4.11

“I never knew how blind I was till I walked a mile in another’s shoes.” - The 187th Anointed Thief Lord, John Johnson the Prolific Shoe Thief.

Note, he stole the shoes right off the feet of the transcriber who was documenting him and is now pestering famous people for their life stories.

“Here are your registration papers,” the receptionist professionally said, handing us each a sheet of paper. “Both of you are now officially registered and may take up quests as Freelance Mercenaries or as a part of a Mercenary Band. The Administrative Guild shall keep a copy of your registration papers, though you will still be required to present your papers to take up a quest unless you gain identification as a Plated Mercenary.”

“Plated Mercenary?” Noam asked as he examined his paper.

“A higher ranked Mercenary, who has accomplished numerous quests, they are given a metal plate as identification as well as other benefits,” she answered.

“Such as?” he continued

“Easier access to certain cities, along with the right to start and lead Bands and Guilds,” she looked at us from side to side, “Are there any other questions?”

“Nope.”

“No input?” I asked my other.

His reply was curt, “Studying. Be quiet.”

Briefly changing to his vision, I caught a glimpse of several dozen opened snack bags before it looked up to see lines upon lines of alien code. Several dozen tabs opened to various Wikipedia articles, coding forums and online teaching classes. Dissecting whatever ‘Discovery’ was no doubt and trying to extrapolate more things from it.

“Keep at it,” I encouraged.

I shook my head.

Satisfied, the receptionist let us go. Sneakily, I grabbed a pamphlet that was stacked on the side of the desk.

“What kinda quest should we start with?”

Unfolding the pamphlet, I answered, “No clue.”

I quickly perused the pamphlet, “They recommend Plateless mercs go for something easier.”

“Such as?”

“Daily quests,” I answered as I got to that section, “I won’t recommend it for you, it’s mostly just gathering quests for items that have a constant demand but don’t require a skilled person to gather.”

“So chores pretty much?” Noam deduced as we reached the quest board.

Folding the pamphlet into one of my pockets, I quickly scanned the board. It was rather barren, with daily quests sequestered to the side to leave a mostly empty board.

“This and this,” I pointed to two sheets. “Those you shouldn’t be bored with.”

Noam followed my finger, before grinning, “You know me so well,” he said as I moved my leg before he could kick it.

A Raid quest posted by a Mercenary Guild, Ivory Tower. They’ve managed to corner a cultist who’d been creating and releasing chimeras, and needed people to clear the caves before they could launch a full raid on the cultist. They were accepting Plateless, so it was probably a low-level quest. Five gold upfront for venturing the caves with a party, with remaining payment determined by contribution.

“Seems kinda low doesn’t it?”

“Not really.” If we were assuming one to one conversion of currency to Traveller Gold, then it was one-seventh the way of the cost of a decent weapon. Though Traveller Gold had the inherent value of being usable literally everywhere.

“It isn’t?”

Oh, I forgot to say it, I quickly explained my reasoning.

Next was a subjugation quest to control the growing infestation of ‘Bilge Rats’. Judging by the picture it was some kind of ugly, fish-like rodent covered in scales. They seemed to grow up to the size of a large dog.

“We’ve seen them before!” Yellow pointed out.

“Really?” “Really?” Both Noam and Greenie asked.

Yellow bonked Greenie on the head, “Of course! After we left Noam.”

There was a sentence classifying the Wharf Rats as only going up to CR 3, but going as high as 7 if a horde gathered. I flicked open the pamphlet again. CR means Combat Rating, they classified each level as… Bah, their description of each level just listed creatures of that level. Creatures that sounded strong but I had no idea what their exact capabilities were.

“Were they strong?” I asked when research failed.

“Yeah! There were lots. One smart big one. Buncha weak small ones.”

I should probably be effective against them then. Horde strategies failed against any constant AOE. They paid a gold per hundred rats killed, so the real difficulty would be massing that number for me to go ham on.

Noam pointed to another quest, “This looks good as well.”

Killing a manticore? Those were classified as CR 20, now that was definitely out of our league.

Reading more of the description, I argued, “Its location is way too vague.” Hunting anywhere around the roads of the nearest three towns? Way too wide an area for two people to search. “And those things can fly. Not something we can quickly deal with even if we caught it.”

The two-hundred gold bounty was nice, but not worth it.

“Aww. Killjoy.”

“Let’s try to not die, we’ve had, what? Eight deaths between us already?” Still didn’t know if we could earn back any experience we lost, for all I knew every death could be lowering our maximum possible level.

He shrugged, “I lost count.”

Noam casually dodged my attempt at bonking him with my staff, “We should go for a quest that’s just hard enough for us to do, but not difficult enough that we could fail.”

“Where’s the fun in that?”

“Living,” I drily answered.

“But we can’t die?” Greenie squeaked.

I gently patted Greenie, “We can die, it’s just that we come back.”

“If I asked that question you would’ve hit me.”

“If I tried to hit you, you would’ve dodged.”

“True.”

Shaking my head, I continued, “Back on track, where’d you want to go?”

Noam pursed his lips, “Hmm… What about this?”

A quest asking for spare hands on a whaling ship. “You know how to help out on a ship?”

“Nope.”

Tsking in annoyance, I said, “If we don’t have the relevant skills, then we’re gonna be annoyances more than actual help.”

“Gotta start somewhere,” he playfully replied.

“And that somewhere is not here,” I said, grabbing his chin and pointing it at the other listed quests. “These two are the only ones we can actually do at our current state.”

“Hmm…” he murmured as he pushed my hand off. “Cave quest?”

Nodding, I agreed, “Cave quest it is then.”

In truth, I was hoping he picked that one. The quest was time-sensitive by its nature and the fact it was underground meant I could operate freely. I was also curious to see how a Guild operated in this world.

Noam moved back to the receptionist desk, “Hey, how do we accept a quest?”

The receptionist, having overheard us, swiftly pulled out another document, “For Ivory Tower’s quest, you will need to sign these papers and present it to our guild’s representative at the location.”

Our as in the Administrative guild’s? “Are they present to ensure we don’t get shortchanged for the contribution-based payment?”

“Among other things,” she absentmindedly replied as she wrestled a few pages out of a stack.

Glancing at us from side to side, she asked, “Do either of you need directions to the location?”

“Please.”

Dustin walked forward with his nose buried in the map. At first glance, he wasn’t paying the slightest attention to his surroundings, but both Greenie and Yellow were on the top of his cap. Somehow managing to fashion the hard brown fungus into a balcony circling his cap from front to back.

Noam knew Dustin was seeing through his eyes too, so he did his best to make sure he was looking everywhere except for where the Shroomy Bois were looking. Which he hoped Dustin would end up making their official name, though Noam also thought them being called ‘THE SQUAD!’ with full reverb and some sound effects would be cool as well.

He wasn’t keeping a wide view to help shore up Dustin’s blindspots, well, he was but not in a combat sense.

Noam was sightseeing.

A glance to the left and he saw a shop that seemed to be crafted from the overturned hull of a ship. Though the doorways and windows looked like a recent addition, Noam could see dozens of brutish lines of different colouration in the wood. Some kind of glue, hurriedly used to cover up scars of numerous encounters, until the ship was disabled by something which took a chunk out of the keel. A wound that remained there until this day.

To the right, he saw an open warehouse, where there were people of numerous races butchering the bloody corpse of some kind of shark-like beast that had hairless and muscled limbs that reminded him of a bear.

Even if he looked to the ground, he could see that the road was cobblestone, hundreds of stones placed haphazardly in a ditch before the gaps were filled with concrete. He knew that these types of roads were uneven by nature. But here they were flat, and unlike with a normal game, Noam could tell that the small indentions on the sides that were carved by years of carts travelling the road, rather than game convenience.

Even a ‘starter’ town oozed history, and that was just what he saw!

Taking into account the ever-present smell of sea salt, he could practically taste the mix of the metallic smell of blood as people butchered huge ocean beasts along with the myriad of strange scents that came from cooking stalls.

This was a living world.

Sure Eve tried to market it off as a game, but Noam knew, he could talk to anyone in this town, become friends or enemies with them like any other person.

Noam truly felt he was alive in a living world.

Something that Declan would not really understand on his own. Declan could take in more information at once, keep track of multiple factors and variables once he knew them, but he did this by simplifying them.

Noam realised long ago, that this drifted into his daily life. Whenever he tried to get Declan to describe a past event, he would describe it by its most notable aspects and little else, if not outright forgetting it. Declan became better the more interactions he had with something, but Matt had figured out a long time ago, if something was not relevant, it was forgotten.

He chuckled, taking in the world so hopefully his friend would get something more than the bare minimum.

The caves were actually pretty close.

A brisk walk through the town, past the first wall that encircled the Wayshard, then the actual walls that marked the end of the town, where Noam managed to catch us a farmer who brought us the rest of the way by cart.

He exchanged farewells with the man after signalling me that I didn’t need to pay for the trip. Apparently the stories he shared were interesting enough.

Noam seemed to be more affable here than in the real world, or were people just friendlier to him? He told me that his Charisma automatically rose per level, similar to how race my race had Wisdom rise automatically.

I knew that mental stats actually affected you, something I should’ve caught on way earlier with the rats manipulating what’s his face and Peps. Was Noam better at making friends compared to Matt because Noam had a higher Charisma?

A question for later. Charisma was one of those harder to measure stats, I theoretically should be able to figure out the stats of a person in the real world with Analyse. I quickly made a mental note to get my real-world counterpart to do some exercise so I could figure my own exact stats. Pure physical stats seemed easy to figure out, and Eve was kind enough to make a judgement of my Mind stats, so that just left whatever the hell ‘Soul’ stats were.

Speaking of, I checked up on what Declan was doing.

My vision was shaking.

Bags of chips were strewn about as my real-world counterpart was keeled over, his vision violently shaking as he clutched his chest.

“What is happening?” I tested.

Declan who had remained silent on the entire journey, final transmitted what he was on his mind.

Hysterical laughter.

It filled my head and deafened my own voice. I waited until he calmed enough for me to ask again.

“What is happening?”

He chuckled, his breathlessness somehow transmitting in my mind, “I realised something.”

Declan was me, or at least close enough that differences didn’t really matter. What did he realise that made him laugh so violently?

“What?”

Somehow, I could feel his lips curl in a smile. “I am never going to to be able to read this, to solve this or understand it in any meaningful way.”

His eyes rose, till they settled back on the myriad of screens before him.

“You won’t get it, not yet. But I’ve scraped enough to realise something simple.”

There was no defeat in his voice as he announced, “This is beyond me, code made by a genius and further sharpened by thousands of years of refinement by something beyond human-level intelligence. It is a simple fact, that I will never ever reach a point where I can match what I see before me.”

There was no defeat in him, no anger, no real emotion other than simple acceptance. Similarly to how one would accept that an object dropped would fall to the earth because of gravity, I accepted that this was beyond what I could reach.

“Understanding,” he sat back down on his chair. “That is one of the Paths that made up Discovery. One of three. What we got Analyse from.”

“Do you know why I know this?” he asked.

“No.”

“The damn thing realised I was studying it, with no sign other than the fact I managed to lay its code bare. It realised it was being studied, and started teaching me.”

I didn’t speak, instead letting him continue.

“It told me the basics of what it was. But I learned enough code now that I knew I would never hope to reach this level,” his voice was dead calm now. Simply reciting a fact.

“And what would you do?”

He giggled, the action descending into another hysterical fit. “I will continue because this interested me.”

Threads of clues finally gathered into a coherent theory, no, a certainty because I knew myself better than anyone else.

What Declan was laughing at, was himself.

There was no part of himself that believed he could reach what he wanted, yet he would try anyway. Declan laughed for the same reason I would laugh at a Darwin’s Award, he was laughing at an idiot doing something incredibly stupid. Declan knew his actions were incredibly idiotic and pointless, but still wanted to try anyway for a reason as shallow as interest.

“Pitiful isn’t it?” he asked, “You’d think we would learn by now.”

I looked through his eyes and strangely felt that they weren’t mine.

As I heard him descend into another fit of mad giggling, the word I thought was not ‘pitiful’.