The manager took us over to a door on the other side of the room. He then opened it to reveal an office. We all stepped inside behind Sean, and he continued to his desk at the other side of the office. The man took out some paperwork from his desk then grabbed a quill and dipped it into an ink well. He then looked up at us, specifically at Grace.
"When did you arrive?"
"Oh, I don't know what time; it was just a few minutes ago, though." Was Grace's response to the question. Sean looked up at her and blinked.
"I apologize. I meant when did you arrive in this world?" He adjusted the question, but Grace still looked embarrassed. She went ahead and told him that we all came at the same time, and when that was. "So you are part of the newest batch of travelers. You realize you're the last group to arrive from that batch, right?"
He went on to explain that every single other person from the group of thirty that arrived in the tavern a week ago had managed to make parties themselves and find the money to join the Guild. 'But we didn't even find out about the Guild until today.' As if reading my mind Grace mentioned that to the manager.
"Yes, and we do apologize for that. The man at the tavern is supposed to tell everyone about us. But he has a bit of a twisted sense of humor. He sometimes picks certain people not to tell, and then makes arrangements for the others to find out. He says it's 'more interesting that way.'" We were all scowling at that information. 'That damn barkeeper.'
Sean decided to move on with the paperwork, asking us what each of our names, ages, and chosen jobs were. When he found out about my job, he smiled at me. "How is the master doing lately?" He asked me.
"Uh, as far as I can tell, she's doing ok. A bit stingy, though, if you ask me." He nodded understandingly.
"Yeah, she's like that. I wasn't particularly good at alchemy, so but I was lucky, the Guild had an opening and bought me out of my job contract. I'm pretty close to paying them back too!" 'Finally!' I thought. 'Someone who understands!'
"So you were one of her apprentices too? Did she make you learn 'Displace Dirt,' as your first skill?" He nodded with a frown on his face, remembering those hard times trying to be helpful to his group, and being forced to carry all of their extra gear because he couldn't fight. Sean looked around the room and looked suspiciously at every other member of my team.
"You're being treated fairly in this group, aren't you?" He asked to be sure.
"Oh yeah! These guys are great!" I smiled at them, and you could hear chuckles from some of them. Derek even added in an. "Awe shucks you're making me blush." Before playfully punching me in the arm.
"You mean to tell me that you don't mind that he can't fight?" He asked Grace in particular. She looked back at him with wide-eyed confusion.
"What do you mean cant fight? He's the lynchpin of our trapping strategy. We would most likely have died if it weren't for his ability and planning." It was the manager's turn to be confused.
"But you said all you know how to do is 'Displace Dirt.' Correct?" I nodded my head, but then Sarah popped up and explained what we had been doing with the traps.
"And even though he doesn't have any combat skills, he doesn't let that stop him!" My friends nodded, agreeing.
"That's right!" Laura popped up. "The first time we went hunting a few days ago, he tackled a goblin to keep it from escaping!"
"Took a dagger in the back for his troubles too!" Derek chimed in.
"And even through all of that, he still came back out with us today and supported us any way he could even helping in the kills." If I wasn't in the presence of a stranger, I might have cried. I had no clue that my friends thought so highly of me. Sean nodded as if he understood.
"I never even thought of using that skill to make traps. But my party wasn't very open to ideas either; as soon as they found out what my skill was, they made me their pack mule." I felt bad for the guy. If he'd been able to be in a good party that valued his skills, he might've been an excellent adventurer. But then I looked around the room and saw all of his nice things, and the finely tailored suit that he was wearing, and realized that things hadn't ended badly for him.
"Things looked like they worked out for you in the end, though." I smiled at him, and he agreed. We spent the next few minutes finishing up the paperwork and confirming that we had level one tags. He explained to us that the ground floor was the only thing available to us until we could take the tag advancement test and pass, which lead to more questions on our part.
"Twice a year, we have something called the tag advancement test. There's a written test based on your job. Most people can pass it as long as they've paid attention to their teachers' instructions." He paused to make sure we understood before continuing his explanation. "After you pass that, there is a practical test, just to measure your abilities and see if they're far enough along to allow you to progress. That's just from bronze to silver tags, though. Once you try to advance to a higher tier tag, the test will become much harder and more involved. You shouldn't have to worry about that right now, though."
You could feel the excitement coming from the group as they thought about advancing their tags, but I had another question.
"Aside from being a status symbol, what other advantages are there to raising our tag level?" Sean nodded at me like it was a common question.
"So for one, you can not go to the second floor of the Guild without at least a silver tag. There are stronger items, armor, weapons, and spellbooks up there. Some of the vendors up there won't even sell to you unless you have a gold tag, and you've proven to be competent enough to handle some of their wares. That's where the advancement tests come in. You can also get discounts from the lower floor vendors based on your tag level and contribution to the Guild." He took a deep breath and let it out. The manager had just given us a lot of information to think about already.
"Now-." He continued. "Would you like to take a look around, and sell your items from the day?" 'Heck yeah!' I thought. We gathered up and headed back out into the busy first floor. Sean pointed us in the direction of a vendor that was looking for the type of items we were selling. The vendor had your basic set up like a street vendor, with a wooden table with some goods on it and an awning, but behind her was a larger room that housed most of the goods that she sold.
"Welcome adventurers, how fair ye today?" The buxom vendor welcomed us. We exchanged pleasantries before showing her our goods. "Looks like ye've brought me a good haul today; ye must be talented adventurers indeed. I'll give ye two silver for the lot." My eyes almost bulged out of my head. It was true what Jake had told us we were going to get double the amount of money than we would have if we'd gone to an outside vendor.
It looked like this woman mostly just sold accessories, they were nice ones that could help increase your defence or attack, but still we decided not to get anything from her today. We got the two silver broken down into one hundred copper pieces and split it among the six of us. We put forty of it back to buy essentials for the house, like food and proper bedding.
So at the end of the dividing each of us got ten copper pieces to shop with. We stayed as group for the first few stores but soon after everyone split apart to go to the stores that really caught their eye. I decided to go over to a table that was selling books. I looked around for a little while and found some that sounded really interesting.
There were books on fighting techniques, one about poisons, a few cook books. But there was only one that really caught my eye. I recognized the front as having an alchemic circle on the front.
"What's this one about?" I asked the salesman, an elderly man with small kind eyes.
"Ooh are we an aspiring alchemist?" He asked back with a chuckle. I nodded to him. "Well that book is about electricity alchemy. It's a very interesting read, but hard to follow for someone like me." He finished up his explanation and I was sold. I had to learn new skills and this book might could even teach me how to shoot lightning or something!
"How much is it?" I asked the older man.
"One silver." He said flatly. My disappointment was clear on my face. "Don't have enough for it today huh?" The man said noticing my drop in mood. "Tell you what young man. I don't have many alchemists come into this shop, so how about I put it away for you? I wont sell it so that when you have the money you can come back and get it from me?" This put a smile on my face.
"Thank you so much sir! I promise I'll be back." I'd been in the store browsing now for roughly an hour. I owed my teacher twenty five copper in total now anyway. I decided I'd try to go find my friends now and see what luck they'd had. I started walking along the line of shops on the wall, and before long I ran into Tim.
"Hey man find anything interesting?" He had a small bag in his hand so it was apparent that he'd bought something. Tim returned my enthusiastic greeting with one of his own. He pulled out his item from the bag. They were prayer beads. "What do they do?" I asked curiously.
"Well apparently if I infuse mana into them while doing my daily prayers, they will allow me to use the stored mana to cast one more spell after I've run out of my own mana." I told him that it sounded really cool, and he blushed a little bit. "I just want to be sure that nothing like last time ever happens again. If I hadn't run out of mana from healing such bad wounds in a row you would be walking around without a scar now."
I laughed a little bit and reasured him that it was ok by grabbing his shoulder. "You are so kooky!" I laughed. "Thank you though, really I appreciate it." Grace and laura saw us just then and walked up to us quickly. They each had bags of their own.
"Hey guys! What did you get?" Grace asked us. Tim showed her his prayer beads, and explained them one more time.
"What about you?" I asked. She reached her hand into her rather large bag and pulled out something that I couldn't identify. It looked like a some kind of hard white material with leather straps. "What is that?" I asked confused. She sighed before putting her bag down and placing her legs through the leather straps before buckling it around her waist. The picture was glowing clearer as she buckled more straps around her legs.
The hard white areas wrapped fully around her legs leaving space in the back and near the knees so that she could move properly.
"It's bone armor!" She exclaimed excitedly. "I figured if we're going to keep fighting goblins for a little while I should probably protect my bits." 'Makes sense.' I thought. "I could only afford this one piece though." She said with a frown.
"Well I think it's really cool!" Laura spoke up and us guys agreed with her.
"What about you?" I asked turning to her. Laura lifted her wand to reveal a small blue marble at the end of it.
"It's supposed to help me calm my nerves when I rub it in battle." Tim was the first person to respond.
"Is something like that even possible?" He asked. We just shrugged. After all was any of this possible? We slipped into a world of magic and monsters. After revealing that I was saving my money to pay my teacher we decided to go ahead and find the other two members of our group. We eventually found them in the cafeteria section having spent all of their money on food for themselves and the group.
We thanked them and sat down to have our first nice meal since we'd gotten to this world.