I awake to the morning sun entering the window to my room in the adventurer's guild. Its not a bad way to wake up, if I'm honest. Without electricity and the internet, its much easier to go to bed at sundown as well.
I get my armor equipped, and go down to meet up with my party. I don't have to wait long for Varris and Calliope to arrive. They arrive together within a few minutes of me being ready in the main lobby. Now seems like a good opportunity to ask them about if they're getting funding or not from the royal family.
"Hey, I've meant to ask, but the Royal family is supposedly paying expenses for the next month, but you both already live here in the Capitol, so I wasn't sure how that was being handled?" I ask.
"They're not paying us anything right now, but if we need maintenance on our gear, or when we start adventuring outside the capitol, I think they'll provide." Calliope responds.
"Thanks, I just thought I'd ask since it felt a little bad that I'm essentially getting rooming for free, but if they're on the up-and-up then it should be fine." I reply.
We end up making idle chit-chat for about 30 minutes and we start to wonder if Elys is alright. Just as we start to consider asking a receptionist to check her room, she hurries down the stairs, with her hair a mess. I'm not one to speak up though, on Earth, I was the same way, only getting up with enough time to properly clothe myself before heading out.
"Uh, sorry I'm late. I overslept." Elys says with a sheepish grin.
"We didn't lose much time. As long as we don't make a habit out of leaving late, it should be fine. Yesterday was a busy day after all!" Varris declares as him and Calliope turn to set out.
I notice Elys make a slightly more worried expression and lean over to whisper to her, "Don't worry, I used to sleep late in my home world. I think it just takes a bit of a habit break to fix it. You should be fine."
She looks a little more relieved, and we set off behind Varris and Calliope to begin slaying giant rats for the day. It takes us a while to find our first one.
After we defeat it I speak up, "Varris, you said they were territorial, right? Do you think moving forward, it'll take us longer each day to find some giant rats initially because we cleared the ones closest to where we entered? Maybe when we go back for lunch, we should ask the receptionist if there are other entrances to the sewer. Either way, we should kill as many as we can in this first batch, in case it takes even longer tomorrow and the next day to get far enough to kill more. We shoul"
"Yeah, that sounds like a good plan." Varris says, "Worst case, we finish early right? We should probably take a late lunch today, just in case."
We all seem to be in agreement, it seems like the scent in the sewers has killed our appetites anyway, so we continue hunting giant rats for quite a few more hours before anyone is hungry enough to decide to head back to eat. By that time, we've killed another 6 rats, leaving only 8 to kill, but no level notifications. Garm did say it gets harder to level though, so that was sort of expected.
By the time we make it to the adventurer's guild, its mid afternoon. We clean off, turn in our rat tails, and grab a bite to eat. While when we finish eating, Varris goes and asks the receptionist for any other entrances to the sewers, and she confirms that there are other entrances, and gives us directions.
We set out towards a different sewer entrance, and hunt down 3 more giant rats before we call it a night, and repeat the process from yesterday. I once again beat Elys down to eat dinner.
"I was wondering what your stats were, if you don't mind me asking. I don't mind sharing mine, but I understand if you don't want to." I say to Elys as she sits down.
She looks a little flustered, but responds, "I don't really mind, but what brought it up?"
"I'm just trying to get an idea of what the numbers actually mean, like the stat is called intelligence, but am I getting smarter as I gain more in it?" I reply.
"Well, each stat affects a combat attribute. Intelligence is a bit of a misnomer, its more like magic strength. Going through each stat, Strength is how hard you hit physically, Endurance is how hard of a hit you can take, Dexterity is precision and agility with physical skills, we already talked about Intelligence, and Charisma affects your resistance to certain magic attacks as well as some other parameters for some holy or dark spells. Charisma is a bit of an outlier, but some healing or corruption spells can affect multiple targets, and Charisma seems to mediate the number of affected targets. As for my stats at level 1, Strength: 2, Endurance: 2, Dexterity: 3, Intelligence: 10, Charisma: 4." Elys explains.
"Thanks, that's very helpful. My stats at 1 were, Strength: 5, Endurance: 5, Dexterity: 6, Intelligence: 11, Charisma: 6. I'm apparently around average for a hero. I don't know if its my place to say it, so all I'll say is one of the other hero adventurers has real high stats. Only the best of the best are on the demon lord subjugation team though." I reply.
Elys looks interested so our conversation meanders on the topic of the other heroes while we eat before we each decide to call it a night.
The next morning, Elys is still the last one ready to leave, but not nearly as late as yesterday. We set out to another entrance to the sewers. By near almost noon, we've found the last giant rat. When we easily dispatch it, we all pause again.
It seems we've all leveled up to 3 at the same time. With that comes some more stats and the choice of our first spells. My choices are:
Emotion Control lvl.1- Temporarily manipulate someone or something's emotions. (Strength of emotional effect controlled by intelligence, duration by charisma).
Read Thoughts lvl.1- Read someone or something's thoughts. (Amount of info controlled by intelligence surface/base thoughts, duration by charisma).
Both choices provide me with some nice benefits, and I could disguise as empathy spells. Read Thoughts I could simply disguise as literally empathizing with someone, and Emotion Control I could try to disguise as something like calm or the like, maybe help people control their emotions sort of thing. Both have upsides and downsides, however I wish I knew more about more monsters/demons we might fight. If we're fighting essentially beasts, read thoughts won't be that useful in combat necessarily, but emotion control could be. Sending a beast into a mindless rage while surrounded by other monsters, or making it calm or confused could be useful as well to get us out of a pinch.
Thinking about it from a survival standpoint, I think Emotion Control lvl.1 is the best bet. I take that as my first spell. Looking about the party, it looks like they're all still deciding what to take, so I idle waiting for them to either speak up or make a decision. It seems like people don't ask for advice on these choices much, which makes sense to a degree. Ultimately, only you are stuck with your decisions, but you may not be adventuring with the same people forever, so doing what you want with your own magic and skills is important.