The town of Dorkastel looked to be a smaller town, probably less than twenty five hundred residents. There was a rather strong looking wooden stockade surrounding the town with armed guards pacing along the top. Bekhi and I had to walk around the town to get to the gate since it was facing away from the mountain.
"Paper's please." A guard wearing light armor, just a poorly maintained breastplate and helmet to be precise, stopped us at the gate. "Can you speak Imperial, dwarves?"
"We can speak Imperial, but what papers do you need?" I quickly ran over Humbart's lessons on humans and they didn't mention anything about paperwork.
"Huh, you two must not be citizens then. I'll need to get your names, occupations, where you are from and where you are going." The guard then called for writing materials so that he could make note of everything. "Alright, you first."
"I'm Kvalinn Ekgo-, I mean, Kvalinn Runecursed. I'm currently unoccupied but I've trained as a weaponsmith. We came down the mountain from Vesturhildrun and we're on our way to the Adventurers Guild to become adventurers."
"Adventurers eh? Well good luck with that. The guild here always has herb gathering requests up. Although if I were you, I'd stay away from the escort quests for the moment, a minotaur has been heard in the woods lately and it might attack you if you stray too close."
After getting Bekhi's information and collecting a couple copper coins as an entrance fee, the guard stamped our hand with a wooden stamp. "This will show the other guards that you're visitors on your way to the adventurers guild. Don't wash it off until you get the paperwork filled out at the guild, if a guard stops you and you don't have the stamp or papers then he'll be authorized to kill you on the spot as a Zaihanian spy."
I made a very big mental note to not wash my hands until getting paperwork. Evidently Zaihan was more of a threat than I realized if such extreme measures were being taken.
Walking through the town, I felt a little nostalgia as we passed by the wooden houses. It was almost like being in a renaissance fair. With stalls selling crafted goods that had been made over the harsh winter, and hunters selling the animals that they had tracked down. The only downside was that as a dwarf I was shorter than everyone except for the children.
"So these are humans." Bekhi was looking around the town with a mix of caution and curiosity. We had heard many stories about the human species in school and only a few of them were favorable. Most of the time Elder Rongrim had told about their fickleness, short lived passions, and the many grudges contained in the great book of grudges against them. "Do you think we're safe here?"
"We should be. I packed enough runed weapons into our bags to make the Warrior Clan turn green with envy."
"Are they safe?" Bekhi looked at me with a piercing glare.
"Mostly. I picked the ones that have the highest chance of killing monsters rather than us and I didn't use any of my experimental ones." That was relatively true, there was one or two slightly overpowered weapons in my bag as a last resort.
"Good. I don't want to be worrying about whether my weapon is going to explode while we're fighting the minotaur. Now which way to the guild building?"
"This way, according to the guard, it's right next to the mayor's office near the center of town. But are we really going to kill the minotaur?"
"Of course!" Bekhi answered with the feral grin that her family always displayed at the prospect of a good fight. "I want to test out these weapons your dad made, and what better way to test them than in a fight?"
We eventually made our way to the guild building. The inside of the building looked like it had been pulled from an anime. With a large wall where quest details were written on wooden boards and hung for adventurers to choose from, a counter where quests could be accepted and completed, and a couple adventurers sitting at tables smoking and drinking. However, instead of finding a cute receptionist behind the counter like you would see in most anime, there was just a bored looking man in his thirties playing with a spinning top.
"Excuse me." I knocked on the counter, just a bit annoyed that it had been made with only humans in mind so it was roughly shoulder height for me. "We've come to register as adventurers." The receptionist gave a heavy sigh, as if I was asking him to do the most idiotic task in the world before putting his toy to the side.
"Name, age, and birthplace?" He scribbled the information onto a couple pieces of paper before handing them to us and droning out the instructions in a bored voice. "These are your guild cards. They can be used as identification anywhere on the continent. Making unauthorized changes to them is grounds for expulsion from the guild. Your starting rank is G. Any questions? No? Good. Now go away, I'm busy." He then went back to spinning his top with an absent expression on his face.
Bekhi and I wandered over to the list of available quests to find the minotaur killing one, but for some reason there was nothing listed.
"Looking for something specific?" A tall, friendly looking adventurer with a longbow strapped to his back came up behind us. "There's a couple good paying herb gathering quests over here that's at your rank."
"Thanks, but we were looking for the one to slay a minotaur. The guard at the gate said that one has been heard in the area." Bekhi didn't even look up from her parsing of the Imperial letters to answer.
"I like your moxie, but that's a rank B quest, rank C if you're in a party. But you won't find a request like that here. Only rank E and F guys like us stick around here. They probably sent the request over to the capital to get a more powerful adventurer."
Bekhi started grumbling and cursing in dwarven. So I took over the conversation. "Are there any good quests that involve travel? We're not looking to make this place our base."
After perusing the quests, the adventurer took a quest off the wall. "Here's a good one for you. It's an escort quest from here to the capital. Just take this board to The Shouting Lady tavern and give it to the quest issuer. He'll decide if he wants to take you or not."
After thanking the adventurer, and getting directions to the tavern, we started off to hopefully begin our first adventure.
The Shouting Lady was a small cheap tavern at the very edge of town. Just as I was starting to wonder why it was called that we heard a shout that was audible from all the way down the street.
"Rodney! Move your ass and get the beds changed! Hurry up! You still need to clean the stables and then scrub the pots and pans while you're at it! After that you need to.." The tirade continued unabated even after we entered the tavern. Once we were inside, we saw the unfortunate Rodney hurriedly following his wife's orders and compliantly saying "Yes, dear." with every order. When the couple noticed us, the woman who had been shouting nonstop gave us her best customer service smile and turned down the volume on her voice exponentially.
"Good morning. What can I help you two with today? I'm afraid we don't have any dwarf rooms available, but we do have a few small casks of dwarven beer."
"We're here looking for," I glanced at the board to double check. "Kurt the traveling merchant. He posted this quest in the adventurers guild."
"Give me a moment and I'll ask him down here." The tavern keeper dropped her friendly smile and shouted up at the ceiling in her previous tone. "Kurt! Pay your tab and get out! Someone finally took up the job of protecting your lazy ass from monsters on the road. Move it!"
A loud banging was heard from upstairs, and a few minutes later a scruffy looking man rushed down the steps with a traveler's sack over his shoulders. "Thank the gods I'm finally getting out of here. Here's your money you witch." Kurt slammed the coins on the counter before noticing us. "Wait a minute, why are my guards children?"
"What did you just call me?! Rodney! Kick him out!"
"Nevermind, you two are hired. Introductions later, more running before I go deaf from that hag." Kurt began running from the extremely loud fury of the tavern keeper, while we followed close behind.
As we exited the gates, I heard the guard chuckle. "You insulted Veronica again, didn't you? You know she's going to remember your face one day and ban you from staying there."
"I doubt it. The only reason she remembers her husband's name is because she shouts it all day. How that poor man hasn't gone deaf yet I'll never know. I'll see you next time I'm in the area."
After saying farewell to the guard, Kurt began walking along the road at a more gentle pace and gestured for us to walk alongside him.
"Now for proper introductions. As you already know, I'm Kurt. Procurer of rare and unusual commodities for the discerning eye, and traveler of the world. Although we will all probably die in the near future from monster attacks, it's a pleasure making your acquaintance, kids." Kurt had the breezy air of a snake oil salesman who may or may not have had something valuable in his traveler's sack.
"First off, we're not children. We're dwarves." I said in annoyance. "Second, none of us are going to die. At least not while we're on the job. Finally, I'm Kvalinn and this is Bekhi. Your guards until we reach Vascato."
"My deepest apologies." Kurt swept off his hat and bowed in an over dramatic apology. "I've never seen dwarves so young register at the guild before, so your beardless faces threw me off. I assume there's a story behind why you left the mountain so young?"
"There is." I left it at that since the mental wounds of being kicked out were still a bit too fresh to talk about with a stranger. Fortunately for me, Kurt got the message and changed the subject.
"I'm glad you two accepted the quest. With tensions escalating with Zaihan and the rumors of a minotaur in the area, I thought I'd be stuck in that hell hole forever!"
"Tensions are escalating here as well?" I thought back to the conversations I had back in the Weapon Clan halls, where they had talked about the increasing attacks on the mountain by their armies and slaving parties.
"Of course! The Zaihanians just crowned a new king, and he's still working on getting total control over his nobility. That means that all the little territories in that cesspool of a country are fighting with each other and the outside world at will. I wouldn't go there for all the gold in the mountains. I'd end up a slave before I even set up my stall."
"Things are that bad up there?"
"Probably? I've never been there myself so I can't say for certain. But the rumors surrounding the country leave me with no desire to visit." Kurts answer was very vague and more than a little flippant, but it fit with the stories I had heard about the country so I made a very big red X on my mental map of places to set up shop.
Back in geography classes, I had learned that Zaihan was set up nearly a thousand years ago as a semi independent territory whose sole purpose was to prevent slaves from escaping from the imperial centers of industry to the Eternal Forest to the north. When the great continent spanning empire started moving towards outlawing slavery, Zaihan split off into their own kingdom and doubled down on their slave owning traditions.
"I guess we aren't gonna go north after this trip." Bekhi said absentmindedly. "Maybe we should go south to the empire after this?"
"I wouldn't do that either." Kurt said. "They're just coming out of a civil war that the dwarves in the southern mountains interfered in, so you might not get the best reception. If I were in your shoes, I'd stick around Handel for a bit. It's not the most exciting place in the world, but there's always people like me wandering around the less developed areas who need protection."
"That… Sounds very boring." Bekhi said in a blunt tone. "Are there even any good monsters to fight against here? Maybe a goblin horde? Or an orc pack? I'd even take that minotaur people were talking about."
At this point, I was beginning to agree with Bekhi. We had been walking for nearly a half hour at this point and we hadn't seen so much as a rabbit. I was beginning to remember why I hated escort quests in video games.
"You two are very odd, aren't you? Most adventurers would be glad of an easy paycheck with no monsters to deal with. Wait, please don't tell me that you two are rookies. Surely I haven't angered the gods enough that they would send rookies to protect me!"
I chuckled at Kurt's discomfiture. "We may be rookies with the guild, but we are both experienced in the field of killing monsters. And we've been trained by masters in combat."
My statement didn't seem to comfort the merchant, since he launched into earnest prayers to Teithio, the god of travel. I watched him pray out of curiosity. The dwarves always called upon the ancestors for guidance so it was easy to forget that this was a world with celestial beings.
The trip from Dorkastel to Vascato was several hundred miles since we had to go south in a winding manner to reach the well used roads, and since Kurt's purse was already stretched by hiring the two of us, we slept in the open air. It was a very cold and miserable journey, but it was also much more free than my former life in front of the forge.
During the trip, I learned a great deal about the country of Handel from Kurt. It was a free trade state that had been set up by a treaty between Zaihan and the Throndian Empire in an attempt to ease relations. Thanks to that treaty, Handel had merchants come from around the world to its large natural harbor, they came here to sell their goods to other merchants who took on the task of transporting the goods to the Empire, Zaihan or even far off Tochka.
Around the fifth day of travel, I felt the rune of wrath start burning on my left hand, and a bestial roar shook the air.
"Finally!" Bekhi shouted with a grin. "Kvalinn! Ready to be bait for a minotaur?"
"Not really, but it's already caught my scent. So I'll trip it up and you take the head." Bekhi stepped back a few paces in preparation.
A few seconds later, the nine foot tall minotaur burst out of the foliage on the side of the road. It was wearing only a filthy loincloth that barely stood out against its black matted fur, and it was wielding an uprooted sapling as a club. Once it caught sight of me, the runes of wrath started burning in its eyes, and it charged at me with blind fury.
I bounced on my toes, ready to avoid the club strike whenever it came crashing down, but I soon realized that it intended to gore me with its horns. So I drew my sword and slashed at the beast's legs as it passed me in its bull rush.
The minotaur let out an agonized cry as it stumbled over its own legs and face planted in the dirt road. Bekhi didn't let it suffer for long though. She had been standing a few feet behind me, and with a sword that had the rune of sharpness on it, she decapitated the beast in one swing.
"Is that it?" Bekhi looked around the forest, hoping to see something, anything, come out to fight her. I instinctively listened for boss music to start playing after she said that, or the minotaur to reveal his second form. But nothing happened at all. My rune stopped burning, so that meant that there were no more monsters around.
"I'm not feeling anything else out there. But what do we do with the corpse? I don't think there are any monsters like goblins up here who will clean it up."
"Ulrich's undies!" We realized that we had completely forgotten about Kurt due to our excitement for the fight. He was standing off to the side of the road with a pale face and shaking knees. "You kids took care of the minotaur without even breaking a sweat! When you said that you were well trained, you weren't kidding! Are you sure you're rookies?"
"We're definitely rookies." I said ruefully. "If we weren't rookies, then we'd know what to do with this smelly carcass."
"Just leave it on the road. This time of year the wolves are starving and they'll eat this beast as soon as they find it. Just cut off a horn, or both if you have a blade sharp enough. One horn's for proof that you killed it, and the other you can sell for a decent sum."
Bekhi quickly cut off the horns and put them in her bag. We then started walking down the road again with Kurt singing our praises.
"Martin's mace, that was unbelievably fast! Even a party of C ranked adventurers would have difficulty in taking that monster down! Who made those weapons!? Are they a famous dwarven smith in Einangrad? Are any of your weapons for sale? The one that Bekhi used would probably fetch a good price in Vascato."
"My father made the weapons for us, and they are not for sale." I shut down any attempts at money making in that way. These weapons were made specifically for us to use, and I wouldn't feel right selling them to anyone.
"Oh well, but do you know if I can buy weapons from your father? I have more than a few clients who are always on the lookout for good weapons."
I gave Kurt instructions on where to find Aundarord, since he was my father's merchant, and left the rest up to the two of them.
"Out of curiosity, Kurt. If I wanted to set up a shop to sell weapons in Handel, where would be the best place to do that?" After only a few weeks on the road, I was already anxious to have a warm bed and a frothing beer waiting for me at the end of the day. Kurt's response though left me less than hopeful.
Kurt started laughing uproariously for several minutes before running out of breath. "Oh wait, you were serious?" He cleared his throat before continuing. "Sorry about that, I assumed you were joking. Well as I mentioned before, Handel is a free trade state, and with people coming in from all over the world, the local craftsmen made a stink about foreign labor taking their jobs. So the government made buying citizenship here stupidly expensive, and if the government official heard you were setting up a shop, they'd probably double your entry fee. So don't even think about putting down roots here it's way too hard. But do let me know when you start selling, if you're even half as good as your father at crafting weapons then I'll make a fortune reselling them!"
I added a big red X to Handel for places to set up shop. My father and Dak had given us some copper and silver coins to get us started on the road, but I doubted that would buy anything so expensive as citizenship.
Eventually, we reached the main road, and after that it was smooth sailing to get to Vascato. We even got to ride on the back of a wagon train for the last couple of days.
The capital was a much bigger city than Dorkastel or any of the other villages we had passed through, with a population of over five thousand. It was a major trading hub as well, being the primary artery of trade between the harbor, the Throndian Empire, and Zaihan.
"This way to the adventurers guild, Kvalinn. I need to sign off that you completed the job and that you killed the minotaur. If you just turn in the horn as rank G, then they'll probably suspect that you bought it somewhere." Kurt led the way through the crowded city with practiced familiarity, and we soon reached the guild building.
Since it was the guild building for the capital of a country, this one was a lot bigger and a lot more crowded. With burly adventurers jostling each other in the line for the counter and at the board for quests. There were a few female adventurers but they were definitely in the minority compared to all the sweaty guys. As for other dwarves, I couldn't spot any, but with my current height of around four and a half feet, spotting anything is nearly impossible.
"Hey, Lina. How's everything going?" Kurt greeted the receptionist with a friendly nod which she returned.
"Good afternoon, Kurt. Welcome back to Vascato. Are you here to trade stuff in or sign off on a quest?" The receptionist was blond, tall, and extremely beautiful. Almost as if she were taken from a painting.
"The second one, Lina. These two took on this quest and carried it out with flying colors." Kurt took the wooden board that we had taken from the Dorkastel guild building, and handed it over to Lina. At her prompting, Bekhi and I handed over our guild cards for her to take notes and pay the money due.
"Oh my! This quest was supposed to be for F rank at minimum! Kurt! How could you take these two rookies on such a dangerous trip!" Lina glared daggers at Kurt, but he just waved her off.
"Like I said, these two passed with flying colors. They even killed a minotaur without even denting their armor." Bekhi took out the two horns from her bag, and placed them on the counter.
Lina reached out for the horns, and held them close to her face. After several minutes of her scrutinizing the horns, she put them down gently. "They're definitely minotaur horns, and so far as I can tell, they're from a fresh kill. But these two G ranked adventurers killed it? Did they set an elaborate trap for it?"
"Nope, it was like nothing I've ever seen before. Kvalinn over here used himself as bait and tripped it up as it charged, and then Bekhi took off its head in a single chop. I'm gonna go back to Einangrad later to get some product from the maker of those weapons."
"Kvalinn, Bekhi, is it possible for me to see these weapons that Kurt speaks so highly of? If they turn out to be cursed then we may need to confiscate them for your own safety. Safe substitutes will be provided if that turns out to be the case."
Looking over at Bekhi, I gave a subtle nod for us to only put the swords on the counter. Each of us had at least a half dozen different weapons on us and all of them had magical runes. And I didn't want to be the idiot who flashes his Rolex to impress the girls, only to get mugged outside the bar.
Bekhi and I gently put our swords on the counter for Lina to inspect. She took up the first one, and I jumped in surprise when her eyes changed color a few times before returning to their normal blue. The same thing happened when she inspected the other blade. I looked at Bekhi, and she was just as surprised as I was.
"Remarkable! They both have powerful magical runes! I'd ask if you would be willing to sell them, but I'm guessing these are ancestral treasures, so I won't bother. I've never seen two runed weapons with this much power in them before!"
"How could you tell how much power was in them?" I remembered that the only way Elder Thrikrondromm was able to measure the power level of the runes was with a pair of runed spectacles.
Lina moved her hair to the side to reveal slightly pointed ears. "I'm a half elf, and thanks to my elven father, I can see the flow of magic in objects so I was able to see the magical energy packed into the weapons."
I looked over at Bekhi to gauge her reaction. There were literally hundreds of swear words in the dwarven language that pertained to elves. But half elves? Not a single word that I could think of. Bekhi looked curiously at Lina's ears before shrugging and putting her sword away.
"Alright, Lina. Need me for anything else?" Kurt asked. Lina just shook her head.
"No, I'll see you next time. But be sure to pay attention to the rank of the people you hire next time. If you do this again then the guild will be forced to fine you."
"I'll try, but no promises. Kvalinn, Bekhi, I'll see you out on the roads." Cheerfully waving goodbye, Kurt left the guild building.
"Just give me a few minutes to calculate your payment and the current price of minotaur horn." Lina began working with an abacus like calculator and small chalkboard. After a few minutes, she handed us new guild cards and some silver coins. "The reward money was ten silver total, but for each of the minotaur horns, you get another twenty silver. So your total payment is fifty silver, and you are both E rank, both for killing the minotaur and due to you possessing runed weapons." One silver was roughly worth $50 in buying power, so we had made around $2,500 from our first adventure together!
Bekhi and I split the money, and after politely thanking Lina, we went to peruse the quests wall.
There were almost no herb or flower picking quests taking up space on the wall, but there was an abundance of quests requiring manual labor such as loading and unloading cargo ships, or guarding warehouses.
"What are we looking for, Kvalinn." Bekhi asked as she worked her way through the lists. "Fun fight, or high payout?"
"If we can find something that has both that would be optimal. But if it comes down to a choice, I'd prefer a high payout, the higher the better." After what Kurt had told me about the high cost of citizenship in Handel, I realized that setting up shop anywhere was going to be very expensive, so I'd need to really fill up my piggy bank for the future.
"There's nothing fun here, so let's go for this one. It has the highest payout." Bekhi took the quest off the wall and handed it to me. It was another escort quest, but this time we'd be part of guarding a caravan and not just a single merchant, and as luck would have it, the minimum rank to join was E rank. Since the quest board had instructions to seek further information at the desk, we brought the quest to Lina for more info.
"Sorry to bother you again, but could you tell us more about this quest?" I placed the board on the counter after we had waited in line again. She took a quick look before looking at us in surprise.
"You sure took advantage of your new rank quickly. Somehow you chose the hardest and longest quest on the wall, it involves thousands of miles of walking, and will take nearly a year to complete. You'll be joining the guards of a trade expedition that's going as far north as possible. Making stops in Zaihan, Tochka, and finally disbanding in the Thombuldahr mountains. If you survive, then the reward is twenty gold ($20,000) and depending on the beasts you slay on the trip then your rank might increase again. Are you sure you want to take this quest?"
"What monsters are out there?" Was Bekhi's first question. "Will they give a good fight if we run into them?" Taken aback by Bekhi's question, Lina did her best to answer.
"There will be ogres, trolls, goblins, giants, wolves, bears, bandits, and don't forget the Zaihanian nobles who are almost as bad as the monsters. And if you have especially bad luck in the Eternal Forest, then you'll have to deal with wood elves and beastkin, not to mention the dozens of monsters that live there."
"We'll take it!" Bekhi had her fighting grin shining on her face as she contemplated fighting all those monsters. I was a little more nervous, but after defeating the minotaur earlier, I felt we stood a good chance against the monsters.
"Where do we need to go to meet the expedition? And does it leave soon?" I knew that we wouldn't find a better offer on the board, and this expedition would get me far away from home. Lina grumbled a little about stubborn dwarves before giving us directions to the warehouse where the expedition was assembling.