As we made our way back to Perseverance's End, I kept an eye on the tide meter. It ticked lower and lower. Despite that, Elyra spammed [Navigational Pings] whenever she could, quickly raising the level of the skill to two. It didn't require beast cores this time, luckily, and now she could keep up with our walking speed so that we were never stumbling along in the dark. So to speak, at least, although it did feel good to have this strange instinctual feel for where things were all around us.
The skill mostly focused on things of interest, which were animals and monsters, and the occasional random plant we chose not to stop to investigate. Thanks to that, we made good time and reached the city by midday. We passed through the main gate, said hello to Ted who was busy with the wall repairs, and stopped at Lee's to give him the reagents. His reaction was priceless.
His eyes almost bulged out of his head when he saw all the stuff we were carrying, and he was forced to call his master Slyzarik since he couldn't handle all of that on his own. It wasn't his shop, and while he was given liberty to purchase stuff that could be useful, this was more money than he was comfortable handling without telling the man.
Sucks, because we all disliked the snake-like master alchemist, but whatever.
"I am very grateful that you thought to come to me first," Lee said as we were about to leave. "This, and the congealed slime?" He said the last part in a whisper, so that his master wouldn't hear. "I owe you big time," he finished.
I smiled and said nothing about it. Inwardly, I was giddy. Not even officially a member of the three-letters and already someone owed me a favor! The girls shared my thoughts, Vespera especially, while Elyra was already trying to think three steps ahead and failing due to a frustrating lack of information. Her emotions were strong enough that I almost felt the same compulsion she must have felt to gather more intel.
That's when Vespera went on the offensive, and quickly the bond became a shouting contest of random emotions. It was fun and very distracting, but it served as a nice reminder that we weren't here to speedrun things. We were here to enjoy life, the second chance at it for all three of us. At our own pace.
We asked Lee where we could sell the cores and the meat. For the cores, he told us that the guild was probably the right place. For the meat, he directed us to a restaurant, which turned out to be the same one where we had dinner a few days ago.
"The one where I gave you that foot—" Vespera began, only to be stopped by two glares. Elyra was blushing like crazy, while I suddenly felt watched even though nobody probably cared or even heard.
At the place, the server's reaction to seeing the meat we were trying to sell was eerily similar to Lee's reaction to the alchemical ingredients. He called the owner, who almost threw a fit when he saw what we had to offer.
"How did you get your hands on… what even is this?"
He made a gesture, and a server vanished and reappeared with a strange item moments after. The owner, Fan, grabbed it from the man's hands and immediately used it.
"Wolf… wagyu… meat?" he read from a screen only he could see. "I don't know what this wagyu thing is but…"
He kept reading, mumbling to himself.
"I'm buying all of it," he said as soon as he recovered from the shock. "Who did you say sent you here?"
"Lee," I said.
That opened the floodgates.
We learned that Fan was a member of the three-letter club as well, the 4089, and he thanked us profusely for having gone to him and not to a random butcher who would have massacred the meat only to then sell it back to him for a massive markup. After having ripped us off, of course.
In his eyes, like to everyone else's, it was as if we were already full members. He gave us A LOT of money, and then told us that while poor Lee surely didn't know, he actually knew a place that would buy wolf cores for a slightly higher price than the guild provided, provided that they were fresh. He offered to handle the deal for us, with no brokerage fee. Well, save for the fact that he'd be delighted if we mentioned his restaurant to Ted if the topic of where to hold another three-letter dinner came up.
I took his offer, and got another good chunk of money.
"And this is how we entrench ourselves in the local power games," Elyra said. "Lee owes us a small favor, and we took upon ourselves to glamour up Fan's restaurant the next time we see Ted."
"Ah, but you see, I liked eating at Fan's, so that's no effort on my part," I said, mostly as a joke.
"Sure you did," Vespera said while smirking.
"That's what I said, yes," I said smirking. "I did! Both the main course and the extras. Elyra, did you like the desserts they served?"
"We ordered no dess—oh," she said as realization dawned on her face. The blush that crept up her cheeks was like wildfire, and it delighted Vespera and me to no end.
"ANYWAY!" she shouted. We were talking telepathically through the bond, so it wasn't like we were making a scene, although it made me wonder how we must have looked from the outside, making faces and reacting to seemingly nothing. Luckily, just like in a space station, everyone tended to mind their own business around here.
"He also asked if we were willing to keep selling anything even remotely edible to him first, and that he will match any other offer we might receive," the angel said. She was mostly talking to herself. "This, I gather, would count as us doing him a favor, but then the price matching would be him, but then again it is in his interest to get his hands on good quality ingredients, but then again he is assuming we can always deliver that stuff, which we can if we use Sol's skill…"
Vespera snickered at hearing Elyra's crazed inner monologue. I was very amused myself, and I used the bond to subtly encourage her to continue.
She did.
"…we could theoretically do it, but the limit is mana. We use mana for everything, and the skill is a massive mana sink. My own magic is another sink. The wings are a massive draw, as are the shields. The halo beam is the main problem, however, and while I do have a big pool, I lack Vespera's regeneration. Sure, we can all share the mana, but it only shifts the problem. She has quick regeneration for her pool, but compared to mine it's a drop in the ocean of space. Ah. Space. I wonder how Sol—"
She turned towards me, staring like a deer caught in headlights.
"Do go on," I said with a knowing smile.
She blushed, covering her mouth with her hands.
"W-we," she stammered, flushing crimson. "We reached the guild, Sol. You said you wanted to give Buck's token to Bib, correct?"
"Yep," I said coolly. I was enjoying this. "I was also thinking we might grab a quest or two on the way back out."
"Denied," Vespera said.
I looked at her.
She only said one word. "Skitterpede."
Oh. The hole I totally forgot about, the one we were led to by a strange manifestation of demonic magic in the wild. Yeah, made sense. I agreed, and the demon smugly walked inside the guild, forgetting for a moment that she was chained to me to keep up the pretense that she was a slave. I had to rush to keep up with her, and I am sure she did it on purpose just to have fun at my expense.
I heard her thoughts. It was fair, according to her. I needed to be punished for forgetting about poor old Vespera and her little tiny itty bitty hole in the ground.
Right, right. I patted her head, not even drawing many eyes. We were rarely here, but the people were already getting used to us, it seemed.
Or it was the club, Elyra supplied in vague ideas.
Bib was doing his usual routine of cleaning wooden mugs, along with the occasional one that looked like it had been carved from a bone or tusk or something. I had seen some larger monsters marked in the guild map; presumably the mugs came from them.
Anyway, the man already had a complex expression on his face as we approached him. When we gave him Buck's token, he fished out the ten silver he promised us with mechanical motions, his eyes never leaving me. Rather than angry or confrontational like last time, they were melancholic and almost empty.
Then he wordlessly touched the token, and for a moment he just stood dazed where he was. When he came to, he looked at me and sighed.
"I saw how he died," he said. "Caught outside with a flash tide rolling in, and the only safe place has a dryad that asks you an impossible riddle and kills you."
I nodded, grimacing. He must have seen the vision from the token without needing to hack it like we did. Probably because he was a guild staffer.
"I am sorry I couldn't help him," I said.
"He went in first and on his own volition," the man said gruffly. "That's how it be. Did you also go in?"
I opened my mouth to answer, but he seemed to suddenly recall something and stammered. Putting his hands up in a gesture of surrender, eyes darting to the corners of the guild room, scanning the shadows where the smoke clung to the air and seemed to conceal some of the guests drinking their ale, he said: "I apologize. I don't mean to pry. It is your business, of course. Everyone is free to do as they wish outside. I know you did not kill Buck, and that's all the guild needs to know."
I tried to calm him down. "It's no problem, man. I got no issues telling you that yes, we did go in and, before you ask, yes, we answered the riddle correctly."
"He was the one who did," Vespera said. "We would have died if not for him."
Bib didn't even register the fact that a supposed slave had just spoken out of turn. He regarded me with wide, beady eyes. His mugs and dishcloth lay forgotten on the wooden counter of the bar. "Can…" he began, clearly fighting with himself over something. "Can you tell me more? The guild would pay you handsomely, of course."
"I can't," I said. "The dryad told me that should I reveal the answer to the riddle, he would simply change it to a more difficult one."
I sighed. Already, for a civilization such as this, the current riddle was all but impossible. Imagine what would happen if the dryad asked an even harder riddle. Like the photon one I came up with, for instance.
"I see," Bib said. "And now, well," he huffed. "Now comes the hard part for me. Listen, man. I made some mean comments about you the other day. I don't even remember what I said, but I know I can get pretty riled up for stupid things. I apologize. The people you hang out with are your business, of course. I just… well, I suppose you know why I got all worked up, don't you? Now, you might think it's spite—" he leaned in, whispering and making sure nobody else saw him—"but after getting rejected from the club, I did some digging. Yes, I was searching for dirt on them; I don't hide it. I was angry and young and stupid. Thing is, I found something."
Then his voice returned to normal. No, actually, not normal. He spoke a rehearsed line, a performance he put on for the sake of watchers.
"Here, I have a job you might be interested in." He handed me a paper slip. "I'm giving it to you first before making it public at the guild as an apology. You don't have to accept. Just take it and think about it."
He asked that I not open the slip until outside the city. Unlike normal jobs, this one was written on enchanted paper that magically talked with my token, and I could accept it from anywhere without issues, and the guild would know. Officially, it was so that I would have time to think about it.
The truth was different, of course.
"Open it, come on!" Vespera said as soon as we were out. She couldn't contain her excitement.
The sun was setting, but the tide meter was low and we had stocked up on supplies to spend the night under the stars more comfortably than ever before. A perk of having a lot of money, relatively speaking.
"I admit that I too am curious, Sol mine," Elyra also said.
I caved in. I tore the envelope, and we all gasped.
"D-demonic magic…" Vespera said, stunned. "It's full of demonic magic!"