Unfortunately, the next two weeks bled by in road-dust, tin trees, and not nearly enough good material finds.

  Dain made do. He stored half of the beast meat they obtained so he could turn them into a Cursed Manabrew Potion yesterday, and the remaining half he ate normally as cooked meals. Most of the beasts they found on the road—mainly ironleaf elks and cinderboars, which even Anisa could take down easily enough with her crossbow—didn’t taste so good. Not even with Drenn’s expert butchering and cooking skills. But he mostly blamed the cursed effect of the previous Cursed Manabrew Potion he drank back in Granamere, making it so everything he ate left a metallic aftertaste.

  At least that cursed effect finally expired over a week ago, and the new Cursed Manabrew Potion he drank yesterday gave him four more mana and point-two more mana regeneration at the cost of… making him smell like a woodland beast for the next two days.

  Probably because the materials I offered for the potion all came from herbivore woodland beasts.

  But all things considered, it’s not so bad a cursed effect.

  Even more importantly, with yesterday's Cursed Manabrew Potion, he'd finally figured out his natural tolerance level: four potions a month, or essentially one potion a week. The moment he downed yesterday's potion, he immediately swooned in his seat and almost fell off the wagon. Yasmin and Anisa had to hold him still for a few minutes just to keep him steady. That tightness in his chest that he'd felt—and that uneven thumping in his heart, like he'd just downed ten spoonfuls of energizing sugar in a single gulp—was the ultimate sign of imminent mana core sickness, which meant his natural tolerance level was equal to Orland the Everbright's.

  It was difficult for him to accept at first that he had the same amount of talent for chugging potions as his childhood hero did, but at this point, he really couldn't tell if it was him who was talented, or if it was the Cursed Manabrew Potions being more easy to digest.

  It's probably not me, right? These potions are probably just easier on my mana core, right?

  And if my natural tolerance level is one potion a week… does that mean I'm just going to be cycling through weird cursed effects all the time for the foreseeable future?

  Sighing, he flicked his gaze at his own Tag while the carriage creaked along the road.

  ***

  Name: Dain Sorowyn

  Grade: Common-7

  Cursed Title: Collector

  Title Ability: Eye of Belara

  Acquired Skills: None

  Might: 14 (+4)

  Swiftness: 13 (+2)

  Resilience: 12 (+1)

  Clarity: 25 (+1)

  Mana: 62/62 (+3.5/hr)

  Relics: Windscar Prosthetic Arm (Common-5), Bloodlight Eye (Common-2), Firelight Oreblade Cane (Common-8), Silverplume Wingcloak (Common-4)

  ***

  Whatever the case, he was Common-7 now.

  He smiled, let himself feel a pinch of pride—

  “We’re here,” Anisa sang.

  And she dragged him back to reality.

  He lifted his head and looked past Drenn’s shoulders.

  Braskir was a massive town terraced like a stone amphitheater and ringed by jagged mountains on all sides. The outer districts held wide, clean avenues and tough little three-storey houses, but closer to the middle, stone stacked to four and five storeys with balcony bridges joining them like veins. Smoke and steam and banners and drying lines tangled the air. People—so many people—moved with purpose, with baskets and tongs and clipboards and weapon-belts, and the sounds of clattering wheels, shouts, and anvils all came like a smith’s hymn.

  He’d thought Granamere was busy. Granamere and Corvalenne combined were a lullaby by comparison.

  As Drenn drove them down into the town, the main road braided with other roads and caravan lines. Miners returning home with dust-gray faces rode lumber carts, hawkers bedecked in rolling copper bells shouted bargains, and as they entered the town itself—by the gods—railways crossed the streets like vines.

  He couldn’t resist a grin and turned around in his seat, hands clenching the sideboards of the carriage as he peered out. Minecarts the size of bathtubs zipped along the rails, most laden with ore, some ferrying rough men and rougher women. A crew of six miners rode a long train of ten carts, sharing drinks as they sped around a corner and shot over a bridge. A group of children perched on another line of carts, legs kicking, hair wild, people shouting at them to get off before they hurt themselves.

  Aw. That’s so cool.

  I kinda wanna ride one now.

  “Obric’s pride and joy,” Anisa said cheerfully, pleased by his delight as she peered out by his side. “All of the minecarts are relics. Any licensed miner and worker can hop in, feed a trickle of mana into them, and use them as public transport around the town. It looks chaotic, but the rails were designed and constructed by Obric’s brightest architects. They never collide.”

  “Efficient and ostentatious,” he said. “I approve.”

  “Oh, but wait until you see the capital if this much already amazes you,” she teased. “Karatash is a city built on the side of a mountain. The slopes are much, much steeper there—and so are the speed of the minecarts.”

  As they continued sightseeing, Drenn half-turned on the driver’s bench, voice raised to beat the street noise.

  “Where am I dropping you three off, then?”

  “Seeker’s Guild first!” Dain shouted back. Drenn nodded back and whipped his reins, speeding the mountain ram down the street even faster.

  Anisa glanced sideways. “What, exactly, are we doing there first?”

  “The one-eyed who activated the golems was most definitely heading here, which means she might still be in town,” he said, lowering his voice out of habit. “No doubt she’s keeping a low profile here, but if her activity in Corvalenne and Granamere is a pattern, then she’s probably intending on destabilizing Braskir as well. If anything weird’s already happening around here, the Guild will know. We’ll check the job board for any strange requests or happenings.”

  Yasmin nodded once, approval understated, while Anisa’s smile tipped wry. “Sensible. Very well. But what about—”

  “The Seeker’s Guild in Braskir should also be much larger and more accommodating to adventurers. We can get food and lodging there.”

  Drenn guided the ram through a final curve and braked outside a wide-fronted stone hall with a hammered-iron sign: ‘SEEKER’S GUILD — BRASKIR BRANCH’. The building loomed larger and more ornate than the tidy hall back in Granamere: broad stone frontage, tall windows latticed with iron, and golden banners flapping against the mountain winds. Adventurers walked in and out through the metal-plated doorway, already making it infinitely more lively than Granamere’s Guild.

  Dain hopped down, landed light, and offered a hand Anisa didn’t actually need.

  “This is me,” Drenn said as the three of them unloaded. “I’m turning back around after I water the ram. Heading back to Granamere for the return haul.”

  “Thank you, Drenn.” Anisa paid the remainder of the fee in clipped curons and a smile that’d fund a man’s courage for days. “May your roads be smooth and your recipes equally daring.”

  Drenn’s grin flashed boyish. “They will be. Best of luck, adventurers!” Then he clicked the reins, and the four-horned mountain ram snorted dignified steam before plodding back into the flow of the main street.

  Dain, Anisa, and Yasmin took the front steps two at a time and passed beneath the golden doorway.

  Inside, the hall was also much larger than Granamere’s entire guildhouse, floorboards worn by a thousand boots and some paws. Three polished counters ran along the back wall, each manned by bronze automatons with soft-glow eye-slits and quill-hands that never splashed a drop of ink. The center of the hall was all tables: battered ones for old hands, clean ones for newbies, and multiple long tables by the sides where crews of adventurers were arm-wrestling each other. Notices and maps wallpapered the whole left wall, and in the center of that wall loomed the job board: a plank the size of a barn door bristling with pinned requests.

  Noise washed over them—boasts, arguments, the scrape of chairs, the thump of boots, the clink of mugs—and Anisa’s eyes lit like a child seeing the backstage of a circus.

  “Now this is a Guild.”

  “Mm.” He couldn’t help smiling. “This building also doubles as an inn, so go charm us a room from the automatons while Yasmin and I skim the board.”

  “Of course,” Anisa said easily, already gliding toward the counter-automatons with a court-curtsy. Yasmin tried to say something—tried to reach out—but Dain calmed her with a pat to the shoulder.

  “She’ll be fine,” he murmured. “Watch.”

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  He nodded at a nearby table where an elf and a giant dwarf with a beard like a broom stood nose-to-nose, glaring at each other. A hawkkin and a human lady tried to calm them down, failed, and the dwarf’s fist flew, catching the elf’s jaw with a crack.

  Before the elf could even rock back, one of the waiter automatons—dainty apron, tray still in hand—went from serving mode to problem mode with a little whir. In the blink of an eye, it slid between the fighters, tray tilting just so to knock the dwarf’s next punch off-line, then caught the elf’s retaliatory swing with a clamp-hand. The hawkkin sprang to his teammate’s defense; the automaton caught the bird-headed man by the collar mid-leap, and the human lady didn’t even get a chance to stand.

  Within ten seconds, the automaton tossed out all four rowdy members of the party, and just to put on a show for everyone else watching the fight—it pointed at a neat sign hammered over the doorway.

  ‘NO FIGHTING.’

  ‘NO EXCEPTIONS.’

  Dain chuckled.

  “... Just like in the tales,” he said. “The Guild keeps its floors peaceful so the coin stays. No one’ll dare hurt your lady in here.”

  Yasmin exhaled, a tiny surrender as the rest of the adventurers went back to what they were doing, having already forgotten the entire scuffle.

  “Very well. The board, then.”

  They threaded the tables, shoulders brushing maps and spears and one sleeping dog that couldn’t be a dog. Not with those teeth. A bard in a brown coat slid past singing something about looking for linebreaks in a contract. A pair of smiths argued about ore grades. A witch—with only one hand, mercifully—argued with an automaton about what counted as a ‘pet’, and why her serpent wasn’t allowed in the building.

  Dain felt oddly at home in the racket. A place where people admitted they wanted more than bread and roofs—a place where ambition was a shared language—it was just like the Seeker’s Guild he’d read about in so many other storybooks about the seekers.

  Once the two of them arrived before the job board, they scanned it for requests.

  Higher grade requests, bigger payouts, he thought, but most of these want five, six, or even seven members in a party.

  Not necessarily because they were more difficult requests—most jobs were still just patrol requests, beast extermination requests, and protection-slash-escort requests for local miners—but because they were simpler larger-scale requests that’d require larger-scale teamwork over a longer period of time.

  I’d rather not involve more people than Anisa and Yasmin, though.

  So he moved down the board, ignoring most of the larger-scale requests until he frowned at a particular piece of parchment.

  ‘Extermination request, Uncommon-2.’

  ‘A swarm of steelplated scorpions has been tamed by an unknown masked figure in Mine Kormuhan, southern shaft-red to shaft-blue, and they are rapidly reproducing, preventing miners from working in that vein. A party of nine adventurers has already perished, leaving only one survivor to tell the tale of the masked tamer. Exterminate both the steelplated scorpion swarm and the masked tamer. Capture and turnover of the masked tamer to the Guild is optional.’

  ‘Reward: Twenty thousand curons upon proof of extermination. Any material harvested from the extermination belongs to the adventurers.’

  His eyes narrowed.

  The steelplated scorpion were a race of giant semi-intelligent scorpions that fed on metals and ores to replenish their chitin—not actually intelligent or sapient beings like Huanchong’s insectkin—so they were known to clash regularly with miners and workers all across Obric. The fact that they moved in swarms also meant any extermination request involving them typically required at least seven people, hence the reward of twenty thousand curons to be split between the party members.

  Twenty thousand curons for a request that’d take about a week for seven adventurers to complete was just about right, especially considering this swarm had already caused a few deaths… but nine adventurers wasn’t a ‘few’.

  Adventurers die all the time, but nine of them to a swarm of steelplated scorpions?

  That’s not normal.

  And as far as he recalled, steelplated scorpions weren’t usually found this far north in Obric, either. Not in autumn with still a good few weeks before the arrival of the winter months. They were more southern creatures, typically found near the capital and the shoreline, so what was a swarm doing all the way up here in Braskir?

  Too many oddities with the request, and there was still one more oddity.

  This one mattered the most.

  A masked tamer, huh?

  His jaw set.

  This might be it. The one-eyed shadow he was chasing might just be the person behind this swarm of steelplated scorpions..

  Even still, he didn’t like the idea that he might be walking into a trap. This request was too obvious. It was too brazen. The one-eyed were more than cautious if they managed to get at least one member inside the Curator Church, so would the shadow he was chasing really leave one adventurer alive so they could inform the Guild about their existence?

  … He didn’t like traps, but he liked ignoring them less.

  If this masked tamer was a one-eyed, he had to go. He had to investigate. And if it wasn’t a one-eyed, then at least exterminating a swarm of steelplated scorpions and its queen would yield tons of magic materials and curons along with them.

  It’s a lead, at least.

  As Anisa came gliding back from the counters with a brass room key looped through her finger, Dain didn’t waste any time. He pulled the piece of paper down and turned.

  “Steelplated scorpion extermination request,” he said plainly. “Tamed by a masked figure. We’re doing this.”

  Yasmin’s mouth tightened, but she nodded once. She must’ve been reading the same request as well. He’d explain to Anisa later, but right now, he simply strode to one of the counters, slapped the contract down, and looked the automaton in the eye.

  “I’d like to take this request,” he said. “I’m Dain Sorowyn, Common-7. My party members are Anisa Roven and Yasmin Roven, both Common-5. There’s no minimum party members for this request, right?”

  The automaton scanned him up and down with two cones of golden light. “No. Request confirmed. Adventurers registered: Dain Sorowyn, Anisa Roven, and Yasmin Roven. Upon completion of the request, please present no fewer than ten steelplated scorpion heads and one emphatic hivemind brain from the scorpion queen to this counter for verification and payment.”

  “Gotcha. What about the lone survivor from the party that took this request before us? What’s his name? Where is he? I’d like to talk him about the masked tamer he saw—”

  “The adventurer has already departed Braskir following the death of his companions. There is no further information,” the automaton cut him off. “Be advised: if your party fails to report within fourteen days of your reported entry into Mine Kormuhan, you will be considered deceased, and the extermination request will be escalated to the local townsguard.”

  The automaton slid the stamped contract back across the counter.

  “... Appreciated,” he said dryly. “We’ll try the whole not-dying thing.”

  Then he rejoined Anisa and Yasmin, folding the contract before tucking it into his coat.

  “There’s no time limit on this request, so we don’t have to dive right in tomorrow,” he said. “We’ll stay here for a week first—settle down, shop around, do some smaller requests, and gather some more equipment so we don’t get caught off-guard. If the one-eyed are really behind this, I’d rather trip over them with a full pack of supplies than with bare hands.”

  “Best to be prudent.” Anisa smiled faintly. “But for now… lunch?”

  “Yep. We eating here?”

  Anisa looked happy enough with this place, but Yasmin made a sour face, so he glanced around the hall to figure out why—and it didn’t take him long to understand. Between the sloshing mugs, the shouting wagers, and the bards singing hilariously off-tune in the corner, the Guild wasn’t the prettiest place for first-time outsiders like them to eat in.

  He read the room and shook his head.

  “We can always eat here later,” he said, glancing at Yasmin as he did. “Besides, I wanna tour Braskir first. Surely the town has better delicacies to offer than what the Guild has, right?”

  Once excited about eating in the Guild, Anisa now puffed her chest at the mention of Obric’s pride and glory. “Leave it to me. I know just what Braskir is famous for.”

  So while Anisa led the way out of the Guild, Dain fell into step behind her, and Yasmin mouthed a small ‘thank you’ at him.

  He grinned back.

  Just because the Guild’s a safe place to eat in doesn’t mean it’s not a noisy place to eat in.

  At the end of the day, Anisa’s a princess. She should eat somewhere more refined.

  He raised a brow to himself as they walked out of the Guild, trodding down the steps where the four adventurers who’d been thrown out of the building were still arguing and fighting each other.

  … And I guess I’d also rather not see her get all tipsy and leak our secrets to any adventurer trying to cozy up to her.

  I can somehow see that happening—

  “You stupid rock-stunted shitbeard,” the elf lady snapped, grabbing the dwarf by the collar. “Now we’ll be sleeping in the gutters for a month!”

  The giant dwarf bared his teeth through his beard, voice so thick it needed shoveling. “Och, aye, an’ if ye’d no’ pinched off the top o’ the purse like a sly branchrat, I’d ha’ nae cause tae wallop the long-ear in the first place, would I? Ye skim like a priest at tithe-time!”

  “Skim? Skim?” The elf barked a laugh, full of splinters. “I was fixing the accounts! If I don’t fix them, none of us eat, because all you know how to do is break stone and stink!”

  The human lady flapped her hands between them, voice soothing, almost sing-song. “Now, now, we don’t have to call each other names. You both work so hard. Let’s use our inside voices, alright? Everyone’s just a little hungry, so—”

  “Hungry because we broke, and broke because we ban from requests for month, and ban because Kargun can’t keep fist down and Ilvaren can’t keep hand out of coinpurse.” The hawkkin threw his head back and guffawed. “I love you, but I hate you too. Is this what humans call a… what you call? ‘Love-hate relationship’?”

  The dwarf spun on him, jabbing a thick thumb. “Shut yer feathered gob, ye gawky cludgie! Ye’d sell yer own egg if it had a crack in it!”

  “And you’d eat it!” the elf snapped.

  “Wouldna’ waste salt on it,” the dwarf fired back.

  “Children, children,” the human lady soothed again. “You all say such clever things when you’re upset, but none of them are helpful. Let’s breathe. One, two—”

  They fell into overlapping insults again—the elf spitting venom, the dwarf rumbling threats that sounded like geological events, the hawkkin speaking absolute nonsense, and the human lady trying to calm them all with even more warm motherly nonsense that only fueled the flames.

  Dain ignored them flatly. He had skewers on his mind, not squabblers, but as the three of them passed by, the hawkkin sniffed.

  Then his eyes snapped to the little corner of the contract paper sticking out of Dain’s coat.

  … Oh, for fuck’s sake.

  It’s because I smell like a woodland beast that this hawk-head—

  “Contract,” the hawkkin blurted. Then he wheeled to his companions, pointing a talon at Dain. “If we cannot take Guild work for month, then we just join someone who already take Guild work. See?”

  That shut the other three up.

  The elf, the dwarf, and the human all turned their eyes from the hawkkin to Dain, Anisa, and Yasmin—measuring them like they were a stack of coins left on a tavern counter. But Dain didn’t flinch. Neither did Anisa or Yasmin.

  It was three pairs of eyes against four, quiet as a blade hanging mid-swing.

  Then the elf broke the silence with a sharp toss of her silky blond hair and stepped towards Dain, flashing a sultry, but slightly embarrassed grin.

  “How about it, mister?” she purred. It wasn’t a good purr. “Looks like the three of you are new to town. What say the four of us help you out with your request? We know the nooks and crannies of this entire region from head to toe, east by west wind. What do you say? We can split the reward neatly and evenly, and we’ll all be richer for it.”

  Her companions nodded along—the dwarf with a grunt, the human with a hopeful smile, and the hawkkin with a hungry glint.

  Dain looked her dead in the eye for a moment longer.

  Then he returned a cheery smile.

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