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Chapter 165: Pets

“No, not Time Loop,” I said. “But I heard a noise from below.”

“Shit,” she said, getting out of bed, herself. “Think it’s an attack?”

“Could be.” I placed my helmet on my head, the last piece to complete the set. “Let’s go see what it is.”

Cautiously, we snuck out into the empty hallway—how was nobody else awake by this? Or were they all already up and evacuated? Maybe the shouting coming from downstairs was the sound of a massive battle raging on.

Every creak as we crept down the wooden steps stabbed my heart, until we finally got to the door that opened to the doorway that led into the main lobby.

“Ready?” I whispered to Erani.

She nodded, and we burst through the door, holding up our hands and ready to blast off our Spells at anything that dared move in our direction.

We found…nothing. Well, there were certainly things in the guild lobby. A receptionist at the front desk, a bartender calmly cleaning a glass, a couple people that’d passed out at the tables, and a few more individuals standing around and talking. The ones who were awake looked over at us with curious expressions at our dramatic entrance.

I looked around, still not totally off-guard, and called out to the room, “What’s going on?”

The bartender frowned at me. “Nothing. What are you doing? It’s six in the morning. Don’t wake up the rest of our patrons.”

“Oh,” I said lamely. “Uh, sorry.”

“There is something going on!” one of the people standing in the middle of the lobby shouted. When I looked over, I realized that the group of people wasn’t just talking, they were arguing. Two big, buff people—a man and a woman—were standing and holding a guy by his arms while he drunkenly shouted at them. The drunken shouter was the one who’d yelled over at me, and he continued, “These two assholes are trying to kick me out, even though I did…like, nothing!”

“You’ve started three separate fights now,” one of the pair holding him said. “Sorry, but that’s too far. We get that you’ve got your vendettas and such, but you can’t be settling that in here. We gave you your warnings, now it\'s time to leave.”

“You can’t do this, man! At least let me get one more drink before I leave.”

The bartender looked over at him. “No.”

Then the drunkard swung his head over at me. “C’mon man, do something about this! It’s, like…prejudice or something, man!”

“Sorry, um, not sure I…”

His eyes widened in recognition upon seeing me. At first, I was worried he somehow recognized me as the kingdom’s fugitive, but then he shouted, “You’re that guy from last night, right?! That guy who pushed me over. Flamin’...spiked armor creep. With the flamin’ armor that hurts me when I touch it. Go…die in hell, or something, man.”

“Oh,” I said, recognizing him. “It’s you. Uh, Tyrus, right? Are you still drunk from last night? You should get some sleep.”

“I don’t…care what you think,” he muttered, and walked off, out of the building, leaving it silent.

“So,” Erani said, “I assume that was what made the noise. Not an attack.”

“Attack?” the bartender asked. “Why in hell’s flames would you think the guild is getting attacked? This is the last place to fall in an assault, certainly not the first.”

“Yeah, guess that’s true,” I sighed. “We’ve just had a lot going on lately.”

After that was over, we left the guild, ourselves, and headed out into the streets. It was technically still somewhat early, but we were up anyway, and so we may as well have gotten a head start on the day.

One thing I hadn’t noticed in my rush to see what was going on in the lobby was that Noxious Grasp had Ranked up over the night. Walking down the street, I looked at the notification.

Threshold reached. Noxious Grasp XP has reached 1.92k.

Noxious Grasp Rank has increased to 16.

Due to Noxious Grasp Rank reaching 16, it has undergone the following changes:

Mana Cost: From 5.32 to 5.45

Health Drain: From 20.8 to 21.8

Stamina Drain: From 10.4 to 10.9

I was officially getting pretty close to Rank 20, meaning the Spell would be able to be Upgraded once again. And since I already had a Poison Spell Crystal, I’d only need one more to get there. Though, with all of my other Spells that also just needed one more Spell Crystal to be Upgraded, I still had quite a few in line. Hopefully, with more time to work today, we’d be able to take on a more suitable job for our Levels and make a much larger chunk of money.

But for now, we had something else to worry about. In order to get a license to let Ainash into this place, we’d need to go to town hall and speak with them. I wasn’t exactly confident they’d have protocol already in place for giving out licenses to allow in such a rare species of monster, but we had to at least try. By talking with town hall, we’d get an idea of what we’d need to do from now. So while this certainly wouldn’t be the only thing we’d need to do, it’d still be the first step in any course of action.

After asking around for directions, we eventually found ourselves standing in front of the imposing marble building that cast a shadow on the surrounding streets. Even in the early morning, a steady trickle of people marched both in and out of the front doors.

We walked in and, after once again asking for directions, we were directed to what was labeled the “Urban Monsters Offices,” which we found after wandering through a winding set of hallways. It was dizzying and stressful, navigating the tight, artificial corridors, but eventually we got there.

Walking through a door with the corresponding plaque on it, we entered an office with a woman sitting at a desk.

She looked up at us. “Do you have an appointment?”

“...No, do we need one?” Erani asked.

She sighed. “No. Just makes it harder on me. Have a seat, tell me what you need.”

We grabbed a couple chairs that were sitting against a wall and dragged them over so they were facing her, the wooden legs scraping loudly against the floorboards.

“So,” I said, “we’d like to get a license to bring a monster into town.”

“Oh, goody,” she said in a monotone voice that made it clear she was in no way excited. “Another one of you people. Tell me the species.”

“Uh, you can only let in specific species, right?”

“Yes. If it’s not in the books, it’s not allowed in.”

“Right,” I pursed my lips. No way ‘Draconiad’ would be in there. “Would we be able to look at that book?”

She sighed again. “Fine.”

As she fished around in a drawer at the bottom of her desk, I shared a glance with Erani. We knew that Draconiads wouldn’t be in there, but there was a possibility that we’d be able to find Nymphs, or even Dryads, which were both more common. So I was hoping that, if we could get our foot in the door with the precursor species, perhaps we could convince them to just use the rules for that one, since there weren’t many differences.

The woman leaned back up in her chair, now holding a massive binder that barely even fit in her hands, and dropped it on the table with a room-shaking thud.

“That’s A through G,” she said, then leaned back down to the drawer.

I shared another glance with Erani. If that thing contained just the first fourth of the species…maybe Draconiad would be in there, after all?

The three other binders—H through M, N through T, and U through Z—landed on the desk, and the woman gestured for us to get started searching through.

It was unwieldy, trying to open these books to specific pages, and despite them being alphabetically organized, it was still difficult to find the exact place that the species we were looking for would be, since there were just so many filling the books. Eventually, I found the page that should’ve contained Draconiad, and…nope. It would’ve been between Dracolich and Dragon—how one would keep either of those as pets, I had no idea—but there was nothing there.

So instead, we looked for Nymph and Dryad. A few more minutes of searching, and…again, nothing.

“Are there any species that are allowed outside of what’s in these books?” I asked.

The woman rolled her eyes and shook her head.

“Really? I mean, it’s kind of surprising you don’t even have Nymphs on here, I thought they were more common.”

“Don’t have any idea what a Nymph is.”

I sighed. Maybe they were only common in the climates that the kingdom was housed in, or something. “Okay, well is there any way to add something to the book? Or, like, have someone come and examine a monster that isn’t in it?”

“You certainly can,” she said. “Once you’ve been a citizen of this town for at least two years, we can start the process and you just need to pay a small fee, and someone will come out here to look at it. It’ll just be around a three month travel time, and—”

“Oh.” I deflated the moment I heard ‘two years,’ and ‘three month travel time’ killed any hope I had left for an exception. “That wouldn’t be an option.”

“Is there anything we can do without waiting so long?” Erani asked.

“If you want to rush things, and you haven’t been a citizen for that long…” the woman stopped to think. “Well, the government wouldn’t help you pay for it at all, but you could always teleport a specialist out here. We’ve got a teleportation circle, so if you pay the cost for a two-way trip, we can have a specialist come out within just a couple days.”

“That’s perfect,” I said, not quite believing our luck. “How much would it cost?”

“Well, Enchanting materials are scarce nowadays, so the cost of teleportation materials have gone up some. For a two way trip at that distance, should be…one hundred and twenty thousand eyt.”

I groaned upon hearing that figure. Over a hundred thousand? That was absolutely ridiculous. “Is there any way to lower it?”

“Not unless you can provide materials, yourself. But to figure that stuff out, you’d want to talk to the people who run the circle. Not me.”

“Sure,” I sighed. “So all of this money is just being spent to bring a ‘specialist’ in, right? What is that, like, the people who write the requirements in the books?”

“Yes. Everything that was put in this book was done by a specialist. It’s their job.”

“So, for all of these entries…” I looked at the tens of thousands of pages in the binders. “Someone paid over a hundred thousand eyt to put it in there?”

“Not all of them. Most of the monsters native to the area were put in preemptively, once the law was put into place. And the ones that are put in through the method you’re trying to do—getting a specialist to look at a monster on request—are more often than not done by a citizen that has the patience to wait a few months. Then the specialist can travel on foot, which is much cheaper.”

“But aren’t there any specialists nearby? Why would it take months to have a specialist come here? I mean, why aren’t they stationed evenly throughout the empire, or something? Hells, this seems like a pretty populated place, why don’t you have someone capable of writing new entries stationed here to begin with?”

“You’re a foreigner, right? Probably from the kingdom?”

“Uh, yeah. How did you know?”

“Your accent. Your vernacular. Your ignorance. Your…everything. It’s obvious. Listen, I’ll afford you a little patience since you’re new here, but please do your research before coming to a new country. Your little kingdom is very, very small. Specialists are stationed evenly throughout the empire. They’re in every major city. The nearest major city is just a few months away. It’s the capital itself, actually.”

“Oh.”

“So please, I’m not sure what to say to you except that. If you want a specialist, you’ll have to pay a round trip fee.”

I sighed, preparing to get up and leave, but before I could, Erani spoke up. “What if it was just one-way?”

The woman laughed. “I can promise you, you won’t be able to convince the specialist to move here forever.”

“No, no, just…it’d cost half to do a one-way trip, right?”

“...Hypothetically, yes.”

“Okay, and the people who live in those big cities—the nearest one is the capital, right?—the people who live in the capital, they don’t have to pay any money for teleportation or anything, right?”

“No, they don’t. Just a small service fee.”

“Great.” Erani looked over at me. “You interested in going someplace new?”

“That’s…a pretty good plan,” I nodded after we left and Erani told me what she was thinking. Instead of paying double for a specialist to come here and go back, we could pay a much smaller amount by going to the specialist, instead. We had nothing tying ourselves to this location, so we had no reason to pay so much for the trip back. It effectively halved the cost of this whole thing.

“Plus,” Erani continued, “we don’t even want to stick around here, anyway. I mean, we’re right next to the kingdom. If the Demons ever decide to attack us, we’re going to be in the city that’s the most vulnerable to the assault. Sure, the military would try to fight them off, and Kingdom’s Edge is a good natural barrier, but I feel like several months-worth of travel time is a much, much better defense. So we’d probably want to leave and go somewhere else at some point. And this specific town is completely oversaturated with adventurers, so we really want to get out of here. If we can head to the capital, we’d solve, like, three problems at once.”

“What about Ainash, though? She wouldn’t be able to enter the city, so how could we bring her along?”

She shook her head. “The circle’s probably not contained within the city itself. If it was, we’d know.”

“What? Why?”

“That’s how it worked in Koinkar,” Erani said. “At least, that’s what my sister told me when we spoke about them. I never actually saw one, but evidently, they’re big. Like, really big. And since they aren’t very fragile, there’s no reason to waste city space keeping them within the walls. In the kingdom, they normally just stuck them out in the forest or whatever.”

“Okay,” I nodded. “And so since we only need a license to bring Ainash into the city itself, it wouldn’t be a problem. I see.”

“Yeah. We can figure out the specifics when we speak to whoever runs the circles, but that’s the idea, at least.”

“Speaking of, do you want to head down and try talking to them about getting a discount? That woman said something about providing ingredients to reduce the cost further, right? Maybe we could go out and grab something to make it a bit more affordable.”

“—Celestial Ash, Moonstone Essence, Ethereal Lotus Petals, Stardust Crystals, Whispering Bane Root, and Dragon Scale Shards for the preliminary lighting of the leylines, then Feymoon Blossoms, Shadowfire Ember, and Enchanted Lotus Petals to connect that with the other circle, and then we use Ashenfired Lotus Petals and Arcane Quartz to bind that connection, then we use some basic leyline superimposing techniques to quicken the connection—that needs Powdered Deepstone to do—then Crystalized Dreams, Essence of the Void, Enigma Orchid, and Lotus Petals of the Shadowed Moon to do the second tier lighting for the circle…”

I nodded along and tried my best to follow the man’s explanation of how they used teleportation circles, and what ingredients were needed. When we’d walked into the circle station that housed the circle and the people that worked with it, I’d been hoping the conversation would be easier to follow. This…was not that.

In the large entrance hall where we’d asked to meet with one of the mages who dealt with this sort of thing, we’d waited until he walked out, an old man with a long beard—the absolute pinnacle of my mental image of what a ‘wise old Wizard’ looked like. Typically, there was a large gap in the ages between high-Level Magic-Types and high-Level Melee-Types. Since Magic-Types got more powerful with time because of how Spell XP and Spell Ranks worked, whereas Melee-Types got more powerful as their bodies got more powerful, it was very common for the peak of the melees to be around age 40, whereas the peak of the magics were instead…just around as old as they could get.

So the long white beard that threatened to trail across the ground, the wrinkled face, and the hoarse voice all contributed to that stereotype I’d always had. And his way of speaking about this complex shit as though I had any idea what he was talking about didn’t detract.

“...and then we close the leylines off with Ancient Spirit Lotus Petals and Runebound Essence, dust the circle with a touch of Timeless Sands, sprinkle it with Luminous Moonwater to reduce nausea, and then we just have to charge it with Mana. That’s the stripped-down, basic, entry-level explanation, so I do hope it didn’t feel too patronizing.”

I blinked. “Right. Thanks. So, we were wanting to teleport to the capital, and heard that we could get the cost reduced if we helped gather ingredients. Would any of those be possible for us to get, or…”

“Hm.” He looked down and stroked his beard for a moment. “Do you have any of them on your person currently?”

“No.”

“Do you have any teleportation capabilities? Or methods to move at extremely high speeds?”

“...No. We wouldn’t be paying for teleportation if we could do that.”

“And I assume you don’t have access to pocket dimensions?”

“No?”

“Then there is not much you can do to help.”

“I mean…” I frowned, trying to think of something. “You mentioned lotus petals a lot, right? Do they all come from special lotuses that you can’t find near here? Or do you get some mundane petals and then enhance them once you have them?”

“Some are sourced locally, as you have said.”

“So could we help you get the natural lotus petals? Are they nearby?”

He tittered to himself. “Yes, yes, you could help by doing that. The lotuses are just over there.”

Following along the direction he pointed in, I looked and saw a potted plant sitting by the wall. My shoulders slumped. “I don’t suppose you could give us a discount for walking over and grabbing some of those?”

“My back has not been kind to me lately, so I would appreciate the help…but no, I do not think we could pay you for walking ten paces.”

“Okay,” I sighed. “Thanks for the help anyway, I guess.”

“You are welcome. Now, please excuse me, I need to return to my station charging the circle for our next teleportation. It is very time-consuming work, so I do hope you understand.”

“Yeah, I do,” I nodded and turned away to leave, but then stopped. He’d already mentioned before that they needed to charge the circle with Mana before it could be activated, but now he was saying it was time-consuming? If charging it with Mana was an issue, then… “What if I could do the Mana charging for our teleportation on my own?”