A business travel

The moment he closed the door behind him Jay opened his inventory and took out the Bag of holding. Thinking about it for a second he decided it was worth a couple of seconds to strip of his bloody and smelly clothes. Sitting on the bed with just his underpants he went on with his inspection. Holding the small purple pouch he opened it and as his right had was about to enter a notification appeared.

__________

Bag of holding – Epic

equipping this Item will bind it

[OK]

__________

Without second thought he chose ok and the next moment he got depicted in his mind what was inside. It was a fortune. Not only the over twenty thousand gold coins or the platinum coins he had no idea of its worth, it held countless ores and items. He of course had no idea of their worth but as most of them were at leat of rare quality he was sure to have struck gold. With one single click he got rich.

Rummaging through the Weapons, mostly guns and axes, Jay soon found out they started from required base levels of thirty and even the worst was of rare quality. Only after checking them all was he sure that only a war-hammer and a rifle could be used by him.

__________

Yetimus Maximus

War Hammer – Rare

Damage 41-48 Weight 16

__________

__________

Trueshot Rifle

Mana-Rifle – Rare

Damage 38-49 Weight 5

__________

The hammer was wooden with metal fittings and humongous. As he didn't have any need nor skill for the big ass weapon he tossed it into his inventory.

But the Rifle intrigued him. It had a slender dark silver barrel, mounted on a dark wooden grip and stock. The trigger, butt plate, fittings and bolt were of a shiny silver. As he had no use for it at the moment he put it back to the inventory but kept it on a quick slot.

With the armory it went pretty much the same way. Only there he had no luck as the worst one was a enchanted leather armor he could use when he reached level 25.

A little disheartened he put the small pouch back into his inventory without any problem. Only some gold coins and a hundred of the silver ones he took out. Half of the silver coins he stored inside his room for use in the near future.

Next he put his new Wingblade inside the inventory and double clicked it. Just as he had hoped for, the notification of forced unbind appeared. Lucky for him this time it showed just a single hour as countdown which instantly dropped to 59m.

After giving himself a quick wash and donning some clothes he went down to the dining hall. Today was some of the game he had hunted as the special. Before he started to work for Mia he had some portions of dinner for himself. The women an co workers were still laughing at his unceasing appetite.

In the coming hours Jay helped in the Inn again and met a lot of soldiers he knew.

From some acquainted soldiers dining at the Inn he had earned that Riley had been transferred to another Garrison. She had leveled up and got to precious for this region. She would have liked to meet him again before leaving, as Jay was told. The same applied to him so he may be could have tested some of his recently achieved skills on her.

The rumors about the female Bandit hunting adventurers had been confirmed as another adventurer

group had fallen to them. It had been a party of recently arrived adventurers, directly from Northvale. Though this time a survivor had made it back, her location remained unknown. Yesterday evening a search group was sent eastwards to the location the adventurers had been attacked at. Unfortunately the soldiers only found traces of battle there.

Aside the unnerving news of disappearing people the evening was uneventful until a lot "Whaatt??" resounded through the whole Inn. It had been Alexis.

The busty drunkard had settled on a special wine she came to like. Not like any drink would have been fine by her,... but now she had learned her favorite was out of stock!

Deciding to ignore what happened and advising the customers to do the same, the commotion died down as quickly as it arose. Alexis kept quiet after Mia pulled her to the kitchen and gave her a lesson, but sat sulking at the bar.

As Jay went to bed it was all back to normal. The same room had been kept for him and even the feeling of being watched as he changed was back again.

Before the lights went out he checked on the sword from his inventory. As he had guessed he could use it just fine and it bound to himself the moment he used it the first time. Storing it back and assigning a quick-slot, Jay looked for what to unbind next. As most of the items in his inventory were way over his current level and the royal satchel could take as long as the Bag of holding took, he decided to go with the Mithril shirt. Before he double-clicked he plundered the gold bags he had looted back then, but compared to his new found wealth, it didn't matter.

After a good night with deep sleep he was already up when Alexis knocked on the door.

The Shirt had a required level of only thirty and absurdly high magical defense with some additional enchantments. It would come in handy the moment Jay reached the required level.

For the next forced unbinding he decided to wait, as only the Royal Satchel and the Amulet were left. As for the latter one, there was a high probability of it being too high level for him to use. So it wasn't worth it and he first wanted to check on the satchel anyways. But the three days it blocked his inventory would be too much of a hindrance for him at this point.

Alexis greeted him friendly and couldn't help but peek at his bare torso. He was about to say something but swallowed it back in fear of a retaliation at his training.

Making their way down to have breakfast Alexis looked surprisingly fresh to him. After he asked her in the most gentle way what had happened for her to be this way she explained it to him

"Well, you see,... My preferred pinot noir went out of stock yesterday. Mia had already warned me that the last barrel was nearly empty..." A.

'So this drunkard is sober in the morning for the first time since we got here...' was Jays first thought. As they reached their favorite table in the dining hall, Mia had already prepared their breakfast.

To no surprise, the main topic for breakfast was the missing delivery from McLures vineyards which had been scheduled for last week. It had gotten robbed as the garrison soldiers had reported. They had placed their own order and went on investigation after the weekly wagon was late, only to find a wrecked wagon with a missing driver and barrels.

Mia had already thought about sending Marcus to the vineyards but never did in fear of endangering him. As she heard this Alexis threw Jay a expectant glance. He knew he had no choice but to offer his help.

"If you'd like, I can go there with Marcus to fetch the Wine. May be you can even sell some to the garrison with profit then..." J.

With sparkling eyes Mia embraced him while still sitting next to him, pressing his left shoulder into her gigantic and soft bust.

"I'd love it! This way I won't have to worry for Marcus and have Haggard owe me one... I'll have Marcus prepare the wagon then. Thanks!" M.

With a smooch on his cheek she stood up to tell Marcus who had already left for the kitchen.

It had been decided to ready the wagon and depart in one hour. That had been enough time for Alexis to grant Jay a good hard morning practice while cursing at him.

She had wanted to come with them but Mia had blocked that off in fear of the bill. Alexis was insatiable if it was about pinot noir!

The carriage Mia owned had a huge load area and a small bench for the driver. The two horses pulling it seemed to be of the same race as the one Jay rode towards Arathor. It being a monster-breed meant the trip wouldn't take too long.

That was at least what Marcus told him as he mounted the carriage. The empty barrels had already been put on the wagon and they left immediately. On their way Jay learned that Marcus had lost his wife in the uproars in Arathor more than ten years ago. Since then he had never fallen in love again and fled to a rural area for Ellie to grow up in peace.

Asking further he was told that the workers had claimed to have been filed and laid fires to burn down the capital. That was all Marcus knew and already more than he wanted to know. As he had no real chance to learn of the real reason or even the culprit behind her death, all that awaited him for asking further was more sorrow.

Jay decided to shut up on that topic and asked Marcus about Mia. She had told her employee to keep shut, but he still told Jay what was already known to most people in Gold Creek.

She had taken over the Inn decades ago and had told him her husband always wanted to own a Inn and help young adventurers, that was at least what she had told him. What only few knew, she was one of the best healers in the whole kingdom. Haggard called for her only in dire situations like with Jay himself back in the days.

The trip was pretty comfortable though the carriage shook and bumped on the paved road. For quite some time they drove along the massive silver lake until they took to the left, passing a sign with 'McLure's Winery' on it. After some miles more through the forest it had taken them not even four hours to reach the border of the vineyard.

The road to the winery winded up a slope through the vineyards. Only a few workers could be seen picking the Grapes though the vines were full. In the some distance behind them, Jay felt he had seen creatures that didn't belong there. If he was right Kobolds were stealing the grapes and running back with full hands. It was a scene he had already witnessed and noted to himself to ask when they arrived.

Overlooking the vineyards from higher up the slope he could see the paved main road passing through the furthest part of them in the distance. The McLure's property was simply gigantic.

As they arrived a tall blonde man greeted them, introducing himself as Joshua McLure. After Marcus and Jay climbed off the carriage and introduced themselves, Marcus went on with business talk. Before the two went inside for payment and signing the documents, Jay had the chance to ask about the Kobolds.

The little Pests had started to appear two days ago and Joshua had already sent a request to the Adventurers Guild. Until now no one had come to help him though. With no desire to watch the paperwork or even help loading the barrels he offered to help with the Kobolds. Giving him the go and even promising immediate report to the Guild, McLure and Marcus went inside.

Grinning wide, Jay switched to his new rifle. It was time for some shooting practice!

While feeling it wasn't the first time he held a rifle, he took his stance and aimed. Not too far away one of the ratlike pests had just turned around to run back to their cave. Pulling the trigger after matching front sight and back sight, Jay was surprised it had nearly no rebound.

A light blue bullet pulling a trail went straight for the kobolds head. Accompanied by a small booming sound the headless kobolds torso hurled forwards.

"Wooow, 'that really a magic gun? Where'd ya gettit?" ???

A young voice reached Jay from behind. Turning around he found a boy of about nine or ten years old gawking at his new toy. The shot just now had not used mana from him though it clearly was a magical attack. He had no idea how it worked so he decided to play the boy for information.

"Hah, you know about mana-guns? They're pretty rare, you know?" J.

"Rare my Ass! It's not called lost science fer joke, ya know? Last stories bout' em was from thousand years ago..." ???

"Hey, what's your name? ..and tell me what you know of those weapons." J.

" Billy McLure 's the name. Those ain't weapons, those are works of art! They could either collect mana by themselves or from the wielder speeding up the recharge. Some even had elemental attributes or could adapt it to the person using them. Adding that most of them could fire off non magical bullets with a magic acceleration they were the most versatile ranged weapons in history!!! I mean, magic and non magic attacks for mages and normal people? That's nuts!" B.

"Ok, Billie, calm down. I stumbled on it by chance some time ago. Want to watch me hunting a little?" J.

With the boy smiling stupidly while nodding his head, Jay got company for the next two hours shooting kobolds all over the vineyard. The cheering never ceased how ever much gore the small boy had to see. Just witnessing the use of the rifle brought him a all time high.