Chapter 1 - Section 3 - Preparations

Night fell my business for the day being done I'd returned to the same inn as before, choosing to camp myself there either until the <Marked Wolves> made contact or if they hadn't by morning i'd depart on my own.

Sitting at a table in the bar enjoying my dinner when a group descended towards me from the entrance.

"Yo Kokei!" <Quinella>

A female voice sounded across the bar, turning my head I saw a familiar sight, there leading her party was Quinella the healer of the Adventurer party known as the <Marked Wolves> I waved at them and the entire party joined me at my table.

"Hasn't been long but we were told you had a job for us?" <Quinella>

"Yes, I hope you don't mind but with our conversation yesterday it was the perfect opportunity to kill four birds with one stone" <Kokei>

Cocking her head to one side, the rest of her party were engaged with the waiter placing an order.

"How do you mean?" <Quinella>

From her tone i could sense a hint of worry lacing her words.

"Well I'd like to hire you for an escort mission as was probably told to you before, but I'd like for your party to escort me to Stata, and then if you're willing to go further to continue on in crossing the border into the Meritocracy." <Kokei>

Her eyes went wide, and the chatter from her group also went silent all of them staring dumbfounded towards me.

"That would be nice but, why would you go out of your way for us?" <Quinella>

"Well I've been hearing a lot of rumors lately and want to get out of this Kingdom as soon as I can before something bad happens, and well to find a C-Ranked team who also had expressed the same desire was sort of like a godsend to me, I'm willing to pay you, and well with our objectives aligned there's a lot less risk of any betrayal occurring" <Kokei>

"That makes sense, you had me a bit worried stating killing 4 birds at once though,

[Right there are four of them after all perhaps she took it to mean i could eliminate all of them or something]

Although we would have a question for you since we've already taken on another job already" <Quinella>

"You want to finish it first before joining me?" <Kokei>

"Oh no not like that, actually the job we took was also an escort mission for a merchant who's heading to Stanlow in the Meritocracy so our ask would be if we could couple the two together, of course you'd be welcome to split off whenever you want since this is a personal request the job ends whenever you say it does" <Quinella>

"I see well if the merchant doesn't mind, we could cover it as me being the 5th member of your party as a trial member since I'm only a G-rank myself, I'd offer to be the 'pack mule' since I possess the item box skill" <Kokei>

"Oh wow really that's amazing, but are you sure your item box would be enough for all of our stuff?" <Quinella>

"I've tested it before and I can hold roughly an entire carts worth of contents within it so it shouldn't be an issue" <Kokei>

[Both the merchants guild and Quinella seemed shocked by my declaration of skill so I should try not to stand out too much by saying I have infinite capacity so limiting what I tell people will be for the best]

"Wow that a pretty good size, it's not the biggest item box I've heard of but even still you must have a pretty sizeable Mana pool to be able to use a box of that size" <Quinella>

[Huh? What's she talking about, does the amount of mp change the size of this worlds item box?]

"I see, I didn't have anyone else to compare against so that sounds pretty good to me" <Kokei>

"But are you really ok with this arrangement, if you act as a member of our party you'd have to also fight if something happens? I mean we'd protect you as much as we could but if we stuck to the story the Merchant would come first…" <Quinella>

"No need to worry I'm the one imposing this on you so the conditions are perfectly fine to me, I'm pretty low level myself so even if I can gain a little experience and level up that would be more than enough for me" <Kokei>

"Ok well then we agree to take on the job, welcome to the Marked Wolves temporarily that is" <Quinella>

We shook hands, and the rest of her party also joined in, welcoming me, discussing the journey and job ahead, Larr threw out that they'd have to discuss what to do about the general hazing a new member would need to go through, which Roseanne countered by dropping a Karate chop atop his head.

After dinner we all headed off to our rooms, Quinella informed me that we'd be heading out from the merchants guild in the morning so if I needed anything I'd better go shopping for it on my way over there.

I returned to my room locking the door behind me and settling into my bed once again pulling up my MMO menu and transferring five large gold coins from the sack in my inventory placing them into the coin slot further increasing my spending capacity, before proceeding further on into the shop.

I spent a while checking all the items out, but my choices were limited since my level was still only 1, the gear I bought in town were items of this world so there was no level requirement, even still I should make sure I don't cause the wolves any issues, and better protect myself now that I have the means.

In the end I purchased a full set of inconspicuous items for myself, at a glance they'd just look like better than basic gear for a newbie, but all of them had hidden affects.

A Mantle of Shadows, boosting ones evasion from enemies which when not activated looked like a black fur cape and hood.

Quickstep boots that increases agility by 15 that looked like a fine pair of leather boots that rode half-way up your calf

Rock-hide leather armor that increases defense by 20 full body hard leather armor including pauldrons, curaiss, greaves, and gauntlets

A steel short sword, which has infinite durability

Along with a small collection of healing potions, stamina potions, and mana recovery potions

And to house those a new belt with magic pouches to house them all, each pouch was just big enough to look like it would fit a single potion bottle but really they could store 25 bottle each so long as they were all the same potion.

[With this I'll have my 'Utility belt' setup for pretty much any quick draw situation]

Figuring that was good enough I setup my equipment selection and set the quick-change feature, now I could get 'dressed' in a flash.

Figuring that should be enough for my preparations I closed the menu, and turned in for the night.

[Well I spent a lot but I still have about a ¼ left in the mmo bank if I need to make an emergency purchase along with the other million or so Dokc in my inventory]