Ch 8-9-10

Our first fight as a party, in a rain slicked clearing went…poorly. I had hoped it would be only one step up from the rats that Lucia and I had faced alone, perhaps a bit more difficult than that but with five of us working together, it would work out. What I found was that the powers of this world were quite a bit stronger than that. Balloons and rodents were fodder at best, dealt with only as something on the side, and given normally small bounties. They were still MONSTERS however, and I had merely lucked out with the rats in the sewer.

The first we ran into was a group of balloons, blue types rather than orange, which meant they were slightly stronger. For all that, my party members and I could take them down with ease, popping almost a dozen over the course of a few minutes, despite the speed with which the things moved, dodging our attacks, and spitting out some kind of resin-like material at us. It was all going really well, until that moment where it wasn't.

That had been…embarrassing, to say the least, as I shot at one, only for it to dodge my shot with ease, slip around behind me, and then fire, slamming a goo filled blast into my back, and knocking me forward and onto the ground. Lucia, seeing that, fired a bolt of lightning at the thing, a bolt that nearly struck Shadow as he tried to get in close to get me off the ground, forcing him to dodge, and her to turn the attack aside.

The bolt striking the tree caused it to burst out with steam, the rain soaked branches puffing it out into a cloud, and covering us all in it, before the thing caught fire once it was over, and began to crackle at us. The balloon, seeming to find this amusing, let out what sounded like laughter, before firing more resin at me, literally sealing me to the ground, then, once I was good and trapped, moving towards me like Pac-Man against a ghost while high on a power pellet with all its friends.

Luckily, Fast and Strong were on me a moment later, the former smacking a few of the closer balloons away, the latter literally ripping me from the ground, and then tossing me away like a sack of potatoes. Landing, roughly, outside the cloud, I had a good view as both Shadow and Lucia cast wind spells, obviously intending on blowing the cloud away, only to be doing it from opposite sides.

I shouted about that, too late to stop them, as the pair of winds collided, and created a small whirlwind, not strong enough to do damage, but it did cause all the balloons to swirl up with the cloud, and then scatter as they reached the apex, leaving us alone in a clearing that looked like a great battle had taken place in it, with torn up dirt, a destroyed tree that was still on fire, and the ruffled fur of the two fighters.

It was sobering to see that…especially since, if we'd been facing some actual opponents that would have probably been a lot worse than some bruises on my part…and it was my failure to be fair. The others had been doing okay, in their own little fights, when I'd been jumped by the blue balloon. Still, it showed that our casters needed something to coordinate their casting, so our fighters could get in there.

With a water spell…ninja water spell, from Shadow, I was freed of the goop, meanwhile I checked the bag I wore on my belt, my current (Loot Cache) destination. Combined with (Auto-Loot) it had gotten all the pieces of the balloons we'd collected, which I soon dumped into the green gem on my weapon, letting it consume them. Not enough to unlock anything yet, but it was a start, and when I rose, I told them to follow me.

Our next encounter went better. Using (Sense) this time, I was able to count our foes, some rabbit-like things that Lucia identified as usapils, common monsters, maybe a step above the balloons. Given they were Beast-Types, I decided to try out my new Bow, the (Beast Bane Bow), while giving some actual strategy this time to the encounter, having Strong and Fast loop around them, while Shadow, Lucia, and I would drive them towards them, rather than getting bogged down in different melees.

This worked marginally better. I had them cast wind spells again, this time from the same angle, adding the two together, which drove the rabbit things back, while I fired at some stragglers that tried to run, finding out 'more effective' in this case meant my shots had some tracking to them, though they fired slower, and cost me almost twice the stamina of my normal shots, which was disconcerting as I'd come out here before getting back to full.

Still, twenty-six usapil were driven back by wind and Bow shots, and when they reached the other end of the clearing, Fast and Strong struck, the rabbits going down in one bloody claw rip from the latter, and going still after the former kicked them a few times. It was all together a much goreier scene than the one with the balloons, but gaining a bit more than just 'scraps' this time, as I found my bag now flush with…well dripping meat and bits of bone and fur.

That was…disconcerting, and I called a huddle afterwards, to go over what we'd gained. For myself, the Usapil were worth twelve EXP a piece, and the balloons had been worth five. Better than the rats in most cases. However, my (Auto-Loot) skill, according to Fast, was terrible at its job, as he went over the meat and pelts, talking about how it was amature level stuff, passable, and only just at that.

Strong, meanwhile, was smiling, as he said the usapil had been worth over twenty EXP for himself, and the same for Fast and Shadow, though slightly less for Fast, and even less for Shadow. For Lucia, they'd been worth eighteen, which said we all gained, when something died at the hands of a party member, but our gains were not the same. It was still enough that Fast, Strong, and Shadow had all gone up a level each, while I was still at eight, and Lucia hadn't broken twenty.

Gains were coming slower then, possibly exponentially, but it was hard to tell because my EXP bar was percentile based, though close to the next level. Scratching a few numerals into the dirt with a stick, trying to keep in mind the numbers, I wished aloud that I'd had a calculator on me before coming to this world, only for the Status Screen to pop up in my vision, and helpfully scroll to such a function.

It was…shockingly convenient, but given there were notes here, just like the help menu, I could only guess that one of my predecessors had made this somehow, and soon enough I was deep diving into the numbers on our gains, looking over stat sheets while Fast and Lucia made use of the meat to cook us a passable meal, as the sky began to darken above us, the sun finally setting behind the clouds.

By the time we'd finished eating, with me wishing for some fast food back home, or at least wishing I knew how to make a pizza to teach them how, I ordered us home. My stamina bar was running low, and the regeneration rate of it was, at best, pathetic. Was that because it fueled the regeneration of the others bars AND my own attacks? Or was it because my stats were, to put it bluntly, not nearly as good as the others.

My highest stat was only a bit over half of the lowest one in the party of the same stat. That…I saw ways of buffing it in my menu, and other stats besides, some of the skills and transformations came with them, but I needed time to plan, as I had no way to 'refund' spent points, meaning if I screwed my build up, it would cause all sorts of problems later for me during the Waves.

Making our way back into the city, just as night fell, leaving Shield still flailing against the orange balloons, we made our way back to the inn. There, I asked if they needed rooms of their own, or could share one to my Beastmen companions, and they agreed to share one. The innkeeper objected, until I laid three times the cost of the room for a night on his counter, and got to watch biases and desire for financial stability war in his eyes, until the latter won out.

I had now, thanks to this, burned through far more of my capital than I'd wanted, leaving me with barely two-hundred silver left. A hefty amount in a general sense. From what I could see anyway, as coppers were far more commonly used for transactions, and what few payouts I'd heard of for labor were in those terms. Still I needed it for adventuring, and that was by no means a cheap prospect.

Retiring for the evening, I sat on the floor of my room for hours, using the notes page I'd discovered, which was how you added help topics apparently, to slowly list out what I knew about the combat system this world operated on, and realizing that it was…well, the real world in a way, which should not have been surprising in the least, given I'd decided to treat this place as reality, but it was.

The numbers, the character sheets, the way I learned attacks, it spoke of gaming to me, but the monsters were real creatures in a way. Sure, you could overwhelm their 'Wave' infection and kill them that way, like empting an HP bar. That would work, and they'd fall over dead after a while once they had no more energy to power those malformed bodies of theirs, and that was how most Adventurers worked in this world, simply hitting them until they died.

For some, that was required. After all, the Wave infection animated skeletons and those balloon things had no anatomy to speak of, they were just vicious balls of gas. You had to overwhelm the energy binding them together. But animals infected, or people weren't all like that. Some were still alive in a way, and if you killed them normally, they'd die, the HP bar going straight to 0 and not passing go. The infection not being enough to animate the corpses once again, at least without them being way more powerful creatures.

That was how we'd killed the Nest Mother. If we'd tried to empty its HP bar, at our level, to kill it via random attacks, we'd have failed, and probably gotten killed ourselves. But by using fire focused via the tunnel right into it, the thing had literally killed itself for us. That was…not likely to happen again. Environment and luck had won us the day, and unfortunately I wouldn't be in control of the former, and the latter was not as stat I could upgrade.

Of course, it COULD work the other way too, according to some topics. Some enemies could stack defenses, turn any attack you could do into piddling damages or even no damage at all. One entry in the help topic made specific reference to 'Mirrors' , some kind of reflecting monster that couldn't be damaged normally, and required special skills to take down, mostly advising that they were more trouble than they were worth.

"Gods, in Dimensional Sign I could get some numbers on these attacks," I complained aloud, trying to rack my own brain for the memories of the damage formulas of the game. It would have given me a starting point at least. I remembered a few things, and how the HP bars my interface showed for the others went up and down over the course of the fight, but it was all too vague.

"Okay, you can't respec yourself, so you need a game plan that lets you do more with less," I told myself, looking over the sheets before me, finding my party was already in the 'rest' state, though Shadow was having bad dreams according to his, which gave him a debuff, and Lucia was wearing…why the freak was it telling me that?! What pervert designed this system…it was even giving me her measurements and…I blushed and quickly banished the whole thing.

Then I stopped and brought it back. Not to look at her stuff…well not the clothing or the other things, but instead to look through her sheet for buffs and debuffs, measuring their effects on her stat block. It worked out perfectly. The same for the Beastmen, the buffs directly correlated with what they said. No guesswork in them, and that had me smiling to myself as I went through some of my skills menu.

I then began to surf through all the menus, going over the help topics, and reading everything I could. Even found I could open multiple windows at once, keeping them all in front of me, collating the data, just like I'd done back home. I was up until the wee hours of the morning, going over all of it, and when I finally felt my stamina bar run out, I was happy, shifting my bow between a few unlocked arrow types, each one glowing a different color or shade.

"Okay world, tomorrow, you're gonna meet a real power gamer," I said to no one in particular, slipping out of my leather armor, and then settling in for a good night's sleep. The last thing I saw in my vision was my own stat sheet, which pinged at me, giving me a stat buff called 'Sage's Insight' for a few hours, which made me smile as I drifted off.

Incoming boosts, what do you need?" I shouted, as I ducked back behind the large rock I was using to shield myself from most of the ongoing fight. In front of me, my party, formally a tiny mage woman dressed like a witch, and three Beastmen who had only been, at most, half again her size earlier this week, and looking very scrawny thanks to their malnourished bodies, even with the healing I'd been able to give them.

In that week, the four had transformed, with the beastmen the most noticeable. The wolf, Strong, now came up to my shoulder, and barely had to lean his head back to look me in the eye. More, he was fifty pounds heavier, and where most of mine was still something only partially resembling non-fat, his was all muscles, with a broad frame that had him picking up the boar like monster, and tearing it in half.

"Heal me!" he shouted, and I looked at his status screen out of the corner of my eye, his HP bar was below half, likely a result of the large wound in his side from one of the tusks of that same boar monster he'd just opened like a pinata. I loaded a shot, while keeping my eye on the others, who gave their own orders.

"Speed me!" shouted Fast, the fox, who, only slightly shorter but a lot thinner than Strong, was dancing between the piggish foes, easily moving between them, even leaping over one, flipping upside down and doing a handspring off it, while raking it with his claws, which were now almost six inches long on one of his hands, and tore a whole chunk out of the monster's side, before he landed behind it, and turned to face the other.

"Mana boost!" cried Lucia, as she and her partner laid into them with spellcraft. The ninja hyena, Shadow, looked…odd. It was hard to see him, even when looking right at him. His body had this aura that made it easy to dismiss him. That was a powerful tool, as the pigs had barely come after him, as he made handsigns and sent out shots in a variety of flavors, from small bolts of lightning that caused the boar things to stumble, to seemingly physically manifested shadows that tore at their legs.

Beside him, the Witch…Sorceress rather, Lucia was doing her work as well. Where Shadow was, like his name, all about the small things, always doing tiny damage that added up, she was a nuker, and her attacks showed it. The majority of craters in this rocky canyon we were fighting in were her handiwork, either from fireballs she tossed from her hand, or bolts of lightning from her staff.

All the orders in, I loaded the attacks, and took aim, forcing myself to keep both eyes open as I did so, like Fast had told me to do. The fox had used bows before, and knew his stuff, as I shot out bolts of colored light. The green bolt struck Strong in his back, just below the left shoulder blade, and immediately, the wound in his side visibly began to mend itself, not going away completely, but enough that he could move more easily, as he chambered a kick, that sent one of the boar's heads flying.

The sparkling bolt that struck Fast was just as potent, as the effect caused him to blur for a moment, and then…well, he described it as the world slowing down around him, that everything took on an odd, blurring effect, and he heard a buzzing in his ear. To him, the boars, myself, and all our party might as well have been statues, as he became nothing but a red wind that dropped several of the boars in seconds.

The two mages got blue darts into them, and they perked up, as their MP meters climbed upwards, refilling after they'd spent the fight emptying them. Not to full, the skill didn't work quite like that, but it was enough that they were able to spin around each other, moving back to back as Shadow made handsigns silently, and Lucia mumbled some words, before they both spun to face their targets.

The end of Lucia's staff slammed into the ground, a pulse of purple energy moving through it, and soon, into the boars, who slowly began to float upwards climbing almost three meters into the sky, before Shadow began to fling…I have no idea. Purple bolts of light like from my Bow, but different, and they flew into the group of floating, struggling creatures, piercing their hides and causing them to squeal.

Not that they did that long, as the bolts seemed to increase their weight suddenly, and the things slammed back into the earth with such force that more than one was killed instantly, breaking their neck, while others broke only legs and ribs, necessitating that our warrior duo finish them off, while the casters pulled themselves back amongst the rocks with me, watching as the battle concluded.

"Excellent work, gentlemen and lady," I say as I come out from behind my hiding place…I felt no shame in calling it that either…not now anyway. It had, in fact, been Strong's suggestion. As he said, there was no shame in not fighting when you were not the one who could, and we'd seen several times since the balloons, with my stat spread, I was not the one for direct confrontation.

Luckily, I didn't have to be. My Skills had grown over the last week, my level as well, nearly doubling, while the three Beastmen had not only caught up to me, but gone farther. I was still at fifteen at the moment, the three of them were all almost twenty, and Lucia had already passed that, at twenty-three, revealing that she gained more MP and spell power at an astonishing rate, doubling at every tenth level, according to her, thanks to skills that came naturally to her chosen 'class'

The Beastmen were not quite so lucky to gain power like that, but their stat growth was nuts in compensation. The three of them were already more than three times hers in total, and still growing. Mind, as they came near me, 'letting go' of their fighting highs, the bodies of the three began to steam a little, visible smoke coming off them, in a small variety of colors, as their bodies changed.

For Lucia, my boosts were merely that, stat boosts that affected her character sheet. For the beastmen, each one had a different effect on them physically. Attack increased the size of Strong's body, buffing him into a mountain of muscle that could tear a wild boar in half. As he shrank down, not too badly, but into more of a normal physique, he looked somewhat disappointed, flexing a little.

For Fast, attack boost took the form of his claws, which receded until they were at least no longer dagger like. They were still sharp, true, but they wouldn't be cutting throats without effort now, and his 'blurriness' faded too, leaving him looking positively fluffy thanks to the effect on his fur, and I honestly always had to make a saving throw against petting him, something he said he hated…I could force the issue, obviously, they had Slave Seals, but I refused to do that, both on principle and because it was far too petty a reason.

Shadow lost his own 'shadowy'-ness as well, returning to visibility in full. That was what a defense boost did for him. Where the other two grew in muscle tone, to the point where a large rock tossed at Strong did nothing to him, Shadow became harder to land a solid hit on, every blow that touched him seeming to 'slide' off his body. Deflection rather than taking the damage. With him guarding Lucia, while also throwing out his own spells, the four of them had turned into quite the monster slaying team.

"Resource check. Auto-loot, or do you want to do the honors?" I asked, and Fast took a moment to look back over the battlefield, inspecting one or two of the corpses, before shaking his head.

"Even if I wanted to, there's too much on these guys to make it worth it, and the infection goes too deep. Take them with your skill, and then clean up, and we'll move on," he said, and I nodded, quickly scrolling through my menu as Lucia and Strong ran back down the canyon. A few moments later, Strong, hauling a cart behind him, ran up, and then Lucia used her magic to lay out a large tarp, Shadow and her setting rock down on the edges to weigh it down.

That done, I tapped the tarp with my foot, making it glow for a moment as it was set as my (Loot-Cache), and then turned on (Auto-Loot). The next second heard the sound of tearing meat and breaking bones as the various bits and bobs of the boars were torn free. Two levels of dissection had given my skill at least some idea of what to go for, but it was still not gentle with it.

Soon, tusks as well as crystals were laying on the tarp, which had spots of blood and gore on it. No meat this time, which meant my (Auto-Loot) agreed with Fast on that part. These things were too far gone with Wave infection to be useful as anything other than ingredients and building tools in adventuring supplies, not good for eating at all, and as the others began to tie up the tarp, turning it into a nice leather sack, I walked up to the now horrid looking corpses.

You could smell the rot already from them. It hadn't been more than a quarter of an hour since the first one died, and they were already becoming problems. Luckily, without their gemstones that were the core of the infection, they would have simply poisoned this place, rather than rising again as some kind of revenant things. That was still bad, but not nearly as bad as becoming even stronger monsters.

I didn't give them the chance, however, as I shifted my Bow from the form I'd had it in for the battle, that being the (Precision) form, which took firing speed away like (Beast Bane Bow) but lessened the cost of my shots. I'd unlocked it from some bits of some bird creatures we'd faced three days earlier, and compared to the other forms I'd unlocked, it was the only one with a bonus that synergized with my build.

For this duty, however, I had to have it in base, and a moment later, the thing was back to being the same silver make, with yellow gem it had started as. That form, giving me no bonuses, was not one I kept it in anymore, after exploring the (Mastery) mechanic a bit, but as it was the only one able to do this, it was what I had to use, as I held out my wrist, and focused on the corpses before me.

Originally, I'd given a verbal command for this, even though it wasn't necessary, but now, I'd gotten bored of it, and simply allowed the weapon to do its duty, the yellow stone beginning to glow in the presence of the corruption, sending out shimmering shafts of light that brushed over the bodies, causing them to glow with purple smoke, the sign of the Wave's infection on these things.

A moment later, I was nearly knocked back, as a burst of force shot from the thing, turning into a wave itself, one that crashed into the corpses of the pig monsters, washing over them, and battling, briefly, against the dark energy inside them. It resisted only for a moment, before being swept away, and the wave passing over each body in turn, leaving them…still looking nasty, but no longer going to render the local area a wasteland.

With that done, I saw the others were ready to go, and shifted my Bow back to (Precision) and fired a bolt at Strong, giving him a boost to his strength, not a potent one for battle, but one that made the carrying of the cart easy for him, as we proceed out of the canyon. None of us were in the best of shape at the moment, and I was soon going over the stat sheets to check our progress, and what we had left to spend for the day.

Thanks to (Precision)'s cost down buff, I still had about a quarter of my Stamina bar left, which was good. A week ago, I'd have drained it many times over doing some of the things I did, as my Boost Arrows were rather costly, but I'd been buffing the Stamina bar itself to make that less of an issue, along with unlocked the various buffs and even a few combat skills to make my party stronger and more effective.

And man were they ever. Those boars, a group of about eighteen, would have forced us to avoid them at the beginning of the week. Even a few days ago honestly, but with proper planning and buffs, my Party had slain every one of them in under a quarter of an hour, leaving us free to continue on towards the small town that Lucia knew of in the nearby hills, a place to cash in all our bounty material.

That had been why we'd been going along the backroads and wild areas, rather than taking the more traveled routes. So we could hunt things that had been missed by the Adventurers and guards, and make a pretty penny, while also giving me fodder for my weapon, which sucked the stuff in like it was nothing, and unlocked new forms for me to play with…I mean factor into my strategies.

At first we'd been collecting bits of monsters at Lucia's direction, but after a few encounters we'd had so much that it was impossible to carry it all with any kind of ease. Luck, as it happened, smiled on us, and less than a kilometer from where we'd been at that point was a farm. While they refused to sell their wagon at any price, given they would need it soon for a harvest, they had had a cart that was just this side of dilapidated.

Fortunately, I had just enough engineering skill in me from my old life to know what could be patched to make the thing work for us, until we could get to the city, and Strong, without prompting, had offered to be the beast of burden hauling it around, at first able to do so via his own strength, though considering how many sacks of loot were piled up on it I'd taken, despite his objections, to giving him a boost to make his job easier.

Over the same period I'd pried a little bit of backstory from everyone in the party, and given them a little of my own. Not that any of it was interesting. I was not the most exciting person myself. A graduate of a tech school, I did software engineering, and even simplified and trying to find analogous things in this world, it had gone over their heads, which I suppose I should just accept was going to happen.

Lucia, as it turned out, had no tragedy or horror in her backstory either. She'd been a member of a village, and had wanted something more, having seen a martial artist(again that should not be within several genres of european fantasy) take down a large beast, she'd gone to take the exam, mostly reading and writing, and been allowed to touch the Dragon Hourglass in Melromarc's capital, her chosen class, Sorceress, not Witch, as she very vehemently would remind me if I got it wrong.

The brothers could provide little more on their village than what I knew already. They'd been attacked after the first Wave some months ago by some monsters. That said, they were quick to point out that the laws of the Kingdom of Melromac were that they would be defended from such things by their local lord and their knights, and the fact that instead they'd been enslaved by said knights was a travesty, and one that needed to be brought to justice.

Lucia…was not pleased to find that out either. As she noted, slavery was only technically legal at the moment, and due in part to shortages in labor in some cities. It was a royal decree only a few years old. Before then, the beastmen and demi-humans had been rare sights in the cities. Since then, they'd become far more common, seen as laborers and the like, some covered in marks and seals.

But to hear that the knights themselves had taken them? That was a gross violation of the Kingdom's laws, though she admitted, even if we reported it, the noble who did so would face little in the way of repercussions during the best of times. At the moment? Inter arma enim silent lēgēs, in times of war, the law falls silent. Anyone trying to disrupt things right now, with the Waves crashing at their shore, would likely be put to death, regardless of what the noble had done.

That…I was tempted to turn aside from our current venture, but we didn't have the time. I'd checked the time til the Wave before we'd left the capital, and at best, we'd have a few days when we were done with our current journey. Toppling a noble even if all we did was rock up and murder the fat bastard, was not a short sidequest sort of thing, especially since we needed to make sure the replacement was ready and waiting to go, either a good heir, or have the King appoint someone.

I also learned a bit about how beastmen operated. Turns out, they weren't kidding about not needing equipment. Oh, they COULD use the stuff just fine, but to a beastman from their village, it was important to push yourself against the world, to carve out your place in it. So they used little in the way of it, beyond some construction methods, as they had homes about on par, construction-wise, with most villages of humans of the area.

The big difference was they tend to be hunters and gathers, trading for a few niceties from time to time with a wandering peddler, but otherwise living off the land itself. It sounded…quaint to me, I'll admit. Not the sort of life I'd have enjoyed, especially since they admitted, life could be hard, but for that harshness, they were stronger, and could survive in smaller groups better than humans, who needed to band together to protect themselves from even simple bandits.

Any bandit who tried that with their village tended to wind up dead. Not eaten, they assured Lucia, they didn't eat humans anymore than humans ate beastmen. It was taboo, and likely for a reason. The way they explained it, the biology was similar enough to trigger neuron degeneration disease from eating the brains of each other…not that I told them that, they just said it made you crazy to consume the flesh of the other, so obviously some already insane nobles did it regularly.

More than that, the three brothers WERE brothers, they shared the same mother, though apparently Shadow was from a different father. Beastmen did not 'crossbreed' or create hybrids when they did, instead each beastman was a specific type of animal, so while they're mother had been a wolf, and the father of Strong and Fast a deer, while Shadow's was a snake of some kind, they did not carry those traits with them.

I was curious about that, why species were made that way, and even reptiles, amphibians, and birds were live births, and operated in the same biospheres as humans, with little difference in dietary needs beyond favoring meat or plants for carnivores and herbivores respectively. No bugs or fish either, which meant some carnivores favored them over other meat sources just to be polite, though few enough herbivore beastmen cared…or so my three carnivore companions said, I might want to get a second opinion there.

All in all, our journey was a good one, and looking into the distance, I saw a break in the trees ahead, and small plumes of smoke rising within it. The village, at last. We could see to our treasure trove of junk, buy or possibly hire a real wagon if I thought it was worth it, and maybe see about getting some more party members while we were at it. Then…well, a few more days of grinding and I'd get to see what a Wave was like with my own eyes.

The Village of Thud…I had to confirm that name several times for myself, but yes, according to Lucia, the village's name was Thud, based on some old legend about a big rock falling from one of the nearby mountains to help carve out the little valley it was resting in. That was…just stupid enough to be awesome in my estimation, but had little to do with our entrance as we came in through the one part of the natural walls around the place that allowed it.

We did get some looks, as we entered, but not as much as I'd feared. Probably because this was a trade village, of sorts, one of the stops between the Capital and the northern reaches of the country, so they were used to disparate groups like the one we represented. My three beastmen companions did get some stares at their wrists and ankles, though most just shook their head at it.

I had a good look at provincial life as we passed along, watching merchants with their dealings, people moving freight and cargo about, and most importantly, the demographics on display. There were beastmen in the groups around us, some even without the manacles, though none that I noticed that didn't have a bit of a shock at some point from a slave seal hidden beneath their fur or feathers, or readily visible on their scales.

It made sense. This wasn't some farming community out in the boonies, this was a place of commerce, and had more traders than anything else. That meant manual laborers, which meant ones as cheap as possible. The cheapest being those you didn't have to pay. Normally, that would be economically unviable, due to the cost of food and housing, not to mention the sheer numbers would easily lead to revolt.

The slave seals made it more useful, especially if, at a glance, you could tell who was free, and who was not. This was a terrible system, and one I needed to look more into, but I put it out of my mind as we finally approached the local Hall for the Adventurers Guild, with two entrances apparent. One for those looking to give jobs, and one for those doing those jobs, with the former having the longer line.

Luckily, we were the latter, and having Strong pull the cart along the side of the building, I looked over our haul, and chatted with Lucia for a moment, asking which ones would be the most valuable first, and had Strong and Fast pick them up. I then left Lucia outside with Shadow to keep our cart from being accosted…mostly that was Shadow's job really, as he'd be better at not making a scene when doing it, but leaving him alone outside seemed like a bad idea. A human would be needed.

Inside the Hall, there were the expected sorts. Behind the counter I saw three demi-humans, which surprised me, especially since they had levels. That was illegal, but, I figured, given the Guild was itself not just for Melromarc, but did business in other lands, they were here as a bit of thumbing the nose at the rules. So long as they were working the counter, not going out and doing things, they were ignored.

"Name?" asked the one manning the counter, a bunny boy…okay man, he was clearly younger than I was, but obviously of age in this world. Still, it was hard to take him seriously with his ears, one of which was bent in half for some reason.

"Bar…Corvo Attano," I said, about to give him my real fake name, instead of my adventurer fake name. Luckily, he didn't seem to care, as he thumbed through a few pages, and pulled out one that looked exactly like the one Ray had filled out in the capital for me a week ago. Mind, he was idly going over it, until suddenly he started, and the bent ear pointed right at me with its tip.

"You're the Bow Hero?" he asked, a bit…nervously isn't quite the right word, but more in an energetic sense, like he didn't really believe someone like that would be here.

"I am, and I've come to claim some bounties, if you're taking those. If not, I can sell them to merchants on my own," I told him. That, as it happened, was how the Guild made most of its money. Adventurers came to them with bits of monsters that could be useful to merchants, most especially the gems inside Wave infected creatures, as well as bits and bobs like horns, teeth, even balloon scraps, or herbs with medicinal properties.

To be fair, you could sell to merchants directly, if you wanted, but the Guild tended to be the better option, as not every merchant bought every kind of good, and finding out who did what in a city was a pain. Worse if NO ONE in the city you were at needed what you were selling, but someone a few towns over could do with a shipment of it. Thus, the Guild facilitated such transactions, paying you a good bit for your trophies, and then getting a bit more on the back end from the sale. All in all, a good system.

Better, the Guild would take on jobs, like my first one with the rats, for when a type of monster got out of control, or just local wildlife needed dealing with. Those jobs tended to be paid for by the local kingdom, with maybe the Guild itself, nearby villages, or some aspiring merchants doing so if the monster was being a nuisance in places where the Kingdom couldn't be bothered to deal with it.

Lucia even had some amusing stories she'd heard in her time of something called a 'Hill Giant' which she described as a five meter tall creature of dirt and soil that moved around that some adventurers had tried to take on, before forcing it into the local lake to make the thing soak through, before being hit with some fire spells to dry it out, making it very fragile for a few minutes, so they could literally dig through it with shovels to pull out the crystal animating the thing.

"How much and what are they?" he asked, and I motioned the wolf and fox forward, the pair hauling in five, and two bags respectively, and setting them down on the floor in front of the counter. That done, I lifted one up, feeling really unmanly given neither one had looked like they were struggling in the slightest under their burdens, meanwhile I grunted a lot myself just getting it from the floor to the countertop.

Luckily no one made a comment, even when the bunny man easily took the first sack to a table behind the counter, and then opened it up, the contents spilling out a little as it turned back into the flat sheet of leather. This one held some balloon scraps, in a variety of colors and sizes, which he quickly began to sort out, his hands moving so fast that it looked like they were blurring for a moment, not via stat buff, but simply because he was that good at his job.

"Hmm, low quality work in the recovery, but not a bad haul. Tell me, did you find some kind of enclave of these things? Or perhaps a full legion?" he asked, and I shook my head. And held up my arm bracer, on which was mounted the Legendary Bow, that I shifted with a thought into its normal form. He just nodded, probably assuming I meant that I'd used it to somehow kill them all.

To be fair, I'd been going over my choices on skills and transformations, and some of those would have let me do that. But in reality, I'd been Support since the first day, and instead it was (Sense) that really helped us track these things down so quickly, especially as I upgraded the skill to give me more range to it, allowing me to find clumps of the various monsters and deal with them.

"Are the rest of your bags filled with the same? If so, I can give you an estimation based off this one to save time if you'd like," he offered.

"I'm afraid not, sir. We've been doing some hunting on the way here from the capital, and so we've got…what seventeen more bags?" I asked, turning back to the others.

"Only fifteen, twenty-two total. We've got three more filled with balloon scraps, and the rest vary in contents, though they are sorted. From a herd usapil, a flock of yatagarasu, a pack of orthros, a passel of babi ngepet, and even one Ursa that took up a bag all on its own," responded Fast, and I tapped my chin before nodding in agreement, going back over my mental list of unlocked Bow forms, and finding that covered most of them.

"That's…quite the haul…one moment," he said, and then turned back towards the two behind the counter. A quick, quiet chat between the two saw one, a woman with a lizard tail walking up to the counter to take over, while the rabbit man came around, and we soon proceeded with him out to the cart, with him carrying what looked like a monocle that he placed on his eye.

Outside we found…not niceness happening. Lucia and Shadow were standing by the cart, and some guys in armor, looking suspiciously like guards, but not quite getting the look right, were accosting them. It didn't take a lot to overhear them trying to ask for 'taxes' to have come into the city, which one of the bigger ones was quick to offer a non-monetary form of such.

"Gentlemen, is there a problem?" asked the rabbit man, startling the group, four in total, as they fumbled to spin around, the clack of their armor a bit louder than I'd have liked.

"Oh, it's you, buns. I was just informing this young lady and her slave that they seemed to have slipped into the village without paying the toll at the gates. It's not a problem at all. At least, it won't be as soon as they pay," he said, in a voice that just screamed 'I'm a bandit who found a guard uniform'.

"You know you're not allowed to do that anymore. The Council voted to allow free trade until the Waves have passed," he told the man, and then did a very nice impression of an intimidating person, cracking his knuckles. It did have the effect of the man's three goon squad pulling back, and the man himself looking towards the cart, with all those nice fat sacks on it, and then back to the bunny man.

"They did, didn't they? Must have slipped my mind. I'll be sure to remember it next time," he said with an obvious edge to his voice ,and then walked away, deliberately ramming into some poor demi-human who was running a stall and knocking her down. I was about to rush over to defend her honor…or at least help her pick up, but one of the other stall owners did so before I could take a single step, so I decided to ignore it and turn back to the Guild worker.

"I'm guessing he's a guard captain?" I asked, and the rabbit man scoffed.

"He wishes. He'd barely be above patrolman normally, but thanks to the Waves, a lot of the better guards had to go defend some more vulnerable villages, or were called back to defend nobles. Thanks to him having some adventurer levels, he's been allowed to have a squad to 'keep the peace'," he said, dismissively, as he looked back over at my cart with his monocle, adjusting it a few times, before he began reading out some numbers.

Turned out, the thing was some kind of 'appraisal' accessory, and without even looking inside, he listed the contents of each sack, and with one hand began to lift them up, easier than Fast had, though not quite as easily as Strong. Still more than me, and making me feel even worse that a guy who barely came up to my chest was able to lift stuff like that freely, as he rattled off the price for each.

When he was done, he asked the three beastmen to help him haul the rest inside, with me taking one along with Lucia just to feel useful, the six of us proceeding inside, and him having us take them to one of the back rooms. Here they kept bins of various bits and bobs from monsters. Each one was marked what came from what, though he just had us set the sacks down, he'd sort them later.

The stuff stored away, he brought us to one of the backrooms, where they kept this Hall's expanded safe. A few twists of a dial, cutting his finger for a drop of blood, and it swung open, revealing an even larger space than the Capital safe had inside it, something I commented on, and the rabbit demi-human laughed.

"Of course. The Capital is the place with the lowest density of Monsters outside of the Waves. It's one of the safest places to live in that regard, even if it presents dangers all its own. For that reason, while that Hall is the one the nobility typically use, the local chapters like my own tend to be the one with more need of more in our cash box to pay out with, to avoid situations like what you had with the Nest Mother," he explained, as he literally walked into the safe, ducking down to fit inside, and then coming out with a sack that clinked quite nicely.

"So, that's…" he began to mumble some numbers, as he slowly pulled out the coins. Not silver either. Gold this time, and my eyebrow went up a bit at that, watching as he laid ten out, and then counted on his fingers, before pulling out another ten and then another eight, before finally slapping that bag back into the safe, and grabbing one for silver, and then one for copper. We did wind up with more of those, but still, gold was not my expected reward level for this sort of thing.

"Are you sure that's right?" I asked as he slowly slid the coins over to me, and the rabbit demi-human waved the question off.

"The bounty on some of the stuff you've brought in went up recently. Healing items are at a premium thanks to the Waves, and while herbs are needed for a base, things like orthros skulls and yatagarasu claws are good for mixing in with them to raise the potency," he told me, which made sense, and I swiftly swept the coins towards me, and then slipped them into a set of bags that I split between myself and Lucia.

Originally, I'd thought about splitting the loot between all of us, but…well the beastmen wore no clothing, and trying to get Fast into a belt had proven…less than satisfactory. A bandolier for Shadow might have worked, especially since I noticed him using things like leaves and rocks to work his ninja magic, but I was told it was simply a, 'what's on hand' sort of skill, not something he needed specific ingredients for.

So I just divided it in half for now. When I filled out the rest of the party I'd separate it out more, to make sure we didn't get pickpocketed or something like so many games I'd played back home. Best to be safe now, rather than sorry later. As such, I slipped a few of the gold into the bracer on which my Bow was mounted, and then down into my boots and things, before turning back to the rabbit demi.

"Would you be able to buy my cart as well?" I asked, and he cocked an eyebrow at me, his bent ear wavering in the air a bit.

"I might be, but won't you be needing it later?" he asked, and I shook my head, holding up my Bow.

"We're headed back to the Capital now, since the next Wave is in a few days, and I want to rally there, before moving out to intercept it," I explained, and he nodded, soon pulling out a few coppers. Twelve at first, but then adding eight more to it. It was a jury rigged cart, after all, and while it had worked for us, it wasn't in the best condition. I didn't haggle, and merely pocketed the coins, before we said our goodbyes and left the Hall.

Outside, the sun was just a bit lower in the sky than I would have liked to be leaving, but looking around, I noticed the guard and his friends were still hanging around. That was…not fun, and I quickly decided we needed to be going, ordering the others to follow me as we made our way out of the city, Lucia lamenting that we'd be camping outside again, but not really arguing too much as we made our way back to where we'd started this journey at, and towards the first of many large fights.