That night I ate at the inn and stretched out on the bed in my own room.
At thirteen thousand roms a night it was a step above the place in Tolson. The room was a little bigger for it, and the bed a little softer.
Now then. What needed working out was how to build a life in this town. If I could manage it I wanted the routine kept whole: training before dawn, then the dungeon, then training with whatever the day had left in it.
The problem was where. Euron is wider than Tolson, and the gates stay shut in the small hours, so stepping outside for an hour was off the table. Swinging a Dark Metal rod around in the street, meanwhile, would get me marked as a lunatic and bring down exactly the sort of bother I could do without.
The guide said the Adventurer’s Guild here has a training ground attached to it, though whether a newly arrived E-ranker would be welcome on it was another question. I’d show my face tomorrow and find out. Access before sunrise would be ideal.
As for dungeons, the town has one F-class within reach, two E-class, two D-class and one C-class.
Tomorrow, the F-class, to take the skill out of it. After that I could start on an E-class.
And I had to put ‘Body Twist’ through its paces. I hadn’t known I was holding a rare skill worth ten million roms, but powerful was exactly what I’d taken it for.
I was still turning it all over when sleep took me.
I was at the Guild first thing the next morning.
Nobody else had come in yet, and the only person on the counters was the unfriendly beauty who had handled me the day before.
“Excuse me. May I use your training ground?”
She looked at me sideways again, the way she had, and answered barely above a murmur. “Yes. Anyone may use it.”
“Is there any procedure for it?”
“No. As a rule you may use it whenever you like.”
“Would that extend to, say, before the sun is up?”
That one did surprise her. She turned and faced me properly.
“What would you be using it for?”
“Training, of course. I’m generally at it from before first light.”
She looked me over with open suspicion, then sighed and came out from behind the counter.
“This way.”
She took me around to the back of the building, where the ground opened into something like a small yard with a prefab structure at the far end that had to be the butchering shed.
“Materials from the larger monsters are brought in here at times, but as a rule it stands open at all hours. When the Guild is shut, come and go through there.”
She pointed at a plain gate that appeared to give onto another street. Very welcome indeed. That settled the training question.
“Thank you. I’ll start using it right away.”
I bowed, and she said “Please do,” and nothing else, and went back inside. Unfriendly, perhaps, but the sort who does the job properly.
I got straight into the usual work: the Dark Metal rods, the same movements over and over, my attention on driving the body and the skills together.
I tried ‘Body Twist’ as well, and it was every bit the outrageous thing I’d taken it for. It ignores the laws of physics and kills inertia outright. Running shuttles side to side, I could shift my weight so smoothly that it felt wrong to do it. The effect is still weak, mind; reproducing what the Moon Wolf had done to me is going to take levels.
What surprised me more was that it applies to a weapon swing. Take the mace all the way through and reverse it, and the weight of the reversal is plainly less than it has any business being. At a high enough level I might manage the sort of ludicrous combination strikes a manga character throws.
Once I’d worked through the whole repertoire and got my body used to it enough to trust it in a fight, I set off for the dungeon.
The F-class dungeon sat about an hour’s walk beyond the Euron gate.
It was the Boulder Dungeon in Tolson over again: a great rock planted in open ground with a hole gaping in it. Plenty of parties take it on, and five of them were outside as I came up. Given the hour there would be a good many more below.
I’m E-rank, so there was no call to stand on ceremony. I went in and drove straight for the boss room. The residents were the same as well, goblins and Rock Lizards and Boarwolves, and they die instantly now even in numbers.
A party of boys and girls was waiting its turn outside the boss room. I joined the queue and they looked me over thoroughly. Fair enough. A man my age turning up alone will draw the eye whether he wants it to or not, and the parties I’d passed on the way down had all had their own reactions to me.
“Mister, are you going to fight the boss on your own?”
That was the girl of the party. Curiosity had gotten the better of her.
“That’s right. I’ve fought this same boss any number of times, so I’ll be fine.”
“You can beat it alone? I heard it’s hard without a party.”
“It probably is, normally. I’m E-rank.”
“Oh, right. You do look like you’ve been an adventurer a long while.”
“No. I’m a rookie, one month in.”
Every one of them pulled a strange face at that.
Then the boss room opened and the party that had been inside came out—boys and girls, again. They were high-fiving each other, so it had gone their way.
“Ah, we’re up. See you.”
The girl went in with the rest of hers.
A while later the door opened and the same party came out. All present. But the girl who’d spoken to me had taken a bad wound in the leg and was being carried by her companions.
Watching, it seemed they meant to go straight home on it.
“No potions between you?”
Meddling, and I knew it as I said it. They were children, though, and a man my age can’t leave that alone.
“We used the last of them back there.”
That was the boy who looked like the leader. Tired, and rattled with it.
“I’ll sell you one, if you like. Grade 5, so fifteen thousand roms.”
“You’d do that?”
“I would.”
Money for potion, and the boy healed the girl’s leg where they stood. You could feel the relief go through the party.
“I’m sorry. We’re in your debt.”
“It was a fair trade. Being thanked for it isn’t unpleasant, mind. Get home safely.”
They made their bows and went.
“Right. My turn.”
I saw them off before I went in. An ordinary Bearwolf this time. The mace would have finished it before it started, so I tried my bare hands instead, and established that my fists have already become appalling weapons.
The skill it left me was ‘Poison Resistance.’ My odds of staying alive keep climbing, which I’ll take and be grateful for.
I went back to the Guild, cleared the buyback, and headed for the training ground.
Several adventurers were there working their own weapons, and every one of them looked high-ranked. I stood there quietly satisfied on a point I hadn’t quite gotten around to asking: the high ranks train, and they train as a matter of course.
I was doing strength work with the Dark Metal rods when a young man came over. Mid-twenties, a swordsman by the look of him; he’d been swinging a longsword a moment earlier.
“Sorry. Have we met somewhere?”
“I couldn’t say. My name is Soshi. I only reached Euron yesterday, and I was in Tolson before that.”
“I’m Zeal. No—got it. You were at the goblin mass subjugation the other day. Killed the King and got chewed out by Anatoria for it.”
“Ah. There was that, yes. Not my finest hour.”
“Hah! E-rank, weren’t you? There’s nothing to be ashamed of about trading blows with a King and coming out on top.”
“There were people whose work I took away by doing it, though… ah. You were with that C-rank party?”
A handsome face, but an approachable one with nothing sour anywhere in it. Now he raised it, I did think I’d seen him before.
“‘Fortuner.’ I lead them, for what that’s worth. So you’ve come to Euron. Say, that’s odd training you’re doing. What’s that thing you’re swinging?”
“It’s a Dark Metal rod. Just the thing for loading the body, so I had the weapon shop let me have them.”
“Huh. Mind if I take the weight of it?”
“Go ahead. It’s heavy, so be careful.”
Zeal took it, tilted hard for an instant, then caught himself and had it up. From the way he handled it I could tell he has ‘Stability’ too. He is C-rank; he’ll be carrying a great many skills I’ve never heard of.
“Now that’s interesting. Swing this around and it’s real training, no argument. No wonder you put a King down.”
He started running sword forms with the Dark Metal rod. Nothing wasted anywhere, every line of it polished. High-rank adventurers are another thing entirely.
“Ha, this is genuinely good. I’ll get the weapon shop to sell me one. Sorry about that, and thanks.”
He handed the rod back and went off to his own work.
An endorsement from a C-ranker settles the matter. I felt rather better for having it confirmed, and put more into the rest of the session.
The next day I finally went out to an E-class dungeon. I’d done the reading in the guide, so all that was left was finding out what it came to in practice. Whether the thing could be cleared solo was the whole question.
There are two E-class dungeons, and the one I started with lay an hour out of town beside a river.
What I found on arrival was a mountain of river stones heaped up with a black mouth gaping in the side of it. A few parties were loitering nearby, as ever. I went past them and in.
Inside was cool and heavy with damp, the walls looking like more of the same piled stone. I’d been following the map’s route a while when ‘Presence Sense’ picked something up. First basement, and five of them. An E-class runs the same five floors as an F-class, but the monsters climb in quality and in number both, and the baptism by numbers had arrived early.
What came was a ‘Fishman’: a fish with arms and legs that walks upright. Taller than a goblin, with a short spear in its hands.
Fushushushu!
They caught sight of me, formed themselves up, and came on making that strange noise. Better disciplined than goblins, then. I swung the mace into their thrusts as a counter, and with the reversal sharpened by ‘Body Twist’ it destroyed all five spears in one instant.
After that it was a brawl. They swung the shafts they had left, and their heads burst the moment they came inside the mace’s reach. This is a blow that kills an F-class boss outright. Trash mobs were never going to hold up under it.
The drops were a magic stone and a scale the size of my palm. The scale had the look of glass about it. Both went into the pack, and I went on.
Between there and the stairs to the second basement, groups of three to five Fishmen turned up about six times. Short of really letting my attention go I wasn’t taking so much as a scratch, though a spear did punch through ‘Steel Body’ once in a while and stick a little way in. Their attack may be higher than I’d credited. The wounds closed at once with ‘Regeneration,’ naturally.
Down on the second floor there was a party of four young people, one man and three women. A harem party, would that be?
I nodded to them and made to pass, and the woman who looked the oldest called out.
“Mister, coming down here on your own. Don’t tell me your wife walked out on you?”
“No, I just work alone. It isn’t despair or anything of the sort.”
Though as it happens, ‘his wife walked out on him’ is about right. In my previous life, at least.
“Even so, E-class by yourself is asking for it.”
“Take it that I’m on the second floor because it isn’t a problem. Fishmen aren’t opposition.”
“Hmm. You look fairly well punctured to me. But if that’s all it came to, you’ve got ‘Steel Body,’ I’d say. So you won’t die immediately, at any rate.”
Behind her, a nervous-looking young man was fretting about. Ah. This one is having the hard time of it, then. I apologized inwardly for the harem thought.
“Well, what’s ahead of you is Stone Tortoises, and if the mace doesn’t get through, run early. They bite, and a leg goes with them.”
“Thanks. I’ll be careful.”
Adventurers in this world strike me as a remarkably decent crowd on the whole.
Though when you think about it, adventuring here is settled at random by ‘Awakening,’ so it isn’t the roughnecks who take it up. That may be the whole of the explanation.
Sure enough, two ‘Stone Tortoises’ came out at me on the second floor. What they amount to is a large snapping turtle with a shell of stone over it. Slow, heavily armored, and dangerous up close because the neck comes out all at once at the moment it strikes.
I went in from the front, used ‘Body Twist’ to feint, and came around onto the flank of one of them. It bought the feint and put its neck out, and the mace came down on the neck and burst it head and all.
I tried the shell too, out of interest. The stone on the surface shatters impressively enough, but there isn’t much damage under it, and a fair amount of the shock comes back up your arms. The extended neck it was, then.
Killing it left a magic stone and a piece of the shell. The shell has the look of tortoiseshell, which does raise the question of where the stone went.
At any rate I got through the second floor without much trouble. I misjudged one dodge and took a bite for it, but ‘Steel Body’ held it to a bite.
By the time I reached the way down to the third, I’d leveled up.
The third floor apparently just means more Stone Tortoises, and my pack was close to full, so I called it there for the day.
My current mace has become thoroughly unsatisfying, too. If I’m clearing E-class dungeons, it may be time to take the equipment up a tier.
Back to the Guild for the buyback. I took it to the unfriendly receptionist. Hers is the one line that’s always free, and the manner is probably what does it, but she does the job properly, so it makes no difference to me.
“E-class scales and shell. …This quantity, by yourself?”
I got a glance with some doubt in it, which was fair enough. There don’t appear to be solo adventurers in Euron either.
“Yes. I got as far as the second floor.”
“Forgive me, but how did you kill the Stone Tortoises?”
“Mace, from the side, when the neck came out.”
“…Ah. That’s right. You have the skill.”
She didn’t say ‘Body Twist’ aloud because there was another adventurer standing nearby. So she thinks about that sort of thing.
“Yes. That’s how I managed it alone.”
Properly, one man draws it while another takes the neck from the flank. It is a nuisance of an opponent solo, no question about that.
“I apologize. That was more than I needed to ask. Here is your payment.”
“Thank you.”
“Do you not find carrying the money about inconvenient? From E-rank you may deposit it with the Guild.”
Ah, here we go. The guide had said the Guild does something bank-shaped.
“Then may I ask you to?”
“Your adventurer card, please.”
I handed it over. She disappeared into a back room and came out again a little later.
“The money is on your card, Soshi-san. Any Adventurer’s Guild will pay it out, so say the word when you need it.”
“That’s a help.”
And with that, a great deal of jingling nuisance got tidied away. She reads what a man needs and tells him about it unprompted. Unfriendly or not, I have no complaints.
I left the Guild and went to the weapon shop before training.
The master of the Euron weapon shop was short, about twice my width, and bearded. A dwarf, the race everybody knows out of fantasy. The beard made his age unreadable, but he was my generation or a little above it.
“Heavier and tougher than this one, is it?”
He had my mace in his hands and was looking me over from head to foot.
“You look like you’ve done some work, but you can’t be swinging even this thing properly. What’s your adventurer rank?”
“E-rank.”
“E? And you’re using a mace like this? Give it a swing.”
He handed it back, so I swung it where I stood. ‘Strength,’ ‘Stability’ and ‘Body Twist’ all do good work, so it comes up light, and makes a very satisfying noise on the way through.
“Hoh. And you’re E, are you? There’s a story behind that, is there. Never mind it, then. With that much in your arms, this won’t do you. Come through.”
Dwarves have a reputation for being difficult and immovable, but it seemed I’d passed.
I followed him into the storeroom at the back of the shop. The forge was next door, and the heat came through hard enough to be uncomfortable.
“Top ranks don’t use maces much, so there’s nothing remarkable back here. What I’d put in front of you is these two.”
He pointed at a pair standing against the wall, one ending in a spiked iron ball, the other shaped like a hammer.
I took each in turn and swung it. Half again as heavy as what I carry now. The weight didn’t match the size of them, so there may be Dark Metal in the cores.
Both sat well in the hand, and after a moment’s thought I took the spiked ball.
“This one. I use it to thrust sometimes.”
“Right you are. That’ll be five hundred thousand roms.”
I paid it straight out, and the master’s face did something odd.
“You don’t haggle?”
“I have no intention of haggling over a craftsman’s work.”
Which is my policy, if it deserves so grand a word. What is true is that beating down the price of a skill somebody spent years acquiring sits badly with me. Possibly a reaction to a working life spent in a business where the competition was over precisely how far you could beat that price down.
“Hmph. You might get somewhere yet. A man who doesn’t haggle is either the sort with no sense who drops dead early, or the sort with a big soul in him. One of the two.”
“Ha. I can’t vouch for the size of my soul, but I have no intention of dropping dead early either.”
I thanked him and left.
After that I renewed my armor at the armorer’s, bought potions back up to strength, put in my training, and went back to the inn.
I asked the innkeeper’s daughter for hot water to wipe myself down with, stripped, and did it. There are public baths in Euron, but I don’t have the spare room in my head to go to one yet. A wipe-down does leave something wanting, so I mean to go before long.
At any rate, standing there with my clothes off and looking at my arms and my chest and my stomach, I noticed I’ve gone frighteningly muscular. I’ve been in this world roughly a month. Isn’t that abnormally quick? If that’s ‘Awakening’ too, the training is going to get more enjoyable still.
Clean, I went down to the inn’s dining hall.
I’d ordered a meat dish and was waiting on it when somebody spoke from the side.
“Ah, Soshi-san. Mind if I join you?”
It was Gashi, the young beastfolk I’d got to know on the road into Euron.
“Good evening. Please, please.”
“Don’t mind if I do.”
He sat down opposite with that easy grin of his. “Been down the dungeons yet, Soshi-san?”
“I have. I’ve cleared the F-class, and I’m working on an E-class now.”
“You go into the dungeons alone as well?”
“For the time being, yes. It’s easier on me that way.”
“Huh. That arm strength of yours gets you through, does it?”
“There’ll be a limit somewhere. When I meet it I’ll think about a party. What about you, Gashi-san? Off somewhere again?”
“That we are. The town of Maneji, this time.”
“Is that a dungeon town as well?”
“That’s it. F-class and E-class both. Smaller than Tolson, but it’s close, so it’s easy enough work.”
“I’ve been wondering since the other day: isn’t it dangerous, just you and Nari-san?”
“Nah, it’s not so bad around Euron. Hardly a monster, hardly a bandit. Only there’s been talk lately of the monsters being up a bit. More of the sort we ran into.”
The sort we ran into meant the Moon Wolf. Field monsters increasing has to be seriously bad news for ordinary people.
Which reminds me that I’ve ignored the subjugation requests on the Guild board entirely, on the assumption they aren’t solo work. Perhaps they’ve been going up as well. Making D-rank apparently takes several of them completed, so if there are any I could handle alone, I’d do well to start taking them.
“You’ll be adventuring out of Euron a while, then?”
“I think so. I’d like to base myself here and get around as many dungeons as I can.”
“Get around the dungeons? What for?”
“The more dungeons you go around, the more skills you come away with. And I’d like as many as I can get, on the grounds that I’d rather not die.”
“Well now. I had heard the strong ones move about a lot. So that’s what it’s for.”
“Probably. I’d like to see this Maneji of yours, come to that. E-class and F-class both is just right for me.”
“Come with us, then. We’d sleep easier with you along.”
“That sounds well enough. When do you go?”
“First thing the morning after tomorrow. How’s that?”
“That may suit exactly. I mean to finish the E-class tomorrow. Should I come to the Merchant Guild before dawn?”
“That’ll do. We stop a night on the way, so I’ll see to the drink.”
“Something to look forward to. That was good liquor the other day.”
“Wasn’t it? Nari gets a bit sharp with me when I buy it, mind, but without it on the road…”
So I was off to another town almost the moment I’d arrived in Euron. No bad thing.
I want to get around any F-class I come across in any case. And if I’m honest, collecting skills has started to be rather fun.