NOVEL NEXT Chapter Nine: Adventuring Guild
Adventuring Guild
As I moved to exit the library, I noticed something was different about six feet away from the door. There were voices outside. A lot of voices. Human voices. A group of people was passing by, and then, a few minutes later, so did another. I wish I could say that I immediately rushed out to meet my fellow human beings, but I hesitated. They were strangers. It'd be weird. What, I just jump out of a door and start talking to them? So I waited for them to pass, and I opened the door, and exited into the hall.
There were still plenty of closed doors, it wasn't entirely packed full of people, but about one door in every four was opened, and I could see shapes of people in both directions, moving in groups and talking to one another. I looked around and saw that nobody was quite close enough to me to strike up a conversation, but I could make out faces of the people behind me- a group of businessmen looking around confused- and the backs of the people ahead of me- a women's soccer team.
'Hey, looks like a bunch of ya made it past the first five hours. Not a completely useless planet huh? You guys do live on planets, right?" Chum said. He was the only non-human creature in the hallway, and I could already see the businessmen pointing at him, slowing down and backing away. I threw my hands up and shouted 'magic is real, so what?' and turned around. I had to start walking quickly, because surely they would want to talk to me and I'd yelled at them.
So the hallway wasn't quite bustling; in the whole six hundred visible feet in both directions I saw only those two groups, and, as both of them had looked at me like a weirdo, I decided to stay exactly in between them and not attract any more attention. I walked with my head down the direction away from the cafeteria, and I saw more signs of human life. One room had a barricade of desks stacked up against the door and the person inside was crouched in a corner away from it. Another had a group of rough looking men sharing a small bottle of alcohol. There was even a man who had covered the entirety of the blackboard except the countdown- 66:45:11- in tiny writing. None of them seemed to want company, and so I kept moving past more and more open doors. About half of them were empty, and a half of them were occupied by people who didn't want anything to do with me.
Just like school and college, by the time I got to meet people, the social groups had already somehow solidified.
And so I went back to drawing my map. I couldn't tell if there were any turns or crossings between the cafeteria and the library, but I had, at least, gone in a straight line, which meant that I could backtrack if I wanted to. Which, I didn't, but if Chum was right I would have to. It took me long enough that my cartography skill did finally level up to two. I couldn't feel the difference, but I did notice that my drawing had gotten a little better.
By the time there were sixty six hours left into the challenge I did finally find something new and strange. It was nothing like any of the signs or decor that the tower had provided before- six sheets of paper were taped above the door of one of the classrooms and said "ADVENTURING GUILD" in black permanent marker. The handwriting was clearly practiced and clear, but I could easily tell that this was the most basic sort of operation possible and put together quickly. Once I got closer, there was a small sheet of paper saying "all welcome" and so I let myself in.
It was just one of the classrooms, but while I was learning spells and running for my life some people had clearly taken it upon themselves to organize. There was a skinny man in suit and tie and salt-and-pepper hair cut short at one of the child sized desks, focused on writing something in a notebook. He looked like an advertisement for the concept of lawyers. There were three sets of three desks pushed together, paper-and-duct tape signs saying "Take a weapon leave a weapon", "Donate medical supplies" and "Food bank". There was not much, but a small collection of improvised weapons, advil, gauze and snacks was gathered on their respective tables. There was also a free-standing white-board that had the words "Quest Log" written on the top in marker, and there were maybe a half a dozen sticky notes with tiny handwriting on each.
At the teacher's desk there sat a woman, quite tall with dark blond hair and an army surplus jacket over a black t-shirt. There were patches on her jacket of local- to me- political organizations and, like, maybe punk bands? She was talking to one of the soccer players I'd seen before in a comforting, confident voice, and had what looked like a mundane notebook with some writing and diagrams in it, pointing at it and apparently explaining the basics of the tower to her.
"Now there's a frood that knows where her towel is," I said.
"Boss, you know I don't know shit about your pop culture. Or is the translation spell not working right?" Chum said.
"I'm just saying. Good on her. Good idea, organizing," I said.
"Eh, sure. She probably gets some title and maybe human points from doing it, but sitting at a desk, helping people who come in isn't going to get her a great class," Chum said.
"Might save our lives," I said.
"Yeah, but more people might make it to that point if we work together," I said.
"Hey, I'm not saying it's a bad idea. Just saying that she'll have a hard time progressing beyond a desk job," Chum said.
The soccer player seemed satisfied with whatever she'd come here for and left with a confident look on her face. As soon as the woman behind the desk saw Chum she said: "Clarence, we'll need another page on the weird shit column," and motioned for me to come forward.
"Welcome to the adventuring guild," she said, and smiled ironically, "I'm Artemis. You need help, or can you spare something?"
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
"Both? I don't know, what are you doing here? I mean, I kind of get it, and it seems like a good idea, but what's the plan exactly? Oh, I'm Alex," I said.
"Honestly, I barely know. Food, water, shelter, information, protection. As you can see, we can maybe provide for, like, two emergencies," Artemis said.
"I can spare this," I pulled the bottle of vodka from my trousers, "but I did get it in the tower. Have you tried drinking anything that originated from here?"
"Quest #7," she said, pointing at the whiteboard, "If you want to experiment with stuff found here, that could end up being really useful. So are you a wizard of some sort?"
"Was playing a roleplaying game before being sucked in here. Now it gives me stats," I said, "Oh, duh. Chum, can we drink stuff we find here?"
"Eh, depends on what you mean. Can stuff be poisoned? Absolutely. Is food and drink found in here compatible with your biology? Yes it is," Chum said.
"Damn, he speaks. Make a deal with the devil, Alex?" Artemis said.
"Kind of. He works for me, I have a contract and everything. I have a map leading back to my original room, which I think is about an hour's walk; I have two spell scrolls that I could copy down, but that's pretty much it. There is a really really dangerous monster in a cafeteria if you keep walking in the direction I came from," I said.
And as I said it there was scratching in my character sheet. The log said:
Quest Complete: Danger Sense- you have given Organizer Artemis information about a dangerous location in the tower. Exp to level 9.3/25.
"Woah, these quests are real?" I said.
"Why?" Chum said, and he sounded like someone told him that they would make a coat out of dalmatian puppies.
"Because we have a chance to do it better. We don't need to use money or whatever to organize our little society here, we can- and have to- help each other if we want to survive," Artemis said, "oh, I also cannot give you experience for free by making quests like 'jump up and down', first thing we tried. It has to involve real sacrifice or danger, even if it's minor."
"Do you want my map too?" I said. She pulled up a larger sheet of paper up from underneath her desk. It was a lot more detailed than my map, but there were some portions I had that she didn't, "copy what you have here, and feel free to copy this to your notebook. Then talk to Clarence and check out the quests. You might want to get a weapon. We don't have much, but there should be a functional knife in there somewhere, better than nothing, right? Vodka can work as a disinfectant, but one of the adventurers coming in here before found a big jar of iodine, which works better, so if you just want to keep your drink that's fine too. Most injuries seem to heal pretty quickly, and it doesn't look like they're getting infected anyways."
"Hey, have you seen any deaths yet?" I said.
"No. But you're not the first to mention it. Most of what I've heard about is bodies found in the hallways. Mutilated and shit. Some people are in proper shock. You see something like that?" Artemis said.
"No," I said, and had to take a pause and a breath, "the cafeteria. I went in there with two other people. They didn't make it. I ran."
"Shit, man, I'm so sorry. We'll figure this out, find a way to defend ourselves and we'll get out of here, okay? I wish I could tell you to speak to a therapist about it, but I haven't found one in here yet. Look, I'm not that busy right now, do you want to talk about it?" she said.
"Fuck. You know what just happened? I wanted to just say no and repress it, but then I remembered the fucking character sheet description of my trauma and thought, 'maybe if I deal with this in a healthy manner I'll get rid of the debuff," I said.
"That's fucked up. What they're doing to us I mean, your response to it makes perfect sense. Now tell me what happened," Artemis said.
And so I did, and we shared the maybe four shots of vodka, and I felt better. The description of the trait didn't change. After we were done I noticed that I'd gotten more experience from the quest to try food and drink from the Tower, which brought me to 10.3 experience out of 25 required to reach level 3. After I was done with the front desk Artemis sent me to her associate with the suit, and I sat down in front of him.
He reached out over the tiny desk and shook my hand with a Esquire cover smile, and said "Clarence Wycombe, attorney at law, at your service," he said, "or should I say administrative rogue now? We've gotten ourselves in quite the pickle, haven't we now?"
"Rogue? Artemis said I should talk to you, I don't really know why. I'm Alex," I said.
"Ah yes, well, I was quite content to avoid danger and help with the administration of whatever group I'd find myself with here, but it so happened that there was some sort of a goblin creature assaulting a pair of women in the hallway that I stumbled upon mere minutes after I left the room I had been transported to. As I had found a dagger," and he presented a dagger from his waist pocket as he said this, "in the supply cabinet of the aforementioned room, I decided it was my duty as a citizen to go to their rescue. Since I managed to kill it without it being any the wiser of my approach, the system saw it fit to grant me the rogue class."
"Nice work, Clarence," I said, "how may I help you now though?"
"It is largely a lack of information that we face here right now. We would appreciate anything that you could tell us about your experience in the Tower," Clarence said.
"Sure, but I'm curious. How did you get to working with Artemis? She doesn't exactly seem the lawyer type," I said.
"Ah, as it so often happens, your presuppositions have guided you wrong. I've worked with Ms. Wilson regularly in the past. You might be shocked to find how often the rowing mobs of rioting protesters are in the legal right. I have often found myself dutybound to represent folks at odds with the powers that be. In this case, however, I had indeed found myself quite a distance away from Ms. Artemis, and only had the pleasure of finding her by the same means as you have- to whit, the sign above the door. I volunteered my services immediately, and soon thereafter gained my title," Clarence said.
"Happy to hear that it worked out for you," I said, "Chum, can I ask you to explain whatever you can to Clarence without breaking the terms of our agreement?"
"Kinda pasee to have the devil talk to the lawyer, but sure, there's nothing against it. Won't tell him anything I wouldn't tell you," Chum said.
"Splendid! Mr. Chum, is that right? Could you tell me about your relationship to Alex and the Tower as a whole?" Clarence said, and I walked off as they chattered about the details of this tower.