Valkyrie's Shadow

Chapter 15

“…did that count?” Utrecht asked.

“Uh…probably?” Merry said.

“They didn’t advance to the fourth floor…so technically that didn’t count?” Josin mused.

“Like hell it didn’t!” Moknach scoffed. “That was way harder than just walking down the stairs to the next floor.”

As the Mirror of Remote Viewing followed the party slowly limping back to E-Rantel, the assembled veterans acting as proctors discussed the outcome. Gazing at the scene in the Mirror of Remote Viewing, Ainzach mulled over his thoughts as the women of the party accompanied the sobbing Kyla back while Howe and Henrich followed some distance behind. It would be just a bit of an understatement to say that they had taken a detour from the expected route.

“It’s pointless to say that it technically didn’t count.” Blair leaned back in his chair, fingers drumming on his desk, “We put them in again and Kyla can just smash her way through everything by herself – provided she’s willing to do it.”

“What about just upping her to Iron then?” Ilyn proposed, “She did the most damage to the party’s enemies and her own party. She laid out that other Fighter with a single punch.”

“I’m not opposed to that,” Ainzach agreed with the motion. “I picked out the ones that appeared to already be Iron-rank or better in the first place for this session. Four of them clearly are, at least.”

“Mmh…it’s hard to tell for Penn,” Ilyn crossed her arms. “This type of scenario is a bad fit for the spells that she currently has. We should run her through again with different opposition to see what she’s really capable of. As, uh, novel as this experience was, Copper-rank casters don’t have much in the way of spell diversity. We can address this over time, but any new recruits coming in – especially people from elsewhere – are going to have the spells that they think they’ll need for old Adventurer work.”

“My thoughts for Themis run along similar lines,” Blair added. “She can clearly hold her own, but most of her mana looks like it was dedicated to keeping Kyla stable. I’d like to see how she handles a more conventional situation.”

“I have no problems with the Ranger and the Rogue,” Merry chimed in. “The Rogue especially. Did he learn his craft from someone?”

Ainzach flipped through the profiles in his dossier, scanning through the contents of Howe’s quickly.

“It says he’s former city militia, a new guy,” he told the others. “Seems he grew up learning from his father, a thief taker in the militia. Howe started working for the city on his own a year or so ago.”

“Might explain why he acts like that,” Merry pondered the description. “He’s too straight-laced for a footpad or some petty crook. Why’d he drop out of the militia?”

“You can probably guess,” Ainzach looked up from Howe’s file. “A bunch of the militia quit after seeing that they were just plain outmatched by His Majesty’s forces deployed around the city. Most of the ones that remained are either too old to change their vocation or working in customs and other duties that don’t revolve around having muscle. There’s probably some use still for a thief taker…I wonder if he just saw a better opportunity here, despite his upbringing.”

“All’s the more to our gain – if he can get to gold or higher,” Merry said. “Someone of his calibre will be pretty popular for parties.”

Ainzach nodded. Flipping through the sheets again, he found the remaining party member.

“I’m on the fence about Henrich, actually.” He admitted, “He’s solid enough, but he’s also pretty…”

“Normal?” Offered Utrecht.

“Kinda,” Ainzach twisted his mouth in thought. “It’s hard to put a finger on it, but something along those lines.”

“He’s reliable, level-headed and appears to have good judgement,” Josin said. “In a very plain sort of way.”

The description floated close to the mark, and several of the other proctors nodded.

“Looking at it from another angle,” Moknach said, “there’s nothing really outstanding that I saw that would hold him back. He did his job, and everyone walked home: that’s what matters, right?”

It seemed that they were in agreement. Ainzach looked to Mare just in case he had something to say, but he appeared to be speaking to someone via magic, whispering to no one in particular with his back facing the rest. The guildmaster decided to move on to the most immediate issue identified during the session.

“So we have one big problem,” he addressed everyone in the room. “Well, this is the biggest one, at least.”

The assembled veterans straightened to pay attention at the shift in his tone. Mare turned around from his conversation and walked back to join them.

“It’s not as pronounced of an issue at lower ranks,” Ainzach said, “but it definitely will be by Silver. The trainees were too conservative with items – probably because they know its training.”

Merry had burst out laughing when Ludmila paid for Penn’s vial of Alchemist’s Fire, as the Sorceress appeared to be hesitating over its use. It was a ridiculous exchange that would not normally happen in a life-or-death encounter.

“I-I can raise the difficulty…” Mare offered.

“That’s one thing we should do – just a tiny bit,” Ainzach nodded at Mare, “but it’s just one out of many parts of the problem at hand here. Everyone has a different budget for items, and Copper ranks usually have very little discretionary income to work with. That Ranger is a noble, so she can probably afford to start shoring up the weaknesses that she’s noticed…but regular recruits can’t do that.”

This was a problem that had completely blindsided Ainzach when it became evident in the training session. It was a vestige of the old ways of thinking where all the risk was shouldered by individual Adventurers: their own wellbeing was their own problem. Going in, he actually had the opposite worry – that Adventurers would attempt to trivialize their trials by overstocking on items but, save for probably a handful of rare cases, it was an unrealistic worry in hindsight.

“That’s a tough one,” Moknach said, resting his chin in hand. “Ideally we want everyone on the same measure, but, at the same, time we can’t exactly force people to buy specific items with their own coin.”

“Maybe the stipends for each rank need to go up so they can afford these purchases?” Utrecht came forward with the most apparent solution.

“That’s probably not a good idea,” Josin countered, shaking his head. “It’s coin, after all. Maybe most will do what is expected of them, but it’s pretty much guaranteed that we’ll end up with spendthrifts. We’ve all seen it in the past: men and women that come back from a job and they drink it away by the end of the week.”

“Put together kits then,” Ilyn said. “There’s still enough Magician Guild members to cater to the few trainees we have. They can handle putting together sets of potions and other expendable items if you order them in advance. That way, everyone will be equal going in.”

“That seems fair at first,” Ainzach said after thinking for a minute, “but it might do more harm than good. Learning what to purchase and when to use it for any given situation should be a part of training. If we simply tell them what to do, they might end up not being able to figure things out on their own. Even worse, it stifles their creativity and keeps the Guild as a whole from developing new approaches to problems both old and new. We’ll lose our edge.”

There was a long silence with everyone at an apparent loss for a solution. A sharp thump snapped Ainzach out of his thoughts.

“Points!” Mare exclaimed as he tapped the butt of his staff on the wood planks of the floor.

Looking around at the startled faces, he lowered his voice.

“Sorry.”

“Points?” Ainzach prompted the Training Area Manager to explain what he meant.

“Uhm…if you want them to learn how to spend, but you don’t want them to spend gold coins, then make something else for them to spend. Just don’t let them spend more than they have,” his ears drooped a little. “The others will yell at you if you do that.”

“Ah, I get it,” Ilyn caught onto his idea. “The Guild budget can be used to purchase adventuring supplies which are, in turn, only purchasable using the points that they accumulate. Since we know what sort of income each rank of Adventurer has now, we can adjust the prices accordingly.”

“Won’t it lead to the same problem?” Merry said, “It might be more of a pain, but they can turn around and sell the items at market prices to get coin – then we’re back to square one. Actually, it’s worse since members will treat it as an extra source of income.”

“The proctors can keep track of the items they use during training sessions,” Ilyn explained. “The Guild will repurchase those items at the end so there’s little chance of their being sold or misused. I daresay we can use this for everything – potions, expendable items, even equipment. Since equipment is pretty distinct, they can keep those on them: it’s hard to make excuses for a missing weapon or suit of armour.”

Ainzach crossed his arms in thought as he cross-examined the idea in his head. At least on the surface, it would tie up many of the problems that he foresaw neatly.

“If we offer equipment through this point system,” he brought up the first issue that rose in his mind, “won’t we wind up back at square one? People will save up for permanent equipment over more temporary items.”

“I don’t think that’s a problem,” Moknach said. “Unless they’re aiming too high. Even then, with our control over the training curriculum, being too frugal will be a punishment in itself. Adventurers will want to climb ranks as quickly as possible to earn more and start going on expeditions, so being too cheap will cost them more in the long run. As long as the prices are realistic, everything should sort itself out.”

“So if someone hoards their points they’ll be dead weight, or at least underperform,” Ainzach concluded. “The proctors will clearly be able to see this.”

“I think so,” Moknach affirmed. “As we get better at assessing member performance in training, we’ll be able to spot those problems. Well, so long as the proctors have a relevant base of experience to the party.”

“This…might take a while to figure out,” Ainzach muttered, “but I think it’s a solid idea. Doing this will also help our members get used to their equipment and items before being fielded on expeditions. It would also give the Guild a lot of clout in the market for magic items that individual Adventurers don’t have. If we play it right, the crafters might even come to us to sell their goods. The Adventurers shopping around the city and beyond can inform us of useful items and equipment that we can add to our inventories.”

“It should give us a good handle on prices as well,” Utrecht added. “Adventurers get played by merchants all the time. With this, we have the information and bargaining power to keep things reasonable.”

“This feels like it’s going to be a hard sell with the Administration,” Ainzach sighed. “The Sorcerous Kingdom’s resources are focused mostly on domestic matters at the moment. The Prime Minister doesn’t seem the type to be amenable to this sort of thing when she has bigger priorities. What do you think, Mare?”

“I don’t know,” the Dark Elf was intently following the conversation, but it seemed he couldn’t speak for the Royal Court. “Albedo likes lots of details so maybe if you put together enough that makes sense: it might help convince her.”

Ainzach had a passing thought that he might broach the subject with His Majesty, but requesting an audience with what effectively amounted to a budget increase seemed extraordinarily presumptuous. Mare’s thought at least provided a basis should it come to that.

“Alright then,” he decided. “We’ll start off with the budget that we have and work the basics of this point system out, starting from the bottom on up. Once I think we have enough to make a convincing presentation, we’ll run this by a few people before going to the Royal Court…maybe Momon will have a thing or two to say.”

“Ah! Don’t forget spells too,” Ilyn said.

“Should we suspend training until we’re ready to adopt this?” Moknach asked.

“No,” Ainzach shook his head. “It’s too long of a delay. Even if we decide on how things will work, we still have to consult with the Magician Guild and the Merchant Guild to secure the supplies that we need. With the rush for everything this spring, I have no idea when we can actually get a hold of some of the equipment we need.”

“That’s true,” Utrecht nodded. “Everything is so crazy right now with all the projects going on and the planting season in the territories. I went to get my armour repaired after that clobbering today and found out that all the forges are tied up for at least a month straight.”

“That’s going to cause problems as trainees advance,” Ainzach sighed. “Frontliners will be barely scraping by on light armour going into Silver-rank, and it will only get worse as more and more of them start looking for magical equipment. We should be able to get a stockpile of potions and such soon, so the newbies should be able to get through Iron fine…but it looks like somewhere between Silver and Gold will be the wall until we fix our other supply issues.”

Ainzach rose to his feet as their course for the near future appeared to be set. In the mirror, the returning party was still only halfway back to the city.

“That’s it then?” Blair asked.

“That was the big problem, yeah.” Ainzach said, “A few of the rest might depend on how quickly we can set up this point thing…I had some thoughts about providing general information and pointers for various roles, but that will be something we have to put together after identifying problems over multiple sessions. A manual or something similar would be more suitable towards that end.”

“How about classes, then?” Ilyn asked, “The Mage Guild sometimes holds workshops and lectures for their members…or at least they used to.”

“That’s never really been an Adventurer thing,” Utrecht said. “We’ve mostly always been learn-on-the-job types. Never mind that, I can’t even imagine me teaching any sort of class, personally.”

“That sort of thing will probably take a long time to set up,” Ainzach said. “Our new mandate demands a whole lot of unfamiliar things, so I’m not confident that any veterans would be able to teach classes until we’ve mounted a few expeditions and learned what’s needed ourselves. Does anyone have anything else? Something that we can deal with right away?”

“I got one thing,” Merry said. “We need traps that we can work with. Those built-in traps can be made to be detected easily but, since they’re a part of the facility, they’re basically impossible to disarm without some heavy-duty work. It’s good in the sense that our scouts will need to figure out when to leave things as they are, but we also need traps that they can work on or they won’t know what to do when they come across the real deal.”

“Makes sense,” Ainzach said, then looked towards Mare. “Is that something you can take care of on your end?”

“No,” Mare shook his head, “the types of traps that I have available are too strong for the weaker floors. I can set aside areas where they can be placed…is that good enough?”

Ainzach turned his head back to Merry, who ran a finger over her lip in thought.

“Uh, I’ll check around with our members to see how many can do that work,” she said. “We have at least a handful that can probably manage it. Scrounging up the parts might be a pain, though.”

“It’s better than nothing,” Ainzach looked around at the assembled Adventurers, then to Mare. “Anything else? Anyone? Good. We need to get to the Guild to go over the results with tonight’s party. Ilyn, can you check and see if there are any mages that can clean them up before they enter the city? Those mirrors don’t deliver odours, but I can just imagine what they smell like right about now...”