Chapter 23: Two – A Long Talk Off a Short Pier

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“Tell us everything you know about Threewells,” Leonard demanded.

Up until that moment I had seen the dour samurai as a sort of... pompous and somewhat rude man that was in a bad mood. Just a normal person who had rolled off the wrong side of the bed that morning. He wasn’t a threat because he could talk, he could be reasoned with.

Now he was in my face, hands gripped over my shoulders and holding on so tight that I couldn’t move. Something told me that bonking him on the head wouldn’t do anything to him. That, and there was a force pushing down on me.

I could hardly hear Emeric’s protests over the roaring in my ears.

Then I remembered that I was Broccoli Bunch, and Broccoli Bunch said nope to bullying. “I won’t tell you anything if you’re going to act like a bully,” I told him. “If you want, I could trade you some information, but with how rude you’re being I think I’ll just keep it to myself.” I crossed my arms. “So there.”

Leonard let go of my shoulders but didn’t back away. He opened his mouth to say something, paused, then stroked his chin. “A trade would be acceptable,” he said. “What do you know of the Exploration Guild?”

“Um. Nothing?” I said. “Nothing beyond what I can guess, at least.”

“Oh boy,” Valerie said before she moved back to the cauldron and started scraping stew off the bottom.

Leonard pulled the log he had been using as a seat closer with hardly any effort. “The Exploration Guild is an old and storied society. It transcends the boundaries of race and species and serves many. Kingdoms rely on it to find new lands and resources, merchants rely on us to find precious materials and to scout new roads. Most important of all, we are often the first to delve into new dungeons to discover the will of the world.”

“That’s impressive,” I said. The feverish light in his eyes kind of disturbed me a little, but it did genuinely sound interesting.

Leonard nodded. “It truly is. As impressive as we are, we still lose members. New Dungeons can be creative and dangerous, exploring faraway lands means being far from help, or encountering threats never seen before. Information is what we seek, and information is what keeps us alive. Like you learning about dryads and sombrals and knowing to avoid them.”

It kind of clicked, not that there was much work needed for that. “That’s why you want to know about Threewells,” I said.

“Yes, he replied simply. “You asked for trade. I do not know how valuable your information is. But some of it might be the difference between the life and death of this party of overconfident fools.”

“Um, are they your responsibility?” I asked.

He nodded. “They are. But I am but one grenoil, I cannot be everywhere at once.”

“Well, okay then.” I wasn’t sure what to think of Leonard anymore. That was both annoying and kind of confusing. But he wanted to know what I knew and I wasn’t averse to sharing. “Let me just fetch something.” I opened my backpack and retrieved my map of Threewells. The map of the dungeon I left behind, maybe I could use it to bargain for something else. Maybe some food. “Here.”

Leonard took my crude map and his eyes widened a little. “This is Threewells?” he asked.

“Yup, I explored most of the town while I was there,” I said, a bit of pride sneaking into my voice.

Emeric laughed. “Full of surprises zis one. We should keep her!”

“Oh no,” Arianne said. “I’m not going to abide to ze party having a pet human.”

The two bickered back and forth, but my focus was mostly on Leonard who was looking over the entirety of my map with more care than I thought it deserved.

“This is shoddy work,” he said and my tiny kernel of pride deflated and died. “It’s not accurate to the maps of Threewells I have seen. The houses are all there, but their locations are slightly off. And the art is... questionable at best. These words, what language are they in?”

“Um. English?” I said. “You can’t read?”

“Of course I can read!” Leonard said over the laughter of Valerie and Emeric. Even Donat seemed to want to laugh. “I don’t speak this ‘Henglish’ of yours.”

“But we’re speaking it now,” I said.

Arianne looked at me curiously. “Do you have a translation skill?” she asked.

I shook my head.

“Any magical jewelry zat may be soul-bound?” she asked next, this time looking at my hand with the bronze ring.

“Well, yes.” But unless my Insight skill was dead wrong there was no way that my ring was translating for me. Did that mean that I just... knew how to speak frog? I didn’t have much time to wonder about it.

“You shouldn’t just put on strange jewelry,” Leonard said. “At this rate it is a miracle you’re not dead already. Donat, fetch me a paper and an inkwell!” The younger grenoil jumped to it. “Very well, for the map, if you help me recreate it in a less... childish hand, then I will give you one gold.”

Emeric whistled. “Suddenly being generous,” he said.

“A lesser gold,” Leonard added even as Donat returned with a small satchel. The samurai pulled out a wooden board with an inkwell built into it and then a long feather and some yellowish paper. “Do you accept?” he asked.

“Um, okay, sure.” Gold was good. Maybe. Probably. Did I want my new friends to know that I had no idea how the money here worked?

“Good.” Leonard reached to his belt and pulled at the drawstrings of a pouch. He flicked a coin at me that I caught out of the air. It was small, about the size of a dime but thicker, and it was heavy. I stuffed it into my backpack in a hurry. “Now, translate this.”

I did as he asked, translating all the little notes I had made for myself while he copied the map with quick, sure strokes of his plume. His notes were tiny little inscriptions in the margins and sides of the buildings and places I had marked.

“I can tell you about the buildings I explored too,” I said.

“Go on.”

“In exchange for the right to spend the night here,” I added.

The samurai looked up at me and narrowed his eyes. “Very well.”

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“Am I the only one zat expects her to slowly fleece him of everything he’s worth?” Emeric asked. He smiled at me then got up to his feet. “I’ll leave you to it. Donat, fetch some blankets and finish setting up ze second tent. Broccoli can sleep wiz ze girls. We’ll set up a watch and put up torches before ze sun sets.”

That last comment had me looking up to a sky that was putting on its night time colours. “Ah, darn, the day’s almost over.”

“Indeed. Now, tell me of these places,” Leonard demanded again.

So I did, each home earning a small notation next to it as he moved across the town. “And that’s the main tower. The one I came in from,” I said. “Nothing on the third floor. You can only get to it by scaling the outside wall. Ah, but there are offices on the first floor, I found a lot of papers and stuffed them in a chest in the barracks.”

“... good,” Leonard said. “Documents from a fallen city might interest some buyers at the guild.”

“How much would you give for, say, the ledger of the guard captain? All the reports leading up to the fall of the town?”

Leonard looked at me. He sighed. “I have misjudged you. For that, I would give a young fool... a letter of recommendation to the guild. As well as four lesser gold.”

“Ask for more,” Arianne said.

“Mind your own business,” Leonard grumped at her. To me he said. “What made you explore the town so much? At your level it’s an incredible risk.”

“I needed stuff. Food and supplies. And I like exploring, it’s fun.” I grinned at the flummoxed look on the samurai’s face. It was as if he’d swallowed a fly. Only probably not, he would like swallowing flies, I suspected.

He shook his head. “Perhaps the letter of recommendation would be too much. The amount of time spent beating the stupid out of you would cost our instructors far too much.”

“No, no, I’ll take the letter,” I said. The guild sounded neat. “And the gold too. Oh, and some food. But nothing with bugs in it.”

“Hey, nozing wrong with some crunch in your lunch,” Valerie said.

Arianne shook her head. “Humans don’t usually like eating insects.

The look of confused betrayal I received from Valerie had me holding back giggles. “Just enough food for the road, at least until I reach that outpost you mentioned. Unless you’d let me come with you?”

“No,” Leonard said. “There is no chance of that happening.” He said it with enough conviction that I decided not to test him. “We can offer you some food, yes. But only after I see the books.”

I pulled out the two binders filled with reports. It was going to be nice to not have that weight on my back. Or maybe just to replace it with proper food. I handed them over to Leonard who brushed a thumb across the cover, then leafed through the reports. Most, I knew, were exceptionally boring, but he seemed not to care.

“Six lesser gold. I won’t have my honour besmirched by shortchanging even a fool.” He carefully set the binders aside. “Tell me more about the town.”

“Ah, which parts?” I asked.

“The so-called evil hole you mentioned,” he said. I sat up straighter and wondered what kind of goodies I could get for my dungeon map. “It sounds like the entrance to a young dungeon.”

“We felt a mana surge,” Arianne mentioned.

Leonard nodded at that. “We did. Someone might have destroyed the dungeon after you left. Not an easy feat.”

“Is that bad?” I asked.

I shrank back as all three still around the fire looked at me.

“Destroying a dungeon is,” Arianne began. “A crime of ze highest order. One who breaks a core must in turn be broken, for it means going against ze world’s will.”

“The world’s will?” I asked.

“It’s a miracle you know how to read and write,” Leonard said. “With the pitiful education you’ve no doubt received. Typical of a human.”

“What Leonard is trying to say,” Arianne said with some bite. “Is zat ze world needs mana to sustain itself. Not all of it. You can live in a mana-free area your entire life. But you will be made uncomfortable by it. Injuries will take longer to heal and you will no doubt die younger with fewer offspring. Dungeons, when zey appears, bring lots of clean mana to an area, and wiz zat comes the lure of ze dungeon boss.”

“You mean... the class thing?”

“Not completely clueless, then,” Leonard muttred.

“Yes, killing a boss grants you a class. Zat’s why our group has zree fencers in it. Zere’s a boss zat grants ze fencing class near ze capital. A lower levelled one, at zat. It is farmed regularly.”

“Oh,” I said. “Wait, three?”

“Emeric was a fencer until his class evolved. Valerie also reached ze level for a class evolution, but she remained a fencer.”

“So cool,” I said under my breath. “Do you know what Cinnamon Bun evolves into?”

“No, I’ve never heard of ze class,” Arianne said. “Was it a natural one? That is, one you grew into?”

“I guess so.”

“Zen it being strange isn’t surprising in ze least. Uncommon, but not surprising.”

“What can you tell us about the dungeon?” Leonard asked.

I shook my head and smiled. “Nothing, nothing at all.”

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