She then began her self imposed routine. Putting on her long leather boots making sure they weren’t uncomfortable, then checking the contents of her satchel making sure she had the basic necessities, she took and strapped her small shield to her left arm, fiddleing with the straps making sure it was set properly. A quick glance at her small dagger if nothing to remind herself that she did in fact cleaned it and sharpened propery the day before. It was truly a commendable habit she had developed on her own. Which unfortunately was one of the very few things she could say she was proud of.
She went down to the adventurer’s guild lobby and she started pleading with the Guildmaster to please let her pay her stay with honest work.
Among the many services the Adventurer’s guild offered, besides adequate (barely) accommodations for registered individuals and
She was basically a charity case for the guild.
“So, more grass picking requests for you eh?” he said, his face didn’t show anger or disgust as one would be to expect when dealing with unwanted freeloaders. He quite understood Mimiru’s situation but he couldn’t quite favor her too much, else he would just spoil her and make her a weak adventurer.
“Y-yes boss. All that you can give me, please! There is a special sale today on meat-filled bread!”
“Oi! Shouldn’t you be thinking about getting stronger instead?”
“W-well yeah, but I finally managed to zero my weekly fees with the guild, so I was thinking I could celebrate a little?”
“You can celebrate once you graduate from the guild’s living rooms, you know?”
“B-but it’s not such a big celebration, right? I mean, it’s just one bread… or two”
“mmph… I suppose if its meat filled, it’s bound to help your growth”
Truly, her situation was bad from an out lookers point of view. She was a young start-up Adventurer with bad luck on the requests she picked, as well as bad results on the jobs she actually fulfilled. Just joining to the Adventurer’s guild, food services, lodging and filling in the registration fees had set her completely in the guild’s debt.
In reality she came from a very impoverished village, even her meager earnings were mostly send as support to her family and friends. No matter the land or country a pretty girl coming from the countryside to a big city is a very common story, more than one eyebrow would be lifted when hearing her story and wondering how come she didn’t get a more reasonable job on any store as a hostess or storefront face (To mention the most graceful and family-oriented accepted possibilities that parents were willing to discuss openly with their children). Taking advantage of a pretty face in order to increase sales was very common practice since the dawn of times after all.
The main reason for her current status as an active adventurer was her special "skill". Since a very young age she had a knack for communication with animals and beasts. If she properly developed her talent, she could be a very successful monster tamer. If she had the money to get registered in the Monster tamer association, by doing it so she could be hired by a noble or even kingdom officials. This would surely help her village and her family in one single move, making money no longer a concern for all of them.
Or at least that was the original plan. The initial registration fee to the Monster Tamer guild was almost all the money her village and her family had gathered to send her off. This steep cost didn’t even cover lodgings, food, clothes or the proper classes on how to advance and use her own skill.
Which lead her to her current situation, the second best choice (or rather perhaps fourth, had she had money for the second or third) was to register herself as an adventurer, learn to use her own skills and earn some money to help with lodging costs. The ideal cost effective plan, as long as one didn’t mind putting their life at risk.
The guildmaster brought a small stack of parchment papers from the back of the counterfront. The sheets were riddled with request information, what to do, what to get, where to go what to expect and a plethora of details that could be life saving (If only all adventurers could read the warnings was an entirely different matter).
With a sigh of mixed relief and concern, she took the pachments from the guildmaster as he handled them from behind the counter of the guild. It served as a business reception and bar as well, the risk-riddled nature of adventuring made it if anything a necessity to have strong beverages[XS2] at the ready.
The muscular weather-beaten man remained behind the counter, looking at the young Monster Tamer (to be) girl as she left the building off to do the most dangerous ingredient-gathering requests that he himself could bear to let her handle. He sighted and poured himself a small glass of the less fancy (yet really potent) spirit they had available, gave a small silent prayer to the fates and gulped it down.
Mimiru had realized the requests were easier each day, her monster empathy skill was really coming along after all. Many of the quests she was handled coincided with areas infested with a lot of aggressive critters and smaller beasts. While any capable adventurer would be able to deal with them, most would either decline such jobs because they considered themselves above such tasks and the other half decided they would rather not deal with enraging a nest of monsters by mistake and risks their live while trying to acquire materials for basic aid ointments. This danger was ever present to her, but she had the possibility of using her monster empathy in order to either soothe a monster’s aggressive nature, to convince them she was not a threat or in the worst case scenario, make the monsters feel like she was not worth chasing for too long (she was constantly frustrated by a monsters definition of what “far enough” was). So her plans were actually quite on the spot. She was honing her monster empathy, experimenting on her own and adquiring valuable experience in the matter. But the money, by the fates! Where was the money?!
After a long day of collecting barely enough herbs and materials stated on some of the guild’s quests, she decided it was probably enough, prooobably enough to cover her daily fees at the Guild. Which was fortunate actually because the overall mood in the woods was that of high alert and unease. Almost as if an even bigger predator was now roaming around. Mimiru was shuddered at the thought, she really hoped there wasn’t such a bigger threat in the forest, and if there was such a dangerous being capable of putting the whole place under high alert. She was sure she didn’t want to meet such a best ever if possible!
As she was about to go through the wall’s southern gateway she was surprised by an odd sight that made her against her best judgement draw closer to the action taking place.
A red winged dragon was by the gate. Big wings folded to the sides, a long tail with a threatening looking spiked tailtip, a muzzle showing sharp fangs as a pair of fierce golden eyes peered at the guard while the Dragon was sitting on its hindlegs, resembling an annoyed lion somehow. The Dragon mount was having a stare standoff with one of the gate’s guards.
“… Papers, please?” said the guard, in a manner that seemed to indicate this wasn’t his first attempt at communication. The massive guard already made for an imposing sight. Mimiru had experience his threatening-calm-face more than once, in her very first interaction with him. She had panicked and had even tried to use her soothing skill on him.
In front of the Bulky and stoic guard was a red dragon mount! They were supposed to be super rare! A mount for kings or knights hand picked (or was it, claw picked[XS3] ?...) by the hero god king of Dragons! To see one on its own was not only rare, it was unheard of to see one alone without a rider. Well, while it was possible and even heard of situations where a mount would be able to separate from their partner in order to request for help, their size made them more than able to carry their wounded partner on their back (or five people if needed) and rush them back to safety. But in this particular situation Mimiru couldn’t see any sort of worry coming from the dragon,
“It… no, it’s a him. He… feels, annoyed, forgiving and… beautiful?..” She said outloud, making the guards and a few curious passerby's stare at her. Without realizing, curiosity got the best of her. Having slowly walked closer to the dragon while trying to make sense of the Dragon’s unique intentions that baffled her as she had never dealt with a non-human creature with intentions beyond a crude set of survivalistic hungry/angry/horny.
{“Majestic! While beautiful indeed, we cannot brush aside the more profound sense of the gallantry from my visage”}
Congratulations!
By your Interactions you have gained a system upgrade.
Congratulations!
By your Interactions you have raised your Monster Empathy skill! by +0.3
“Thesyetemwhatnow!Majestic?!didyajusttalktome?!” She stammered all her words together into a beautiful one liner sentence that bards all over the world were starting to use to cheat rhymes, when out of time to properly create a beautiful and more sensitive ballad. In her case she sputtered words in a nonsensical way that could never be used by a bard. Her utter confusion still not sure where she should be focusing her eyes to. The red Dragon in front of her, the dangerous-annoyed-looking guard, or a translucent blue glowing square in front of her, which she had never seen or heard about before in her entire life. Probably the later. Quite alien to her, very possible magic nature too, therefore too expensive for her to even look at. Crap, should stop staring at it then! Magic is always expensibe, better to avoid it altogether.
“Oe! Ya dem Guil’masters proteegee! ya kno dis bum here? His bein’ here all mornin makin me annoyed” Said the imposing guard, standing well above her height, almost twice her height in fact, with a psyque that shouldn’t be possible without a lot of training and/or inhuman genes. Making her glad to have such a convenient Orc-sized distraction to avoid incurring in any sort of fees per magical usage of any sort.
“Oe, boss you aint supposed to let her know about the coot watchin her” came from a different guard.
“tsk. Dat’s dat coot’s problem”
{“BUM?! Regal mount! Majestic noble companion! Gallant adventuring partner would fit even! Had he the need to look for titles at all! Mmph!”}
Congratulations!
By your Interactions you have raised your Monster Empathy skill! by +0.3
By your Interactions you have raised your Monster Empathy skill! by +0.3
“N-noble companion? Adventuring partner?” Mimiru repeated. Fully focused on not paying attention to the magical glowing blue square scam in front of her. Still, confused by her newfound capability to understand an ‘enlightened beast’. Which was in reality the core essence of all monster tamers. She had just never encountered herself with anything but wild animals and small monsters, both didn’t need (or had) a higher intellect or the need to convey intentions beyond the four F’s of common biology. So the Dragon intentions reached her as clear as speech because he himself intended so. Probably. The city guards were just unprepared for such encounter.
“Oh, one of dem adventuring beasties eh?, tsk. fine! girlie make sure you take’im to the ol’coot!”
“M-m-me?!! T-take him to the old co-” She stopped herself almost biting her tongue, feeling like she almost got trapped into a prank by calling the Guild master such names, in public!
“gah! To the guild master?! Me?! Surely that’s not my responsibility!”
“Ah?! Whats that lil miss? Where else woul ya be goin if not da adventurer’s guild? Eh?! ‘Sides ya can talk with it, so ya will have to speak for ‘im nyway no?!”
“T-That’s… that’s right…” She tried to defend herself from the obvious power abuse taking place. But the guard was inherently right, she was to head back to the guild as soon as her requests were taken care of. Specially if an enlightened-beast was heading there, there were not many capable monster tamers within this part of the city, and while the nobles had beast tamers at their back and call, hiring one would be expensive. Anyway, this was a great opportunity to increase her skills! Probably. And maybe she could claim a commission for her services! Or maybe just an extension on further payments to make… Having set her mind on the task and trying her very best to forget the fact that she had just been outsmarted by one of the brutish gate guards, she nodded at the guard and then looked straight at the Dragon and motioned to invite him to follow her.
“T-this way please!” She said, making a clumsy curtsy she had practiced on her own whenever she thought she needed more manners in order to be in the big Kingdom City. She felt that if she was to be playing a escort she might as well do it properly (and charge properly if possible too!)
In response to the courtsy, the Dragon seemed to puff his chest. He nodded in acknowledgement and standng up, started following the little monster tamer (to be).
While trying to not think of being outsmarted by the guards. It never occurred to Mimiru that not even once the dragon said he was an adventurer, or that he wanted to go to the adventurer’s guild.
[XS1]Adventurer’s managed to pass this phrase in public even through lie detection magic if anything because it hold the same sense that a handful of sand has an immensurable amount of sand grains.
[XS2]Honey-based ales had been their strongest beverage until the introduction of “spirit drinks” which in turn made to the development of even some extraordinary healing concoctions, said to heal even your very soul. As long as being blacked-out unconscious and getting carried back to your bed wasn’t a concern.
[XS3]In reality, dragons went by neither. Their phrase of choice was something along the lines of “god’s picking” but when it refered of their 'All-father Hero God King’s' choice, it was VERY redundant. They left the task to the “faithful” to try and enounce all of their god’s titles adjetives and pronouns without breaking into a laughing fit, whenever they had to address him.
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