Chapter 17

After a few moments the redheaded receptionist came back with a leather bound book. “Sorry about that, I had to dig through storage a little to find this.” She handed me a book that seemed to have as many pages as a typical novel, unfortunately I couldn’t read it at all but I flipped through and saw that on each page was one or two magic circles of all different kinds.

“That book there is what we used to sell to adventurers before we got the affinity crystal. The idea was that it would have maybe a dozen or so magic circles for every affinity and you would try to cast each circle until you found one you were able to cast. Then you would cast each circle in one affinity until you were capped out. If you had affinity in a magic then you could usually cast any circle of that type but after a certain point your mana conversion would become so inefficient you’d be unable to continue higher. Since you have affinity in all of the magics this book covers you’d be able to cast at least three or four circles from each affinity making the book way more useful to you than to the average person. Since we got the affinity crystal in we can’t convince anyone to buy the books anymore so you can just take that one, no one will miss it.”

”Thanks a lot, this was way more than I was expecting.”

“I wish I could have given you better news but this is far from the worst result. At the very least it will give you a lot of utility in a party and make your own life a lot easier. It’s rather nice being able to start a fire wherever you want purely by arranging the ash in a fire pit. Oh and remember not to actually activate any of the circles in the book or you’ll end up consuming the paper it’s written on in the process. You’ll have to buy some good magic reactive chalk to use a lot of the rituals so you may want to pick some up. I don’t have any here but the guild store next door carries it.”

“Cool, I’ll pick some up then after this. Alright, your turn Bella.”

She nods and then places her hand on the crystal tablet. A green one glows very brightly and a blue one, a lighter green one, and a pink one glows about as bright as the light magic one did for me.

“Looks like you have a strong affinity for nature magic and medium affinities with water, wind, and alteration magics. What class were you planning on going for?”

“I’m a novice nature healer right now.”

“Ah, those are very good affinities for you then. Having a strong nature affinity is great for healing and other nature spells are also pretty useful, having water will give you access to a much larger range of healing spells even if they’re not your primary affinity, having even a little bit of wind affinity can make you much more mobile, and having alteration magic could give you access to some powerful buffs and debuffs to help in combat as well. Your affinities kind of make you perfect to be a healer.”

Bella gave a joyful smile, she seems quite happy that her magic affinities support healing so much. I wonder if her transformation had something to do with it, unfortunately there really isn’t any way of knowing. Maybe if I was to soultouch someone else who already knew their affinities we could find out but it isn’t exactly high on my priority list, even with the soul stealing part removed.

“Is there any chance you have a nature affinity book for her as well? We’re both pretty new to this so she could use some more spells within her main affinity too.”

“Sure, we have a basic nature magic book but that one costs 50 silver.”

“Ah, no that’s oka-”

“Sounds good, we’ll take it.” I dig through my bag and slap a gold coin on the counter. She pulls a book off the shelf behind her and hands me a bag with 50 silver in change.

We thank the receptionist and sit down to fill out our forms. Unfortunately, still unable to read and write in this language I have to ask Bella to help me fill it out. For a class I had her put me down as a Swordswoman even if it isn’t strictly true for me at the moment. Still, with such a high sword skill and my current stat spread this was probably the best description of what I could do. I still have 60 stat points I never allocated but considering I haven’t even unlocked a bunch of stats I was hesitant to put any in anything. Although, considering my low finesse relative to my strength and sword skill I might actually want to invest something in that.

“Hey Bella, I have 60 unallocated stat points, do you know how I should be distributing them?”

“No idea sorry. I’m actually pretty unsure about that for myself. Apparently when I was transformed it emptied all of my stats and now I’m sitting on 80 points and I’m not sure if I should put them in something or wait until I unlock an actual magic related stat.”

“Hmm… Well vitality and speed might be good choices. Vitality so you don’t die in one hit and speed to make you less likely to be hit in the first place. But yeah, I agree that you probably should save most of the points.”

“That’s probably a good idea, I’ll put 20 points into each and save the other 40. It will be pretty weird not having all of my points in strength and endurance. Growing up on the farm those two stats made the most sense for what I was doing.”

“Do you know how useful the charisma or luck stats are?”

“You… have the luck stat?”

I hesitate, “Yeah? Is the luck stat uncommon too?”

“Luck is… it’s a hard to say but usually people only have the luck stat if they lived through a near death experience solely by chance. There’s a pretty common phrase among adventurers: ‘one ounce of skill and ten pounds of luck.’ I’m not actually sure how useful the stat is but I’ve heard a lot of stories of people who’ve invested points in it coming out of ridiculous situations. Most people usually believe heroes always have it, there’s no way to know for sure though.”

“I see… well… I’ll tell you more about my specific class when we get back to our room later.” I still had no idea if it was worth investing points in luck now. On one hand having 400 minimum luck meant I could get the benefits of high luck without investing anything, on the other if I wanted to ever have more than the minimum luck I’d probably want to actually invest in it over time. It wouldn’t help me right now but I feel like I should put 10 in now and put in more every now and again. It would probably help me out down the line, especially if I decided to level other classes for a while.

“What about charisma?” I ask.

“Don’t really know. I assume some merchants and nobles have it but it’s hard to tell because its effects are pretty subtle. People who seem to have a lot of friends are usually suspected of having points in it but I have no idea if it’s worth it or not,” Bella says. That makes me think it’s probably not really worth it in a world where monsters are running around, at least not for me right now.

“I think I want to put 10 into finesse to help with my swordsmanship but I want to save the rest until I can unlock speed or maybe something magic related if I can get it.”

“Are you planning on investing in magic when you’re already a swordswoman?”

“I have a hunch that magic will do me a lot of favors in the long run, even if all I can do is rituals that take time to prepare. I don’t know anything about magic obviously but something about the idea calls to me. Truthfully it could just be because my world romanticized it so much though.”

“I suppose the same kind of thing happens here. You hear a new story about an amazing hero and then everyone imagines themselves trying it. I never really thought I would be one to go on adventures but with our circumstances it makes sense. I’m actually pretty excited about it to be honest.” Bella treats me to a cute smile.

We spend a little more time finishing up our forms. Bella has to help me out with plausible information on where I came from. Since I don’t remember my precise birth date and have no idea what the calendar here looks like I just tell her to pick a date in the middle of summer since that’s the best I can narrow my birthday to. Luckily, she tells me the guild tries not to pry too deep into people’s backgrounds unless they come off as troublesome so I won’t need to worry about any of it being seriously questioned. A lot of members are running from something or other and since adventuring can be a dangerous job they try not to discourage people when they don’t have to. That isn’t to say they would accept anyone but they do happen to have a lot of leeway. Apparently sometimes even crime slaves are sold to the guild as punishment so the guild can fill out its ranks.

We take the forms back up to the same receptionist and she fills out her part of the form. She then sets them aside and pulls out two sets of small wood plaques that look a little bit like dog tags. She uses some kind of tool on them that transfers down our name, role, and joining date. Then asks a few questions confirming all of the information. On the part where the receptionist is confirming the spelling of my name I notice that I can’t understand the noises she makes when she says the individual letters, that’s curious. A quick glance and a nod from Bella confirms that everything is fine though so I just accept the confirmation of all of my info.

“Alright, you’re all set. My name is Mirianna by the way. Since you registered with me I assigned you to my own caseload for this city so if you have any business here I would appreciate you come to me while I’m working. One of our main responsibilities as Guild liaisons is to keep track of adventurers so we can tell if anyone goes missing or if any adventurers run into any legal issues while doing quests. If you want to take a quest make sure you report it to me or another liaison if I’m not available and we would greatly appreciate it if you notify us if you intend to leave town or take a long break so that we can update your file before you leave. This isn’t strictly required but you may be reported as missing if you do not take this step which would just be a hassle for everyone.”

She scanned over the documents again before continuing. “A swordswoman and a healer make a pretty decent two person party but if you’re interested there is another group of two that registered recently that might round out your party pretty well. To be frank they probably need your help more than you need theirs but considering all of you are pretty new to adventuring it might be a good idea to work together. Would you like me to put you in contact with them? You don’t have to commit to working together if your personalities don’t mesh well but I’d be relieved if the four of you worked together.”

I looked at Bella. “I don’t mind if you’re okay with it.” I turned back to Mirianna. “Though I’m curious to know what their roles are.”

Bella chimed in, “I wouldn’t mind meeting with them but if you could make sure they know that we’re beastkin ahead of time that would be best. Not everyone is accepting of beastkin and I wouldn’t want to meet with them at all if that’s going to be a problem.”

“Ah well that’s part of why I think you would might be willing to work together, the two I have in mind are a pair of Pantherkin sisters. They are a scout and a wild mage but they have been having trouble finding people to party with because a lot of the groups they’ve tried to work with have either been discriminatory about their race or wouldn’t stop hitting on them relentlessly.”

I nod. “I could see that. I guess we don’t mind meeting them but we’re going to be busy for the rest of the day. How about you ask them to meet us tomorrow morning?”

Mirianna’s expression brightens. “That sounds perfect. They’ll likely be out for the rest of the day anyway, they’ve been mostly doing simple gathering quests since it’s dangerous for the two of them to do subjugation quests alone.”

We put on our new tags and thank her before finally walking out of the guild building. It’s now the afternoon and we still need to take Bitch to the slave traders. I’m not really sure how this is going to go but I’d like to get that taken care of as soon as possible. My gut still twisted in a mix of anger and disgust whenever I thought about her.