Minute Mage: A Time-Traveling LitRPG

Chapter 178: Truth and Treachery

After I made my choice for the Ethereal Armor Upgrade, Erani and I went out in the early morning to kill some Gloomspurs. Once again, we were pretty much just waiting for a party to accept our request. The receptionist said that we’d probably get a taker in a day or two, given the sum of money listed as a reward, but that we’d most likely not get to be very picky. We weren’t really telling what we wanted this party to do, after all, so it was more than likely that we wouldn’t have a wide range of options when it came to people willing to do a completely unknown task for money, especially if we wanted to pick someone quickly.

While we hunted, I also continued to charge up the Mana Battery. Since we’d gotten it, I managed to get it charged a good bit between casting my other Spells.

Advanced Mana Battery is charged with 63.7k/100k Mana.

Slightly over halfway done at this point, though really I’d been slowed down quite a bit because of the amount I had to spend on casting Expedite the day before. Today we wouldn’t be nearly as busy, so the plan was to get it charged today, go turn it in to the teleportation specialists and get a new one, and at some point along the way, for me to go out and get the last usage of the Arcane Spell Crystal I needed to Upgrade Gravity Well.

So we got to work. At this point, I’d gotten pretty used to the ways these Gloomspurs acted, and so we were able to more efficiently find and hunt down the packs. We were hunting without Ainash today, since she was out on her mission to tame the Goblins, but even without her it didn’t slow us much, considering how easy the beasts were to kill in small numbers.

By the time we’d gotten a decent bit more than what we’d need to pay for a room, I got a message from her.

“Have two Goblins now!”

I blinked. “Wait, really? You got two to join you?”

“Yes! They are in my house.”

“Your…house?”

“Made a home! Like what you talk about in Human settlements! Goblins like houses, so made one for them.”

“Well, good job! That sounds like it would take a lot of work.”

“It did not! Anyway, come see them!”

I looked over at Erani. “Do you want to go see the Goblins? I need to probably be leaving around now if I want to get to the Arcane Spell Crystal before midnight.”

She shrugged. “Sure, I’ll meet up with her and let you know if she’s done anything absolutely insane.”

“Yeah…I’m wondering how willingly the Goblins are staying in her ‘house.’”

We parted ways, with me traveling the now-somewhat familiar road leading to the guard outpost and Erani heading out into the forest where Ainash said she was located. I still got a pang of anxiety whenever I left her side, same I got when I separated from Ainash, but it was helped considerably by the fact that I could talk to them if I ever needed to with out telepathic bond.

As I walked, I continued to fill the Mana Battery. This time, I had enough time to make the walk without Expedite, so I could instead spend all of that Mana on that. I felt kind of annoyed I couldn’t spend that excess Mana on practicing my Spells instead, but I supposed that was the sacrifice one had to make for money. We were getting half off an exorbitantly expensive teleportation procedure basically for free, but still, it just left me with a bad taste in my mouth. What if, one day, I was left just ten Spell XP away from a much-needed Rank, and I got killed for it? That would’ve been totally avoided if I could’ve simply spent my Mana practicing now. But in the same way, if we spent twice the amount of time out here near Kingdom’s Edge and died to the Demons because of it, that would be a similarly easy-to-avoid scenario. I supposed it was just a trade-off, same as always.

Despite my frustrations with the Battery, the walk went on, uneventful as ever. By the time I was a few hours out from the town walls, pretty much nobody was around anymore hunting for Gloomspurs or traveling, so I couldn’t even people-watch as I walked. Just left me wandering in my boredom.

Eventually, though, after several hours of walking, I got a message that made me smile.

Advanced Mana Battery is charged with 100k/100k Mana.

It was full! That meant the cell in my hand was worth a full three thousand eyt’s worth of discount, and, since I didn’t have any more Batteries on me, I was free to practice to my heart’s content. So, since there was nobody around and I could switch out of it instantly if I did spot someone on the off-chance they were out here, I changed into Light Plate for full efficiency and began practicing Noxious Grasp.

Right now, it was at Rank 16 with only 368 Spell XP filling the next requirement of 2429, so I didn’t anticipate getting it to the next Upgrade point of 20 any time particularly soon, but any amount of practice to push it in that direction would be great. Getting a single Upgrade on a Spell was one thing—it could push the power level way up, either in terms of numerical supremacy or adding on new uses for it. But a second Upgrade was what could push it into a whole new realm of power.

Erani had spoken about this. Most Magic-Types never pushed a Spell into its 20th Rank—or even close to it. The costs just ramped up to ridiculous levels by that point, and spending money on three Spell Crystals—one for the first Upgrade and two more for the second—was an expense many couldn’t justify unless they were still in the adventuring game. And, considering how long it would take to either push a Spell that far past their Soft Cap, or naturally Level up to 40, most had long since gotten however much money they wanted out of slaying monsters by that point.

So, as consequence, it was pretty rare to see Spells up at that point of power. But the Upgrades were equally powerful, too. So I was eager to get my first Spell to that point, needless to say. And with Ethereal Armor giving me a point of Spell XP per 51 Mana spent, rather than 100, it left me hoping that wouldn’t take too long.

But anyway, I needed to focus up and stop thinking about Noxious Grasp. Because right now, I was starting to approach the guard outpost.

Erani walked through the forest in Ainash’s direction. Ainash was, of course, excitedly rambling to Erani through their telepathic bond about every little thing relating to the Goblins as she made her way over.

“I think I will teach Goblins how to speak my language! Do not know anyone who speaks my language anymore, so will be nice to talk to someone in it again! And they seem like could learn languages very easy! Dragon taught them Human language quickly, so I think Goblins are very smart. Could probably learn my language easy too. And after that, will teach them about how to kill bad guys! Will give them whips like my weapon, and show them where to hit to kill bad guys with them. They will be so helpful!”

“Yes, honey, I’m sure they will be. But first, I think we should teach them how to be safe and how to not kill innocent people. Especially before we teach them how to kill bad people. We don’t want them to get confused about who is good and who is bad, right?”

“Okay! And will also teach them about how to beat up mean guys too! Because can’t kill mean guys, only beat them up, so that will be good idea to tell them. And—”

Erani continued listening and doing her best to remind Ainash that these were, in fact, dangerous monsters right now. Yes, they didn’t deserve to die, but it would be best to exercise caution when interacting with them. Something Ainash didn’t seem to entirely understand, but hopefully Erani could help guide her thinking in the right direction once they met up.

As she walked, though, her conversation with Ainash was interrupted by a voice behind her.

“Excuse me.”

Erani turned around and saw three people—two men and a woman. The two men were both standing a couple paces back, eyeing Erani’s appearance warily—as many people did—while the woman was stood slightly ahead, giving a halfhearted wave. Erani frowned. “Yes?”

At her distorted voice, the woman’s polite smile became slightly strained. But she continued in a friendly tone, “We were wondering if you’d seen any Gloomspurs nearby. Hoping to kill as many packs as we can, y’know?”

“Um…” Erani looked around. “Nope. Don’t see any nearby. Should probably try heading further west, though? I don’t know too much about their migration habits, but in my experience, they’re normally further in that direction.”

“Hey,” one of the men called out. He was dressed in a traditional Magic-Type’s robe and staff. Both of those items almost certainly held Enchantments—otherwise there’d be no reason to use them—so he was most likely pretty wealthy. And dangerous. He continued, “What’s up with your voice? And, uh, look? That some sorta Spell?”

“Yes. It’s a Spell.” Erani turned to keep walking.

“Well, which one?”

Erani turned back around and saw that the man was approaching her.

“You’re a Magic-Type, I guess? Probably not a Hybrid-Type, if you don’t got any weapons on you. But, uh, yeah. What’s your Class? I kinda dig the look, y’know?”

“Damien,” the woman glared at the man as he stood up next to her, “leave her alone. Didn’t you just say you didn’t want to be the one to ask? You literally made me go up and talk to this one.”

“Shut up!” he said. “I asked the last, like, four people where the Gloomspurs were. Your turn anyway.”

“Oh? And now you’re just so interested in this woman’s Class? That’s a rude question to ask, anyway. You don’t know her.”

“Um,” Erani pursed her lips, not really wanting to get into whatever these people had going on. “I’m gonna go. Sorry I couldn’t be any help.”

“Hey, wait!” the man called out again. “Do you want to join our party?”

Erani stopped. That…was almost exactly what she and Arlan were looking for.

“C’mon, Damien,” the other man said. “Don’t bother her. She’s probably got a party already.”

“Um, actually,” Erani said, “I’d…be interested. My party and I have been wanting to take on some higher-difficulty jobs. What’re your degrees?”

“Mid bronze,” the woman said, seeming surprised that Erani said yes. “Are you sure you want to join?”

“Well, of course,” Erani said. “Working together would let us take on some much higher-paying jobs.”

“Yeah!” the first man—Damien—said. “That’d be great, right guys?”

“We could probably cover more ground when looking for Gloomspurs…” the woman muttered.

“Oh,” Erani said, “well, my party doesn’t really want to do Gloomspur extermination stuff. I mean, ideally we’d be moving on to do things at the peak of what’s allowed for our group. That’s what pays well, right?”

The other man chuckled. “Oh, I see. You’re one of those suicidal types. Nah, we stick to the stuff that doesn’t get us killed.”

Erani nodded, shrugging off the insult. “Seems we’ll have to agree to disagree, then.”

“Well, we might be able to do something like that,” Damien said, seeming almost desperate. He turned to his teammates and spoke in a lower voice, “c’mon guys, just for one job?”

“Damien.” The woman whispered back to him in a harsh tone, grabbing his arm. “I know you’re lonely, but it is not appropriate to try and get a girlfriend by forcing us to risk our lives on a dangerous job just to have an excuse to speak to a woman.”

Erani held back a sigh. Maybe the woman hadn’t meant for her to hear that, maybe she was just trying to subtly warn Erani.

“Um,” Erani said, “if you aren’t comfortable doing higher-difficulty jobs, that’s totally fine. I can always—”

“No, no, it’s okay,” Damien, said, wrenching his arm free from the woman. “We can find something that’s hard, but not deadly, right? What about that bounty for the criminal guy? Seems like it wouldn’t be too hard.”

“I really had a specific job in mind when I said I’d join,” Erani said. “It’s really no problem. I might just need to get going, anyway.”

“Whatever the specific job you have, this bounty is way better!” Damien said. “It pays over five hundred thousand!”

Erani blinked, her attention fully gotten by the insane number. “Wait, what? Why haven’t I heard of this?”

“Only came in today,” Damien said proudly. “We basically have, like, exclusive access to the info.”

“You mean you eavesdropped on someone else talking about the bounty,” the woman said, rolling her eyes.

“Yeah, well, that actually seems like a great job to work with you three on,” Erani said. “If all of you agree on it, I’d be willing to work together and split the reward. It’s just me and my b-boyfriend, so—”

“Oh,” Damien looked down dejectedly. “Nevermind. You can go, it’s no problem.”

“...No,” the woman said, “if you’re willing to split the reward, we’d be happy to work with you. It’s just one guy and an accomplice, so it shouldn’t be a big risk if we’ve got five of us.”

“Yeah,” the other man nodded. “They estimate the two of them are only high bronze degrees, so if the two of you are also bronze, that’s a five-on-two. Could work.”

“We’re actually low silver,” Erani said.

“Woah, silver,” Damien muttered. “Um, is it serious with your boyfriend, or…”

The woman hit him on the side of the arm, and Erani fought off a blush. This Damien guy was just kind of annoying—she’d dealt with one or two guys who seemed over-eager to get to know her in the past—but regardless of her annoyance within this conversation, her heart still fluttered at the idea of calling Arlan her ‘boyfriend.’ She wasn’t totally sure how that would be something to get her heart to pound after everything she’d gone through, but it was just…Acknowledging their relationship like that wasn’t something she was used to. Certainly not speaking with others about it. So even when it was a basic conversation like this, bringing up the topic of relationships at all turned her face red.

Damien saw her face turn red, though, and seemed to grow in confidence slightly, assuming it was through its own merit that his remark colored her cheeks. “Um, if you want to, y’know, go out and get dinner—”

“Anyway,” Erani said, “my b-boyfriend and I would be happy to accept your offer. What are the details? Do we know where the person is? Or what they look like, anything like that?”

“Yeah, yeah,” the other man stepped forward as the woman pulled Damien away to reprimand him. “There’s not a huge amount of info out right now, but basically it’s this Koinkarian guy. He snuck through Empire’s Edge or something, ended up around this area, the kingdom estimates.”

Erani frowned, growing nervous. “Wait…”

“Anyway, him and this girl he was with, they’re supposed to be the whole reasons the Demons attacked that place to begin with. And so Koinkar says, if we kill the two or bring them back to the kingdom, they’ll pay a whole lot. I know, not much to go off of, but they sent out some depictions of how the people look and their names and stuff, so shouldn’t be impossible, or anything.”

Oh, no…

“Names are…Arlan something and Erani something, I think? I dunno, Koinkarians have such weird names. Anyway, that’s the idea. You in or out?”

“Uh…”