Wuxia - Mtl
CH.181 Road Safety Check
CH.181 Road Safety Check
Like yesterday, I woke up to the sounds of Ria changing clothes, but this time, I stayed still, trying to not show that I had woken up. I don’t want her to think that she is too loud or something.
After she left the room, I went into the factory, as is basically the morning tradition by now.
As I realized in the factory, I noticed that the control platform that I realized was empty. But at the bottom of the chairs leading up to it, or down from it from my point of view, was a table and two people sat at the table. Laura and Mia.
I looked over the rest of the hall. A few monsters were walking from one room to another, but I didn’t spot either Fantasia nor Tahlia. Moving over a bit, I took a look on the security monitors and found Tahlia first. She was in the deepest part of the Different Dimension Treasury room reading a book, just like she was yesterday morning.
Finding Fantasia on the cameras took a bit longer, but I managed to spot her in a forest area. She was riding a white tiger, The All-Seeing White Tiger to be exact.
As for the reason I managed to spot her, well she was wearing a red ninja outfit, possibly a copy of Nin-Ken Dog’s outfit. She seems to be having fun, so I see no reason to interrupt her.
I walked down the steps and joined the duo at the table. It was a small circular wooden table that could seat five or six people.
“Good morning.” I said to the two system supports sitting at the table.
“Good morning, dear.”
“Good morning, Mr. Brian.”
“I hope I didn’t interrupt anything.”
“No, we are done for tonight. We were just waiting for you and Mistress to wake up.”
“I’m telling Lua next time I see her.”
“I don’t mind. You have no proof.”
“We have cameras. Laura, they do record, right?”
“No, not at the moment. We have no place to store all that data.”
“Couldn’t it be stored inside Different Dimension Treasury?”
“Inventory is not designed to hold data like that.”
“But I’m not talking of just my inventory, but Tahlia herself. She is somewhat different from a normal inventory, right? Or can every inventory just casually realize an avatar?”
“A beyond system function, huh. I suppose that might be possible, as she does originate from a different source and is only recognized as an inventory by the system.”
“If you have the time, look into that. But prioritize getting the dungeon security footage recorded, instead of the factory footage. The stuff happening in the dungeon is more important in the end.”
“Sure. I’ll see if that is possible.”
For the other stuff that happened during the night, Laura fully completed for me.
I already had Jinzo and Imperial Order, but some nice stuff still became available. Gearfried the Iron Knight is just a decent monster all around. Fairy Meteor Crush should result in some sort of penetration skill if installed and even just activating it is good. Premature Burial and Call of the Haunted might sound good on paper, but as they would resurrect the target as a zombie or some other kind of undead, it is a no go. But at least they don’t have a time limit like Monster Reborn does.
Goblin Attack Force is also something. With just one card, I can get a total of ten armed hobgoblins. So if I fill up my entire duel disk and hold one in each hand, I can have a total of 90 hobgoblins summoned at the same time. That’s basically a small army.
Skull Mariner is just a straight up pirate ship, in case I find a sea I want to sail. Of course I can just fly, but sometimes sailing might be more fun. And I would get to be a pirate captain.
And finally, having many many copies of Rain of Mercy is always good. Just AoE healing for everyone. Great if something bad happens.
“So, anything else I should know?” I asked.
“No, not really. We did play around with the idea of using the link Master-slave link between you and Ria as a way of connecting you two, but at most it would be one way. From you to her.”
“Well, that isn’t terrible. But also not super useful. I guess I should just learn a skill like telepathy or something.”
“That would be for the best.”
“Wait? It really is a thing? I was just joking. Like I assumed as telekinesis was, but I wasn’t sure.”
“It is and I believe the training you do with Miss Alice and others will eventually help you learn it.”
“Training? Oh, the remote magic power loop thing, right?”
“Yes. You just need to learn how to leave information into the magic you send. It isn’t that easy, but I know you can do it.”
“With your help at least.”
“Yes. You will also have to learn how to read the information written into the magic.”
“Because can’t have it too easy, right?”
“You will eventually learn how to have it done automatically after the message reaches the recipient, but that is a more advanced technique than just using telepathy between two people who know how to read the magic.”
“I’d better try to add that to our practice as well then.”
I ended up returning to the real world without meeting either Tahlia or Fantasia, as neither of them ever showed up. I guess they might not have known, so it might be on me. Or they were just busy. I’ll ask them in the evening when I go and say good night to them.
Anyway, after breakfast, the four of us, Ria, Alice, Paulina and I, headed to the adventurer’s guild. We needed to get some blood, so might as well get a guild quest while at it.
And I was going to register Ria, but this is the response I got.
“I’m sorry, but dhampirs can only register if they have been deemed stable.”
I also asked about slaves and they are alright as long as their master approves. And the master has to be there when they register. So we’ll just have to do it as soon as Ria gets her stable papers. That sounded wrong.
After that, I, with Ria, headed to the quest board where Alice was already looking for something we could do today. But as we are a bit later than most adventurers, we don’t have the greatest of choices.
“Should we check out the C-rank quests?” I offered to Alice. She had only been looking at the D-rank ones.
“I already did. There was nothing.” She said.
I quickly took few steps and looked at the C-rank part, but as she said, there was nothing we could really do. There were two escort missions from some trading company, but as I have no idea where they would lead, they might take too long. And I still have that quest from Agatha to be her chauffeur and blood collector. Yes, it does fall under official adventuring work. I actually dropped off the papers for that at the desk while I was asking about registering Ria.
It isn’t in any way against the rules, but other adventurers can see it as favoritism, so it is discouraged. But at the same time, I heard that they aren’t popular. Collecting blood is a lot of work, if you don’t have blood magic and going to the dhampir village is not popular as you have to constantly keep your guard up against the dhampirs. Well, not anymore, losers. Thanks for letting me have the easy job. But then again, I guess I am the one that made it easy.
“Did you find anything?” Paulina asked as she came to us. She had come to another counter when I had because she was doing some sort of delivery for Angelina or something.
“Nothing that fun. We’ll just have to go hunt something and report that we did.” I answered.
There were generic, always active, hunting quests which you didn’t have to ‘take’. You would just come to the guild with the subjugation proof and it would be processed. But they didn’t pay as much as actual quests and they also carried less contribution points. And collecting contribution points is how you get considered for rank ups.
Of course you would still get money for selling the remains of whatever you hunted, but that goes for most quests, except the ones actually asking for materials from certain monsters. But those are some of the best paying jobs and always pay better than hunting something and trying to sell the parts.
As we were speaking about it, a guild employee came and set out two new C-rank quests. As no one else was actively looking at the boards, we had the first look and potentially first pick if we wanted to take them.
“Road safety check? And a bison meat request?” I looked at the two new quests. They were both from the same person, Earl Sawyer.
“Yes. With his birthday coming up, Father has to ensure that the people arriving will run into as few problems as possible on their way here, so there will likely be multiple road safety check quests coming from him. They usually take a few days, but with your flying golems, we should be able to do it in a day, right?” Paulina asked.
“... we probably could…” I agreed. But this seems … convenient. I already felt that way about the missions that Alice had done previously, as two of them were also from Earl Sawyer, but this seems to confirm my suspicions. I don’t know where this falls in the shady category, but I do feel like this is somewhat shady. Having a noble put in a quest only for their children or grandchildren to take it as soon as it is placed on the board. Especially as I think Paulina just delivered the quest from the Earl.
Well, it isn’t my place to complain about things being easy, so we shall take these. I did have an idea for where we might find a C-rank bison monster that Laura marked when we were doing the scouting flight for the orc village, but there is a chance that someone has already hunted that one, as it was not too far from the city.
“Let’s just take them both.” Alice said as she peeled the two C-rank quests from the board.
“Hey. Alice, wait for me. You aren’t even C-rank, so you can’t accept them alone.” I called after her.
“... No. This thing can’t be real …” We had accepted the two quests and were now flying in the sky inside B.E.S. Big Core. And apparently Paulina didn’t really want to believe her eyes.
In terms of seating arrangement, Paulina had taken the lead navigator's seat and Ria moved to one of the seats for the communicators.
“Why not? You are sitting inside of it, so it has to be real.” I told her.
“No, no, no. I refuse. This is a dream. I'm definitely dreaming.” Paulina tried to go against my assessment.
“Don’t dream too much. I need you to show what road we are supposed to check for threats.”
Our plan, if you can call it that, was to first fly up and down the road, well more like south and then back north. The road went on the east side of the wyvern mountains and would eventually lead to a dukedom and the dukedom capital. But we didn’t have to go that far. We would only have to go as far as the first large town on the road. The Hill town of Yuva, ruled by Viscount Yuvaan Hill. He would be attending, so the road to there had to be checked.
On the way, Laura was making a map from everything we could see and was marking all monsters on it. On the way back, we would then hunt the most dangerous ones and leave a report about the rest of them to the guild so they and Earl Sawyer can decide if they want those hunted as well.
“We have to get at least this horde of forest deer. And this cockatrice.” Paulina was pointing out targets that we had to hunt.
We had flown all the way to The Hill town of Yuva and were ready to head back and hunt the few must solve problems. The deer were a problem because they would be ideal prey for stronger monsters and the cockatrice is a problem because it is a cockatrice. It can turn stuff into stone by looking at them.
“We should also get these bisons for the other quest.” I added.
I was displaying the map data on the monitors so we could speak about it easier.
“Yes. Too bad they are only D-rank forest bisons and not C-rank horned bisons.”
“I do have info on one C-rank horned bison, so we can go check it out. I noticed it when we were searching for that orc settlement a few days ago. But it was within a walking distance of Sawyer city, so there is a chance that someone else hunted it.”
“Could be, but I would appreciate it if we checked it out.” Paulina said. “But let’s get to work. The deer first. We can’t have them attracting more dangerous monsters.”
I have to say, having the quest giver with us does feel a bit like cheating. And this isn’t even an escort quest.
“I banish Trial of Nightmare and Petit Angel to summon Black Luster Soldier - Envoy of the Beginning.” I needed a monster to kill the deer quickly and I was already meaning to summon BLS envoy yesterday in the dungeon, until Laura and everyone else spoke me into summoning Sorcerer of Dark Magic instead.
For a vampire, I summoned Vampire Sorcerer. Ria could use blood magic, but she wasn’t as good at it as Lua, so she said there is no way she would keep up with our hunting speed.
I also summoned The Bistro Butcher and Kitchen Dragonmaid. Their job would be taking the deer apart into easily sellable pieces of meat. The blood filled three of the four barrels. We could have filled up all four, but I decided to leave the fourth one for the bison blood. And Ria needed some blood as well, so she took the rest into her new magic flask.
Summoning Kitchen Dragonmaid also led me to realize her power. She could get me other Dragonmaid cards with her effect. I asked her about it, and after a bit of time, she came back with one card and an apology.
“I’m sorry Master, but something is preventing me from getting the others. I can only manage this.” She said as she handed me the card Dragonmaid Tinkhec, her dragon form.
“Don’t worry. I understand. Honestly, even this is good.”
I did expect some level of prerequisite for the search effect, like Senju and Manju have. For now, I’ll assume that Kitchen Dragonmaid can only get me the dragon form for the maids I already have, or vice versa.
After we finished the deer, I put the blood barrels and all of the meat, hide and other parts into my inventory. Paulina ended up questioning me about the inventory, but I just said it happened when I hit level 50. Not entirely true, but close enough. I also swapped out our B.E.S. Big Core for a fresh one, so the summoning time wouldn’t get in the way. We, all my monsters included, got into Big Core and were off to hunt down the bisons and the cockatrice.