DAY 19: MORNING — OMUI GUILD

DAY 19

MORNING

The nonsense spellstone ranking system is one of the great mysteries of all time.

OMUI GUILD

 

NO ONE TRIED to pick a fight with me or even dared look me in the eye this time. The crowd parted to let me through. Sure, it was convenient, but…were they scared? I walked up to the trade-in counter.

“We must offer our apologies,” the receptionist said. “Please accept all the money that we have. This is all we can give you right now. We promise to pay the rest soon!”

“Our deepest apologies,” chimed in the other staff.

Uh…I didn’t commit a robbery, did I? I’m not a thief! I’m not even an adventurer, I’m pretty much a hobo! I don’t even have a legal address! I can say I live in a cave, but that sounds so sketchy!

The guild master appeared besides me and slapped my shoulder. “Sorry ’bout that,” he said. “Your spellstones were worth so much that it depleted all of our reserves. I hope you don’t mind if we pay you in installments.”

“Please!” chimed in the staff.

I still feel like I’m robbing them, I thought. They should be so suspicious of me! I would be!

“Normally we turn away spellstones we can’t buy,” the guild master explained. “But because you’re not an adventurer, we technically shouldn’t buy them from you in the first place. And it would be such a pity if you ended up trading in this massive volume of spellstones anywhere else.”

He explained that the guild charged a ten percent fee for every spellstone trade. This was a guild-wide policy, so headquarters got a cut on top of that, too.

Since the income was used to help the guild and its adventurers, members were forbidden from selling spellstones to other merchants. If they did, the guild expelled them. Since I wasn’t an adventurer, they couldn’t use the threat of expulsion.

He felt guilty about taking ten percent of the trade from someone who couldn’t enjoy guild benefits, so he offered his apologies.

I wouldn’t have gotten in trouble if I tried selling them elsewhere. The guild was willing to pay a fair price for the spellstones, but I turned in so many that they didn’t have enough cash on hand. If I sold all my spellstones elsewhere, it would have thrown off the economy, hurting guild operations.

“Of course, I can’t force you, and it’s not my place to ask you for a favor. Please accept my apologies.”

I appreciated the concern, but I didn’t mind. He rattled off so many issues that I couldn’t get a word in edgewise.

At last, the receptionist, who looked like she might have lost a few sheep herself, resolved the matter in a quiet, shy voice.

“If you sell those stones to us, we’ll buy you a new set of clothes.”

“It’s okay. Sorry for making you stay up so late counting.” I turned to address the guild master. “Maybe you should give her and her staff a bonus?”

I really didn’t care about the money. In a world without bookstores, no amount of money could buy books.

“Even if I can’t become an adventurer, Class Rep and the others registered, and the four nerds must have registered as well. I really don’t mind. Just look after all twenty-four of those people. That helps me, too.”

The guild staff breathed out and relaxed. The receptionist literally jumped for joy. The guild master, eyebrow twitching, lectured her about professionalism in the workplace. You have my sympathies—I get scolded for no reason, too.

For the time being, they gave me 8 million ele. Are you…serious? No wonder they were going bankrupt! They could’ve bargained the price down a little!

“Well, that must be payment for almost everything, right?” I asked. “Aren’t F-class spellstones the least valuable?”

The scolded receptionist came around the counter to explain. She was probably trying to escape another lecture.

“Allow me to explain. S-class stones come from legendary monsters, A-class stones from unstoppable monsters. Defeating a monster with a B-class spellstone would require all the combined might and resources of an entire nation to even have a chance. If the guild mustered all of its resources, it might be able to take on a monster with a C-class stone. A party of first-rate adventurers might be able to get their hands on one D-class stone, or one of those adventurers alone could probably get an E-class stone.

Everything else is F-class. Almost all of our dealings are in F-class spellstones. D-class spellstones are rare enough to impress a king.”

That ranking system was totally useless! What’s the point of all those rankings if anything above an F-class stone was unimaginably rare and hard to get?

“From there we divide the F-class spellstones into subclasses F1 to F10, with plus and minus grades in each subclass. Altogether, that makes for over thirty types of F-class stones.”

“But why stop at F?!” I exclaimed. “Why not just keep going until you hit Z? This system makes no sense!”

“A great observation! That’s a mystery for the ages. Scholars and philosophers have asked that very question throughout history,” she said. “Moving on, you brought one F10+ stone, which is the most valuable. Most of the spellstones we get are between F5 and F8. The F10+ alone is worth more than 10 million ele. You’ve bankrupted us with just one stone!”

As she grew more flustered, I realized that this receptionist was the same person who cried and glared at me from behind the trade-in counter yesterday. Did she also appraise the stones? She seemed like an expert.

Apparently, there’d been a spellstone shortage going on, so I had raked in an absurd profit. I had more money than in my wildest dreams.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” the guild master asked. “From a completely selfish perspective, there’s really no benefit for you. It’s not something we would expect anyone to agree to…”

“It’s fine. If you didn’t accept, I would’ve just had the Class Rep and the others sell them on my behalf. I plan to learn all kinds of guild secrets and lore from them, anyway.”

“Don’t just casually say things like that in front of all the guild staff, not to mention me!” the guild master said. “We haven’t discussed anything that’s supposed to be a secret, anyway. I was hoping you’d want to learn from the guild, so I’ll just pretend I didn’t hear that.”

Eventually we settled on a long-term payment plan. Until the accounts were settled, the guild would help finance anything the girls or I needed. It was good to have the guild on our side. Still, it felt like they were only helping us under duress.

“Seems like a good time to go shopping, then. Is there anywhere you recommend?”

After the guild staff directed me to various local merchants, I headed toward the front door. The Class Rep called over to me before I left.

“Wait up, Haruka-kun. Can I talk to you for a minute?”

Wasn’t it convenient that the Class Rep wanted to chat as soon as I struck it rich? Her uncanny timing is terrifying!

“What do you want? Mugging? Blackmail? Extortion? Sheep?”

She didn’t seem to know what to do about the sudden windfall. Just like a worried mother. I knew what she wanted to talk about when she started nervously picking at the drawstring of the bag full of spellstones I gave her for safekeeping.

“Oh, those?” I said, gesturing to the bag. “Nah, just keep it. What if something happened?”

“But it’s worth so much money! I kind of feel nervous carrying this around with me,” she said. “Besides, I don’t have much more room in my own bag.”

I gave her the bag as a sort of rainy-day fund in case her weapon broke or someone got hurt. Was she concerned because the emergency fund ended up being much more money than expected?

“If you don’t end up using all of it, just give me whatever’s left over later, I guess?”

“You’ll just say you don’t care and tell me to keep the change! Money is important, you know?”

I lived rent-free in a cave, got all my groceries for free by picking mushrooms, and wore indestructible clothes. Money was a foreign concept in my lifestyle. What’s money? Does it taste good?

Besides, as a loner, I never had and never would spend money on socializing! Let’s not think about that!

“Keep it,” I said. “This is just in case something happens. And if nothing happens, that’s even better, right?”

“You’re right, thanks,” the Class Rep said. “I’ll spend it wisely.”

Now that I’d finally persuaded Class Rep, was I allowed to go shopping?

Out on the street, the old dude with a spear waved at me.

He said, “Hey, kiddo! I told you I needed to thank you proper-like. I’ve got to show you something real nice! Let me take ya there!”

Oh? He’s going to show me something “real nice?” Was he going to bring me to a place filled with cute, giggling girls? Would it be named something like the Puff-Puff Parlor? That would make up for the weeks of seeing nothing but ugly, grunting goblins in the woods.

“Er, isn’t that more of an evening activity?”

Almost as soon as I said that, Enemy Tracking pinged twenty foes nearby. How do they know what I’m thinking?

“You crack me up, kiddo,” the spearman said. “I’m not taking you to that kind of place. We’re going to an armory! It might have a weird vibe, but it’s a great hole-in-the-wall joint.”

I’ve had enough of this geezer! Should I give him back to the Greenwolves?

I couldn’t use most items at level 9, but this money wasn’t going to spend itself. Besides, if they sold anything useful in there, I could tell the Class Rep about it later. In any case, this was his way of thanking me. He made this armory sound like something unique, too. I had no reason not to check it out.

Nonetheless, as a teenager, I would’ve rather gone to the paradise of cute, giggling girls.