“Thanks for the shirt, Yarm. I’ll pay you back later, I promise,” Newmill said as he fitted himself into the top.
“Don’t worry about it.” I stretched my arms over my shoulder and then behind my back.
“So, are we taking more requests from the guild? You still haven’t claimed your reward for defeating the giant rat, you know?”
“Yeah, I guess.” I looked up at the clear blue sky and stared until my eyes hurt. “Being inside this home building just annihilates my motivation. Everyone in there sucks.”
“Sorry I’m late!” Penrin rushed over towards us. She panted and sweat dripped off of her nose. Her sweat-glistened skin accentuated her scar.
“Glad to see you, Penrin, but you didn’t need to run. We weren’t going to leave without you,” I said. It was mostly politeness speaking because I really did hate when people were late. Though, I felt no disapproval towards Penrin. Her help was greatly appreciated.
“What’s the plan for today then?” the girl asked.
“I have business at a certain half-mushroom’s shop. After that, I’d love to head to the school to unlock my map.”
“Is that part of a quest you have?” Newmill wondered.
“Kind of. It’s a new menu that I got due to my high Mind. Though, speaking of quests, do either of you have quests that you want to complete?”
“I’ve already completed all the easy quests that I’ve been given,” answered Penrin. She opened up her System and started scrolling through the green menu to navigate to her quest-log. “I guess this would be the simplest one for me to try and complete.” She pointed at her floating screen.
[Explorer: Travel to a city in the Kingdom of Monsters.]
What part of that was simple? Getting to the Demon Kingdom was difficult as is, surviving there would be even harder. They had a mandate to kill all humans. It was strange that Penrin’s quest was different from mine. “I was lucky with my Explorer quest. It wants me to explore all places of interest inside this city. Much easier.”
“Oh, I had that too. It automatically completed itself since I’ve already visited all important locations in this city,” said Penrin.
“Same for me,” added Newmill.
It was foolish of me to think that I would be lucky in any way. These two had lived in this city their whole lives so it was no wonder that the quest retroactively completed.
“The quest should be quite simple for you to complete, Yarm,” said Newmill. “All the famous locations are well documented in tourist pamphlets. It will take the whole day, but I can take you to all the places.”
I shook my head and refused aloud. “There’s no need. If it’s easy to do, then it would be better to complete it in my own time. Today I want to focus on three things: kowtowing to a certain shopkeeper, accessing the school’s belltower, and going to the guildhall.”
Surprisingly, Penrin and Newmill didn’t have any complaints. They were happy for me to lead the way.
First, we all stopped by Mushy’s shop. It wasn’t very far. I wanted to tell her the truth about what happened to the spores. I knew this was going to be painful, but I had to do it. I stepped into the shop with my two friends.
Mushy’s face immediately brightened as she saw me enter. “Hello, my little assistant. Welcome back. I see you’ve brought some friends today. How can I help you?”
“I’ve come to tell you something about the spores,” I said.
“What might that be?”
“I didn’t spread them like you asked. The truth is, I lost them. I was careless with a precious item that you had entrusted me with. Not only that, but I lied to you. I was too scared to admit that I hadn’t spread them, so I lied. I’m so sorry, Mushy. I really am. I’ll do anything to make it up to you. I’ll pay you or work for free. I’ll accept any punishment.” I bowed my head towards the shopkeeper. I was terrified of the repercussions of my actions.
For a long time, I heard nothing. Then came footsteps. Mushy walked out from behind her counter and approached me. She stepped up right in front of me and then stopped. After a few seconds, I felt a weak karate-chop to the back of my head. “There. That’s your punishment.”
“Huh?” I lifted my head and looked up at her. She did not seem angry at me. I rubbed the part of my head that she had lightly chopped. “That’s it? Aren’t you mad at me?”
“I am, but I can also tell that you’re sorry, so I don’t want to take my anger out on you.” Mushy pinched my cheek and pulled it gently.
“But it’s all my fault.”
“I forgive you. Next month, you can make it up to me by spreading my spores for real.” She let go of me and returned to the till. “By the way, where did you end up losing them?”
“Oh, right. I didn’t tell you the full story. I dropped the pouch in a military caravan. Later on, I found out the soldiers snorted the spores to try and get high.”
Mushy formed a raw expression of disgust on her face. “They did what? How awful. Inhaling my little seedlings like that is unforgivable. How dare they steal something that doesn’t belong to them.”
“Not only that, but they came up to me to try and buy more. They said that they were willing to pay upwards of 50,000 GP for a single pouch. Isn’t that so rude? Stealing something and then begging for more like that?” I crossed my arms and tutted.
Mushy froze like a deer in headlights. Her eyes were looking at something distant, but I couldn’t tell what. She was deep in thought.
“Are you okay, Mushy?” My question brought her back to reality.
“Oh, yes! Uhm, where are these soldiers exactly? I need to know their exact names and addresses, so I can stay away from them.”
“Trust me, Mushy, the less you know about them the better. Also, when did you want me to come back to spread the new bag of spores?”
Mushy’s palms slapped the counter. “There’s no need for that. I can spread them myself.”
“But didn’t you say that I should make it up to you by spreading your spores?”
“No, no. You can make it up to me by telling me where the soldiers are.”
I handed Mushy the note that Verwood had given me and her eyes shone with glee. She kissed the note and thanked me.
“I’m closing up shop early today. Thank you again.” Mushy pushed the three of us out and then locked her store door, before running off into the distance.
I watched her kick up a trail of dust as she left. “I hope Mushy doesn’t accidentally meet up with those soldiers. She might be forced to sell her spores.”
“Forced?” Penrin said. “Yarm, your idiocy never fails to surprise me.”
Newmill mumbled to himself, “Snorting spores has psychoactive effects? Perhaps I should forage for mushrooms on my next expedition outside the city.”
Onwards, the three of us went to the school. I wondered if the map menu that I was about to unlock from the belltower would be any better than just a regular map.
The walk to school was moderately long and it gave the three of us time to idly chat. I was surprised at how fun it was to talk to literal children as compared with the aggravation of speaking to my fellow Earthlings.
We entered the large school gate and walked along the beautiful stone path leading inside. I was again impressed with the greenery and lovely flowers that grew in sizable planters.
While walking together, I heard many remarks from students that I did not wish to hear. “Look, it’s that Penrin girl. Her face is even uglier than the rumours.”
“Is that the failed prince? He’s kinda cute.”
“Who’s the dopey looking one in the middle?”
At this school, there were students of many different ages. The insults from younger students did not anger me as much as the verbal abuse from the adult students. At their age, they should have known better.
When entering the school and walking through the hallways, I accidentally bumped into a young girl. The collision caused her glasses to fall off of her face and onto the floor behind her. The collision also caused her body to fall backwards onto the glasses and crush them.
“I’m so sorry!” I said.
“Oh no! My glasses.” The girl started panicking.
“It’s alright. Don’t freak out. I can repair them. I have a skill.” I picked up the frame of the glasses and collected the broken shards of glass.
“You really can fix them? Thank goodness. I have an important event today and I need my glasses for it.” She nervously pinched and twisted tufts of her brown hair.
“Leave it to me.” I activated my skill and the broken glasses absorbed blue light from my palms. They slowly began mending themselves as mana drained from me. What worried me was the speed of MP loss. These glasses were fixing far too slow and I was losing mana far too fast. “A regular pair of glasses should be easy to fix. What are these things made out of?”
“The frame is made from a metal alloy that uses rare sun-steel, and the glass is crafted from the red sands of a faraway desert.”
My face dropped. “Why would you use such expensive materials?”
“So they don’t break when I drop them,” she answered.
I almost felt like crushing the glasses a second time. “Newmill, can I borrow your MP regen ring?”
“Of course.” Newmill pulled the ring off of his thumb and handed it to me.
“How long is this repair going to take, might I ask?” the nerdy girl said.
“Judging by the rate of my MP recovery, probably an hour or so.”
“That’s not good!” The girl started panicking again. “This isn’t good at all. I’m not going to be able to attend the event if I can’t see.”
I felt bad. The girl had bumped into me while rushing to get to her little event. “What is this event, anyhow? Maybe I can help.”
“I’m going to be having a debate. I won’t be able to do it without my glasses.”
I scratched my chin and my brows creased together in confusion. “I don’t understand. It seems like a debate is one of the few events where you don’t need vision. It’s a purely auditory and verbal thing, right?”
“You don’t understand. I’m totally blind without my glasses.”
“No, that’s the part I understood. What I’m asking is, why can’t you debate without seeing?”
“Because I’m blind!”
“That makes no sense. Actually, never mind.” I wasn’t about to get into an argument with a professional debater.
“You’ll have to do the debate in my place.” The girl tried to point at me, but the angle of her pointer finger was off.
“No way. Why me?”
“Because you broke my glasses.”
“You ran into me! Maybe watch where you’re going next time.”
The girl began fake sobbing. “Oh, woe is me. A brute has broken my glasses and with it, broken my dreams of winning the debate on slavery.”
“Wohoah, hold on a second. Did you say slavery?”
The girl led me, Penrin, and Newmill to a huge auditorium. We were taken to the stage and seated next to a long table with what looked to be microphones on them. They were clearly magical in nature. Microphone-runes probably.
Infront of me was a massive crowd of hundreds of students. It was dizzying. Our group sat on one side of a podium, and on the other side sat our opponents.
The debate moderator stood at the podium and announced, “Welcome one, welcome all. Today we have a very special debate planned. We will be arguing on the morality of slavery.”
Cheers came from the audience.
This was it. I had to win this debate. The heavens above had given me this golden opportunity to sway the minds of a great number of people. Every person that I convinced here would go on to convince others. And then those others would go on to convince more people. I could change the course of history here, by winning this debate.
“The motion we are gathered here to dispute is the following: ‘slavery is an unethical practice’. On the right, we have Mr Callington and his esteemed teammates arguing for the motion. On the left, we have Mr Yarm and his gang arguing against the motion. Please enjoy this wonderful debate.”
Wait a minute. I was arguing against the motion? Then that meant I had to explain why slavery was ok. This was not what I signed up for!
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