World Tree Online: The Mountain Valley War: 2nd Dive Concludes

by M. A. Carlson

  Gras nodded, shuffling the reigns to get his oxen team moving.

  We arrived at Filina’s Bakery to see the Dwarf woman coming out and locking the door behind her.

  “Well, and here I was thinking you were not going to show up,” said Filina, seeing all of us.

  “Sorry we’re late,” said Micaela worriedly. “Not too late, are we?”

  “Not at all,” said Filina. “I would have instructed you to take it to the butcher’s anyway. I might as well show you the way.”

  “We brought three of them for you,” said Micaela eagerly. “And I can still get baking lesson from you, right?”

  “Yes, yes, of course you can,” said Filina. “Be at me bakery a few hours before I open, and we can get started.”

  “I’ll be there! This is going to be so much fun,” said Micaela, her pixyish tendencies exaggerated more than usual as she jumped up and down clapping excitedly.

  “Only because she can’t cook a lick in the real world,” Olaf whispered to me.

  “I heard that!” Micaela shouted, glaring at Olaf suddenly.

  “Son of a-” Olaf started to curse but stopped himself.

  “I get the feeling you’ll be sleeping on the couch tonight,” Baby said with a giggle of amusement.

  Rose snorted back a laugh, an action I mirrored.

  “You’ll all be sleeping on the couch if you keep this up,” said Micaela.

  “Or we could just sleep in our rooms and Olaf can sleep on the couch,” Baby quipped, earning another round of laughs.

  Micaela tried not to laugh but couldn’t stop the little giggle that escaped.

  Only Olaf wasn’t laughing. “Why is everybody always picking on me?”

  At that point we laughed harder for a good minute, I saw even Gras’s shoulders were shaking slightly though no sound escaped him.

  “Aw, poor baby,” teased Micaela, seeming to soften slightly on her husband. “Are the other big and tough adventurers picking on my poor little Artillery Calf?”

  “Maybe . . . a little,” Olaf replied pouting.

  “Want me to beat them up for you?” Micaela asked teasingly.

  “No, but you can maybe forgive me for being a dumb brute?” Olaf asked.

  “I suppose,” said Micaela, rolling her eyes. “Just, watch that temper. We got lucky this time but now that we know that skill exists you really need to watch yourself. Okay?”

  “Of course,” said Olaf.

  “Unless we need it,” Rose and I added at the same time, causing us to share a brief look and a small snicker. It was true that the ability was dangerous, but all abilities had a time and place. We just needed to figure out how to trigger ‘Rage of the Minotaur’ at will.

  “You two, don’t encourage him,” said Micaela, trying to sound serious and failing as usual.

  Filina was thoroughly entertained by our group dynamic, laughing and enjoying the banter as we followed her to the butchers. It turned out, all Filina needed from the boars were the legs, shoulders and the butt. The rest of the meat would get parted out and sold.

  “Except the bacon,” said Vision appearing in much the same fashion Heath was becoming known for. “We get to keep the bacon, right?”

  “Right,” I said, agreeing with Vision.

  “You can pick it up in two days,” said the butcher, handing over a receipt.

  “Well, that would be your quest completed,” said Filina, happily taking her own receipt and completing our quest.

  Quest Alert: A Boar’ing Task (Recommended Level 8-10) – Completed!

  Filina Grindstone has asked you to brave the danger of the south slopes, part of Anvilton’s territory, to acquire that most delicious of meats, PORK! Bring back at least 1 boar, bonus for each additional boar brought back.

  Reward: +1,500-Experience, 3-Gold

  I accepted my rewards. I was sure Micaela was taking the cooking lessons given how excited she was for them earlier. So, 10-hours of work yield a pretty good profit after all, nearly 6-Gold for a day’s work was more than acceptable.

  Chapter 7

  The leatherworker was as giddy as a schoolgirl when we came in with the twelve bearskins. The shop was located deeper inside the mountain, down the path that ran left of Mardi’s residence. I actually saw several leatherworking shops as well as armorers, all of them displaying some rather impressive looking wares, and yet, Gras led us to a dingy looking shop run by a stout young Dwarven girl with dark hair that was cut short and went everywhere, completely untamed. That she could probably give Micaela a run for pixie of the year made me wonder why Gras chose this shop.

  “Oh, Sooty, I do love it when you bring me bearskins,” the gushed when she saw the grey-skinned Dwarf with us. “They are always in the best shape and ready to be worked.”

  I looked to Gras with a raised eyebrow, “Sooty?”

  Gras only shrugged, his eyes not meeting mine.

  “Anyway, selling or refining?” she asked. “Wait, where are me manners. Names Loral Skinner, I know, kind of on the nose. My dad’s a Caravanner and me mum’s a Wagoneer. As to how, a Skinner like me ended up a skinner, well after I made my first rabbit fur scarf I was hooked. Anyway, what was I asking? Oh, right, selling or refining?”

  “Selling,” I answered, though I was curious about the refining. Did that mean she would turn the skins into usable leather and claws into proper crafting materials? And what about the head? What could she do with those? And why wasn’t I asking exactly those questions? So, I did.

  “I turn some of the bearskins into leather and some into rugs and some into winter cloaks. The heads have all kinds of uses. The brains are used in the tanning process and the eyes go to the alchemists, the tongue is sold to Chef Samrey, they are a delicacy. For the cloaks, the skull is hollowed out from below to make a bear head hood. For the rugs, I send the finished rug with the skull still attached to the taxidermist to preserve it and add glass eyes. For those I turn into leather, I make the head into medium leather armor. It all gets used . . . but I need to sell to other leatherworkers, no one ever buys from me directly,” Loral answered rapidly, seemingly excited to have someone to talk to.

  “Anyway, where were we? Oh, right, 1-Gold per intact bear pelt,” Loral said, setting 12-Gold on the counter.

  “1-Gold, 5-Silver,” I Interrupted.

  “Ooh, negotiation, I love it. 1-Gold,” Loral said.

  “1-Gold, 4-Silver,” I said, bringing my price down while noting she didn’t bring her price up at all.

  “1-Gold,” Loral countered, repeating the price.

  “You know, when you negotiate, you're supposed to give a little back,” I said.

  Loral shrugged. “My prices are fixed. You will not find a better price from any of the other leatherworkers. Just ask Sooty, he will tell you I am the best in the business.”

  I looked at Gras who just shrugged once again.

  “I guess we have a deal,” said Olaf, quickly distributing 2-Gold to each of us, including Gras who had more than earned his share of the profit.

  “Pleasure doing business with you,” said Loral, struggling for a moment to stack and carry all twelve skins into the back of her shop.

  “Strange woman,” said Baby.

  Gras thumped his hammer then gave Baby a look as if to say, ‘And you’re one to talk’.

  “Well, she is,” Baby defended herself.

  Loral returned a moment later, stopping in surprise when she noticed us. “You are still here. Did I forget something? Did I forget to pay you? I do that sometimes.”

  “No, you paid us,” I answered quickly. We might have been able to swindle the girl out of a lot of money that way, but that wasn’t my way.

  “So . . . not to be rude, but uh . . . what do you want?” Loral asked bluntly.

  “Grip upgrades for my shields,” said Rose, setting her two shields on the counter.

  “Same for my axes,” said Micaela. “Oh, don’t you complain, you know as well as I do that you mis
s sometimes, Butch. Hey, don’t you pout and stop picking on your brother,” she argued, seemingly staring at one of the two axes.

  “Same for me,” said Olaf, setting his two hand-cannons and maul on the counter.

  “Oh wow, business, you are actually here to hire me . . . nobody ever hires me. This is the greatest day ever!” Loral cheered, raising both arms in triumph. “Just wait right here, I’ll be back in a few hours with all your equipment upgraded.” Once again, the young Dwarven woman awkwardly loaded all the weapons and shields into her arms before wobbly walking into the back of the shop with the very unbalanced pile.

  “Olaf, did you remember to unload your guns?” I asked, watching as the girl’s balance became rather precarious.

  “Uh, we can wait outside, right?” Olaf asked, suddenly looking slightly nervous watching his precious weapons sliding back and forth across Rose’s shields, coming precariously close to the edge of falling off several times as the shopkeeper carried them to the back room completely unaware of the danger she was in.

  “Micaela, would you mind bringing my shields back to Mardi’s?” Rose asked. “I need to get back to the manor and clean up. So, does Jack for that matter.”

  “Sure, but can I ask why?” Micaela asked, her eyes narrowing and glancing between Rose and me while a smirk affixed to her mouth.

  “Date night,” said Rose succinctly, turning swiftly and leaving before Micaela could ask more.

  Seeing Micaela turn toward me and open her mouth, I knew I needed to run. “Right, see you all later, have fun, bye-bye now,” I said rapidly and exiting just as quickly as Rose had.

  I was barely out the door when I remembered something I still needed to do. Sighing, I turned around and poked my head in the door. Seeing everyone was turned away from me, I risked it. “Pst, Olaf,” I whispered and waved, motioning for him to come outside.

  “What’s up, Bye-bye?” Olaf asked as soon as he was out of the shop with the door closed behind him.

  “Watch Gras closely. If he’s sending secret messages, I want to know who he’s sending them to,” I instructed my friend. “I’m going to go back to see Krangle and I’ll arrange to hire Gras for the rest of the month. So, after you stable the oxen and wagon, bring him back to the Duchess’s home, he’ll be staying with us for the duration.”

  “Are you sure that’s safe?” Olaf asked.

  “Safer than letting him run around on his own. And maybe, just maybe, Mardi will befriend him,” I said.

  “Or it could all backfire horribly,” said Olaf. “But, hey, what’s life without a little risk?”

  “Great, thanks for filling me with confidence,” I snarked back at my friend, earning a good-natured laugh. “And one last thing, send Heath to give this shop and Loral a once over. I want to know why Gras chose this shop over all the others we passed along the way.”

  “We’ll sort it out, mate,” Olaf promised. “Now, you better hurry or Rose might kill you if you’re late.”

  “Right, I should hurry,” I said. Rose hadn’t given me a time to ‘pick her up’ but I figured an hour would be plenty of time for her and me to get ready, though I needed to run an errand first.

  Not wasting any time, I ran back toward the gates and the stables, pushing my ‘Body Control’ subskill ‘Sprint’ as hard as I could, it had the added benefit of being good training in addition to hastening my trip.

  “I see you, but I do not see my wagon or my boy? Was the wagon destroyed?” Krangle asked rather cantankerously as I approached him. He was leaning heavily on an old wooden countertop.

  “No, Ash and the others are at the leatherworker’s shop getting the bearskins taken care of,” I answered, only slightly surprised he was more concerned about his wagon than his son.

  “That explains why he and the wagon are not here but tells me nothing of why you are. What do you want?” Krangle asked.

  “I want to contract Ash to work for us until it is time for us to leave the province,” I said. “Full-time, we’ll provide room and board for the duration but due to our schedules and the odd hours we’ll often be made to work, we need him on call,” I added, trying to provide a legitimate excuse to the elderly Dwarf. I didn’t think it would be appropriate to tell him, ‘your son is the heir of Anvilton and has an Assassin ready to kill the Duchess, so I don’t trust him and don’t want to let him out of my sight’. Yeah, that wouldn’t end well.

  “It's your gold,” said Krangle. “So, how long before you leave the province?”

  “Nineteen days,” I replied.

  “Let’s make it a 20-day contract then. So, 7-Silver, 50-Copper per hour as we agreed this morning for 24-hours a day for 20-days, comes out to 360-Gold, can you afford that much?” Krangle said, doing the math faster than I could. It was indeed a hefty price but seeing he was giving me the reduced hourly price we had already negotiated I thought it might be too greedy to press for more, even though we weren’t using the oxen and wagon for at least eight of those hours per day, and as reluctant as I was to let more gold go, this was one time I couldn’t afford to skimp or risk not getting the deal done. I’ll say this though, we better collect a lot of bear pelts and rock giant hearts to offset the cost.

  “Half upfront?” I asked. As much as I appreciated Gras’s oath not to harm Mardi, I wasn’t about to trust he wouldn’t betray my friends and me at some point. As such, not paying the full fare upfront was probably for the best.

  “That’s fine,” said Krangle. “Just be sure you pay me what is owed, or I will send collectors after you, nothing worse in this world than the debt collector . . . except maybe the tax collector.”

  “Understood,” I said, placing my 180-Gold on his small countertop, which he quickly swept away, presumably into his own inventory as the Dwarf did not have a cash register of any kind.

  “I will inform Ash of our deal when he returns with the wagon, I assume your other companions will be with him?” Krangle asked.

  “Yes, unfortunately, I have to run,” I said, excusing myself.

  “Young folk, always in such a rush,” griped the old Dwarf.

  “You would be too if you were me,” I countered, grinning a little as the upcoming event had been a long time coming.

  Krangle chuckled. “I see, well then, best to not keep her waiting. They do not like that much.”

  “No, they do not, have a good evening,” I said, giving Krangle a mock-salute and activating my ‘Sprint’.

  Returning to Mardi’s home was easy enough. The Guards knew us now, so I didn’t have any trouble getting through the gate and into the residence. I wasn’t sure what to call Mardi’s home, it wasn’t a manor or mansion nor was it a temple. I suppose it didn’t really matter. Anyway, I said a quick hello to Barkley, before I hurried to the upper level and into the unoccupied of the two bathrooms. I didn’t know if these bathrooms had the same enchantments as those in the Doghouse Inn in Hurligville, but I knew that if they didn’t then I was assured of a trip to the graveyard because I had no doubt Rose would kill me if I entered her bathroom while she was using it.

  It didn’t take me long to shower and put on a clean pair of jeans and shirt, tossing the blood and dirt covered set into the waiting wash basket along with my armor as it was equally muck covered, the pristine white seemingly dyed a dirty red-brown of dried blood. Plus, they could use a repair anyway, hopefully, Mardi’s staff provided those services.

  Dressed and ready to go, I went to Mardi’ sitting room to wait. And wait I did. It took me just under an hour to run to Krangle’s, make a deal with the man, run back here, shower and change. It had been just under two since Rose returned here to get herself ready and I was still waiting.

  Part of me was starting to wonder if she changed her mind and decided she didn’t want to go on this date with me. That was followed by anger at the possibility that she led me on. Which naturally, was followed by regret for the loss of what could have been.

  Those thoughts and worries were washed away in an instant when Rose e
ntered the room and asked, “Ready to go, Jack?”

  Part of my brain seized up. I knew the words that I was supposed to say but my ability to speak them seemed to have been forgotten. I knew Rose was beautiful, mostly in a fierce and powerful way. I had gotten so used to seeing her in her armor without any makeup and I thought of her as beautiful even then. But now, with a little blush on her cheeks, some subtle eyeshadow and a white dress with long-sleeves that reached just to her forearms and a skirt that stopped just above her knees, she was absolutely stunning.

  “What?” Rose asked. “Stop staring.”

  Was I staring? Yes, I was, but could you really blame me?

  “Wow,” I said softly as my brain finally connected to my mouth.

  “It’s not too much?” Rose asked, showing just a little vulnerability.

  “If you weren’t the best tank in the game, I would say you should always dress like this,” I said honestly, I couldn’t help but notice Panther was absent from her neck. The snake familiar had become something of a regular fixture around Rose’s neck.

  “Stop, I am not the best tank in the game . . . yet, but thank you,” Rose said, her cheeks turning slightly redder under the blush.

  “Shall we go?” I asked, offering Rose my arm.

  Rose smiled at me as she took my arm in hand and I knew I was done for, that real smile was it.

  “So, where are we going?” Rose asked, looking at me expectantly.

  I was now thanking the Goddess Issara for that long wait. It gave me a chance to speak with Barkley, that wonderful and amazing butler. Mardi definitely needed to give him a raise as he refused my tip. Anyway, when I mentioned Rose and I were going on a date, he asked me very simply what my plan was. Of course, I had no plan. When was I supposed to have time to make a plan? Did all guys make a plan before a date? Was this something I had been screwing up for years? The short answer was ‘yes’. Did I mention Barkley deserved a big raise? With that brilliant butler’s assistance, he pointed me toward a popular Dwarven ale house that served delicious food and had a live band every night.

  “I heard about this Dwarven pub called ‘Falling Down Dwarf’, it supposedly has good food and a live band. It sounded like a lot of fun,” I said, hopeful that plan ‘A’ would work.