“No, no, just a fan of the art. Now, about those schematics.”
She glanced down at the book and the designs I’d drawn and began muttering to herself about amateurs. She eventually looked up. “These are shit. Who designed them?”
“I did.”
“Who taught you?”
“No one.”
She snorted, looked me up and down and then nodded. “In that case, not bad. I can make them if you want me to, but any village smith could.”
“I don’t want you to make them. I want you to improve them, but keep them just as simple to construct.”
Her eyes lit up. “Oh, now that’s a challenge. I like a fucking challenge. But if you want design work and blueprints to go along with it, that’s going to cost you. Is this for personal use or sale?”
“What’s the difference?”
“If I make the blueprints for you and give you personal use, that means you can have any smith make them for you at whatever rate they charge, but you can’t sell the end product. The second option you can. I don’t like to haggle, so the first option is ten times my base hourly rate plus 10%, and the second is a hundred times.”
“Wow.”
She snorted. “Bah. If that’s too bloody rich for you, I can make the designs and build them myself which will just be my standard rate plus 10%. The other option is to pay me my standard rate while I’m working on the designs and then decide to purchase the blueprints after. That way, if you don’t like my work, you can decide not to purchase it.”
I looked around her store. The traps were pretty basic. There were only a few things that really caught my attention. I could design most of what she had on display given enough time.
She saw me looking and chuckled. “This isn’t the good shit. This is just the stuff I sell to hunters and adventurers. The good shit is in the back and I don’t show it to just anyone. And if you are dickering over the price, you definitely can’t afford my good shit.”
Maybe I should have worn my fancy clothes.
“It’s fine. How long will it take you to come up with something?”
“That depends on how much effort you want me to put in. I can keep working until I think I’ve got it right, or I can work to your budget, and do a slapdash job that won’t be my best but will be better than what you have here.”
I pulled five crowns out of my purse and put them on the counter. “How much research will that get me?”
“That will get you a couple of weeks more than I will need for everything in this book, but it won’t get you through the backdoor.”
“That’s fine for now.”
She took the coins off the counter, pulled out a book, and began writing down the amount with the job request. “I’ll need your name and a residence where I can contact you once the first blueprint is ready.”
“The name’s Arnold and you can find me at the regent’s palace for the foreseeable future.” Her pen slipped. “If that changes, I’ll contact you.”
The carriage stopped outside a music shop on a busy upper-tier street. This was the third instrument shop I had stopped at. The first one hadn’t sold guitars and had sent me to the second. The second had said the first was wrong and had sent me here.
As I walked inside, all sorts of instruments were on display. None of them was an acoustic guitar. None of them was even a lute.
I sighed as the shop assistant approached me. He had that too-friendly smile thing going on that I was used to seeing in most retail stores.
“How may I help you, sir?”
“I was told you sell acoustic guitars.”
“Ah, we do, and we don’t, sir. We have a craftsman who sometimes takes on projects for clients he likes. Raymond’s a bit eccentric, but he’s the only person in the city who makes acoustic guitars.”
“Look, I’m not a bard. I just like playing the guitar. I’m not interested in spending a fortune on an instrument. I just want something that is simple and sounds good.”
“You will have to discuss that with him, sir. Would you like me to schedule an appointment? If I send a runner, I can have him here within the hour.”
“Sure.”
I left the store and headed to the local restaurant, with my guards trailing behind. I ordered a second lunch with a couple of really good beers and then made my way back without looking around. Today I had errands to run, but tomorrow I would come back and finally do the whole tourist thing. Melgrim was more like home than anywhere else I had been and I was excited to go exploring.
I walked back into the store and spotted a middle-aged man on a stool in the far corner of the shop, surrounded by five guitar cases. “You him?” he asked, voice warm and friendly.
“I’m him.”
“Good, come over here and sit down. This won’t take long.” He pointed to the empty stool next to him and then ran his hand through his long brown hair, pulling his fringe away from his face.
I did as he said.
He untied the string holding the nearest case closed and pulled out a simple guitar. It looked like it wasn’t finished. There was no varnish or paint, just bare wood. “Play your favourite song on this.”
I took the guitar, gave it a strum, made a face, and began tuning it the way I had been taught. He didn’t complain. It took me a few minutes, but I got it to sound right. I turned to him. “Does it have to be my favourite?”
“It works better if it is.”
“What works better?”
“The process.”
I shrugged, a little confused at how vague he was being, but the shop assistant said the guy was eccentric, so I put my confusion aside and began to play Alyssa Lies, silently mouthing the lyric, because I didn’t want to cry in the middle of the store. It didn’t work that well. I still had to fight the urge to tear up.
This song had been my favourite ever since I’d first heard it on the radio. The simple words told a story that was anything but simple. And I didn’t play it often, because it rarely fit my mood, but that didn’t stop it from being my favourite.
Raymond nodded his head along to the tune, tapping his foot, but didn’t talk until I got to the end. “It was different from what I’m used to, but I liked it. All right, give it back.”
I handed him the guitar. He put it away and pulled out another. “Just strum this once and give it back.”
I strummed it and handed it back.
He gave me the next guitar and got me to strum it and then do the same with the next. The last guitar he picked up and held. It was an absolutely gorgeous instrument with purple strings and a paint job by a truly gifted artist.
Raymond handed me a pair of gloves and told me to put them on. “This lovely lady is as deadly as she is beautiful. Her strings are crafted from mithril and will cut through your bones if you are foolish enough to press an unprotected finger against them. Though you need to wear armour just to play her, I promise you it is worth it. Do not let any part of your body that you want to keep touch the strings. You have been warned. Now, I need you to play the most complex piece of music you are capable of.”
He passed me the guitar only after I put the gloves on.
I moved to tune her. As my hand approached the pegs, they began to turn on their own.
“Hmmm, she must like you. She almost never tunes for anyone but me.”
“It’s magical?”
“Few things with mithril aren’t. Now play.”
It took me a few seconds to get my head around a magical guitar, but then I began to play, pouring every ounce of skill I had into her. I put in a hundred percent and got out a thousand. Music unlike anything I had ever managed to achieve before poured out of me.
Light enveloped me as I played.
Well done, you have successfully played an original composition with Raymond’s guitar and gained a new rank of proficiency with guitars. You can now boast that you can use a guitar as well as any Journeyman.
I dismissed the prompt to focus on the music. When it was over, I
almost didn’t want to hand her back. But with what felt like too much regret for something so trivial, I did.
Raymond grinned. “Congratulations on the rank up. Now you will be happy to know I can make you your guitar. It should only take me a week and cost you no more than a 185 nobles.”
The price seemed insanely high for a week’s work. “What was the point of this?”
He paused. “I have an ability called soul song. When it works, it lets me build an instrument that fits a person perfectly and I earn coin every time they do when they use my creation. What I didn’t know before getting the stupid ability is that I can’t build instruments that aren’t soul song instruments now that I have it. Having said that, I would never have been able to make my mistress without the ability and I wouldn’t give her up for anything.”
“Why the secrecy?”
He shrugged. “Well, hearing people play music with my instruments lets me get a glimpse of the player’s soul. It gives me access to a lot of information, and many people don’t like that, Arnold. The only reason I’m telling you that is I know you won’t freak out.”
“I didn’t tell you my name.”
“No, you did not.”
“What else can you tell?”
“Well, let’s start with the big one. You’re an incarnate like me.”
My cheer matched the volume of the arena’s crowd as the gladiator somersaulted over her opponent and dropped a chain net right on top of him. I couldn’t stop myself from shouting, while grinning ear to ear. “Raymond, this is probably the coolest thing I have ever seen.”
Raymond didn’t return the grin as he took a swig of his ale. He was quieter today than usual—not that I was paying much attention. He’d brought me to this gladiator match and I was so excited it didn’t leave room for much else.
The two gladiators continued to tear each other apart, stabbing blades into exposed flesh. Normally, I wouldn’t be interested in watching two people cut each other to shreds, but the arena was a magical building that looked a lot like the Roman Colosseum, and the wounds the fighters suffered here didn’t last more than a few minutes. It was actually impossible for them to kill each other. So, there was all the gore and none of the guilt.
Jeric still didn’t have time for me despite another week passing. So I’d been using my free time to track down anything that could help us deal with the giant. Occasionally, I’d hang out with Raymond. He’d taken me to a couple of good restaurants and the incarnate bookstore. Every book on the shelves was written by an incarnate. There were hundreds of histories from other worlds, with a few even more advanced than back home. After spending all that time together, we were far from friends. We didn’t actually have that much in common besides both loving guitars and being incarnate.
He came from a world close to home, with technology similar to ours in the early 1900s, but it also had magic to a limited degree. People could do small things like light candles and float quarters. He’d been brought here when he was 19 year old. He remembered being hit by a car—a rather new addition to his city—and then waking up on the altar like I had. Unlike me, he didn’t have his soul ripped out of his body while alive. He’d died before coming here.
In this world, his parents were carpenters who only vaguely resembled his original parents. They’d hoped to get their son back and hadn’t been thrilled that he was incarnate. They’d disowned him.
He would have eventually been just another poor incarnate on the street. However, his uncle, a man that didn’t exist in his world, had taken him in, given him experience, and helped him to learn how to survive, blending his old world’s guitar-making skills, which was apparently a five-generation family tradition, with his new world.
That was his story.
I think the only reason we continued to hang out was it was nice being with another outsider. Someone who didn’t think all this was normal. He’d been here 27 years and he still wasn’t used to it.
It was reassuring to know that I wasn’t the only one.
My eyes turned back to the arena.
The gladiator trapped in the net didn’t try to remove it. Instead, he leapt backwards, throwing himself thirty feet across the arena away from his opponent’s trident, trying to get enough room to untangle himself without having to worry about his opponent.
It didn’t work.
Watching the high-level gladiators fight was like watching Captain America fight the Black Panther. The feats of strength they were capable of were just astounding. And terrifying. The speed at which they moved and acrobatics they were capable of…if this was what it took to take on high-level monsters head-to-head, I certainly didn’t want to try.
It was nuts.
The trident wielder pressed her advantage, using the opportunity to flourish for the crowd, gaining more cheers. Having showboated enough, she lunged, stabbing the trident into her opponent’s stomach, only to then lift him off the ground and throw him fifty feet.
I roared my approval.
Gladiator fighting wasn’t about winning. It was about putting on a show. It kind of reminded me of WWE wrestling, only the violence was real. Gladiators had a promotion that turned the crowd’s approval into money, similar to how bards did. The better the crowd’s reaction, the more they would make. In about a third of the matches, the loser earned more.
Raymond clapped me on the shoulder as the defeated gladiator lay twitching, waiting for his wounds to heal. “You know, I was hoping to show you being a farmer might not be so bad. But I think I’ve had the opposite effect.”
I grinned. “I wouldn’t say that. Getting cut to pieces day after day can’t be fun. And I probably wouldn’t choose it over being a farmer. But it does make for a heck of a show.”
Raymond snorted. “I’m glad you enjoyed yourself. I'd better get back to your guitar. The glue will have dried by now. I’ll have it delivered to the palace in the morning.”
“Thanks, and thanks for the invitation.”
“You’re welcome.” Raymond climbed to his feet, carefully stepped past my escorts, and merged into the crowd that was filing out.
I stayed in my seat, nursing my ale while the crowd dispersed. My appointment with the adventurers’ guild wasn’t for another hour, and they were only one street away, next to the entrance to the city’s dungeon, so I wasn’t in a rush.
Once the crowd and streets cleared, I made my way over, wandering through the streets on foot. My escorts followed behind. I’d gotten used to having them around, so I barely noticed them anymore. I’d tried to make small talk on a couple of occasions, but none of them responded. I wasn’t sure if it was professional detachment or fear that kept them silent, but either way I’d stopped trying.
After a few minutes, we began to approach a now familiar elegant multi-storey building. I entered the adventurers’ guild, made my way to the help desk in the corner, and asked the attendant to tell Talia I had arrived. Then I took a seat at one of the cafe tables.
Talia appeared a few minutes later, her pink robe clashing with the more subdued colours of everything else in the room. Her crystal staff clanked loudly with each step.
She smiled when she saw me. “You are looking well.”
“More than doubling your endurance will do that to you,” I said.
“It will,” she said, taking the seat opposite me. “How are the new abilities treating you?”
I laughed. “I see why you said I should consider my decision before going ahead and getting hunter’s gambit. Learning to run that fast has been an experience.”
“No accidents, I hope.”
“None so far, but I keep swallowing bugs.”
Talia chuckled. “I took the liberty of adding a pair of speed goggles to your equipment. Once you get up to full speed, you will start finding it harder to see with your strength so low.”
“How much do I owe you?”
“Twenty-seven nobles.”
I summoned the coins and handed them over. They immediately increased b
y 50%.
Talia smiled as she slid the coins into a purse identical to my one. The fact that it wasn’t pink probably annoyed her, but she didn’t show it. “How did you find the books you bought?”
I’d been digging into the lore on giants and everything I had found was terrifying. They really were that scary. It usually took 50 or more high-level adventurers to subdue one without fatalities. Reading that made me finally understand why the adventurer’s guild was putting it off. That was most of the high-level adventurers in the northern region, and it’s not like those people sat around doing nothing. There were always high-level dungeons that needed culling to prevent breakouts.
“Terrifying. Did you manage to get the rest of my order?”
She shook her head. “No, the printers only print The Monsters Compendium once a year and they are currently sold out. They will reprint it in a few months, before the next influx of students. I’ve already organised for it to be shipped to your village.”
I shrugged. “Well, you said it was a long shot.”
Unlike class information, which scholars controlled, monster information was open to the public. The kingdom wanted its people to be ready to survive, and hoarding information went against that. I’d been able to ask for anything on anything—the only bottleneck was supply. I had two dozen books back in my room, each specialising in a different type of monster, but The Monsters Compendium was the crown jewel. It was an encyclopaedia. Not just the single book version, either. It was the alphabetised one, 37 massive books with every known monster, their abilities, resistances, life cycles, and the locations of where they were found. It was the first item every adventurer party bought when they could afford it.
“It was still worth enquiring,” Talia said. “You should know Jeremby and the others went back into the northern forest to cull the dungeons there. Ames gained a level.”
I smiled. “Good for him.” Unlike every other class, one of the quirks of being an adventurer was you couldn’t crystallize experience, or used crystallized experience. Every level you gained had to be done yourself.
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