Chapter 6: 6 - Hunting Trip

The giant, slavering maw of a twenty-foot mass of fur and teeth slipped and slid against her [Prismatic Barrier], and Vivi admitted she was hyperventilating slightly. Black claws the length of her forearm scraped against the invisible shield, sending rainbow sparks flying. She smelled rotting flesh, felt the hot air of the beast’s roars on her face. Snow crunched as its enormous paws pushed into the ground, giving it leverage to push against her.

Maybe making video games too realistic would be a bad thing, actually. Because while she was definitely engaged, this was more terrifying than exciting. It was certainly cool, and interesting, and unique…but yeah, she had mixed feelings on this experience.

“[Earthen Anchor].”

Vines burst from the ground, whipping out to grab the rampaging Frostmaw Titan. The hulking beast slammed into the ground with a thud that threw up snow all around them, briefly obscuring her vision, and Vivi took several steps back to create space. The monster struggled against the restraints, but the spell was far too powerful for it to break through.

She looked around. Two other Frostmaw Titans were secured to the ground in the same way. She had saved them for later.

Another had been killed gorily. She winced at the viscera and jerked her head away. She wasn’t squeamish, but neither was she inured to piles of exploded flesh and bone. Blowing a monster up with a super-charged fireball, it turned out, was rather messy. Again, there were downsides to realism. The smells especially.

She’d had her fun with a ‘flashy’ spell on the first of the Titans. These other three she wanted to harvest. Hence minimal damage, which, unfortunately, meant no spectacle.

“[Sanguine Vitaphage],” she incanted, pointing her staff at the nearest monster.

Its thrashing stopped, and a low, whining noise involuntarily escaped the back of its throat. Red streams of energy siphoned out of the mountain of white fur, soon gushing in billowing clouds to gather and condense into a red ball hovering six feet above the beast. The Titan’s vitality was sucked dry in seconds. She supposed her ridiculous stats were to thank. Even weak spells were strong when cast by her.

A fist-sized red ball—too shiny and metallic to resemble blood, though the same color—hovered above the dead beast. She flicked her wrist, and the orb went sailing away to disappear into the snow.

Pure vitality was a great catalyst for further blood magic, but she had no need for it, and it couldn’t be stored for later. Her goal had been this, anyway: the bear had died without a scratch. Perfect for gathering monster parts.

“[Loot].”

To her satisfaction, that functionality was still present. She hadn’t been looking forward to skinning and butchering a monster by hand. Well, by magic. Which would’ve been better, but not by a lot.

A screen appeared with a list of available loot.

***

Deceased [Frostmaw Titan]

Loot:

Frostmaw Fangs (x2)

Titan Bear Claws (x8)

Primal Ice Core

Pristine Frostmaw Titan Pelt {[Skinning]}

Meat (x38) {[Butchering]}

Arctic Essence Gland {[Alchemical Harvesting]}

***

Each of the items could be inspected in turn. She wasn’t sure whether it was a good haul. She recognized most of the loot as items from Seven Cataclysms, but who knew how valuable they were nowadays?

Half of the loot was only available for harvest because of her crafting skills. Since she had no-lifed Seven Cataclysms, she had maxed out most basic crafting-type skills, especially the ones relevant to her class and the ones best for making money.

While the world was shockingly realistic, the videogame-like features were still in full effect: she dragged the loot into her inventory and, just like that, was the owner of a new collection of items deposited into spatial storage.

The unexpected part was how the hulking mass of the Frostmaw Titan was suddenly lying there, de-skinned and missing several body parts.

Internally, Vivi made a horrified face. Her body didn’t though. There was a mismatch between her mind and the body she was in. One she appreciated. Heroes of legend wouldn’t go around acting squeamish about skinning a monster. Those thoughts could remain in her head alone.

She killed and looted the next three beasts, then hastily retreated.

The smell was just awful.

----------------------------------------

Hunting was an efficient process when she could teleport around, [Detect Presence], kill monsters in seconds, and return to town with a handful more [Blinks].

An hour later, she was standing in front of the guild receptionist’s desk. Danny looked up at her with a wince, not faring much better with her hangover. She plastered on another smile.

“How can I help?”

“You mentioned having resources appraised?”

“Ready to have that done?” She nodded. “Let me go check with Nazriel.”

She walked around the receptionist desk and disappeared through a door labeled ‘Guild Appraising — Approval Required’. A minute later she returned.

“He’s free. First door on the left.” She smiled at her, and Vivi nodded her thanks.

Walking through and turning left, she knocked on the available door and was met with a “Come in.” The Guild Appraising Room—or whatever the official term was—featured walls covered with unlabeled cubbies, shelves, and other storage units, all covered or otherwise obscured to hide their contents. In the back left was another door, probably leading into an office.

The man standing behind the table in the center of the room wasn’t, technically, a man: he was a demon, but Vivi doubted she’d get used to replacing that word properly. Males were men, females were women. Going around calling people ‘demon males’ or ‘elven females’ would just feel weird.

His white hair was short and neatly styled, with two oni-style horns—straight and pointing up—jutting from the front of his skull. In demon culture, because Vivi was nerdy enough to have read Seven Cataclysm’s lore, that marked him as being of low birth. Curling horns like hers were the mark of high-blooded demons. Not that every curled-horn demon was of nobility, or vice versa; it was a historical indicator, and thus only trended that way.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

His eyes were, like all demons, red, and his skin was white as snow, paler than any human’s could reasonably be. He adjusted a pair of thin silver-framed spectacles as she walked in, and his posture was ramrod straight.

“Good afternoon, miss. My name is Nazriel. I was told you were seeking an appraisal?”

Vivi nodded, not sure how this process was supposed to go. She was happy to let him take the lead. “Vivi,” she replied.

“A pleasure to make your acquaintance.” After a second in which Vivi didn’t respond, he continued smoothly, “Shall we begin?” He gestured at the empty table, and even if she was in a half-foreign fantasy world, she knew what he was asking.

She hesitated before opening her loot screen. She wasn’t sure whether locals had access to game screens. They certainly had classes and levels, but she hadn’t seen anyone interacting with screens…but she hadn’t been around many people and certainly not in circumstances where they would need to use one.

It wasn’t like she could fetch the items some other way. So, mentally shrugging, she opened her loot tab and began extracting loot. Nazriel didn’t seem to find that odd, so she tentatively assumed adventurers had access to an inventory in the same way she did.

She started with the small pieces that seemed more like proper loot: the bear claws and fangs.

The appraiser stopped her with a raised hand before she piled more onto the table. “One item type at a time, if you please.”

Her suspicion about inventories was confirmed a second later when a magnifying glass materialized in his hand. He picked up one of the massive obsidian-black claws to inspect it, turning the item this way and that.

“Hunting Frostmaw Titans, I take it? The Hoarfrost Plains in particular?”

It probably wasn’t some impressive piece of knowledge, but it showed he had a level of familiarity with the local monsters. “Yes.”

“How significant of a haul should I anticipate?” He glanced at the items she’d piled onto the table. “I don’t believe I’ve seen this quantity of Frostmaw Fangs and Titan Bear Claws in one place in…” He paused as he considered. “…ever.”

Er. Had she been too enthusiastic with her hunting trip?

It had only lasted an hour, but [Blink] and [Detect Presence], as mentioned, made for a devastating combo when she could one-shot and harvest whatever she ran into. She’d scoured a non-negligible portion of the Hoarfrost Plains, seeing how life was sparse there.

“That’s all of them,” she said cautiously.

“But you have similar quantities of other Frostmaw Titan loot, and presumably other locals of the Hoarfrost Plains?”

She nodded.

“Would that be the totality of your appraisal today? Or do you have additional items?”

“Just from that hunting trip.”

“I see.” He nodded to himself and laid the claw back onto the table. “Miss,” he said carefully, “while our branch does deal with orichalcum-ranked adventurers on occasion, a purchase of this size would require approval from the Guildmaster, and I feel obligated to inform you that you might be better suited dealing with an external merchant consortium or trading house. In-guild exchanges are usually for…newer adventurers. Or, rather, mithril ranks and lower. Orichalcum grade products are valuable enough they’re handled with more care—the overhead required in finding proper buyers pales in comparison to the prices the items themselves fetch.”

Okay, she could tell he was bewildered, but only because of the content of what he’d said. He sounded perfectly composed and had laid out the explanation without faltering. He just wasn’t the sort of person to start gawking at her.

Straight-faced, Vivi replied, “I don’t care about getting the best deal. Will you buy it?”

“I cannot imagine the Guildmaster would refuse. We have standard pricing for common loot found on orichalcum-rank monsters, and even local Titled-rank. These would make easy, significant profit for the Guild. We simply don’t see such products pass through often, likely for that exact reason.”

“Then please continue.”

He nodded and did so without further comment.

Part by part, he inspected each of the items and suggested a price, occasionally referencing a notebook and tallying the total in another. One-third of the way through, Vivi told him to choose whatever price he thought was fair, and that she didn’t want to haggle. She didn’t care; she needed some ‘starter money’ seeing how she was locked out of her bank account.

She was pretty sure she was going to turn more of a profit than she’d intended. Enough to draw attention from the Guildmaster. She was seriously failing at her goal of laying low.

The appraiser deposited some items into his inventory, and for others, wrapped them in various materials and placed them in drawers or cabinets. She wasn’t sure what his exact logic was, but she guessed it had to do with spoilage. The claws and teeth, for example, were stored physically rather than in his spatial storage.

“This meat is extraordinarily well preserved, and portioned,” he commented, inspecting one such slab laid out on paper. “Skill extracted? A high-level one. Feel no obligation to respond, of course, I’m merely speaking to myself.”

When everything had finished, Nazriel consulted his notebook. He went through and added the sums together, paused, squinted, and shook his head in incredulity. It was the most reaction he’d given for what Vivi knew had to have been a highly unusual experience.

“The Festival always brings interesting characters,” he said mildly. “I’ll go speak with the Guildmaster. It won’t be more than ten minutes. He’ll find you in the lobby?”

She nodded, and he showed her the way out.

Back in the lobby, she scanned the tables for familiar faces: Lailah or Saffra. Neither was present.

Closing her eyes, she mentally quested out for the magical beacon she’d placed on the green-haired woman. She was somewhere on the edge of the city, close enough to the gates Vivi suspected she was leaving for that hunting trip she’d mentioned.

Saffra’s warnings had taken root in her head. She was probably being paranoid, but after she was done dealing with this loot debacle, she intended to ensure nothing strange was going on with Lailah. It wasn’t like Vivi was pressed for time. She didn’t have any real goals, much less pressing ones, besides returning to Meridian and finding out what had happened to her house, guild, and relevant NPCs.

The Guildmaster tracked her down a few minutes later, with Vivi standing at the quest board, arms crossed and frowning down at the floor. She looked up at the heavy footsteps approaching her.

He was a middle-aged human man, dark hair balding on top, a bit of a beer gut, with muscled, hairy forearms. He reminded her of a retired blue-collar father, which frankly might be a solid equivalent for this world. Vivi assumed most Guildmasters would be experienced adventurers settling down.

His face was a lot easier to read than the demon appraiser’s: caution bordering on suspicion on his features. It wasn’t blatant, though. It was hidden past an ostensibly neutral expression, and he nodded at her when their eyes met, sticking out a hand to shake. She took it.

His squeeze started firm and rapidly increased in strength—something she was weirdly aware of, while barely feeling the pressure.

It hadn’t been a dominance display, or an attempt at one. His face had grown grim, and she could tell he’d confirmed something to himself.

Because, yeah. Vivi might be a mage, but she was level 2100, and all stats scaled with level. She was actually absurdly strong by regular standards, and the Guildmaster had confirmed that. Sneaky. She couldn’t find it in herself to disapprove of his methods. He was just scoping out a potential threat.

“Good to meet you, miss. Dougal Flint. Just thought I’d come and see you myself, considering the—situation. New in town?”

“I’ve been before.”

“Have ya?”

“…A hundred years ago, or so.”

She probably shouldn’t have said that, but she was bad at small talk, and it’d been all she could think of.

His eyebrows went up, but he didn’t seem surprised. Thankfully, elves and demons were common in the city, and they were long-lived races. Plus, being introduced by Nazriel as ‘the weird orichalcum or higher rank adventurer’ had probably dispelled any ideas about her age, regardless of her appearance. Not everyone was quick to assume short and petite meant child, anyway. It just happened more often than Vivi preferred.

“I see. Changed a lot in that time, I expect?”

She didn’t mean to be rude, but she wanted to check on Lailah, and she didn’t do well with casual conversations. Not with people she didn’t know well, at least. “Will you be approving the purchase?”

He frowned slightly, but didn’t take offense at the abruptness. “Long as there won’t be bad feelings. Never good business, getting on the bad side of high rankers. You’d be better off selling elsewhere, but I’m sure ya know that already. Not lecturin’ you or anything.”

“It doesn’t matter.” They were treating this like it was a big deal, but it had been an hour-long prance-around in the Hoarfrost Plains, which she could reach in minutes. “I have places to be. Can we finalize?”

Again, he didn’t seem to mind her curtness. He was just studying her curiously. “Won’t hold ya if you’re busy.” He pulled out a pouch stuffed with coins—he’d prepared it before coming. “Thirty-six mithril and change. Fairest price we could muster. Hope to see you around, miss.”

Even if he did sound like he appreciated the tidy profit his Guild had no doubt made, he didn’t sound like he actually wanted to see her around again. Vivi could imagine why. She expected that for guildmasters, high-rankers appearing out of nowhere were usually walking headaches.

She tucked the bag of coins into her inventory. They automatically sorted into the currency bar at the bottom, with the pouch itself being labeled as ‘empty pouch’. Convenient.

With that, it was time to see whether anything was happening with Lailah. Sooner rather than later. For some reason, she couldn’t shake the feeling of unease.