When Thera woke up he prepared a nice breakfast for them before heading to the guild, bringing his bike and the pumps he designed in tow. After explaining the details of the type of patent he’d needed to make last time with the projector, he’d warned her that he was working on something else that would require the same type and she had told him that as long as he made sure to have all of the details written for her ahead of time, he could just drop in.

As he went in and brought everything to the counter, Onk was there to greet them. “I see you’ve brought another fun thing today Ben, is this what everyone’s been talking about seeing you riding on?”

A part of him wanted to question how they saw anything without a face but left it at that. “Yeah, Ceselee told me I could stop in so I just wanted to see if it was an okay time to go up.”

“And a quest we should be able to do today please,” Thera asked after him. They’d already planned to leave their second day off for the week to give them each time to work on other things, and since Ben hadn’t bothered sleeping the previous night it was better for him personally to not be stuck out too late.

“Well, let’s put the quest on hold for now,” Onk told them both. “The guild master actually requested you both see her the next time you came in, so she’ll have time now.”

Ben found himself mildly worried they’d done something wrong, but to counter that he got the impression Thera was positively thrilled under her cloak, so he assumed she knew something about what was going on.

When he arrived at her office he knocked on the door and heard a loud call to enter. When he did, Ceselee looked up from her paperwork to see just who it was.

“Ah, perfect timing. I have to say, you’re both very convenient to always come for quests on the same day, makes you easy to expect. Not so much whatever you have with you though.”

“It’s called a bike, it’s the thing I told you about last time, as well as a couple maintenance tools I needed to keep the wheels in proper working order. I’ve got everything written down here so it shouldn’t be too much trouble for you.”

“Having an adventurer that will actually follow instructions is pretty nice, I gotta say,” She mused as she looked through his detailed notes, happy to have that part already done. “All that’s left is to see it in action to be sure it works like you say.”

“What, in here?”

“Unless you need more space?”

He cast a quick look around the office. It wasn’t cluttered and there was a decent amount of space, so he shrugged and hopped on, doing a quick circle before he stopped. “Happy?”

“Very,” The guild leader's eyes were shining as she got up to take a closer look at just what he’d made. “It looks like fun, mind if I give it a try?”

“Sure, but I should warn you it can take some practice.”

Completely ignoring his advice, she hopped on without hesitation, skillfully doing a few tight laps around the room.

Okay, what skills did she already possess that made that so easy for her?

<It might just be that her race has an unusually good sense of balance.>

“Alright, this thing is fantastic. Are you going to be selling them at Falk’s shop?” She questioned.

“We’re planning on having a few pre-made but mostly taking special orders. If you’re interested we’ll make you one to suit your size.”

“Then I’ll have to stop by soon. With that out of the way though, let’s get to the reason I asked you both to join me when you got here,” She could see Ben didn’t have a clue on his face while Thera stood beside him, almost shaking with excitement. “I’d like to offer you both a rank 4 promotion quest.”

“Absolutely!”

“Pass.”

“Ben!” Thera yelled in exasperation.

“What? I’ll still help you out if you want to take it, I don’t personally want to rank up any more than I already have.”

Ceselee sat and watched their interaction, chuckling as she did. “As amusing as it is to see an adventurer who doesn’t want to raise their rank, you aren't getting much of a choice. Adventurers aren’t given money to hunt just to take care of monsters in the area you know. The entire system is built around the idea of incentivising people to get stronger, if you don’t actively work to raise your rank, you don’t get the rewards. Of course, if you just don’t feel like doing a quest for it, there’s no issue with that. You can continue doing the regular ones you’d take, it would just mean instead of ranking up immediately you do it in maybe half a year.”

“Mmh,” He still wasn’t thrilled. He knew ranking up came with responsibility, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to deal with it. Unfortunately on the other hand, he did need to make use of the guild. Their archive was the best place in town to learn about the resources in the area, and it also had books on the various magic branches he would use to study with on occasion since they were geared more towards the standard ways magic was used in the world, something his god was less familiar with.

“Don’t be so glum about it, ranking up comes with other perks too. At rank four you are officially recognised as a proper adventurer so the guild helps you out in a variety of ways. In your case, we could arrange to have books sent out here for you at a far lower cost than we could give you as a member of the craftsman's guild, though the specific books we could get our hands on would be different and more focused towards adventuring. Aside from that though, one of the biggest perks is getting to be an adventurer as a job.”

“The issue is I have no interest in this being my job.”

“I’m talking about for your status. Aside from the benefit of all of your skills and aptitudes getting a minor bonus across the board, it’s also a class of job similar to soldier or some leadership type jobs that merges your experience pool with your companions.”

“Um, is that a good thing?”

She hesitated briefly, giving it some thought. “It depends. If only you two intend to keep partying together alone then maybe not, but there are a lot of benefits. Adventurer is a job that can specifically gain experience from combat, using magic, or killing monsters, but since it pools your experience all party members can gain experience the way the others can too. A party only needs a single adventurer to take advantage of this effect after all, so the benefits of this are that if someone with the warrior class was to take it, they’d be able to get experience for their entire party too if they ever needed to use magic, and since killing monsters gives varying experience based on how powerful they are, as long as you hunt regularly then not only will you finish your job, but you’ll be able to get your entire party to finish their jobs quickly too. There are plenty of adventurer parties out there where they try to have one person always with that job until the entire party has taken it.”

“And it sounds like for a full-time craftsman like me, the entire thing would be a slog that would take up my time from pursuing more valuable jobs,” He told her dryly, before ultimately giving in. “Still, since it doesn’t seem like I have a choice, what’s the quest?”

“It’s actually quite simple, all you have to do is hike through the woods until you get to the city, eliminating any monsters you encounter along the way. It’s important to keep the roads safe after all, and it should only take a couple weeks.”

He couldn’t help but groan. That sounded like a pain, and since he’d be walking through the woods to do it he couldn’t even use his bike, the thing he’d specifically made to make travel quicker. He could see Thera in the corner of his eye, giddy with excitement and knew he wouldn’t be able to turn it down.

“Fine, we’ll do it but it can’t be immediately. I need to talk to Falk about this since the shop is my priority. If it comes down to losing access to the archives and losing access to my teacher, I know which choice I’m making.”

“Understandable, there’s no rush, just let me know when you plan to so I can inform the surrounding towns and villages that we’ll be working to clear the woods at that time.”

With business done they left Ceselee to their work and left the guild, taking a simple gathering quest as they did. Ben wanting to talk to his teacher beforehand so if they were taking anything it needed to be easy, and Thera cared far less since she knew she was about to be promoted up a rank.

 

---

 

“The timing for that works out pretty well actually,” Falk mused when Ben got to the shop to explain the situation. “Since the timeframe you’ve got to do it is flexible, put it off for two months. I’ve got a meeting with a client in that time that’s gonna take me at least a month to deal with so it won’t matter if you’re busy at the same time. I was planning on letting you know a bit closer to me leaving, but now works just as well.”

“Alright, sounds good to me. Thera?”

“Yeah, I can wait two months. I’ll let the guild know when we finish our quest.”

The timing worked out at least. It felt like he had too many distractions from his actual work, so it was nice to hear that he wouldn’t be missing out on time he could have spent learning. It did create another problem though, what he would do for the rest of the time that Falk would be away. He was pretty sure they could make it to the city in around two weeks of walking, but with the amount of time it would take Falk to get to his meeting and back, he’d have around three weeks to do nothing with. Sure, he could just practice as he always had, but a slightly more productive idea managed to pass through his mind.

“Since we’re going to be by the gate anyway, maybe we should stop by Anailia?” He thought aloud, immediately feeling Thera’s good mood drop as a result.

“Uhg, why though? It hasn’t even been a year since I’ve been home. Plus the thought of dealing with my parents again after how they were last time…”

“I just thought if I let your mom know ahead of time she could gather me some people so I could make some braces. I made a little deal with my god to make him a real church in exchange for a small favour so boosting my wealth a little would be helpful. Not to mention the fact that I should probably greet the believers he has in the city while wearing the church, score him a bit more faith.”

<Not that I’m against it, but you should have plenty of wealth already to get started if you want.>

My living expenses are currently more than what I’m making in the shop. No matter how well off I am I want a bit more so I don’t need to worry about however expensive building a freaking church ends up being doesn’t leave me in a bad place.

<You know, I didn’t mention it because I thought it would be more fun as a surprise, but you really should check how much is on your card from time to time.>

What do you mean? He asked as he pulled it out, only to feel his eyes bulge as he saw the figure within.

Thera and Falk could see his reaction clearly and wanted to know what was going on. He turned his card to them, causing Falk to let out a low whistle and Thera to yell in shock. “Where did that all come from!”

<You really should check your balance more often instead of just trusting you’d have enough. My other believers have almost all gotten their skill to the first level after some rather aggressive training from their governments, all together they’ve been making a few hundred braces a day.>

“Well, it looks like my patent has started paying off,” He sheepishly told the other two.

“I’d say,” His teacher said with a laugh. “Let alone a church, May as well have a small castle constructed too.”

“How does someone not notice suddenly having so much money!” Thera asked in exasperation.

“I mean, not to brag but I was already kind of rich after my first time going there to make all those braces. I haven’t had any reason to look at how much was in my account.”

“Unbelievable, but that means we don’t need to see my family again, right?”

“Nope, Sonya’s already got your mom trying to find some specific skills for me, remember? Since I have the chance I’d like to go to their craftsman guild anyway to look into anything else I might ask her to find. I still have a long way to go with your brace after all and it just so happens your mom would probably be up there as one of the people most looking forward to my success.”

Thera could only sigh knowing she wouldn’t be getting out of a visit home.