The next day began as usual, with me taking care of requests in the morning. There were five requests for ice that day, bumping me up to 28/40 requests. If I’d a few more days, I’d have been able to get my rank up for just making ice, which made me chuckle.

Wanting to see if there were any other easily filled requests, I browsed the rank zero and one boards to see if there was anything else I could easily do. There was one I could do, but the reward was too low for the item requested. Really low, so I wondered why the guild had even accepted the request in the first place. They were supposed to ensure things were fair for their adventurers, but the reward was well below market price for the item.

There was a lull in people waiting, so I headed over to the desk to ask about it, not even bothering to take the request off the wall.

“Morning Sally.”

“Hello Rynn. I thought you’d already taken care of the requests for you.”

“Yeah, I did, I was just browsing to see what else might be able to push me to the next rank and found an odd quest on the board, I I wanted to ask about it.”

“Sure thing, which one?”

“0-4396. It’s requesting wyvern hide, likely due to the rumors of a flight of them disappearing recently, but the reward amount is absurdly low, below market value.”

Her face took on an irritated look.

“Ah… that one… We were forced to accept it as is by the Merchant’s Guild. They claimed the market price had dropped, so they would only offer the ‘new’ market price.”

“Wow. Greedy bastards. Well, thanks for the information.”

“You’re welcome.”

I started to turn away but was stopped.

“Wait a sec… that you’re asking about it, do you have some hide in your storage?”

I scratched my head.

“Well, a bit. I happened to acquire the stuff at a good price during my travels and hadn’t sold yet. I was saving it for when I was low on funds or found a quest with a good reward. I wouldn’t want to sell it for less than it’s worth.”

Some people might claim I got it for free, since I’d killed and dismantled the beasts myself, but that wasn’t the case. My skills, that allowed me to take down a flight of the things without a scratch, were valued very highly, as well as how neatly dismantled and prepped for use the hide was.

“Can you wait here for a bit?”

“Uh, I guess?”

I tilted my head in confusion. Yes it was a cutesy gesture, not really suited to my current looks, but I still heard a small intake of breath to accompany the flushed look on her face before she took off to a back room.

She wasn’t gone very long, returning a moment later beckoning me to follow her to the back. An eyebrow raised in curiosity, I did as requested, following her. The back was where the guild had it’s offices as well as the warehouses for materials to be stored before they were picked up by the clients if there was one, or sold to the Merchant’s Guild if there wasn’t.

There was also the guild operated dismantling area where one could have professionals take care of things, though the fee came to a tenth of the value of the materials recovered. It wasn’t a bad idea for beginners to use the service, since they could easily ruin their kill’s value by doing the job themselves and messing up.

The guild offered classes on the subject as well, though they required the students to either provide their own corpses to work on or purchase them in addition to the class fee.

I’d been taught how to do it by an elven hunter, yes elves eat meat, they live in a forest for heaven’s sake. The elves were among the best hunters on Valla, and their techniques made the best use of the materials so as to waste as little as possible. Being wasteful was disrespectful to the life of what was hunted.

The room I was led into had a plaque next to the door: Guildmaster.

Oh, so what kind of cliché am I getting into here?

The man behind the desk looked up from what he’d been reading. His desk had a lot of paperwork on it, piles of it covered most of the surface. Only right in front of the Guildmaster was mostly clear, so he could work on it, most likely.

“So you’re the Ice Prince, huh?”

“Ice Prince? Never been called that before.”

I noticed the receptionist who’d brought me here blushing while looking away from me before swiftly departing.

“Ha! It seems between your good looks and your magic, that’s what most of the women on staff have taken to calling you. Ah, please have a seat.”

He motioned me towards one of the chairs in front of the desk, so I sat.

“Sally told me that you have some wyvern material, but the only request available to you for the stuff is that piece of shit the Merchants forced on us.”

“Yeah, I do. I have no need for it, but I’d rather not have it basically stolen from me.”

“Good for you. Any reasonable person would feel the same way. That being said, we would like to purchase the hide from you. It’s a great material for armor, as I’m sure you know. Don’t worry, we’ll pay you a fair price, and count it as a request.”

“That’s fine with me. I’d like to be able to hit rank two before I leave if possible, there’s just been nothing I felt like doing that justified the time spent. Yeah, that makes me sound lazy, but…”

“Naw, I get it. The low rank requests are pretty dull. Lots of newbies feel the same way, though they don’t have the skills to skip out on them if they want to earn a living.”

He’d pulled out a form and started filling it out as we talked. After agreeing on the reward, he handed me the paper.

“Anything else you feel like selling? I seem to recall you spent a few bells in a dismantling room yesterday.”

“Depends on the price and what you want.”

So we got to haggling.

He’d already guessed the reason I’d needed one of the larger dismantling rooms yesterday, though from the way he asked, it seemed he thought I’d only had one. Which was logical. An average person would have only been able to dissect a single wyvern in the time it took me to several. With my blessings, which technically should have been returned when I left Valla, I’d been able to raise my dismantling skill to the limit.

By the end of it, I’d be getting a rank up and a large amount of gold, and the guild would be receiving almost all of one wyvern’s materials. I’d keep some of the meat, since it was rare and delicious. I could have let him take the whole thing’s meat, I had plenty, but felt it was better to be reluctant to part with all of it.

Satisfied, I stood to leave.

“Before you go, let me ask you something, no need to answer if you don’t want to though. You just arrived in this country, why are you leaving so soon?”

I pondered how best to answer for a moment before answering.

“I’m a traveler. This place was just one stop on my journey. Plus I came here without knowing what the place was like, didn’t like some of what I found, so I found a more interesting place to visit.”

“Well, I regret losing you. You could have become one of the mainstays of the guild, but I can’t stop you. May you have a pleasant journey.”

He called for someone to come collect me, and I was led to the guild’s warehouse. Passing the papers I had to the guy in charge, he read them, before giving me instructions on where he wanted the stuff. Things like the bones and hide could be placed in the normal warehouse, but the meat and blood needed to be kept cool so it wouldn’t spoil.

I would have liked to ditch the garbage, but there was too much to do so here without giving the game away. So I had to carry it for a while longer. At least until I found an out of the way place to burn and bury it.

I’d considered tossing it into the sea, letting the fish eat it, but decided it was a bad idea. It’d end up attracting sea monsters, and possibly make them stronger. Wyvern might not be true dragons, but their flesh, even the parts useless to humans, contained power.

Hmm, well, it’s not like I have to get rid of it. My storage capacity is insane after all. Maybe I can find something to do with the stuff in the future, or use it as feed if I get an animal companion.

The guy signed off on receiving the goods, so I took the request forms back and made my way back to the front to get paid. It didn’t take too long, since it wasn’t too busy. And because I’d passed over an empty magic bag for them to put the gold in. The amount I was getting would be pretty heavy, and I didn’t want anyone to strain their back.

Funds increased exponentially, I headed to the library. Today would be my last day to visit, since tomorrow I’d be leaving the city. The upper part of it anyway. I’d told everyone here I’d be leaving a day earlier than I really was to make it harder to track me if there was a problem. I felt secure in doing so because the tickets for the ship, two since I’d purchased both spots in the cabin, didn’t require ID to purchase.

I stayed at the library until it closed at the eighth bell, putting up with reading by candlelight for one day. I wanted to take in all the information I had time for, with monsters being today’s topic. Sea creatures specifically. I wanted to know what kind of annoyances might interrupt my voyage, how to most cleanly kill them, and what parts were useful and how.

I’d even skipped lunch, so when I got back to the inn I was ravenous, and ordered a larger meal than normal. Normally I’d have had a few mugs of ale while relaxing and listening to the day’s gossip, but I needed to get up early tomorrow, since I had to ‘rush’ to take care of quests before I left.

Not for the first time, I wished I had a watch, or a clock on my status display, but I’d at least come up with a way around it a few years back. Valla hadn’t had clocks, so I’d tried to make a magical or mechanical clock, even if it had to be larger, but hadn’t had the time to get it to work, nor had there been others who could work on it when there was a war for survival going on.

My solution was both simple, and really annoying. I could roughly charge up spells and barriers to last a certain period of time, so I used that ability. I warded my room first, making it internally soundproof, I could hear the outside, but the outside couldn’t hear me. Then I created what I called the shrieking ball of distraction.

The name pretty much said it all. It was a ball of magic that created noise that was super annoying, but usable for distracting things. I could alter the sound if needed to mimic various things. Like someone crying. Or a ghost haunting a place. Yes, I’d made good use of it for pranks.

Anyway… I set up the ball to last ten hours or until cancelled, then enclosed it in another soundproof barrier that last about eight hours. In this way, the barrier would fall, loosing destruction on my ears, waking me up.

To act out my plan, I wanted to get to the guild before first bell, and this was the best way to do so.

I regretted it in the morning, like I always did when I had to use this method of alarm clock, but I was up and out the door as scheduled. I took breakfast to go, having left a lunch box for the innkeeper to fill with food for my breakfast last night.

I ate as I walked, and was one of the first people at the guild hall that morning.

The guild never closed, though the number of staff on hand was much smaller at night. There needed to be someone there in case of emergency, as well as providing nighttime adventurers the ability to receive and turn in quests.

Vampires existed in this world, strangely being one of the more accepted members of the demon race, and while the sun wouldn’t kill them, they did burn really easily, so many vampiric adventurers found it easier to deal with quests that took place during the dark hours. They also didn’t need human blood to survive, any would do, so butchers saved blood to sell to them.

I usually reached the guild around seven, so I was over an hour earlier than normal, but it being so quiet just seemed weird. The place’s pub had closed at ninth bell, since most people followed the saying ‘wake with a chime, sleep with nine.’ It wouldn’t open until second bell, so there was no reason for people to be here unless they were there on business.

There was only one desk open, and a couple people in line, so I joined the queue in order to grab today’s quests…

There were five of them again. I’d have to hurry to meet my deadline.

I took off at a comfortable run. Usually I walked, but not today. The first bell rang as I left the first location. It took an hour to get through the other four, since one of them was out of the way, and then it was back to the guild… with plenty of time to be wasted waiting during the morning rush hour.

Still, I was out of there and headed down into the merchant’s district before the second bell rang. On the way, I made random turns and backtracked. I didn’t think I was being followed, but justified paranoia has a way of leaving aftereffects on one’s mind even when the danger should have passed… no I still have something to be worried about.

Those damn temple knights were still here.

I passed three pairs of them before I got to the docks.

Well, they shouldn’t be able to recognize me, since I was a handsome looking man right now, not a cute young woman. But the pests were still annoying.

I found an inn to stay at, entering with a hood shadowing my face. I paid for the room, and only that. I’d get food elsewhere, the breakfasts I could see didn’t look at all appetizing to me, so I didn’t trust them to make a decent dinner either.

I entered the room, then got comfortable. No need to do anything outside, since I wanted people to think I’d left the city today. There was plenty of light coming in the window, so I pulled out a comfortable chair to sit in and read. The bed in this room wasn’t very good, so I didn’t use it. I’d also throw a mattress…

I hadn’t done anything with my new skill! I’d had it for over a week, but I’d forgotten about it with the incident regarding the church.

I pulled out some materials.

This was going to be fun!