Chương 395: Chapter 384 - New Stuff, New House

"Here comes the knight in shining armour," Ayu chuckled, eyeing Alonso's new gear.

"Well, to be fair, it's not very shiny, is it," he said with a smile.

"So what's up? Where are the others?" He glanced around the market, his presence drawing more attention than he would have liked.

"Imani went to check the smith. Lukas picked up Chiara, and they both went to the town's church. And Pablo… I think he wanted to check the local library or something."

"Sounds about right," Alonso nodded.

"Heard some loud bloke earlier. Was that the town crier?" Ayu blinked at the term, but Leonie nodded.

"Anything interesting?"

"The Baron is recruiting for a campaign," she said.

"Campaign? So, like the first main quest?" Alonso joked, then shook his head. Probably should've saved that one for when Lukas was around.

"So how was the Adventurer Guild?" Ayu asked.

"Better than good. Found myself a sponsor and all," Alonso grinned. He flicked his Guild Token to Ayu. She caught it and studied it with a nod.

"Looks like a proper ID."

"Well, it is," Alonso said.

"About as official as it gets around here, and oddly not that different from a driver's licence." He paused, then took out the Giant's Gauntlet from his backpack and handed it to Leonie.

"By the way, I won't be needing this anymore. Thanks." Leonie blinked for a moment as she stared at it, then nodded and slid it on. Alonso scanned the market for a moment.

"Looks lively. You wanna hang around or…?"

"I'll check on Pablo," Leonie said quickly, ready to give them space, but Ayu waved it off.

"Not much left to see. Let's meet the others first," Ayu said, tossing the token back.

"I wanna hear what you all found."

"Well, speak of the devil," Alonso said a moment later as he spotted Lukas and Chiara in the distance. Ayu and Leonie turned as Lukas waved at them with his usual easy grin.

"That's a fancy badge you've got there, mister," Lukas said, his waves picking up the silver token.

"And new armour too… wow. Shall we now refer to you as Sir Alonso Shemson, per chance?" Chiara shook her head with a faint sigh. Leonie pressed her lips together, leaving only Alonso chuckling.

"Rolls off the tongue pretty nicely, doesn't it?"

"Indeed," Lukas said, his gaze drifting around before settling on the large notice board nearby.

"A recruitment campaign? Is that the first quest?"

"You have to be fucking kidding me," Leonie murmured, not sure whether to laugh or cry.

Pablo sat in the library, staring at a painting of an old man whose face and name meant nothing to him. Not that he was truly looking at it. His mind was elsewhere, threads of information racing, linking, sorting. The town's library had turned out to be a bit of a disappointment. Not for lack of knowledge. Quite the opposite. He had read and uncovered more in minutes than a normal human could in months. Politics. History. Religions. Competing organisations. Dungeons. Creatures. Trade patterns. Professions.

Even things he wasn't sure were fairy tales or real. In any case, it was all there, and his brain was having a great time. The disappointment came from something far simpler. There were barely any paper books! Most of the library consisted of encoded information slates, smooth surfaces that reacted to EM input, text unfolding straight into his mind as tightly packed coded pulses streamed back. Efficient. Fast. Practical. Entire volumes could be skimmed in moments. But still…

Even on modern Earth they had kept paper. Out of choice. Out of culture. Out of respect for the experience of reading. And here, in a clear-cut, straight-out-of-a-painting medieval town, one he now knew was quite literally in the middle of nowhere, paper books were the niche medium! Seriously. Come on. He exhaled slowly. He liked the feel of pages. The weight of a book. The faint drag of paper against skin. Knowledge that pushed back a little as you moved through it.

Instead, information here felt like a matrix injection, for crying out loud. Still, it was what it was. He slipped back into the flow, categorising data streams in his head, extracting relevance, discarding noise, when—" We are outside." He lifted his head and glanced through the window. Alonso, Leonie, and nearly the rest of the group stood together, waiting for him.

"Bloody hell…" the smith muttered as he inspected the blades.

"First time I've seen the Giant-Slayer dual-sword variant."

"Can you temper them?" Alonso asked.

"Not my hands for this, sir," the man admitted.

"But you're in luck. I know the only one in town who can." He turned aside, gaze unfocused, and Alonso felt an EM pulse exchange. Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there. A few minutes later, a broad old man shuffled in, thick arms, shoulders still like iron, only a few grey strands clinging to his scalp. He said nothing. Just took the swords, turned them once, twice, thumb tracing the metal. Then he looked at Alonso.

"You got the feathers?" Alonso nodded and brought out the six plumes Jack had dropped along with the blades. Grade 04 - Gilded Dawn Plume Tempering Material The old man grunted, rubbing a thumb along one.

"Can push 'em to three with these. Want the full rise, or stoppin' short?" Alonso blinked. That easy? Still, he knew the hard part was next.

"How much per step?"

"First's 15. Second's 25. Third's 40. All three's 80 Silvermarks." Alonso's eyes widened. Sure enough… a stab to the gut. After a moment, he nodded.

"I'll take it all the way to the third. How long?"

"Six, eight hours max," the old smith said. His eyes lingered on Alonso's token.

"Guild pay?"

"Yes," Alonso said, handing it over. The man snorted, pulled a half-filled ledger scroll from beneath the bench, checked the token, wrote Alonso's name, and marked 80 Silvermarks. He passed it back. Alonso read it and signed with a quill.

"Right then," the smith said with a heavy breath.

"Come back in eight. I'll have them ready."

"Thanks," Alonso said, stepping away from the smith toward where the others were waiting.

"And there goes more than half my balance," he muttered with a grin.

"Well, who doesn't want a pair of badass tempered blades, eh?" Lukas said.

"Wait… how did you even pay for it?" Leonie asked, a bit confused.

"The Guild offers credit to Silver-rank Adventurers, up to 150 Silvermarks, but it has to be paid back, and only works for local services. You can't really cash it out," he said.

"That's convenient."

"I'll try to pick up the pace, so we can avoid these costs," Imani said quietly after a moment.

"It's fine," Alonso said, meeting his eyes.

"More than that, having you working on it already is a blessing."

"True," Lukas said.

"So," Leonie said as the mood settled, "should we find a place to discuss our plans?"

"Well, speaking of places… I know one," Alonso grinned, remembering something.

"You got a house!"

"Well, it's more of a rental," Alonso grinned.

"Got a nice discount on it, thanks to the Guild."

"Seriously… how many benefits does the Adventurer Guild give you?"

"Quite a few, to be honest," Alonso admitted.

"Well, it's only natural the world sugarcoats the powerful," Lukas said.

"When you've got people around who can flatten a hill with one strike, you sure want to keep them happy, right?" Leonie nodded. Her brother's comment felt uncomfortably accurate when compared to Earth's current situation. Alonso stepped closer and sent a coded pulse to the lock. The door clicked open a moment later.

"EM-based locks? Seriously?"

"I was as surprised as you," Alonso said.

"They've also got an integrated system that sends out a wide-range EM signal if someone forces entry. Alerts the owner and local authorities."

"Alright… I may be underestimating this 'Medieval' society." Alonso stepped inside and showed them the place. A compact living space, clean stone walls, a small hearth, two simple wooden tables, a narrow kitchen alcove, and woven rugs softening the floor.

"It has two bedrooms, one double, one single," Alonso said, then sent them all an EM pulse.

"Just sent you the entry code. Feel free to come and sleep or rest whenever, just take turns. We can save on rent for now, since we don't need much sleep anyway."

"Looks good," Lukas said. Chiara and Ayu were already checking the bed and washing area.

"Does it have hot water?"

"Yep," Alonso said.

"They use a resistor system. We heat it through EM control."

"Shit, nice."

"It also comes with a maid that cleans once a week."

"Alright, now you're just showing off." Alonso chuckled.

"We don't have enough chairs, so let's just gather and share findings here in the living room."

"We do," Chiara said calmly, channelling Dark Stars and shaping two additional chairs, one for her and one for Lukas.

"Even better," Alonso shrugged.

"So… where do we start?"

"As much as I want to hear about the library and tempering," Lukas said, "I think we all agree we want Alonso to go first." They nodded. Alonso sighed.

"Fair enough." He began recounting his exchange with Gregor, the spar, and the events that followed, finishing with how he secured the house and later ran into Ayu and Leonie in the plaza.

"This Gregor sounds like a nice guy," Lukas said.

"You said he was Gold-rank. How much stronger than you do you think he was?"

"There's a clear gap," Alonso admitted.

"Still an excellent starting point for this stage," Lukas said.

"You got the Guild Master as a sponsor, and you're only a rank below him. With all the benefits, that saves us a good amount of time."

"Indeed."

"I saw a notice earlier mentioning Internal Conditioning and something called the First and Second Mark," Leonie said after a short pause.

"Any idea how that translates to our Stage Progress, or maybe Adventurer ranks?"

"Actually, yes," Alonso said, glad Houston had already sorted and analysed most of the information.

"The natives can't see Tower prompts and don't know what Stage Progress is. Everything they know comes from experience and long practice. But they still have SP. My Observer status lets me see it. They call it Internal Conditioning. Normal orbs they call stat orbs, and the red ones, boss orbs."

"I wouldn't mind if we used those terms too," Lukas said.

"Sounds way better than just orbs." Alonso nodded.

"As for the Marks, that's how they measure SP growth. From the data I gathered, each Mark represents roughly a 7% increase in SP. The First Mark starts at about 21%, the Second at 28%, and so on."

"And let me guess. Copper-rank is First Mark, Iron-rank the Second, and Silver the Third," Lukas said.

"That's the convention, but in practice it all comes down to actual power," Alonso said.

"I haven't reached the Third Mark yet, and I'm still considered mid Silver-rank, maybe even higher after all the gear upgrades."

"As expected," Lukas said, rubbing his chin.

"I guess gear grade ties into rank too. Like, for your rank, you'd be expected to wear Grade 3 gear with proper tempering, right?"

"Yeah, something like that. Maybe closer to between Grade 3 and 4 for Silver," Alonso said.

"So I'm pretty far behind in both SP and gear compared to a native at my rank."

"I'm just picturing how many hundreds of Silvermarks it would take to fully equip a single Silver-rank Adventurer," Lukas said, raising an eyebrow.

"Well, not to sound cold or cynical, but there is a cheaper alternative," Chiara said. Lukas nodded slowly.

"True… but maybe let's avoid killing natives for now. Just the security system on this 'simple' town house has me thinking of several reasons why that wouldn't end well for us."

"Anyway, I'll send you all the information I got from the Guild in coded pulses later," Alonso said.

"For now, why don't you share your side? How was the Church?" A heavy silence followed as Lukas and Chiara looked at each other. Lukas eventually sighed.

"In short… scary."