Chương 17: Because the rumors are crazy.

Herman's place, with its finely manicured garden out front, and friendly staff were but a memory only a moment after stepping outside.

"I smell a scoop." I said. There was a veritable mob forming down at the Adventurer's Guild. Some fresh hubbub going on.

"You sure you don't wanna give up on this whole Demon Queen thing and help me start an independent paper?

'Cause I smell it too." Theodore clapped me on the shoulder with a surprisingly fine-tuned amount of power. It didn't hurt, but even that pat on the back was a gentle, probably unintentional reminder, he could turn me into a fine red mist any time he got the notion to do so.

"I'm afraid a divine commandment outweighs a pretty good idea."

"Ha! Yeah, I suppose it does. Well when you're done with all that, assuming you survive, I'll hopefully have a job for you 'round here, if you want it."

"That is good to know. Just gotta do the Demon Queen thing, and find and rescue my wife first. Shall we go get you the next scoop?" I asked... not aware that I was still the scoop... kind of. We made our way into the crowd, and asked around to see what the reason for the crowd was, and got an array of answers.

"Something crazy happened and the alchemists guild is selling level five Elixir for the price of a medium-potion. If you've got any malady or curse level five or lower, now's the chance."

"I heard it can regrow missing fingers and toes too!"

"Julie said it didn't even taste like farts neither!"

"Bullshit! The mountain spring they use is loaded with sulfur." And so on. Lakshmi pulled our masks out of her frog, again.

"These are diseased people. Here." She handed them out to our entire party, Theodore also took one. He'd lived through the Spanish flu. On hearing her, he took the freely offered mask, immediately, and without issue. Not sure if he was immune to diseases as a man of steel. He was human still, right? As I started to think about getting more information on him, the glasses on my face reacted.

They started pulling his data, but it was coming at me too fast, and it wasn't really the time for all that, right in the middle of a crowd. So I shook it off and blinked it away. Good to know I can easily scan people if I want to, definitely going to need to learn to mind those sorts of thoughts, so that I don't accidentally turn on my glasses full power. Someone up near the entrance started shouting for order. To get the crowd to shut the hell up, her voice changed.

A deep, womanly voice came from an amazonian battle goddess that suddenly stood nine feet tall right outside the entrance.

"Alright everyone! You've clearly all heard the rumors about the Elixir. There is a large supply, so everybody calm the fuck down. There is enough for everyone! FORM AN ORDERLY LINE OR I WILL!" She shrank back down to whatever size she was before she transformed to yell at the mob, and the mob… started to form an orderly line. Apparently, they knew her here. The same woman, now in a much less deep, equally womanly voice, "Alright! Good.

Anyone who is here for regular guild business, you can skip the line and come through the left door. If you're here for Elixir, stay in line, you'll enter through the right door. Line skippers will have their knees broken." I got the feeling that was only half a joke. We stopped joining the line, as we were not here for Elixir, simply to check out what the deal with the adventurer's guild was. When we were spaced out from the mob, Lakshmi took her mask off and stuffed it back into the frog.

"Well, if we're not in the mob, we don't really need these." We handed her back the masks as we walked around the forming line. We got some stink eye, but we were stopped by the Amazonian Shifter lady. She was a 5'6" delicate looking woman. Dressed like a mild mannered DMV employee. I guess she gets the amazonian outfit with the transformation.

"Regular business?" She asked with a customer service smile that was barely holding on. My thought about knowing more about her caused the glasses to react, and I stopped them when they revealed she was 'Guildmaster' Grace.

"We're new," I said.

"Looking to learn about the Guild, ma'am." Her smile turned almost genuine for a moment.

"That is the most regular business there is. Sorry about the chaos, someone flooded the market with fancy spring water, and now there's a rush on elixir. Welcome to the Adventurer's guild." Grace eyeballed the crowd, and I could see the line almost wither under her gaze.

"Good, everyone out here is behaving. I'll show you in, and we can get you started. She opened the door and held it for us to enter. We stepped inside. It was a bigger building than the neighboring stores. From outside it appeared to be three stories at the top of the stone part. Most of the building, however, was a sprawling one story tavern, with the stone tower situation built into the side of it. Inside there was a clear delineation between the tavern, and the non-tavern business areas.

On our left was a wooden Tavern, and mean wooden. It had wooden floors, wooden tables, wooden chairs, wooden mugs, wooden plates... everything but the people were wood, even the cutlery. There was a bar, and a lady dressed like a bad stereotype of a medieval tavern maid. Tight braid on her head and boobs pushed up like a renaissance fair maiden. A bald, mutton chop having man in a sweat stained tank top stood behind the bar. They both smiled and beckoned us over. There was something... off about those two.

"Ignore the NPCs." Our guide said.

"Did you say NPCs?" I asked.

"Non-Person Creations. Most dungeons have a tavern, like this one, sometimes they're even plopped down atop them. Deep enough dungeons have whole floors that are just a tavern rest area. This Dungeon, The West Starter Dungeon, generates a bartender and enough service people to manage the crowd if a crowd forms inside the tavern. More tavern than dungeon, really. They don't all provide staff, so when you get to a real dungeon, don't treat the staff like shit, they could be real people with insane powers.

Only nutjobs run bars in a dungeon. Or, they could be harmless NPCs. Best to just be polite." The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

"What do you mean exactly by Dungeon?" Lakshmi asked. I'd watched enough trash anime with my grandson that the answer was exactly what I expected.

"A Dungeon is a sort of magical cave, or maze, or labyrinth, or tower... or doorway in the middle of a field of wheat... that generates monsters and creatures from nothing. Treasure too. There is a two level, very easy dungeon underneath us, but let's go through all the normal stuff before you guys go down into this one to get registered here, if that sounds like something you want to do."

"I do, I think." We'd see if there was anything to registering that gave me pause. Where we stood was stone floor. On the right - still on the stone portion of the building - there were several people I recognized as the Seagulls from the market. They had set up a table with hundreds of bottles of elixir on them. Next to them, a job board. With images of monsters and information about where to find them underneath. Other jobs too, it seemed.

"I think I recognize those guys fr-" Theodore started to talk.

"Apupup. Save it for evening edition, Newsboy." I said, dropping him a wink that he noticed but our guide did not. I didn't want to cause a fracas, and I was the only guy in camo cargo pants and a black cotton t-shirt I'd seen in town. The Seagulls were busy, they probably wouldn't notice me. I didn't want this nice little lady to turn into a giantess and smash me when she realized I was the one that summoned the first Domino in line that eventually ended up with a mob outside.

"Normally the Alchemists guild has their apprentices here selling shitty potions that didn't turn out quite right for discounts, side effects may vary. Not sure what the hell happened, but they got great elixir deals today." Our guide said.

"Tif fawn y here will help you get registered if that's what you decide, and she'll explain how it all works, getting a dungeon pass, yada yada yada. I need to go keep the crowd in line. HEY! Darius. I saw that. Give it back or I'll break your hand off in your own ass. Sorry." Grace started getting bigger as she walked away, not exactly living up to her name. The high ceilings in here were not high enough, she had to hunch significantly as she went to deal with Darius and his impending bending.

"New? Take a seat, all of ya's." The... Deer shifter girl said, gesturing. Aww, she looked like Bambi. Ohh... she didn't like that I felt that way about her appearance. I suppose she could see it on my face. I quickly straightened myself out. Military bearing time. The cute, but not enough that I had to fawn over her, Deer shifter was sitting behind a large desk, and where she gestured four chairs sprang up from the floor.

"I am very new. It's been a whirlwind of a day since I got here, yesterday morning." I sat down, and my party joined me.

"Oh, new new. Well, welcome to the adventurers guild. Have you figured out that most people have levels yet?" She pulled a quill from an inkwell and started writing something on a page.

"I have. I'm level one, she's level three, and Damon's level zero." I said.

"What about the big fella." She pointed at Theodore with the feather of her writing implement.

"I'm not joining the guild, just here as a journalist, ma'am. Doing a piece on Johnny there."

"Swell," she gestured for him to sit too, which he did.

"Pretty sure he's level two." I said.

"So. Level zero's a wizard, I can see that plainly. But what're you two?"

"War Cleric." Lakshmi said, perhaps... a little too loud. Tiffawny didn't disguise her surprise or excitement. Several heads turned in the elixir crowd, too. The party that just finished purchasing even walked over to us, instead of leaving the building or going to the tavern.

"I'm a merchant." I said, but all attention was on the War Cleric.

"Clerics are rare enough, but a War Cleric? You're one in a million." Tiffany said.

"And you're level three? Can you cast lesser restoration already? I'd love to be human again."" Giagstacto." Lakshmi said, turning on her diagnostic spell and with glowing eyes, she started staring at Tiffawny.

"Oh, I see." I also started staring at her, trying to learn more. Seemed like a good time to put my glasses to use. Tiffany: 8/8 HP. 16 Defense. 4 Attack. (No 'w'. I got the feeling her co-worker was ribbing her by pronouncing her name that way.) Status: Shifter's starting curse. Debuff. Unable to shift back to human form until lvl 1. (minor) Lvl: 0 Exp: 96/100 When my glasses started pulling up blood type, age, and dating status, I fluttered my eyes and thought, 'that's enough privacy invasion for now'.

The glasses stopped drilling down. Herman said these would 'level up' with me, and I couldn't help but wonder what else they were going to reveal when I leveled up. Was I going to be able to see people's undergarments? I hope not, but maybe Herman was a huge perv, he did seem to be spying on potentially hundreds of people.

"I suppose I can see if I can lift your curse's symptoms." Lakshmi said.

"But not the curse itself, you just have to level for that, I think." I was too distracted to notice that the crowd coming off the Elixir line was stuck, like a blood clot on the way out of the building. The Blood Clot was watching Lakshmi as she said, " Drune-Rembark." The golden light flowed up from Lakshmi and over Tiffany, and Tiffany's Deerness was washed away, leaving a little woman... who looked like a deer caught in the headlights.

"Oh... My gods!?" She looked at her mostly hairless human arms in shock, "I'm not a fucking Furry anymore!" Some of the shifters in the crowd seemed to take offense at the term Furry. Noted: not my word to say.

"Oh shut up you flea-bitten, ballbags." Suddenly, not a deer-in-the-headlights, Tiffany let the crowd know what she thought.

"Like you assholes didn't hate being a Furry until you leveled up and could go human again."

"Sure, but what're you gonna do when the lunar phases force you back in a week?" Said a... a weasel man, maybe? Maybe a Mink. I wasn't sure, my various weasel-thing identification skills were lacking. As if to answer my dearth of confidence in my own weasel knowledge, the glasses showed me 'Stoat-Shifter' while I looked at him. I glanced across the crowd while this 'mode' was active, and it showed me the non-shifter's classes too. There were fighters, rogues, and barbarians galore.

Most had a subclass listed in parenthesis too, like: Dale, Fighter (Archery), and Hanz, Barbarian (Bear Totem), or Darius, Rogue (Thief). Less common were various titles of spell caster: wizards, sorcerers, warlocks, bards, and druids. I noticed there were no clerics, not a single one.

"I'm gonna level soon, I'm sure." Tiffany said.

"And then I'll be fine. Anyhow, screw off you animals. New guys, fill out these forms, and we'll get you set up for your first mission if you do want to join. You can even do it as a party." She slid some paperwork across the table along with a pen, and before I could make my first mark on the page, the people who had witnessed Lakshmi's power started crowding around.

"Hey, pretty cleric lady, you wanna join a real adventuring party?"

"Whoa, you ain't real adventurers, your party can't even clear a goblin cave without help."

"Nobody asked for your help, Dale! We woulda had it."

"Oh, no thank you, everyone. I have a party already." Lakshmi said, but the Blood Clot thickened. I had thought I was a juicy, delicious french fry before, when we were in the market, but Lakshmi was the ultimate french fry: a brand new healer in an adventurer's guild. One of these Adventurer Gulls had the audacity to put a hand on Lakshmi's shoulder after she'd turned back the paperwork, and already said no thank you. Before she or I could react, there was a loud SNAP.

Theodore had the man's wrist folded in a way wrists don't fold. We all stared for a moment, the exposed bone, the visible arm meat, the suddenness of Theodore's violence. It was like for a second, time paused. Even Dale didn't know what to make of his situation.

"AAAAHHHHHGGGG!!!" Dale figured it out. He started screaming, blood spraying from the fully snapped wrist.