Chương 151: Chapter 149: Maester Cellin

The next morning, we head back into the town of angels and back up to the castle. We take the winding path up to the castle as it turns back on itself over and over again. I wonder this time if the little divot in the middle of the road, the ditch leading all along the pathway, is really just meant for drainage. It occurs to me that you could pour oil or something else flammable in there and it would go all the way down the line of the enemy.

You could then light it on fire and basically try to burn out the entire enemy army while they were still on their way up to your castle. That's clever. The same guard stops us. He looks a little bit surprised to see me.

"Hello there," I say. I reach into my spatial bag and pull out the pouch full of claws. He looks at me like I just did a magic trick. And I suppose I did. The bag full of claws is technically bigger than the spatial bag. Inside of my spatial bag is currently 104 cubic feet of space, but the bag itself is just a satchel. It shouldn't have an interior bigger than, say, one cubic foot. The bag full of claws is about a foot and a half wide. The bag bulges once I get the bulk of it out of the spatial bag.

But it looks like I just pulled something bigger than the bag I was pulling it from. I guess they don't have spatial bags here. Good to know.

"You asked for ten sets of claws," I say, holding the bag in both of my hands. I present it to him.

"Here they are." He takes the bag from me and looks inside. Satisfied that these are actually dire lynxith claws, he sets the bag down and looks at me, dumbfounded, for a few seconds. He looks at the others, looking use all up and down, as if expecting to see wounds or expecting to see through us somehow. Maybe he thinks we're ghosts. He doesn't reach out and poke me or anything, but I can tell he's thinking about it.

"You said that you would get us a meeting with someone who can give us quests?" I remind him, breaking him out of his little reverie.

"What? Oh! Right. Yes, I did say that, didn't I? All right," he clears his throat and picks up the bag.

"You wait right here," he says to me. Then he turns to another guard.

"I'm going to take these to the maester," he says.

"I'll be right back." Then back to me.

"Be right back," he says again. It takes about five minutes, but the guard does return, along with a tall angel wearing long robes. His wings hang outside of the robes, and he seems to be twitching them enthusiastically. The maester, assuming I heard the guy right, looks older. Not like a super old man, but just a bit on the aged side. Like he's sixty or so. His skin is a bit weathered looking, his eyes are a bit sunken in.

But he moves with a grace that suggests he's still in really good shape, and his eyes are sparkling so much they're practically glowing. I give him a look. Maester Cellin. Very rare rare elite seraph blood, level 55. HP: 55, 000/55, 000. So I definitely heard him right. What is a maester? Aren't they like an order of learned men or something? That's what they were in Game of Thrones. But maester is just a weird way of saying master. It's like maestro. Which I think is Italian, but I'm totally guessing there.

Point is, I can't assume anything, not yet, other than that this guy is nominally in charge of something. I smile at the maester.

"Hello," I say.

"My companions and I were told that you might have a quest for us."

"Yes, yes, so I've been told," maester Cellin says.

"And then you slew ten of the dire lynxiths, just the four of you?"

"Thirteen, actually," El says from over my shoulder. Guess that puts the nail in the coffin on the question of whether or not there is a common language; she can clearly understand them, and they can clearly understand her. The maester's eyebrows rise in surprise at her comment.

"We are adventurers," I say.

"We come from a distant land, and we're here to help."

"What is your purpose in our land?" Cellin asks. Which is odd; I'm pretty sure I literally just answered that question. But maybe there's more depth to the question than I'm giving it credit for. We may in fact be here to help, but that doesn't tell him why we're here. Should I tell him the whole story? Does he want the whole story?

"We're on a quest," I say.

"An overarching one that is taking us through your lands. While we were here, we were hoping to find some smaller quests that we could undertake."

"But why?" he asks.

"We need the experience," I say, trying to be as honest as I can without being too honest.

"We hope to gain more levels in our travels, and quests are one of the best ways for us to do that."

"Money is good, too," Ash points out. I turn back and glare at the three of them. Are we letting me do the talking or aren't we? I turn back to maester Cellin.

"There is much you are not telling me," he says. He strokes a smooth chin, making me wonder if the angel types can even grow facial hair. I don't remember seeing anyone with a beard since we've come to this continent. Which is just great; doesn't make me feel singled out at all. My beard is thick, and I don't like shaving it. Am I going to have to if I want to fit in? They'd probably notice the lack of wings before they noticed the presence of facial hair. I think I'm okay.

"Yes," I say.

"We are standing in front of the castle gates. If you want a story, I'll be happy to share it, but I'd rather do so somewhere more comfortable." This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings. He rubs his chin again for a long moment. Time stretches out a little bit, and I start to get antsy. If this guy doesn't want to give us a quest, I wish he'd just tell us and let us be on our way. We can keep going until we find another city. I don't care.

"Right," maestro Cellin says.

"How rude of me. Come in to my home under a flag of peace, and come share your story while we dine." There's a definite formality to those words. But it's better than 'enter of your own free will.' Much less ominous. We're soon inside, sitting at a long table. None of the chairs have backs, which is going to be murder on my posture. I tend to lean forward a little bit anyway, but when there's no back to the chair, I start to curl up like I have scoliosis.

I know that I slouch when I stand, too; I'm about five inches taller than I seem to be on most days. It came in handy when people would get in my face and try to intimidate me. I'd just start standing up straight, and suddenly I wouldn't be as short as they were. Some of them, I even ended up towering over them. Which isn't saying much; even at full stretch, I'm still not that tall. I might crack six feet, but that's being pretty generous. Cellin has servants who bring out a plate of sliced cheeses and fruit.

It's been a while since any of us have had them, so they really do seem like a bit of a delicacy. Not that cheese by itself is rare in this world. But these are, like, artisanal cheeses. Special cheeses. The wine they bring out is pretty good too, though I'm not much of a drinker. It's red wine; that's about as far as I can tell.

"So you're from a far away land," Cellin prompts once we're all settled down.

"We're actually from another world," I say. I decide that maybe the best way to get information about this part of the world is to tell him about the other part of the world, and let him offer new information about things being different. Maybe by telling him the whole truth, I'll get him to trust me enough to tell us everything we need to know. It's not a great idea, but it's the only one I've got right now.

"Another world? What do you mean?"

"Well, our original world was called Earth," I say. I then go on to tell him about the tutorial that appeared one day, preparing us for this world. About how we had to fight monsters from this world back in our old world, and gradually learned our trade as adventurers before coming to this world. I don't tell him much about Earth, because I don't want to confuse him with talk of cars and electricity and other tech that simply isn't here.

The highest tech I've seen in this part of the world is still oil lamps, and I'm pretty sure Earth had those back in the time of Socrates. So instead I try to focus on our time around Elmspire. I tell him about the war we fought in, and about the god slayer. I tell him about us chasing her across the continent, and then about us catching a flight with a dragon.

He seems at first incredulous, but as I explain how we bribed first Silk and then the dragon on the island, he starts to believe me, and his look changes to one of wonder. He is amazed by my recounting of the battle with the goars, and then even more amazed as I tell him about the dire lynxiths we fought.

"But you are all such low level," he says, not even trying to hide his amazement.

"How did you manage to win these battles?"

"We've got a lot of hit points," El says, proudly.

"And we've got a lot of experience fighting," I say.

"It's one of the effects of being from another world. When we die, we do not stay dead." I go on to explain a little bit about resurrection. I don't tell him about the death cycle or the fact that we've been through it so many times, but it's important that he knows that we don't stay dead. Hopefully, it will stop him from having us executed, if such a thought does cross his mind. Because he'll know that we're coming back, and we won't be happy with him. Cellin asks a lot of questions. Good questions, too.

He asks us about how long it takes to come back from the dead, what death is like, and what happens to our bodies. He doesn't ask if we lose our power, but I think he figures it out from my story. As I'm talking, I start to wonder why I'm telling him so much. Does he really need to know all these things? Does he need to know any of them? He's an interested audience. Is that all it takes? Am I desperate to tell someone about our adventures? It almost feels like he's manipulating me. Maybe he is.

If he is, he's really good at it. But maybe I'm just too trusting. I don't have any reason to lie to this guy. I didn't entirely expect him to believe the truth, to be honest. I thought for sure he'd think I was making some of it up, or that I was crazy, or something like that. But he seems to be genuinely interested in what I have to say, and he seems to believe, and hang on, my every word.

"So then what is this overarching quest you are on?" he asks, as I finish bringing him more or less up to speed with what's happened over the past three months.

"We're going to become gods," El says, through a mouthful of cheese. Ash frowns at her and then smiles at Cellin.

"We are questing to find the gods," she says.

"The major gods, I believe. We know that we have a part to play in something that is happening, but we don't know exactly what." Cellin nods, giving her a look that makes me think that he doesn't believe her. Like that he knows she's hiding something. But the simple fact is that she's not hiding anything. We really don't know what we're doing. We're not entirely sure what the goal is, and what the end result is going to be. I think about it a lot.

Are we going to get to the gods, the final boss of the game as it were, and then find out that the game just ends? Do we get to live happily ever after? Do we wake up back on Earth and find out that it was all just a dream, and now we have to go back to our old lives, but with the confidence and the spirit of adventure from this world still there, guiding us to a more fulfilling life? I hope not. I want to leave all of my past life behind. This is who I am now. I don't want to go back to being human.

I want to be a wolf blood. That's me, now. I don't want this to end in such an unsatisfying way. But maybe we'll end up being promoted to a new world, a whole new game. Maybe we'll end up in a different genre, and I'll eventually have to become a gunslinger. Maybe we'll end up in an alien zoo somewhere, the last survivors of a dead planet who broke out of the digital world they were being maintained within, like some kind of weird Star Trek Matrix spin off thing. Or, maybe, we'll become gods.

We'll go create our world, write our own game for people to play. Or take over this one. Or we'll be reborn as dragons. We really don't know. We are pursuing a goal that is as shrouded as the pathway towards it. We don't know where we're going or how to get there. We just know that we need to keep moving towards it, and we need to get more powerful.

"I can see why you would want quests." Cellin gets up and paces across the room for a minute or so.

"Forgive me," he says.

"But this is a lot to process. I must contemplate what tasks I have that are worthy of your talents." El smiles at that, apparently appreciating being held up on a pedestal like that. I'm not sure how I feel. I mean, what if he gives us a task that he considers impossible? What if he gives us a quest that we can't actually do? What if he wants us to do something like conquer the neighboring city, to lay siege to the castle there and to kill whoever is inside?

I mean, I suppose we can always say no to whatever he suggests. He's probably thinking about that right now. Using that as part of his reasoning as he puts his own personal wish list in order. Because that's basically what we're offering him. We're four strangers, to whom no one has any connection, who have rolled into this guy's living room and told him that we will do anything he wants us to do.

We've talked a big enough game that he probably believes we are capable of anything, so now he has to decide what he wants done most.