The developers obviously had a difference of opinion when it came to how they pictured the East. Some of them went with an Aladdin or Scheherazade vibe—complete with minarets, camels, flying carpets, and little Harun al-Rashids—while others stuck to Chinese and Vietnamese motifs.
The result was a fantastic mix that made room for both. In front of me, were NPC dervishes and some kind of cross-eyed vendors wearing hats made from bamboo.
The market—or, more accurately, the bazaar, since I was in the East—began right in front of the pier. Shouts, bustle, cries; some selling, others buying.
“Silk, elite silk. Only for difficult crafting!”
“Sindhi sabers, curved, sharp. Buy two and get a knife with three attributes free!”
“Watermelon, cantaloupe, peaches! They all give you stamina and strength for two hours!”
“Precious stones from all over the continent! For crafting or personal use!”
“I make rings, I make rings! You bring the materials, I do the work!”
“I’ll take you around dungeons, show you the area! Expensive!”
“Scarce beads from the western swamps, reputational! Use them to get respect in the swamps!”
Oh, I’ve been there already, and I have their respect. In six months, I’ll even have a marriage to prove it.
I stood for a second on the pier, trying to decide where to go. But then, I noticed an icon blinking in a corner of the interface—I had mail. It looked like my direction was decided for me: I needed to visit the mailbox.
Pushing my way through the crowd and catching at least one hand trying to dip into my bag, as thieves there were everywhere, I spotted the mailbox near a building with a sign that read “Iago’s.” Maybe a tavern or a caravanserai. I’ll check it out later.
The letter was from the Gray Witch. Ah-ha, let’s see how valuable she thought my help was.
Good afternoon, Hagen.
I thought for quite a while about how I could reward someone as enterprising and intelligent as you. Another ring? Too petty. Have a good suit of armor made for you? Also no good, as that type of thing wouldn’t reflect how highly I think of you. Here’s what I decided.
Hagen, you are receiving tickets for two people on my flotilla’s flagship, the proudly named Excelsior, which will set sail sooner or later for Rivenholm. You can now head for Rivenholm along with me whether or not your clan’s ships are included in the armada.
I will look forward to seeing you then.
Gray Witch
P.S. Don’t forget about your promise regarding the Wild Hearts. A broken enemy is far from a destroyed enemy.
P.P.S. Whether you tell Elina about this gift is up to you. I personally wouldn’t, but the decision is yours.
There was something attached to the letter. It turned out to be a silver rectangle with an inscription on one side.
Personal ticket granting passage for two aboard the Excelsior.
Owner: Hagen.
Gives the right to board the ship and travel on it to Rivenholm.
Cannot be stolen, sold, gifted, lost, or destroyed.
Well, that’s a new twist. It looked like I was bound for Rivenholm, whether I liked it or not. I wasn’t in too much of a hurry to go, but, still, the idea wasn’t a bad one. It was the type of card you always like having up your sleeve. The important thing was to make sure they didn’t set sail while I was still helping out the dryads.
Speaking of which, I pulled up my map and checked the distance to the red spot I needed to visit. It wasn’t that close—maybe five days’ walk. And that didn’t even include the fact that the locations on the way weren’t what I was used to in Mettan. All the enemies I’d be facing were at least Level 40-42, well eclipsing my Level 33. I had to think of something. But, in the meantime, I wanted to see what that caravanserai was all about and drop the ticket off in my room. Then I could figure out what to do next.
Chapter Sixteen
In which our hero makes up for lost time and gets ready for what’s coming next.
The caravanserai turned out to be another hotel, just with an eastern flavor. There were rugs on the walls, which were ornately painted, and there was a man with a long nose wearing a turban and a robe sitting behind the desk.
“Salaam, true believer,” I said in greeting. “Could I have my room key?”
He wordlessly handed me the key and held up three fingers. I guess that means it’s on the third floor? I wondered what happened to the fabled eastern hospitality. Why hadn’t I been offered a bowl of green tea, some Turkish delight, and baklava?
“Thanks,” I said and headed for the stairs without hearing a “You’re welcome.”
“The people around here still need some work,” I said to myself as I walked up the stairs. “So unsociable—very unlike the East. What happened to the effusive welcome for anyone walking through your door?”
“They’re all mute here,” said a voice from above me.
I looked up. An armored knight was standing on the third-floor landing, complete with a helmet under his arm and a cape slung over his shoulder.
“What do you mean?” I stopped and looked at him.
“Exactly that,” he explained. “All the hotel workers are mute; it’s their tradition. For some reason, the developers decided that everyone who works in caravanserais in the East—I mean, in the real-world East—are mute. They had their tongues cut out so they wouldn’t be able to give up anyone’s secrets. So, it’s the same way here.”
“That’s ridiculous,” I said sincerely. “I doubt that ever happened. Mute hotel workers are as much use as one-legged sprinters.”
“Ah, who cares? Mute, talking…” The knight waved his plate gauntlet around. “I couldn’t care less. By the way, let me introduce myself: Sophius, knight.”
“Hagen, warrior,” I responded, walking up to the knight and offering my hand.
He pulled the iron off his hand and shook mine.
“Where did you get here from?” asked Sophius politely.
“From the West, from Mettan. And you?”
“Oh, I’ve been here for maybe a month already. There are lots of quests, and I like the atmosphere. Makes you feel like you’re on one of the crusades.”
Got it, a role-player, doing a deep dive into his role as a knight. He was a hefty Level 86.
“Anything interesting?” I asked.
“Some,” the knight answered. “I haven’t found any secret quests, though they’re definitely here. They have to be.”
“What are the people like? I mean, ours—players.”
“All kinds, just like anywhere else.” Sophius, I was happy to note, was not in any hurry. “Lots of thieves, so keep your ears open. There are a lot of things for them to do here, plus the bazaar, which is the biggest in Rattermark, so they spend a lot of time leveling-up. There are plenty of killers and assassins, too, for the same reason. Oh, and there’s Atarin, a castle up in the cliffs a few days from here ruled by Hassan Ibn Kemal, who’s the spiritual leader of all the killers in the East. He gives assassins a quest that’s incredibly difficult and complex, though you get a really good class ability and named weapon if you can beat it. So, that’s why they stick around here.”
“Wow,” I said, impressed. It would have been interesting to go see the castle and Ibn Kemal himself, but what good would that have done me? It wasn’t my class, and I had other things to worry about.
“Yup. Okay, I imagine we’ll cross paths again. I’ll be here for another week.”
“Then we’ll definitely see each other,” I agreed. “Do you sweat in your armor? Isn’t the climate too hot to wear it?”
“Oh, no, I’m used to it,” said Sophius with a deep breath. “Though I have no idea how they wore all this in the real world. I’d die out in the sun.” The knight nodded to me and walked down the stairs, armor clanging as he went.
I walked into my room. Once there, I dropped the ticket in the chest and counted my money. It turned out there wasn’t much lef
t: about six thousand gold.
It was looking more and more like I had no business leaving the city gates at the level I was at. The first monster I came across would scatter my bones across the sand without thinking twice, not to mention whatever I might find when I got to where I was going. In other words, I had to do some leveling-up. I had two options: I could do some quests or I could farm some bots. Quests would have taken forever and sent me out into deserts and oases I wouldn’t survive, even if they would have given me a nice experience boost. That meant I had to go looking for some comrades in arms. The city was a big one, and I was sure that I could find a good group. It was a shame, of course, that I had to find a pickup team, but that was my only option.
I left the caravanserai and started monitoring the in-game chat to see who was putting groups together. There were quite a few players out there, but most of them were looking for a specific kind of person. Most wanted people who also had quests for some kind of obviously high-level named monsters. I decided to walk around the streets and try to collect some quests in the meantime, giving me something to do when I finally found a group. Oh, and I need to find some parchment for the Fladridge instructor. Quite some time had based, but I had given him my word, after all.
The city was enormous. It was perceptibly larger than Aegan, which was the biggest of the cities I’d seen in Fayroll. I spent half an hour walking around the streets, obviously without seeing half of it, and managed to collect seven quests. Most were your garden variety, like killing some kind of evil spirit or undead living in the desert, though for one, I needed to collect city guard weapons from a field not far from Selgar where the guard fought some bandits.
I also bought some parchment and saw a message pop up.
You completed a quest: Acquire Parchment.
You got parchment from the eastern end of the continent.
To get your reward, take it to instructor Serhio in Fladridge.
That active ability would be nice, but I was in no hurry to go back to Fladridge. Three thousand gold for portals there and back was a bit pricey, and walking, well… I decided to just hold off on that until the next time I happened to be back there.
The whole time all that was going on, I was reading the chat in the hopes of finding someone making a group. I had almost given up and decided to start my own group when a new message caught my eye.
Message from Merkutia
Making a group, 30+, for farming. Already have 5/8. Looking for: warrior, mage, druid.
Bingo! Some kind soul had heard my prayers and put together an eight-player group, and they even had five of the players already. The cherry on top was that they were looking for someone like me. I quickly sent a message to Merkutia saying that I was a Level 33 warrior, and a minute later, I received an invitation to join the group and a reply telling me where to go. I quickly headed in that direction.
By the time I got there, the group was already complete. Merkutia himself was the leader—a Level 50 barbarian.
“Okay, listen up,” he said, beginning his spiel. We were all there and glancing at each other appraisingly. “This is a pickup group, so we’re going to lay out the conditions right at the start. If anyone doesn’t like them, they’re free to leave. Is everyone listening?”
“We can hear you, Kaa!” a young mage girl named Ensen referred to the Jungle Book with a giggle.
The group smiled.
“Well, if you can hear me, I don’t want anyone telling me later that they couldn’t,” said Merkutia amiably. “All right, there are two conditions. The first is that I’m the leader and what I say goes. If I tell you to run, you run. If I tell you to stop, you stop. If anyone doesn’t listen, I’ll kick them out of the group without another word. Second, nobody leaves the group until the time we agree on is up. Questions?”
“Trophy distribution?” asked the healer—the only one in the group.
“Who Needs What,” answered Merkutia. “If we have any rats in the group, we’ll see soon enough.”
There wasn’t anything out of the ordinary there, though I wondered how he planned on punishing anyone who left the group early. The first point made sense—anyone who was kicked out of the group in the middle of the desert a ways away from the city would be in big trouble. But the second… But that wasn’t the only thing I found odd. Why did Merkutia, his fifty levels, and his very decent equipment need the trip? I wondered what he got out of taking some noobs out onto the sand. There had to be some reason. Incidentally, he reminded me of myself when I was giving it to my staff at the office the week before.
“How long will we be out there for?” asked Gilin, a dwarf with a giant axe on his back. I couldn’t tell how he was even standing upright it was so big.
“Five hours. If that’s not enough, we’ll stay out a little longer. But, five hours is the minimum, so make sure you’ll last that long,” answered Merkutia.
“That sounds fine,” I said, confirming my intention of joining them.
“No, that’s way too long,” said Ensen. She shook her head and left the group, followed shortly by one of the two hunters.
“That’s fine,” said Merkutia. They were soon replaced by a mage and a hunter.
“Okay, we leave in ten minutes,” shouted our fearless leader. “If anyone still needs to pick up quests, go for it. If you need food and potions, buy some. Just don’t be late; we won’t wait for you.”
Before we set off, I managed to get one more quest that had me collecting tokens left by nagas, a kind of local monster. If I remember correctly, they have a human body and the head of a snake, or maybe the other way around.
“Everyone ready?” asked Merkutia when the ten minutes were up.
“It looks like everyone is here,” boomed a big swordsman named Grinya who was standing next to me. He had a giant flame-bladed sword slung over his shoulder, and the blade was waving around dangerously close to me.
“You’re not going to prick me, are you?” I asked him tentatively.
“Why would you say that?” he answered. “I’ll be careful.”
“Is it hard to swing that thing around?”
“It’s fine,” said Grinya shortly.
I could see how one might clear out a whole crowd of enemies with a single swipe, but would they stand there waiting while you wound up? I pondered that question as our group started toward the exit from the city.
The giant with the sword wasn’t exactly talkative, though to be fair, I wasn’t asking him any questions. Instead, I was wondering if it might be a good idea to publish the Fayroll Times in Ukraine and Belarus. As we walked the streets of Selgar, I made out both languages. I’ll have to bring that up with the bosses. Carefully. You have to be careful when you suggest something to management. I remembered clearly the advice I’d been given by Sergeant Poletaev when I was still in the army: if you make a suggestion, you’ll be the one stuck doing it.
I was so lost in thought that I nearly didn’t notice when we left the city, and, at the same time, the headstone sitting there. Oh, wouldn’t that have been great: die out in the desert and find myself back in Montrig, complete with a nasty pixie and the city guard looking for me.
The group walked out the gate, and, by the time I’d linked to the headstone, I had to hurry to catch up. That earned me a reproachful look from Merkutia.
“Okay, we’ll start with those dunes.” Merkutia pointed to the east. “There are nagas there, so you’re in luck if you have a quest for their tokens. We’ll kill them for two hours and then go see the iblisi near the Gulkan Oasis.”
And off we went. Really, the only differences between clearing nagas on the dunes and killing skeletons in Grinvort were the people around me and the level: the first three nagas were all Level 35-36. Also, it turned out that they were humans with snake tails below the waist, and they were armed with two-handed sabers that looked something like zhanmadaos. All in all, a fearsome spectacle. Their heads were bald, lipless, and browless, and their pupils ran vertically. Not the kind
of thing you’d want to come up against in the dark.
They popped up from under the sand, hissing and waving their sabers around before slithering toward us. We had already assumed a formation. The three warriors, myself among them, were the tip of the spear. We had the two hunters behind us and on either side of the mage, and the last warrior was standing guard next to the hero farther back. Of the first three nagas, only one got to us. The other two were taken out by the hunters and mage.
I got a good amount experience from each of the nagas, not to mention the loot and the quest tokens. There was even an action.
You unlocked Snakeface, Level 1.
To get it, destroy 49 more nagas.
Reward:
+3% defense against poison
Title: Fearless Mongoose
To see similar messages, go to the Action section of the attribute window.
We kept going at a similar pace until we decided we were ready to take on larger groups. One of the lead trio would run out across the sand to trigger the nagas before sprinting back to their position. Twenty minutes later, we realized we’d slightly overestimated our abilities, as the healer had to quickly heal an archer who was badly wounded.
Right after that, I was promoted to Level 34, the group congratulated me, and I happily put on the poleyns I got at the temple. Then we got back to slaughtering the nagas.
The process was more boring than exhausting. It was like chopping wood or peeling potatoes, and I realized I was just raising and lowering my sword in a mechanical motion. We figured out exactly where the nagas would be coming from, and once that happened, we all lost interest. The only good part was that action and splitting up the loot (though, to be fair, I didn’t get lucky. I missed out on a nice helmet and a decent amulet.)
You unlocked Snakeface, Level 2.
To get it, destroy 149 more nagas.
Reward:
+5% chance of doing poison damage
30% of the poison damage you do is added to your health
To see similar messages, go to the Action section of the attribute window.
The Road East (Epic LitRPG Adventure - Book 2) (Fayroll) Page 20
