Chapter 84: Injury & Death (1/2)

For the first time, Jason walked past the one-star contracts in the jobs hall to the two-star notices further down. It was a much smaller section, and looking further he saw the solitary three-star noticeboard had no jobs at all.

Looking over the notices, most were regular monster hunts with some kind of complication. The most common was a requirement to avoid damaging whatever valuable thing the monster had chosen to nest in.

Jason frowned as he read a certain contract. He took it from the noticeboard and over to the desk manned by an Adventure Society functionary he didn’t recognise. The man looked over the contract, then up at Jason.

“You aren’t allowed to take this contract alone,” the man said. “You need a team; minimum three.”

“I have some people in mind,” Jason said.

In an Old City alleyway, two women struggled to move. One was unharmed but weighed down by the other, who was heavily injured. Her all-black outfit had long, bloody tears across the arms, legs and torso. The black mask that had originally obscured almost her entire head was ripped, with silver hair spilling out.

The uninjured woman was not strong but she was determined. With her friend draped over her, she kept moving forward. It was daytime, and the alley was close to the Broadstreet thoroughfare. They could encounter people at any moment.

“We have to stop this,” Belinda said. “It’s a miracle we haven’t been caught already.”

“We keep going,” Sophie said, her voice strained with the pain. “If we can play this out long enough, Ventress will be forced to show her hand. Once she does, that gives us options.”

“Do you not realise the condition you’re in right now? You can barely move!”

“But I can move,” Sophie said. “The Duke’s household guard laid a trap, but now we know to be ready. His bronze-rankers can fight, but they can’t chase worth a damn.”

“The Adventure Society has been pressuring the Duke to stay out of it,” Belinda said. “I haven’t been able to find out why, but it’s been good for us. That’s over, now. The complaints from his high-society friends must have outgrown his unwillingness to push back against the Adventure Society.”

“We plan around it,” Sophie said.

“Do you even understand how lucky you were to get out of there?”

“This time it was luck,” Sophie said. “Next time will be preparation.”

“Next time you’ll probably get killed.”

“The Duke getting involved buys us time,” Sophie said. “Ventress can’t accuse us of slacking if we take extra time to adapt. There’s only so blatant she can be about setting us up. Whatever she’s up to, she won’t burn her reputation to get it.”

“You do realise she’s not the only one trying to set us up now,” Belinda said. “The pressure is mounting and old friends aren’t as reliable as they used to be.”

They reached a solid metal gate in a high wall. Belinda leaned Sophie against the wall and cautiously pushed on the unlocked gate to peer inside. There were a handful of labourers in the yard, moving materials through a newly made hole in the wall to the yard next door.

“Those adventurers aren’t here,” she told Sophie, “but there’s some kind of construction happening. Just stay there, and I’ll go get him.”

She ducked inside the yard, the workers not even looking up as she walked past them and into the back of the clinic. She saw Jory escorting a patient out of his exam room.

“…just apply the salve every morning,” he was explaining, “and you shouldn’t have any trouble through the day.”

“Jory,” she called out to him.

“Belinda!”

Jory’s eyes lit up as he turned around, then narrowed on the blood staining her clothes. He quickly ushered the patient through a doorway.

“Janice,” he said through the door, “no new patients for the moment. No one is to come back here until I say otherwise, understood?”

He closed the door and rushed over to her.

“Are you hurt?” he asked.

“Not my blood,” she said. “Sophie is out back.”

“Show me.”

In an old city restaurant, Jason was served a dish of rice dumplings in the shape of a three-sided pyramid.

“They have this shape because of how they’re wrapped in the bamboo leaves to cook,” he said, picking up his chopsticks.

“I could never get the hang of chopsticks,” Humphrey said as the waiter placed bowls of dumpling soup in front of Humphrey and Clive. Cheap and easily-replaced chopsticks were the primary utensil in the delta and most of Old City, but Humphrey grew up with silverware. Jason had been amused to discover the most common utensil in the high-society was the spork.

They chatted lightly over their lunch. Their empty dishes were taken away and replaced with a tray of fried, sticky rice cake.

“So what did you really want to talk about?” Humphrey asked. “I’m guessing you didn’t just call us out for lunch, excellent as it was.”

“I have a contract,” Jason said. “Two-star. They won't let me take it without a minimum team of three.”

“Minimum team?” Clive asked. “That means the danger is either large or unknown.”

Humphrey’s face darkened.

“Unknown usually means it's killed an adventurer already,” he said.

“That's right,” Jason said. “A solo adventurer took a one-star contract for something called a marsh wyrm. The tracking on his badge recorded his death mid-afternoon, the day before yesterday.”

All three men looked soberly down. They were all adventurers, and even the less-active Clive knew that death was always a possibility.

“Alright, then,” Clive said. “So the job is to find the body and clear the monster?”

“Yeah, that’s the job,” Jason said. “Kill the monster and find the body. If nothing’s left, then we at least bring back the badge.”

“Not much to return to the family,” Humphrey said, “but better than nothing.”

“I looked up the marsh wyrm,” Jason said, “and whatever’s out there, I don’t think it’s that.”

“No surprise, there,” Humphrey said. “Monsters don’t always turn out to be what they’re reported as.”

“What does your ability say?” Clive asked Jason.

“It says the monster that killed him,” Jason said. “Which doesn't tell us what it is, but means there should only be the one.”

Quest: [Contract: Fallen Comrade]

An adventurer has fallen in the course of their duties. Complete their task and bring home their remains.

Objective: Eliminate the monster that killed your fellow adventurer 0/1.Objective: Retrieve the remains of your fellow adventurer 0/1.