Control Comes from Within

The journey back to the city was uneventful. I kept the deer in what I was referring to as my ‘beast space’. I wasn’t seen leaving the city with a tamed beast, and it’d put me in an awkward position if I came back with one so soon after I left. The beast space wasn’t a feature of the taming spell, and if I was seen banishing and summoning my tamed beasts at will, I had a feeling I’d be locked up in a lab somewhere and tortured, or maybe just dissected, so people could figure out how to exploit or obtain that ability.

I waited in line to enter the city, the guards just watching the waves of people coming and going. I needed to turn in the berries and complete my task, but I also needed to report to someone about the vorander that showed up in the forest.

I decided it was better to turn in the berries first; maybe they needed to be used while still relatively fresh? I power-walked down the main road, entering the Society building. It seemed that the morning rush was almost over, as most people were either at the task board or the counter. I tried to avoid the little scuffles going on between a few stragglers, then waited in line for the counter.

Finally, I reached the counter and turned in the basket of berries and the piece of paper with the task information. The worker recognized the basket, and said he had to reclaim it and verify the contents before marking the task as complete.

I nodded in understanding, and he went to a side room taking the basket and task paper with him. I stood to the side so other people could do their business. After a few minutes, he came back and verified everything was correct. Then he handed me the reward, three squares, and said I could use the basket the next time I took another collection task.

Now for the awkward part.

I then told him how I saw a vorander in the forest while I was doing the task. The shock on his face as I said the word vorander was almost…comical. I might have laughed if I didn’t think I was gonna die a short while ago. He brought me behind the counter and told me to tell him what happened, leaving nothing out.

Now, obviously, I couldn’t tell the whole truth. I omitted the parts about me taming it and the deer accidentally. Instead, I said the vorander came out of nowhere and the deer killed it before running off, and that I froze before running off after it died. I didn’t leave out anything else. I told him where I saw it, roughly what time it was, and what it looked like. Anything I thought could be relevant.

He told me that normally, dangerous tasks pay better than safe ones, but the vorander showing up was a rare occurrence, and so I wouldn’t be compensated, as the poster had no idea of knowing beforehand. He’d report it to the guards who would investigate soon and said the guards might look for me if they had additional questions. And just like that, barring any questioning from the guards, the incident was over.

I can’t believe that’s it. I thought it would be a bigger deal, a vorander appearing extremely close to a city. But after ages of dealing with them, the locals probably had procedures in place to handle these types of situations.

So, I had done what I needed to do. Now I had some time before I needed to go to the restaurant where I’d be working in the afternoon and evening. I didn’t smell bad enough to warrant taking another bath, so I just decided to check out the location of the restaurant. Better to spend some time now getting familiar with the route there, than arriving late cause I got lost.

On the way there, while I checked the location of the restaurant on the task sheet, I figured I could afford better, less Earth-like clothes, now that I had some confidence in my ability to earn regular money. Right now when people saw me, they saw a slightly overweight guy covered in a black robe in what was probably mid-summer. Granted, other people were wearing robes, but they usually had theirs open, showing whatever clothes they wore underneath.

So I headed to a tailor recommended by Ennin. It was on a side road, away from the west gate and the area of the city with the bathhouse and inns. This seemed like a mercantile district, offering goods of all kinds. The smell of various spices hit me as I passed by the open door of one shop. A group of ladies were seated outside a bakery, chattering away while eating pastries and sipping tea. I heard the clang of metal on metal, as I walked past an actual blacksmith, a store full of weapons and armor attached to what I assumed was his forge.

For now, clothes were the priority, despite the childish part of me that wanted to look at every single storefront. I noticed the tailor shop Ennin mentioned was empty of customers, which didn’t bode well for the shop’s wares. I went in anyways, if not to buy anything, then to at least check the prices, when I noticed that there were no readymade clothes available. Anywhere. There were just rolls of different materials in myriad colors.

There were samples of the styles of clothing that could be made, but they were images. Magic photographs of various styles and colors on a collection of clothes rotated on the store’s walls like some kind of slideshow.

A worker came out and after I inquired how long it would take, he informed me that fitting for a set of clothes could take up to two hours, and the clothes themselves wouldn’t be ready for two or three days.

I probably didn’t have two hours, so it seemed like getting new clothes would have to wait a bit. I bid farewell to the employee, then made my way to the restaurant where I’d be working.

The scut work at the restaurant was simple but boring. Peeling vegetables, cleaning tables and chairs, taking the trash, which they held in cloth bags, to a nearby public incinerator, which was officially supposed to be powered by a team of fire mages, but in reality, everything ran off of an essence stone. The owner was nice enough to give us a dinner break around sunset, so that helped. Also, I didn’t have to do any actual service work, like interacting with diners, so there were a few silver linings.

At the end of the night, I got my requisite signature from the owner, marking my task as complete and satisfactory. I wondered if the Society was even open at this hour, and decided to check just in case. To my alarm, it was open, if understaffed. I turned in the task and received my reward, six squares. I was too tired to worry about whether the job was worth it or not, and just made my way to my inn, where I collapsed onto the bed, falling asleep in minutes.

I developed a routine that I stuck to over the course of the week: wake up before sunrise so I wouldn’t be mobbed by workmen in the morning melee fighting over tasks, take a bath, do as many tasks as I could in a day within reason, then collapse in bed. I got my meals when I could, and I found out that having essence in my body minimized the amount of food I needed to function properly.

I could lift heavy boxes all day and be sweating and panting, but not be hungry in the slightest. It was a blessing and a curse. Just one more thing I would need to adjust to, in this new world.

On the weekend, when I woke up, I did my meditative breathing exercise which improved my essence. I believed essence was stored in the body somewhere, and doing the breathing exercise enhanced some aspect of it. Maybe my total capacity was increasing, or maybe the rate at which I could regenerate essence after expending it (on spells) was going up. In any case, I felt that the exercise was improving me in some fashion, so I kept at it.

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Finally, the day I was looking forward to arrived.

I stood in front of the Workman’s Society building, showing up only after the morning melee was over. I was taking a break from working today, having netted a decent sum over the past few days, and in need of some mental relaxation. On the door of the Society building was a notice stuck to it that said, ‘For details regarding enrollment to the Academy, inquire inside with a worker.’

There were less people inside than I would have thought. The morning melee was over, explaining the low number of workers, but surely some other civilians would be eager to join the academy, no? Knowledge is power, and all that?

Evidently, there was a good reason for the low number of people interested in enrolling. I asked one of the workers about the academy enrollment, and he gave me a slip of paper half the size of task sheets, each side just under half a meter.

In a style of calligraphy that seemed overly formal to me, the details about enrolling for the academy were written neatly. And while the brushwork was aesthetically pleasing, the contents it revealed were…less so.

At least the accepted age range for applicants was somewhat logical, fourteen to nineteen.

But the affinity test, which determined what magical affinities one had, cost three triangles?

Registration for new students cost two triangles?!

Room and board was five triangles, and food and drink cost seven triangles!

And tuition fees for every year cost eight circles for commoners! And for every tier of nobility, the price increased by one circle.

There was a postscript under the section detailing fees that said commoners could accept sponsorship from nobles. So what, nobles paid the fees for commoners, and the commoners after graduating repaid that debt by…working for the nobles? Yeah, no. I had thankfully managed to escape the quagmire of student loans in my world, and I wasn’t gonna actively endorse that here. Though I could see how the locals might accept those terms, if there were no other options.

At the bottom of the paper was the time and place where the registration for new students would take place: the city center, in the first week of spring. Which was ten months from now.

Well, at least I had enough time to raise the funds. Hopefully.

I was standing as still as a statue in the Society building, shocked by the cost of everything. And I noted that, while the cost of the things listed were exorbitantly high, at least from my perspective, there were also likely to be things that I needed which were not listed. Equipment. Clothing. Supplies. All things that I would need to account for.

Totalling everything up, and adding a generous amount as a safety net, the amount I needed that I considered safe was…fifteen, maybe sixteen circles. Of which I had three.

So I needed to earn thirteen circles in ten months. The pessimistic side of me did the math and converted that to 8,320 squares. In just ten months. Averaging eight hundred squares a month, or twenty every single day?

Was that even possible?

It was a good thing I had already bought some of the things I needed: clothes, boots, a pencil and notebooks (quills were too expensive), even my own personal basket for collection tasks. Taking into account my already minimal expenses, I wouldn’t be able to spend much on other luxuries. In fact, I vowed not to spend more than was absolutely necessary.

My plans to take the day off collapsed in the face of this new information, and I needed as much money as I could get. The morning melee was over, which meant all the good tasks were taken. Sighing out loud, I checked the task board anyways, seeing if there was anything left I could do.

To my surprise, there was.

And while I was now desperate for money, I didn’t know how it would be perceived that I had taken the lone task that nobody else wanted to do.

I grabbed the task sheet off the board and headed to the counter. I placed the sheet on the counter and asked one of the workers if there was anything I needed to know about it. She looked at the task, then looked at me, her eyes wide as she went back and forth multiple times.

“You’re really going to do this?” she asked incredulously.

“Sigh, I need the money.” I responded.

“But, do you really need it that much? You’re willing to do this? I mean, the poster has been waiting for someone to accept the task for a while now, even though they’re increased the reward multiple times, but, well, there’s a reason nobody has taken it. Can you…handle it?” Her voice was full of concern, and disbelief.

“I don’t really have a choice. It pays well, right?” I said.

“Yes, it pays well. But there’s always a chance something could go wrong! It might affect you for the rest of your life! And you’re certain you have to do this?” I just nodded. “I hate that I’m saying this, but it’s official policy, and I have to. The Society will not be held responsible for any negative effects resulting from performing this task. Just, take care of yourself, alright?” she finished.

I took the task sheet back from her hands, and made my way to my next job:

Acting as a test subject for experimental, untested potions and concoctions.