Novaris: Adventure in the Shattered Fang Continent

Novaris. Quattur. 905. AGC.

Nodel. Last Quarter 🌗. Day 24.

“Tesilim! What did you do!?” Lili and Alyx shouted in unison.

Tesilim, ignoring them, grabbed the pizza off his face and gave it a good look. It was a bacon and pepperoni pizza. He hadn't had one in a while, so enjoying the nice sunshine on his skin and taking a deep breath, he bit into it.

Pizza was raining from the sky around them and was a view to be admired. The rain stopped after a minute, but that was enough to cover the immediate area in pizza. There was pizza on trees, brushes, mushrooms, dirt and grass. And considering they were in a mushroom forest they were all technically mushroom pizzas. Tesilim just hoped the creatures in the environment wouldn't become addicted to pizza, as Tesilim doubted they would eat it again. However, even worse was the fact that the pizzas might somehow merge into some sort of pizza elemental—that realization caused Tesilim's eyes to go wide as he inspected the surroundings for any odd movements.

There was none, well, other than Alyx and Lili eating some of the pizza themselves. Some cleaning promptly followed this as pizzas began going into their pouch and bag of holding.

“Pretty good, right?” Tesilim asked his two companions, who glared at him but were held back by the delicious meal in their mouths. Offended by their glares, Tesilim yelled back, “Hey! You're welcome! Also, save some for me, too!”

After doing some minor pizza clean-up, Tesilim, with help from his two companions, began collecting the mushrooms from the wolves. As they did so, he received some commentary about his latest fight.

“Good job on the fight. We got to work on your reaction time, but otherwise, it wasn't bad for your first beast encounter.” Lili said proudly.

“Yeah, good job. Honestly, that weapon of yours is rather nice. Especially since it will help you approach combat through different methods. We do have to teach you some more spells, though, but slow and steady.” Alyx commented.

“Thanks! I did well because I had great teachers.” Tesilim answered as he ripped the last mushroom from the wolf and then heard the jingle.

🔷 Crystal Notice 🔷

Quest: Wolves Wearing Mushrooms updated. 25/25 Mushrooms collected.

🔷

After reading the notification, he told his companions they could stop, but they just looked at him, looked at each other, and continued collecting them as they took turns explaining.

“Tesilim, just because the request calls for a certain amount or weight, or otherwise, doesn't mean you collect that. If you do, then you are just leaving stuff to waste behind,” Alyx said, motioning at the rest of the mushrooms on the wolves.

“Yeah. Also, you can sell everything else. You know, these wolf mushrooms can be used for a variety of different things. They are decent ingredients to make wolf transformation potions, spore antidotes, and werewolf blockers.” Lili mentioned helpfully, though Tesilim only heard werewolf and transformation and ignored everything in between as he imagined turning into a badass werewolf.

After collecting the mushrooms, Alyx spoke an incantation Tesilim did not understand, and a deep white pool appeared under the stack of wolf bodies. The bodies slowly sank into it while Tesilim watched in amazement, throwing a questioning look at Alyx after the bodies disappeared.

“It's a spatial storage spell of sorts. You won't be able to do it until C Rank at the earliest.” The Crystal-eyed Gnome answered smugly.

“What the hell! Why can you do it then!?” Tesilim yelled, annoyed.

Alyx answered in a sarcastic voice while pointing at himself. “Chosen of two gods, remember?”

“This is bullshit. Stupid gods. Stupid clerics. Stupid chosen.” Tesilim murmured as he kicked some mushrooms about.

After storing away the bodies, the party headed back to the city. There, they quickly turned in the mushrooms, and Tesilim got his goal complete notification, increasing his chaos points by one. Additionally, Alyx and Lili were incredibly nice and let him keep the 50g reward.

However, they were going to split the gold for selling the wolf bodies and, to some extent, the potions Lili was going to make. Tesilim insisted he needed a werewolf potion and was rudely shut down as he was informed there wasn't such a thing that he would instead just get a regular but a bit expensive wolf transformation potion. And, of course, he agreed. Alyx, for his part, didn't need the gold as he was apparently a prince of sorts. Instead, he just wanted to keep studying Tesilim’s peculiarities. Naturally, Tesilim agreed, especially after Alyx said Tesilim could have his share of the gold.

From there on, they sent the wolf bodies to a butcher, who happily paid five gold per wolf body. So, in total, Tesilim made 70 gold that day, and the first thing he was going to do was move out of the Badger Inn.

Canopies Nest was a nice inn inside of a huge tree or better said, the inn was a huge tree. Its thick and massive branches extended into the sky as its canopy covered a rather large area. The tree wasn't as big as the adventurer’s guild, but it was still one of the largest Tesilim had seen in the city. The trunk was filled with glass windows and a few balconies. These balcony windows slowly descended down the trunk until they met the tree's thick base. The base had nice double doors on its front, but Tesilim could see the roof of a structure extending from its back. The tree and its branches also had hanging vines with little bulbs on them that Tesilim would come to find out were little glowing fruits that gave the tree a real fey, magical-like wonder at night.

Entering the inn through its double doors that seemed to get bigger as Tesilim and his companions got closer they quickly found themselves in a nice-looking lobby. The lobby was way bigger than it should have been, and based on how the corners went blurry through the edges of Tesilim's vision, the room's space was definitely being messed with.

Still, the place had a nice-looking carpet that Tesilim believed to be an incredibly well-groomed lawn of the highest quality. The walls were, of course, bark and were smoothed to a nice tan-like color, just like the inside of a tree might have. Decorating the walls were various paintings, plants, and shelves that were carved directly out of the bark. Also barely noticeable were rings around the entire trunk or at least the part of it that also extended up into the dome-like ceiling.

Populating the rest of the lobby were more grown chairs with beautiful emerald green cushions with beautiful golden embroideries. Additionally, there were also grown coffee tables to accompany the chairs, with each table having a beautiful bouquet of flowers growing from its center. Also important to mention was that the chairs and tables were not made of roots but did start as such. The roots did eventually meld into good looking and polished wood.

Finally, the lovely, polished counter was also grown from the floor like the rest of the furniture. The counter was a decent size and resembled any counter that could be found at a tavern, well, except it was better kept. Behind the rather empty counter was a satyr who was smiling widely in Tesilim's direction. The satyr had green fur for pants, a rather handsome face with two ram-like horns, a goatee, and luscious hair.

Just as Tesilim was going to speak up, the satyr spoke up, his voice smooth and calm.

“You forgot to smell.”

“What?” Tesilim responded with confusion on his face.

“I love seeing new people take in the lobby. It is always a treat. However, they always forget to smell. Go on.” The satyr answered back.

A bit confused but with nothing to lose, Tesilim inhaled deeply as he smelled what could be described as spring in a pine forest. The smell was fresh and not too strong, and it felt like it cleaned out his nostrils.

Seeing Tesilim breathe in, the satyr spoke up once more.

“Nice to meet you. My name is Grover. Welcome to Canopies Nest. How can I help you?”

“Uh, hi Grover, I am Tesilim. I was told this was the best inn in town and wanted to come get a room.”

“You’re are darn right it is!” Grover said with a grin and evident pride. “So, how long are you planning to stay?”

“Not sure, how much per night?” Tesilim asked.

“Depends on the room you want to stay in. Our basic room is one gold per night; then from there, it goes to three gold for one with a bathroom and five gold per night for our suite.”

“That's a bit more expensive than I thought,” Tesilim answered as he began questioning his decision to move to the best inn in town.

“Well, with the basic room, you get three meals a day, access to our bathrooms, and other amenities such as laundry service. From there, the upgrade to intermediate gives you your own bathroom and a bigger room. Finally, the last one is a much larger room with everything and anything included inside.” Grover answered, breaking down the rooms.

Tesilim was honestly hooked. He had 70 gold, which would last him for a month or two by itself since he didn’t need to buy food and drinks. Also, it's not like he was going to stop doing quests. So, knowing he would have a steady income, he handed over 30 gold pieces to Grover, who just smiled in turn as the gold disappeared.

Grover then made a wooden token appear. The token was decorated with an image of the inn's tree, and as Tesilim watched, it multiplied into five round wooden tokens. Grover then told Teslim to infuse some of his mana into a token, and after doing so, the token glowed slightly green as a T1 appeared on its empty side.

“So, that's the master token. After activating one of the other four, I advise you to leave it in your room. The master token is used to give or revoke access to the other four tokens. That way, you can give your silent friends here access to your room.” Grover paused, motioning at Lili and Alyx before continuing, “Or you know any other friends you might want to bring.” The satyr said while winking at Tesilim.

Smiling at the Satyr while also side-eyeing Lili for any reaction, Tesilim continued the conversation as Lili seemed lost in thought. “Okay, so how do I get to my room?”

Also smiling back at him, Grover pointed at the coffee tables in the lobby before explaining. “You will find a small round outline on the tables; simply tap the token to the circle and will yourself to head to your room. Once there, you will have a list of the various rooms in the inn next to a circle on the wall that you can use to teleport around.”

“That's fucking cool!” Tesilim answered as he walked towards the nearest coffee table before hearing Alyx fake clear his throat behind him.

“Oh, right. My bad.” Tesilim said before quickly giving access to two tokens and handing them over to Lili and Alyx, who infused mana into them. Then he tapped the token to the circle on the table and felt a tug before disappearing in the blink of an eye and appearing in his room.

Much like the lobby, the room he appeared in had wooden smooth bark walls with rings on them. The wall was also adorned with paintings and shelves, though the shelves were relatively empty in this case, only holding one or two potted plants.

Tesilim had appeared in a small half-circle room that connected to a small hallway that then gave way to a hotel-looking room with one large bed at its center. Much like the floor, the bed was green, except unlike the grass-like lawn floor, it was the emerald green of the plush seats in the lobby. Additionally, the room had two small nightstands on each side of the bed and a few larger drawers in a corner. The room also had a study table and some chairs that, like with everything else in the room, were actually grown from the floor.

Everything was made of wood and looked nice and polished with its lovely nature carvings of plants and leaves. Additionally, veering away from the small hallway was a doorway that led to a small closet. Finally, there was indeed a circle at the half-circle room with a map next to it listing a dining, bath, exercise, laundry, and spa rooms.

Looking around the room, Tesilim noticed it was lit by a soft, glowing light on its oval roof, along with a small round window that let in some sunlight. Also, like the lobby, it smelled of nature.

After inspecting the room, Tesilim saw the half a circle area flash twice as Lili and Alyx teleported in, both looking around at his new place.

“Pretty nice, right!?” Tesilim asked with excitement.

“Yeah, not bad at all,” Lili mentioned.

“Eh, it's alright,” commented Alyx, causing a vine to grow out of the wall and smack him on the head before disappearing.

“Ow! Yeah, it's a nice room. Jeez.” The gnome spoke to the air as Tesilim watched the walls wide-eyed.