The Axe Falls -CH11- (Patreon)

Nick decided to take a break and get his just rewards. In a flash he took out a small wooden chair that could fold up from his backpack.

Unfolding it he set it down to the ground and dropped into it. All around him was the gear he’d just spread out and would have to organize shortly.

“So, what’d we get?” he asked.

“Ah, yes, accepting the first reward,” said Lucian.

Quest complete!

Experience earned!

Gained 1,232! experience!

Congratulations!

You’ve leveled up!

You’ve leveled up!

You’ve leveled up!

You’ve leveled up!

You’ve leveled up!

You’ve leveled up!

You’ve leveled up!

You’ve leveled up!

You’ve leveled up!

You’ve leveled up!

You’ve leveled up!

You’ve leveled up!

“Holy shit, what the hell?” Nick asked aloud. The amount of experience well far beyond what he was expecting. Far beyond and an almost impossible amount.

“Yes, the amount isn’t quite right, Sire,” muttered Lucian. “That’s far too much for what we accomplished. I can only attribute it to the extra experience reward, though this seems in excess to me.

“I think the land itself is acting far too boldly. This isn’t something that should be happening. Not at all. I’m sure it paid a price to grant us so much.”

Almost feeling far too excited, Nick called up his status window.

“It… literally pushed us all the way to level seven. It took us nearly a month to do that much work back in the dungeon,” said Nick in a voice that was almost a complaint. “We could have… we could have just stayed in Ashcroft if it was going to do something like this. We wouldn’t have been that far behind everyone.”

“That’s a poor way to look at the situation,” countered Lucian immediately. “There’s no way of knowing it would have presented us with a quest that would be the equivalent of what it did. We could have remained in Ashcroft and gained nothing at all other than time being wasted.”

Sighing, Nick raised a hand and pressed it to his temple. Staring at the window in front of him he really didn’t know what to do with it.

He’d gotten what he wanted most, but he’d done it in a way that was entirely too out of the ordinary. Straight out of a place that would make him worry about what was to come next for him.

Whatever else was just around the bend.

“Al-alright. Alright, I… yeah. You’re not wrong. It’s just… a bit… a lot… to take in,” said Nick and then shook his head. “Okay. Let’s go to the next piece, I guess. The skill rewards, right?”

“Indeed, accepting the skill rewards,” Lucian said.

Quest complete!

Reward gained: Skill upgrade available!

“Uhh, it didn’t give me a list of skills,” said Nick, still waiting. Hoping that something more was coming. Something that would tell him what he’d gained.

“No, it did not. It would seem that we’ll need to seek out a Skill Doctor to learn what we received,” Lucian said and then sighed. “I think we’ll need to wait on that for a while. There’s no way we can truly know if we can trust Doctor Palt. Having him look into the skills would most certainly confirm his suspicions.”

“Shit,” grumbled Nick, looking down to his boots. “At least we unlocked them, I guess. Even if we can’t access them yet, we can at least keep to the thought that they’re there.”

“Indeed. A silver lining to the dark cloud,” agreed Lucian. “Now… we should probably get to work. There’s a lot to get done if we’re going to establish ourselves here.”

“More work,” Nick said with a smirk.

***

Pausing in his task, Nick let the hand-saw stop.

“Lucian, aren’t we spreading ourselves too thin?” he asked, looking up at the clear blue sky above them. “I feel like we had a goal, then jumped to another, and now a third. We’re just running around, aren’t we?”

“Not at all, Sire. Each time we’ve shifted focus it’s because we met our goal, or partially met our goal,” said Lucian. “We reached Ashcroft, that was a goal.

“We established a presence there, or at least one that can be pointed to later. Especially after having met Erica. That was a goal or partial goal depending on how you look at it.”

“You mean other than the fact that the land still wants me to kill her,” said Nick, starting to work the saw back and forth again. “Still in my quest log.”

“Other than that, yes,” agreed Lucian. “Besides, I think that quest might change in the future depending on how things turn out. If she were to join our cause, the quest might change from killing her to impregnating her.

“You do still need an heir after all, and putting one in a Fash descendant would most definitely help stabilize any royal concerns.”

Nick raised his eyebrows at that as the tree started to creak and pop.

Quest updated!

Plunge it in: Kill or Impregnate Erica Fash!

Groaning, Nick rolled his eyes even as the tree he’d cut down toppled.

“Seriously? Really, Gramps?” Nick asked. “You know it hears you, too. Why give it ideas? I’m not really even interested in Erica. She’s not bad looking but… not my type.”

“Well, you’re going to have to figure out your type soon enough,” Lucian said after a small delay. “You’ll need an heir soon enough. And I’m sorry, I didn’t… I didn’t think it was listening at all times. Though, that’s certainly a better quest to have than just killing her.

“It does also mean that we can negotiate, does it not? If we disagree with a quest we can attempt to change things. Move a little one way or another.”

Grabbing the fallen tree Nick began to carry it back to his camp. It’d only been three days since he started but he was making headway on putting together a log-cabin. Lucian was the architect and designer of the home while Nick just did the work dictated to him.

He didn’t mind it at all.

If anything, it was nice having an older male figure helping him along with this. He had no idea what to do otherwise.

“Is Sara more your type?” Lucian asked.

“I mean… yeah? I want someone with a lot in the chest and a good face. So yeah, Sara fits a lot better,” admitted Nick. Thinking about the Elf reminded Nick distinctly about the fact that he hadn’t enjoyed the opposite sex in a while now. “Remind me to buy some company next time we go to Ashcroft.”

“That would be inadvisable,” said Lucian in a dry tone. “When we go back to Ashcroft we should ask Sara out again. She never actually said no to you, she didn’t even respond. If she declined, that’d be one thing. Saying nothing though?”

Nick shook his head. He didn’t want to think about that very much. He’d rather pay for company by the hour rather than fret over getting into Sara’s bed.

Thinking with his privates when attempting to romance a woman had never done him any favors previously. He doubted it would now.

“Ah! Fucker, what’re you doing? You know there’s nothing there for you,” shouted Nick as he got closer to his camp.

The large fisher was rooting around in his campfire. Attempting to find anything it could of what might be Nick’s leftovers.

“I already gave you everything I didn’t eat, Fucker. You got all the fish bones this morning and the bits I didn’t want last night, remember?” chastised Nick. Dropping the large tree next to the semi-built cabin he came over to where the fisher was.

Looking up at him it let out a soft huff that sounded like a complaint.

It didn’t back down, run away, or move. Staring Nick down, it was as aggressive and bold as ever.

Even the local wolves avoided Nick and wanted no part of him. Nor did the single black bear he’d come across that’d high-tailed it out of there as soon as he yelled at it.

“What?” asked Nick in a loud voice.

The fisher merely stared back at him.

“You want me to go catch another fish and give you the head, organs, and bones again?” asked Nick. “Do I look like your keeper?”

The fisher yet still only stared back at him.

“Sire, I assure you, it doesn’t understand you. It’s a-”

Darting forward the fisher grabbed Nick’s fishing rod and began casually strutting off toward the river. Looking very much like it was going to go fishing by itself.

“Or… ah… hum. Maybe it’s possible to establish a familiar bond with it since we’re a Caster,” amended Lucian as the creature continued to move away.

“A familiar bond with Fucker?” Nick asked aloud.

As if hearing him, the fisher turned and looked at Nick. It let out a little chuffing noise and started moving off again.

Except Nick had the distinct impression that the fisher had agreed with his statement. The idea of a familiar bond with him seemed ridiculous. As if the fisher were just as unimpressed with the idea as he was.

Hm.

After a moment of thought, Nick chased after the fisher. He had his fishing rod after all and that was the only fishing gear he had.

Several hours later, and successfully wrestling his fishing rod from the fisher, Nick couldn’t do anything more. He was at an impasse he couldn’t solve by himself.

Sitting in his chair, he was staring at the ground as he collected his thoughts.

His saw blade had just broken, the axe he used to chop out sections of the logs was quite dull and he had no whetstone to sharpen it. It’d broken yesterday when he’d dropped it and managed to step on it in looking for it.

Finally, he’d run out of food. Nick had severely underestimated how much food he’d need.

While fishing did provide for him, it didn’t provide enough. The simple reality was he needed to make a trip to Dayton and pick up more supplies.

The time needed to be spent on the cabin was making it impossible for him to do anything else. All of his time was spent working on said cabin or getting materials for it.

It’d taken far longer than he’d expected to find as much as he needed for the chinking between the logs.

Nor did it help that Nick actually didn’t know how to really hunt or trap.

“Hey, let’s try out that Outer World trading thingie,” Nick said, looking up from the ground. “They might have a saw blade, whet stone, and food, right?”

“I… yes. There is all manner of things available to be purchased,” answered Lucian. “Though we should talk about it before we truly delve into it.”

“Yeah, yeah, tell me all about it Gramps,” Nick said, dragging his backpack over. Reaching into it he drew out the Outer World Ledger.

Looking at it, it had the appearance of a perfectly normal black leather folio. Nothing out of the ordinary and something he’d seen many people carrying in Ashcroft.

“It’s… well, it’s essentially dimensional magic,” explained Lucian as Nick put the binder on his knees. “A magician ripped open a dimensional portal to another world, thinking it was another continent. After he realized what he’d done, he opened a business.

“Tearing open multiple dimensional portals to a vast number of worlds he set up a magical exchange between them all. It can only be accessed by ledgers like the one you’re holding now. To get one takes a great deal of wealth to begin with.

“Though… there’s a great many of them out there now. Not all of them are with their original owners of course so theres no telling what we can buy or sell any longer.”

“Sell?” Nick asked opening the ledger.

The first page was odd looking. It was just a simple black lined box.

Flipping to the next page Nick found it was a sea of words.

Line after line all crammed ontop of one another with what looked to be a title, and then a price.

“Yes, sell. For now, go back to the first page. Take out a charcoal stick and write into the box what you’re looking for,” Lucian directed. “It’ll take you to the page that holds the item you wrote. If it doesn’t do anything, that means the searched for item isn’t in the ledger.”

“Strange,” murmured Nick. “And how does this… magician… make profit on this?”

“He takes a cut of anything sold,” Lucian said in an offhand tone. “So only the seller pays a fee. Encourages buyers. We can sell anything, really. Even the terrible gear we took from the bandits or meat we’ve taken from monsters or dungeon creatures.”

Nick closed the ledge and flicked it back into his backpack.

“Fuck that, we’ll just go into town for now,” he said. He didn’t want to do with something else right now. He felt like he was still barely scrambling to keep thing son the right track. The last thing he wanted to do was to add this ledger into the mix.

Getting up to his feet, Nick began to pack away everything in his camp back into his backpack. It was time to head back to Dayton.

“What? But… it isn’t even that complicated. At the least we should comb through it to see what is currently in demand,” argued Lucian. “For all we know, others are in desperate need of wood, Sire.

“We have a great deal of coin, but it will go quickly once we start buying things from the ledger. If we were only to use on purchases what we made in sales, that would keep our budget quite clean and tidy, Sire.”

Sighing, Nick hung his head.

He couldn’t argue with Lucian as he knew he was right.

“Okay, fine,” Nick consented and then went back to his pack. Reaching into it he pulled out the ledger once again. Sitting down in the chair, he put the folio on his knees. “What do you want me to do, Gramps?”

“Let’s start with simple things. We’ll check things that are easy for us to acquire and could gain a surplus of, Sire,” advised Lucian. “Wood, grain, steel swords, shovels, things of that nature. If there’s a lack in a different world, or location, that’d be where we try to make our profits.

“At least, until we can find something unique, rare, or uncommon to sell and work with. It wouldn’t be a terrible idea to visit a high-grade store and see if there’s any comparative prices we can abuse.”

“That’d work?” Nick asked, picking a charcoal stick out of his pack and opening the ledger to the first page. He slowly wrote in “steel sword” into the box.

“I know for a fact that your ancestors often did it. They would raid a dungeon with their companions, sell it on the dimensional market, then split the proceeds, Sire,” Lucian confirmed. “I imagine even your father did the same with whatever he could scrounge up. Likely how he purchased things he didn’t want others to know about, as well.”

Nick suddenly remembered how his father often managed to get foodstuffs that most certainly shouldn’t have been available to them. That even in their dark corner of the kingdom his father managed to always provide his son with whatever it was he truly wanted.

With a grunt since he didn’t trust his voice Nick watched as the ledger began to flip through the pages it held. Though it seemed as if there couldn’t have been enough in the ledger to cover how many it flipped through.

Magical indeed.

The page it ended up on had a great many listed items on it that all had “steel sword” in the name. The prices listed were all what he expected to see for such weapons. Though a great many were even higher than that.

“Swords are out,” Nick said and flipped the ledger back to the front.

Going through each and every term Lucian had suggested to him, Nick worked quietly. Each and every search resulted in finding a market that was well and truly filled.

There was nothing he looked into that didn’t have an already filled market.

“Well, doesn’t seem like we’ll have an easy to sell product,” Nick said and closed the ledger. Leaning forward he dropped it into his backpack and then shut it once again.

“No, that unfortunately does seem to be the case, Sire. While I expected it, I did hope for better news. We’d be foolish to bank on such an unlikely thing, but it never hurts to make sure it isn’t possible.

“One shouldn’t depend on luck, but it never hurts to make sure one isn’t lucky.”

Smirking, Nick rolled his eyes at that but just accepted it for what it was. He couldn’t fault Lucian for the thought.

Only a fool wouldn’t check a purse they found to see if it had any coins in it. This was much the same.

“Alright, let’s head into town and pick up some supplies,” murmured Nick. “With any luck, we can get this all taken care of soon and head back to Ashcroft. The others should have already reached their promotion by this point. They said they were planning on going to another dungeon entirely and starting from floor one again.”

“In other words, it’s safe to come out of hiding because they’re probably gone,” remarked Lucian with a heavy sigh.

From the corner of his eyes, Nick spotted something heading his way.

Faster than he could expect came the fisher. No sooner than it reached Nick than it spun around put its rear end toward him. Then it promptly emptied its bowels right there and ran off. Letting out a light snuffling noise as it went.

“You little shit! You’re getting more and more annoying Fucker!” yelled Nick at the retreating fisher. Getting up he considered taking something and throwing it at the little bastard. “Imma kill you and eat you, Fucker!”