Cass went about the rest of his day before showering and changing. Exiting his rooms, there was an extra pep in his step as he moseyed down to the Entrance Hall for his meetup with Rina and Orla.

  Rina was again dressed nicely, though this time in a green dress cut just a little high on the thigh. Orla, on the other hand, was still in her regular clothes, but the grin on her face told him something went right.

  “I’ve got the charter!” She waved a long, rolled-up paper through the air as Jim heard and shouted his encouragement from nearby. “We’re officially an enterprise, bitches! I just need you both to sign next to your names, then it’s all set.”

  Rina signed second, as Orla’s signature was already in place. As her borrowed pen left the paper, her eyes became glassy for a moment before she and the Merchant hugged. Cass thought they were just happy to get things started, so after spending a long moment reading the document, he signed.

  A buzz rippled through his body before his progression screen forced itself into his vision.

  [QUESTWRIGHT CALLING UPGRADE UNLOCKED]

  QuestWright Cassio Vale of Liora

  With two others, you have begun the long road of starting an enterprise.

  By signing your name, you have agreed to help lift up those under your employ and treat all who work for you with equanimity.

  The first stones are laid not in soil, but in trust. The System watches…and rewards.

  —

  QuestWright Path: Enterprise

  A path designed for QuestWrights who lead enterprises and organizations through formally recognized charters. Unlocks abilities that enhance cohesion, interpersonal situations, and member productivity.

  Cost to unlock: 300xp

  Warning: Dissolution of the connected charter will disallow Cassio Vale from using any unlocked nodes until a new enterprise has risen.

  [SYSTEM NOTICE]

  Your Common Solutions reputation has increased by 100

  “Huh…”

  “Get something special over there, Cass?” Orla asked with a knowing grin. “Because I sure did! What did your path description say?”

  “Something about member productivity.”

  “Pscch, figures. Mine’s all about profits! MORE PROFITS!” She gave her second maniacal laugh on the same day, only stopping because of a brief coughing fit after it went on for too long.

  Rina shook her head, “Mine talked about output. It seems that the System has an idea of what all of us should be doing.” She pointed at Orla, “Money.” Then Cass, “People,” then to herself, “Materials. Every part of an enterprise; divided into three ways.”

  Cass groaned as they started walking to Cullings, “But I’m already going to be managing the first floor of the Registry.”

  Orla’s laugh felt mocking, “What? You thought you’d just be giving out Quests? While that’s something that will push our enterprise up faster than others who’ve just started, it’s not enough for your percentage. Hell, our first profit was from a small box of nails. Nails. I overheard Joey’s talking about needing some and sprang into action. You could say…I nailed it.”

  Cass groaned again, but this time for a wholly different reason.

  The walk to Cullings was fast. Situated just outside of downtown Liora, it was placed a little to the south amidst a cluster of restaurants called Deli-Row. Why they’d decided to put a bar in the middle, he wasn’t sure, but it always seemed to have the right amount of people in it. Never too many to be uncomfortable, or so few as to seem deserted.

  When they entered, the eyes of the place latched on to them, but only Rina kept them. The high-cut and tightness of her dress drew enough attention that Cass felt second-hand nervousness from it.

  When they sat down at a table and made their order with a smiling barmaid, he asked, “You wore a purple dress last night, and now this…um…green one. What do I not know?”

  Rina blushed, “Can’t a girl dress up?”

  Orla coughed, “Holt.”

  When the leatherworker didn’t respond to that, it fairly confirmed it for the table.

  Instead of pushing, Cass side-stepped the conversation. Seeing the barmaid already approaching with their order, he said, “My dad told me the other day that there used to be drinking laws.”

  Orla received hers first, knocking back a long draw from her beer, she said, “What? Did you have to drink every day?”

  “No,” Cass shook his head, “That only people of a certain age were allowed to.”

  Rina took a dainty sip, careful not to spill any on her dress. “Do you know what the age limit was?"

  "No," Cass said with a shake of his head, "But the way my father phrased it, the limit was probably even older than we are now."

  Rina shook her head, "How does that make sense? We have people with Combat Callings fighting monsters as young as fifteen. They can die to a monster, but they can’t have a beer?”

  “I don’t pretend to understand them,” Cass replied after a hearty drain of his own. “It’s just something he told me.”

  They spoke for a few more moments before the big topic of the day stepped in. Common Solutions wasn’t going to run exactly the way the System had intended. It could try to arrange things as much as it wanted, but that didn’t make it practical.

  Cass would be in charge of Quests, interviewing applicants interested in joining their small group, as well as resolving interpersonal issues. He was not enthused.

  Rina was in charge of general recruitment, as she was the most familiar with the trades, as well as material acquisitions and overall production output. As for Orla, she was all about sales and deals as she loudly proclaimed to the room.

  “Sales and Deals!”

  Though Common Solutions was on a slight hold as Rina had to wait for them to finish their classes, that didn’t stop the three from diving deep into their drinks. Their celebration moved late into the night, far past the moon rising to its zenith and the room slowly emptying.

  The trio wasn’t the last to leave, but they were close to it. Orla was expounding on tight economic efficiency in the marketplace when Cass felt a funny itch strike between his shoulders. After a few more steps, another itch struck him, along with something vague.

  Though he didn’t want to ruin the celebratory mood of the evening, the feeling just wasn’t going away. “Hold on a second,” He called out to his partners, not quite knowing why he was doing it. “There’s something weird going on here.”

  “Weird how?” Orla asked.

  “I don’t know. It’s like…you ever get that feeling you’re being watched, but you can’t tell from where?”

  “Nope,” Rina said with a shake of the head.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  “Not at all,” Orla confirmed. “Is this one of those odd Vale things I’ve heard people talk about? Like your sister's proclivity to chew raw pieces of Iron?”

  “She doesn’t…actually, she might do that,” Cass said, prepared to let it go. But just as he was about to turn around, the feeling struck him again. Pulling up his mental map of Liora, he knew the region just beyond Cullings had a nickname.

  The school zone.

  Cass felt his pulse quicken at the thought of something nefarious happening where children would be located only hours later. Though it could’ve just been nothing, he didn’t want to chance it.

  “I think I need to check this out.”

  Rina and Orla shared a look and a shrug as they followed him a few steps behind.

  Moving quietly, his eyes roamed every inch of the location as he tried to locate the source of his discomfort. Orla watched him take a step to the side before righting himself.

  “Do you know where you’re going?” She asked in a too-loud voice.

  “Kind of,” Cass replied much more quietly, “I’ve only seen a lot of the places in Liora on my System map. This is all kind of new for me.”

  Rina picked up on the mood as she whispered, “Haven’t you ever walked around Liora? I thought you were born here?”

  “I was, but my parents never really let me leave Company land. We’d go to the Grounds every so often, but most of my life was spent with the GoldenCrowns. My parents weren’t big on me wandering around.”

  “Eesh, and I thought my family was rough,” Orla replied, again too loudly.

  Cass thought she might’ve had too much to drink, but any further thought on the matter was stopped the moment he heard something fall in a building on the far right. When he stopped moving, so too did the two girls behind him.

  “It could’ve been a rat.” Rina whispered, “Or maybe someone is working late.”

  “At a school?” Orla whispered back, finally understanding that this was a precarious situation. “No teacher stays late at a school. Those kids burn them out.”

  That vague feeling intensified until he finally understood what it was.

  “Run!” He yelled out as three creatures pinging his monster sense erupted through the thin walls just a short distance away. Throwing his bag on the ground, Cass mentally cursed himself for not having his knife ready before they walked into an ambush.

  Orla took a few steps away, but Rina stopped and cried out as something blurred by. A quick look as Cass dumped his bag on the ground showed an extended cut across one of the leatherworker’s thighs, the previously green dress now holding a splash of red. She fell to the ground as Orla came back for her.

  No! I brought them here!

  Just beyond them, Cass heard something.

  Chirp, Chirp.

  Grabbing his knife, he whipped it out and moved to cover the two girls. If his hatchet had already been ready, he wouldn’t have had to fight so close to the creatures, but fate or circumstance always had its own prerogative.

  As he grew close, something knocked into his back, throwing him to the ground. Moving into one of the rolls Dev taught him, Cass popped back up and spun around just as the creature leaped for his face.

  Twisting to the side, he brought the ever-sharp knife under its stomach and braced the arm with his other hand. A tearing sound told him he’d hit the mark as the creature whined, its guts spilled across the ground as it flopped over.

  Waving away the notification, he looked back at the two girls and found Orla hitting one with her bag as it continuously tried to leap at them. Just beyond Orla was another, its flat feet braced back in a stance Cass knew well. With no thought to his own safety, he dashed as fast as he could to place himself between them.

  Three fast steps and a leap got him there barely in time as the Scrounger latched onto his arm rather than Orla’s back. He felt the double burn of pain as the monster tore into his skin while his passive ability attempted to heal him at the same time. Bashing it against a nearby stone foundation didn’t loosen its grip as it tore in again and again, a scream burning from the back of his throat.

  Keep moving!

  Unable to angle the blade of his knife into the creature, Cass did the next best thing. He leaped forward and tackled the monster battling the quickly wearying Orla. With two monsters to deal with, Cass plunged his knife into the skull of the first, still shocked by his surprise attack.

  Throwing the knife to Orla as he blinked past the pain, Cass yelled, “Catch! Stab it!”

  Orla fumblingly grabbed it, then plunged the blade into the creature without hesitation. The tip of the blade scraped against Cass’s bone enough that he involuntarily screamed again, but at least the skin of his arm wasn’t being shredded anymore. When he finally managed to pry the dead creature off, bits of mangled flesh and gnawed-on bone met his eyes.

  Cass collapsed to the ground as his legs refused to hold him up. With shaky hands but a clear voice, he said, “You two okay?”

  Rina was still sobbing, but she held up a thumb. Orla, covered in sweat, looked him over as she spoke quietly, “She’s okay, just trauma, I think. You, on the other hand, are going back to the infirmary, I’m afraid.”

  “I’ll be fine,” Cass replied as he felt the familiar burn of healing on full throttle.

  “No! Look at your arm, Cass! You’re all torn up!”

  She was right. Hiding what had happened might not be possible, especially with so much blood around an area that would be occupied in only half a dozen hours. But he needed to keep his unique path secret.

  The Guildmaster’s private warning wasn’t the only reason for his hiding it. It was also instinct.

  Cass had been raised in a household and Company that weren’t exactly trustful of outsiders. While he didn’t fully buy into the need to keep people at arm's length, childhood memories were powerful enough to shape you, no matter your wishes. Add in the fact that his family didn’t want him fighting, that he had an Administrative Calling rather than one for Combat, and that he was the first QuestWright in however many years, it was best to keep things under wraps.

  Not to mention, there was too much about the world he didn’t know. Already, people spoke about his fight with the Skreels as if it were luck, and he wanted to keep it that way. If his family or the Guild learned that he was in another fight only a little over a week later, they might try to start watching his movements.

  They might try to lock him down, so the first QuestWright in Liora for far too long wouldn’t be in danger. Cass refused to let others dictate how he should live his life.

  He grabbed her hand, forcing her eyes to meet his own, “I’ll be fine. Don’t tell anyone I was injured, please.”

  “Why? You saved us.”

  “And you saved me,” Cass said with genuine thanks in his voice. As he moved to stand and did his best to ignore the fire that was his arm, his monster sense told him they weren’t done yet. As soon as he got upright, he looked at Orla, “Grab her and get her the hell out of here.”

  Orla’s eyes went wide as she too looked in the direction of the holes in the wall. She glanced back at the crying Rina, “How?’

  “Drag her if you have to, just go.”

  He looked toward the dark holes the Scroungers had come from.

  “This one’s bigger.”

  Orienting himself and squinting through the pain, Cass focused as Orla dragged Rina away with quiet grunts. Then his ability gave him another shock. There wasn’t one more coming, but two.

  Without a sound, two long legs exited the holes.

  Cass felt his lip curl, “Skreels.”

  They both screeched loud enough to silence everything in the area before they tore off at him. Cass braced himself, bending his knees and making sure he was in balance as they came. But that turned out to be unnecessary as a sword cleaved one in half at the same time as an arrow took the other in the jaw.

  The one that took the arrow was about to get up when Cass’s knife finished the job. Wanting to be certain, he pumped his arm twice more before stopping at the blank look in the creature’s eyes.

  “Ooof, bit of bloodthirst on you, young Vale. It seems QuestWright should not have been the Calling you’d taken.”

  “I don’t like Skreels.” He knew that voice, “Hello, Carter. How did you know?” Pulling the knife out, he slid it across the creature's skin and stood up in a light stumble.

  The mustached man was leaning against a wall with one leg crossed over the other, “Tier Three monster sense. We felt it out by the grounds, but we were the first to get here. Johann, have you ever heard of Scroungers and Skreels making it this far into Liora?”

  A large man in tight leather shook his head, a pommel sticking out behind his back, “Can’t say that I have. It’s dark times upon us all.”

  Cass took a stumbling step forward, intent on checking in with Rina and Orla.

  In a blink, Carter was in front of him, forcing him to stop. “You alright, kid?”

  Cass brushed some hair away from his face. I’m going to need a haircut soon.

  Not knowing where that thought had come from, he looked the leader of the Fabulous Five in the eye. “Yeah, I’m fine.” An idea took hold that might stave off problems later. “Hey, do you guys mind taking the credit for everything that happened here?”

  They both looked around, spotting the three Scroungers across the area, “You sure?” The swordsman asked, “I killed one, but you and your friends took down four.”

  “Three and a half, surely,” Carter said with a smile. He glanced at Cass, “I bet the Council will give you a bounty for that.”

  “I don’t want it,” Cass said with a shake of his head, “I’d rather everyone just forgets I was here in the first place. Just say Orla and Rina were beset by monsters, and you two got here in time. It’s what’s best for everyone involved.”

  The two men looked at each other and seemed to come to some unspoken agreement. Carter looked back at him, “Sure, kid. I won’t ask why you don’t want your name out there, but I can respect it. We’ll keep your secret.”

  “Thank you.” Cass walked off into the night, leaving them behind for the accolades. He didn’t need people to know that he’d fought, and he especially didn’t want them to know that he’d been injured. Because as he took his steps into the forlorn darkness, the wound on his arm continued to rapidly heal.

  By the time he extracted promises from Rina and Orla that they’d keep his fighting secret and had made it back to his room, the darkness of the evening swallowed him whole.