Kara was waiting in the Annex when he got there, and she wasn’t alone. Standing beside her was the same man Cass had spoken with on his last visit to the Foundry.
“Thomas Moore, right?”
He nodded, “Excellent memory, Mr. Vale. But then again, you would have to have one to be worth anything as a QuestWright.”
“Mr. Moore is here to help you, Cass,” Kara said in a soft voice. “He’ll be helping you manage the first floor of the Quest Registry.”
Something in the way she said his name told Cass to pay close attention. He’d only heard her use that tone when talking about Master Greeves and the Guildmaster so far, and certainly never a Clerk. If he was important enough that she spoke softly about him, Cass had to wonder…just who was this guy?
“Nice to meet you, Mr. Moore, for a second time.”
Kara spared him a nervous look. “Guildmaster Hollis asked him to come here as a special favor.”
“And it was a favor repaid, in fact. I owed him from a time before.” Moore said without taking his eyes off Cass. “But that’s only one part of the reason I’m here. After all, every QuestWright needs a Clerk.”
“Sir, you’re hardly a Cler-”
“That’ll be enough, Kara,” he interrupted her, his tone unchanged but definitive. “I can take over the Guild Trainers' duties while inside the Registry. You are free to go about the rest of your day.”
“Yes, sir.” Kara bowed her head a little and left right there. If he wanted a display of the man’s authority, that was enough to fill him to the brim.
That was weird. Cass stood a little straighter. If this guy is going to be my Clerk, or whatever he is, then I need to act my part.
That thought was immediately dashed as the man gave an order, “Sit down and let's take a look at your templates.”
Before he knew it, Cass was sitting, and the ledger was in front of him.
What the hell?
“Now, why do you think the Annex exists? After all, you have your own remote System Map. You don’t need to come here every day to hand out Quests.”
Cass thought on it, the previous moment falling to the back of his mind as he considered things. “Because nobody can see the System Map except me? So, how could you help if you can’t view what I’m working on?”
“Very good.” Even though he said that, his expression never changed. “The Head Clerk of a middling city’s Quest Registry is normally a Tier 3. But with my addition to the Liora Guildhall, I’ll be taking over all operations for the time being. But do not worry. I’ll be spending most of my time with you.”
Yay?
Staring at the screen, Moore asked Cass to change it to each subset of Quest types he’d unlocked, one after another. After he’d stared at the Training screen for several moments, he stepped away and came back with a chair, placing it beside Cass’s own.
“We have a lot of work to do, but there are a few things we must go over first. So here’s the first real question I have for you…” He paused, steepling his fingers as he leaned back slightly in his chair. It went on long enough that Cass felt a small bit of sweat break out on his neck. When he finally spoke, it felt like a hammer shattering the silence, “What do you want from Liora?”
“Sorry?” Cass asked, confused by the question.
“You’re a QuestWright, with a great amount of power at your fingertips. Council members get voted in and out. Consortia rise and fall. But QuestWright is a Calling. You can be fired, do not doubt that, but the odds of it, especially when compared to the city's needs, are low. You would have to make a tremendous and costly mistake for that to occur. So the real question becomes, what are you going to do with that kind of influence, and what impact will that have on the city you were raised in?”
“I…when you say influence?”
“Not of the sword or the coin,” Moore said, with a slash of his hand. “But real power. The kind many dream of. The world is lucky. Most who receive the QuestWright Calling are benevolent, doling out their assignments to those who deserve them. However, the oldest ones like the Sovereign, well understand what the real currency of the world is after the Reshaping. Experience. And you, my young friend, have a monopoly on it.”
I think I know where he’s going with this.
“I won’t hand out Quests for money,” Cass said with a shake of his head. “And I won’t give them to people just for experience if it doesn’t fulfill something the city needs.”
Moore remained unfazed, “Good, because I wouldn’t ask you to. But now that you’re about to be in charge of the Tier 1 floor, you need to consider who should have your help. Liora has over 100,000 citizens. If you count the outlying region and our satellite locations, you can more than double that amount. And each has their own needs, demands, emergencies, and aspirations. So I ask you again, what do you want from Liora?”
“I…”
Moore cut him off again, “Don’t answer now, just think about it. Also, I don’t want you to hand out any Guild Quests today, just skip the fieldwork class. I’ll have Gerald take them for you, and feel free to continue with the personal ones that Kara informed me of. But you need to consider not only what kind of QuestWright you want to be, but who deserves the Quests you create. Think on it, please.”
Standing up, he walked away without looking back. Left behind, a flummoxed Cass sat alone, the weight of those questions holding him to his chair as if he were anchored to it.
“This day is way too heavy.” Cass groaned. He struggled with the question Moore had asked him for the rest of the block. Even as he sat through lunch and the classes that followed, his mind kept going back to it. When the fieldwork block arrived, Cass got Rina’s location from Orla and headed that way.
They’d taken her to a local infirmary with good standing in the community. The moment he walked in, she gave him a light smile. “Hey, Cass.”
He closed the door behind him. “Hey, Rina.” Giving her a lopsided smile, he asked, “How’re you feeling?”
“Believe it or not, but I’ve been worse.” Lifting the side of the gown they had her in, she showed off a long scar along the lower part of her ribs, “My father worked in a sawmill, and I was just a little too curious as a kid.”
“Oof, sounds rough.” He didn’t sit, as that somehow felt wrong to him. Instead, he moved a little closer to the bed. “Look, I’m sorry-”
“No.” She interrupted, “I already knew how you were going to react to this, and I know what you’re going to say. It’s a screwed up world we live in, Cass.”
“But-”
“Can you honestly stand there and tell me that you knew, without a doubt, that monsters were hiding in that school?”
People are interrupting me a lot today. Because she asked for honesty, he considered it for a beat, then shook his head, “No.”
“Then it’s not your fault. In fact, I should thank you.” She reached out a hand, which Cass took as he stepped closer. She looked up at him with liquid eyes and a light trembling to her voice, “Thank you, Cassio Vale. You saved my life.”
Cass didn’t know how to respond to that, and when he didn’t speak for a long moment, she let go of his hand and laughed, “Man, you and Holt have a lot more in common than you think.”
“I’m more handsome,” Cass said, a small smile breaking out on his face for the first time that day.
“That’s debatable.”
They spoke for a short time before he said he needed to leave.
“Cass, don’t worry. I’m not going to tell anyone about how you almost single-handedly killed three of those things. Nor how you’re standing in front of me, healthy as can be.”
“Three and a half.”
She smirked at him, “Still, you don’t have to worry.”
“Thank you,” And he meant it. Before he left, he had one more question to ask her. “Hey, if you had the power to change Liora, what would you do?”
She canted her head to the side, “Change it how?”
“I don’t know,” He shrugged, “For the better.”
“Oh…” She thought about it for only a moment, “That’s a hard question. If you’d asked me a week ago, I’d have told you that everyone deserves a more equal shot at opportunity. We’re supposed to be rebuilding this world after the Reshaping, but from what I know of history, we’re just settling back into the old ways. Now, after all of this,” She gestured around the room. “I’d say we need thicker walls and roaming guard patrols within the city.”
He left it there, mentally chewing on what she’d said. Still ignoring the new architecture books waiting for him, Cass walked for a long minute until he found the Entrance Hall, a happy Jim waving at him while chewing on a pastry.
‘How would I change things? Well, that’s simple. I want everyone to be happy. The world’s hard enough. We need some crystal clear moments of levity and laughter to brighten up that darkness.”
Next, he found Pellin. The System Engineer was working on one of the Rings, a common focus for him lately.
“I want us to advance. There’s so much you can do with the System, but we’re barely touching the tip of things. This iceberg needs to be rolled over.”
Kara was in the Atrium.
“We need to expand. Monsters are everywhere right now. We can’t even send anyone on satellite deliveries without a huge escort. Things are dangerous. I’d say we need better-trained teams, ready to go out there and clear the ruffage.”
The notification for his next class came in, but Cass ignored it. He understood what that meant, as well as the idea that what he was doing right now was Foundational. Hollis and his instructors would understand after he explained things.
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Finding a grassy hill just outside, Cass sat down and finally opened his notifications.
[SYSTEM NOTICE]
12 Quests completed:
Total xp gained: 12.1
Total System reputation gained: 16
Total Liora Guildhall reputation gained: 3
Details can be found in your Quest Ledger.
—
You have slain 2 monsters
You have gained partial credit for slaying 2 monsters
Total XP gained: +70.0
Bonus experience granted for slaying a mixed monster pack:
40xp
Bonus experience granted for assisting all party members in surviving an ambush:
10xp
Combat-adjacent Achievement progress: 4/10
Tactician Achievement progress: 2/10
Your System Reputation has increased by 12:
New quest options are available:
View your System Ledger for unlockable options…
You’ve gained four Survivor Tokens…
—
That was a lot to take in. As the screen began to fade, only to be replaced with another automatically, Cass reflected on the changes.
What’s going to happen when I hit the halfway point for the combat achievements? And how the hell did I get Survivor Tokens? Then it hit him. Four tokens, four monsters…but that seems like it’s actually pushing me to go after monsters. Wouldn’t that be against the Survivor Path’s purpose?
Though it was a lot of experience, he didn’t get the same giddy feeling that came with purely completed Quests. This experience came from blood.
The screen crystallized.
[SYSTEM NOTICE- TITLE UPGRADED]
Your title [Speedy Leveler] has upgraded to [Rapid Riser]
Upgrade unlocked for reaching Level 5 in less than a month of receiving your Calling
+5 bonus experience granted for every five completed Quests
Upgradeable
Note: Modified per Calling
As soon as that registered in his mind, his main node appeared.
Calling: QuestWright Initiate: Cassio Vale
Level: 4->5
Experience Accrued: 704.69
Experience required for the next level: 295.31
Unspent experience: 404.69
Total Stalwart Tokens: 2
Total Survivor Tokens: 15
Cass couldn’t help laughing to himself, “A QuestWright, getting the greater part of his experience from killing Monsters. How does this world make any sense?”
But of course, nobody could answer that for him. As he already had too many things to focus on right now, he shuffled any stray thoughts into the back of his mind and settled himself. It was time to unlock his first standard path.
Cass pushed the view out, looking at the multitude of paths before him. Tactician was still fuzzy, as were Resolution and Expansion. They wouldn’t reveal themselves until further paths were unlocked.
“Sorry, Kara.”
But Inspection, Logistics, and the new Enterprise option were up for grabs. Cass could afford both Inspection and Logistics, or Enterprise alone. One thing stopped his hand from tapping on his newest path and spending his hard-earned experience. The first choice he’d ever made had been Survivor, and while it was quickly paying for itself, it was a non-standard choice that didn’t truly affect the QuestWright Calling.
It only affected him.
As for Enterprise, it could undoubtedly be useful, but it was also a non-standard choice. It wouldn’t make sense to select the path now when he still hadn’t unlocked a single choice for his actual Calling. That left only two, and the mysteries they held.
Inspection still said the same thing. It was about evaluating candidates, and would increase his match precision and reduce inefficiency, supposedly related to who the Questor was. Logistics, on the other hand, was a focus on goods, resources, and civic management.
Because Cass had never chosen a standard path before, he wasn’t sure what to expect. Although Survivor used Tokens to advance, there was no reason to think that Logistics or Inspection would do the same. If he went with both and they used a shared currency to advance, then unlocking them simultaneously would hamstring what he gained.
But it would also show Cass what to expect and allow him to better plan out his future. That was what mattered most now. Planning. Structure.
Before he made his decision, he reflected again on what Mr. Moore had said. What did he want from Liora? Rather than only pulling from himself, Cass built an amalgamation in his mind of all those he had spoken to. Each had their own dreams of Liora, so why couldn’t his enmesh theirs as well?
“I want…progress. I want clean streets and smiling faces. Expansion, and joy, and safety. And laughter, that doesn’t feel like it’s borrowed. I want a city that’s physically as great as all the citizens that fill its space. I want the dream of what Liora can be to be realized. I want it all.” He let out a breath, smiling at a world he could almost see, but not touch. “And I guess that starts with a few smart decisions and a mountain of paperwork. But first, I have a choice to make.”
Should he just dive into both?
After all, why couldn’t he? It seemed like the smart decision. The right choice. However, all he would get was a vision of the future, rather than immediate gains. It was a conundrum. The present, or the potential future. Never before had such a simple choice weighed on him this much. Inspection and Logistics, or only one, and the possibility of a few choices that followed?
He didn’t have to decide right away. He could just unlock one, take a look, and make his decision then. But the choice of which to go with first stymied him.
He focused on Inspection first.
The Path of Inspection:
A line of development focused on refining how candidates are evaluated and assigned.
Unlocks abilities that increase match precision and reduce inefficiency.
Cost to unlock: 200xp
Because he didn’t know what lay within, he searched his feelings. Inspection felt like…people. Like he would be diving into a path that helped him choose the right person for the right task.
Recognizing that, he pulled up Logistics next.
The Path of Logistics:
A line of development focused on goods, resources, and civic management.
Unlocks tools that grant the QuestWright increased understanding of supplies and crafting methods.
Cost to unlock: 200xp
Logistics…Logistics felt like…motion. Like the kind of scaffolding you would build cities on. It had a sense of planning and control.
I could use a bit of control right now. Cass thought to himself.
So, in the end, Cass went with his feelings on the matter rather than pure logic. Eyes roaming back and forth between the two, he went with his first big decision, and the irony of how he chose it wasn’t lost on him.
[SYSTEM ALERT]
Are you certain that you would like to unlock the Logistics Path?
Once taken, the experience spent cannot be recouped.
Proceed?
[Yes] [No]
Cass finalized his choice.
[Path Confirmed: Logistics]
The screen turned blue as the node lifted up, then shattered. Long, straight lines pushed out from the remnants before doubling back again. But they didn’t stop like they had for Survivor. Instead, they began to criss-cross each other, creating a patchwork of interconnected lines populated by smaller and larger nodes spread across their entirety.
Text didn’t appear with fire as he’d seen with his first path unlock. One moment it wasn’t there, then it was.
–Logistics Unlocked–
There are 5 major nodes on this path.
There are 18 minor nodes on this path.
Automatically gain the Copy ability.
Copy: Once per day, copy any Quest without it counting against your daily total.
Upgradeable
Already, he saw the value in the Copy ability.
It’s designed to stimulate developing Routine Quests.
Just that one ability, with its upgradeable quality, would pay for itself once he took over the Registry’s first floor.
Where before a single node had appeared, Cass now found a sea of them. And what was even more interesting was that some had lines firing out, connecting to the first path he’d unlocked.
He shifted the screen until it focused on it.
[Minor Node: Stalwart Logistics]
Even in crisis, the route holds.
Cost to unlock: 50xp
During city-wide events or disruptions, Quests gain partial immunity to penalties.
Successful completions during high-strain periods grant an additional +1 System Reputation.
No nodes currently connect to Stalwart Logistics
“So they play off of each other…” Cass stared at the screen, moving it over to the first Major node on the path.
[Major Node: Waypoint]
It glowed golden, lighting the way for all who need succor.
Cost to unlock: 200xp
Selection unlocks the Heatmap Overlay
Passive ability: The QuestWright’s System Map will now have a filtering option, presenting any logistical problems occurring in real-time.
Selection unlocks the Questor Waypoint
Active ability: Upon assignment, Questors will now have the option to activate a System-generated Waypoint marker visible on their personal screen. The marker identifies the primary location for quest fulfillment, but does not adjust if the objective is mobile.
No nodes currently connect to Waypoint
“Influence...” Everything Mr. Moore had said suddenly came into stark clarity. “This is going to take some planning…”
Cass roamed the entire path, his eyes traveling the breadth of his soon-to-come future. While there was a good chance Inspection would grant him an ability like this one had, it would also delay his chance to unlock Waypoint early.
He wanted that major node. It wasn’t just another perk, it was an immediate upgrade to every Quest he ever again assigned. An addition to being one of Cass’s “Questors”. A built-in feature that would help people fulfill their objectives, making their assignment all the easier to complete.
So he made his second decision.
Inspection might come with another ability, but by choosing it, he would delay the road to his first major node by stepping off into the unknown. But that didn’t mean he would forget the other, easily unlocked path. It would stay there, within reach, the moment he felt he’d gotten a great amount of benefits from Logistics. He knew it was important to unlock, but it would have to wait until he gained more experience in a lump sum.
Settling on his plan, Cass began to internalize the entirety of his first standard path. It was time to unlock a few nodes.
