Victor

  Good mooorning, Caradon! If you didn't hear that in the voice of a legendary comical actor, then you are wrong! Guess what? I'm officially an adventurer now, well, by the definition of this world anyway. I kinda was one in my old world, always going places I'd never been, going camping, getting into mischief, that sort of thing; plus my grandfather took me all over the world, and, well where do you think I got the habit of travelling from? Obviously we didn't have magic, monsters and elf princesses; it's the little differences, said John to Samuel.

  But now it's not only official, I have a little magic trinket holding all kinds of information about me. I don't think the people of this world have any idea what they have on their hands with this little device dangling around my neck - it's terrifying. I could think of a few ways pattern magic could be used by bad actors, so I was fixin' to keep my mouth shut!

  I say good morning but a new day hadn't actually dawned. It was still the same morning albeit later therein, from when we'd set out from Tor Anaura. By the way, receptionist Juliette gave me a breakdown of my existing skills and even suggested a job classification should I choose to pursue training thereof.

  "Mister Kirkland, I am pleased to inform you that with your skill set, you have all of the makings of a ranger!"

  From what I understood, a ranger in this world referred to a type of adventurer skilled in traversing wild country. Basically, a sort of advanced type capable of doing more than merely swinging a sword around. They were typically lightly armored to support a skirmishing fighting style. For weapons they usually favored light blades - short swords, fighting knives and the like - and also bows.

  The impression I got from the classification system is a bit like how Roman Gladiators had different names depending on their fighting style. Honestly ranger seemed to suit me; after all, my favorite team was called the Rangers, and of course who didn't think the ranger from that famous trilogy was cool? But more than that, I mean, come on: ranger practically screamed American frontiersman!

  Miss Juliette brought out a sheet full of information and went over it with me, "you're a capable tracker, possess wilderness survival skills, knowledgeable about plants and animals, superb marksmanship, good at brawling and using a light blade, quite athletic with above average strength, agility, and stamina. Your base mana reserves are average, but it ought to be enough for your purposes."

  The thought of learning magic hadn't occurred to me, but then the receptionist mentioned that rangers often learn nature and wildlife magic, plus utility spells from other disciplines. "Learnin some magic is a neat idea but I'd like to become a better fighter first." After all, I'd already spent, um, ten rounds? Er, one to show off the weapon for the princess, six at the farmhouse, one to demo for Val, one to let Val try it himself, and one in a wind magic experiment, yeah, that was it.

  Point is, I'd run out of ammo eventually so I needed to become better at fighting the way people did here. But the absolute coolest thing about ranger training is that they teach you how to gain the service of a companion animal that gets smarter and tougher the stronger your bond is! There's a nature magic ritual and everything for it - man, that alone had me damn near sold on the idea!

  She nodded, "well you're a ways away from that - you'll start out classified as a fighting-man until you qualify for specialist training - well not that you couldn't start learning from a tutor now of course. But I'd suggest learning how to use a shield at the very least, and familiarizing yourself with armor; I suggest consulting with an armorer on what would work best for someone of your build and fighting style - a full suit of plate might be too much for you."

  I crossed my arms, "yeah I don't reckon I'd be able to drive very well in that."

  The princess giggled, "it would be funny though, could we have you sit in the driver's seat wearing that getup some time?"

  I sighed, "how could I resist a royal command, delivered through a pair of bright green eyes sparkling like that?" I mean that literally, elf irises friggin sparkle when they get excited. Well, at least hers did, maybe it's a girl thing? It didn't happen to anyone else that I could recall.

  The princess grinned wickedly, the receptionist continued, "but this is by no means set in stone - anyone can learn to use any sort of weapon, but you've already acquired a fair bit of skill over the years. I think that you might make iron in no time!"

  I nodded, "so how do we go about recruiting other people anyway?"

  "Ask around, usually. Eager newbodies like to mingle in the tavern area seeking new friends to travel with. The tavern is open to non-guild members too, incidentally, so it's also a bit of a recruiting hub for us."

  "All right then, thank you kindly for all the help!" I rose to my feet, turned to the princess, and gave a polite bow "so shall we consult the board for our first quest, lady healer of Red Lightning?"

  She stood up and curtsied, "why, that is a most splendid idea, lord fighting-man of Red Lightning!"

  Presently we headed over to that enormous message board where various jobs were posted. Just look at all these! Something. But guild rules prohibited us from going any higher than iron since our party only had two members. If we had a full party of four to five, we could have tried to go after a tin quest. A group of six to eight wood-ranks, called a large party, could go up to copper. Eight was the max, and there weren't any prohibitions on doing lower-ranked quests either but it was generally considered polite to wait until someone who could use the practice grabbed it, or form an alliance; that's when two or more parties teamed up in case it wasn't obvious.

  Basically, the more powerful guys would sign on as mentors and show the weaker guys the ropes - and the guild even gives them a cash bonus for doing so. It should also be noted that guard duty and deliveries were dependent on the known danger and distance, so their rank had a broad range. But for now, we were sort of laying low and couldn't form alliances or anything of that nature, so we really only had the iron and wood quests to pick from.

  The wood rank quests were mostly menial tasks, painting houses, babysitting gigs, eww I don't even want to know what a sewerjack is. What is this a temp agency or what? Like do people just dump all jobs people don't have the manpower for on the adventurer's guild? Well, I moved along to the iron ranked quests next; ah this was more like it. Let's see here:

  Investigate potential orc war party sighting near Haroldhill; confirmation of orc's existence with proof pays one five silver helms, eradication of the same orcs shall pay instead five gold crowns for completion plus an additional silver helm for each orc head returned. This was posted by the knight-captain of the Cara military, in other words, a member of the queen's court. Despite paying well it was too risky, as the knight-captain was a suspect. Even if he wasn't the culprit, doing any quests that touched the court had the potential of derailing our counter strategy.

  Precious cargo delivery to the Grimdark Forest, great name. The objective was to bring some metal ingots to a village within the woods and return with their payment. The princess vetoed this one; I'd have to ask about why later. Well it's fine, I was trying to save gas and the further out we travelled the old fashioned way the less time we would have to prepare; this forest seemed a tidy way away but was still within Cara, well at least the village was. Yeah too far away to be worth it by car, and too time consuming to do it by horse.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  This one though was marked as urgent, and had actually just been put up a moment ago. Well color me intrigued, so I checked out the details: yes. This one suits us well, so, yoink! With our first quest secured and all of the necessary paperwork done, we skipped and jumped back to the inn where we conducted a strategy meeting. This involved us plopping down with the map in front of us, drinking an afternoon coffee, and discussing our plans.

  "According to Hanzo's map," I said, indicating a road which had been overlaid in red ink, "the ambush is going to happen on this route, somewhere where the road runs along the base of a hill leading into some kind of narrow passage. This section circled here indicates the most likely stretch of road. We might have a stakeout on our hands."

  "What is a stakeout?"

  "It's where we lie in wait for our enemy to show up, assess their strength, then plan accordingly" I smiled, "which of course means we'll need fresh meat for grilling while we wait and plenty of coffee. They'll probably have a camp somewhere if they aren't sallying out of a nearby stronghold."

  "Then what?"

  "Then we make our plan of attack - I won't know what shape this plan's gonna take but I reckon I'll figure something out. That is why we gotta be patient and wait."

  The princess smiled, "immovable as the mountain, right?"

  I nodded, "that's right. But speakin' of the art of war - I realize that I don't know your strengths that well. I mean I know which kinds of magic you're best at, but I don't know what that entails beyond what you've shown me already."

  The princess nodded, resolvedly and started to break things down for me. As a highborn elf, the princess already has an advantage - being more skilled with healing and nature magic merely for being one - but as she gains in magical prowess her divine gifts also grow in power. Life, nature, and healing, are three distinct but intertwined disciplines boosted by the nature of her goddess' blessing - eventually, the princess will be able to master all three, but only the last two have practical application as an adventurer with her current understanding and power.

  Basically, at this time the only thing she could do with "life" magic was tell if someone was alive or dead, which even a psychiatrist could do. I should mention that there is also a "holy" magic discipline that only those chosen to receive a divine blessing can use - this is for blasting evil things with divine fire, beseeching the heavens for insight, blessing water and that sort of thing. The princess didn't know any holy spells at this time, but she assured me that those powers would awaken eventually.

  Well let's begin with healing. There is technically only one spell for repairing bodily harm, the aptly named Heal, but it heals more severe wounds depending on how much juice she puts into it - as she gains mastery of healing, she can improve the mana efficiency and do more extreme things; you know, like restoring lost limbs and all that. She can also heal a bunch of folks at once by cutting down the power in half; I would need to do the math to see at what point it becomes more efficient to do so.

  Cure does what it says on the tin; cure for what ails you; she is actually especially good at this one, as she is capable of nailing magic diseases too albeit at a higher cost. Purify removes poison, but can also cleanse food and water. There's also one for restoring soul damage and other nasty things that aren't covered by Heal but the princess had yet to get that spell quite right - but she assured me that she was making progress.

  Wind magic affects the wind as one might expect, unless of course one read the word and assumed that it had to do with reelin' in a rainbow fightin' trout. The spell she had been using to improve my gas mileage was called Zone of Calm, it's considered utility level and has a generous duration. Gust lets her create a sudden rapid current of wind that's just good enough to knock people off their feet; if she puts more power into it, she can send heavier guys flying further so she has to use her best judgment to figure out how much wind speed is required.

  Create Wind is one of the wind spells she showed off at the Platinum Flagon, and allows her to kick up some wind and then change its direction by concentrating; when she gets a bit more practiced she can make these winds pretty damn harsh. Tailwind is actually one she was working on, as in, she was developing it herself based on an experiment we tried with one of my bullets.

  Whirlwind was a separate spell from create wind that created a stationary cyclone instead of straight wind whose direction she could control; especially powerful wind mages could get the speeds pretty high, but in order to make something tornado strength you actually needed a more complex spell with a bigger incantation rather than simply pumping more oomph into a Whirlwind.

  Wind Punch was a super concentrated wind blast, kind of on the vein of that attack a certain spiky haired guy used with an open palm and outstretched fingers; this was a straight up attack spell that could be lethal. Finally there was Windscreen, a battlefield control variety spell that created a sheet of wind for blocking arrows and hedging out poison gasses - neat!

  Nature magic, which has nice synergy with earth magic, deals mostly with wood, living plants, and plant-like creatures; oh so like them walking trees from that award-winning film. Entanglement allows her to create a small area of vines that impede movement; sadly it's a small area and doesn't affect big things like horses if they're already galloping, but it's still useful. Grind Grain is that utility-grade one she used to help me make coffee; usually used on grain, of course. Woodwork allows her to reshape existing wood - I can think of some good uses for that; not considered utility because it takes a fair bit more power, it may be handy for setting up defenses and the like.

  Call Campfire pulls nearby bits of wood from the forest and arranges them into a convenient teepee-style campfire for you to just light up and go. So you might be asking, what about animals, aren't they a part of nature? That's more the domain of the wildlife discipline. But what about storms; that was answered in a conversation I had with the princess much later.

  For earth and water, there isn't much else to say because she only knows a few spells of those disciplines. She does have one attack spell of the earth type, Stone Arrow, but it is relatively weak and she typically only uses it if her stronger spells aren't available to her; incidentally, though the spell has "arrow" in its name, the projectile that comes out is more like a golfball. I wondered if it could be improved upon; yeah when we had more time, maybe.

  Then there's the other spell that helps my gas mileage, Terra-Levigo, super grateful for that one. Raise Pillar isn't utility grade because it fails the low mana cost test, but I could think of some good ways to use it. The same is true of Entrench, which digs a trench, and Dig, which creates a vertical or horizontal hole, both incapable of penetrating stone; as an army boy I appreciated these very much.

  Though they were novice grade, their mana cost was such that she could maybe manage one or two per day, but since the trenches weren't magical effects that wore off, she could rest afterwards. Finally, Create Water creates water and is the foundation of the water discipline, required for all novice and most intermediate water spells.

  "The quest bill states that Lord Henri Masson, a minor nobleman who owns a vineyard south of here has had his estate taken over completely by goblins. The estate is just over twenty miles away; a reasonable distance I think. He and his family are presently staying at the Silver Crane Inn; speak to him for details. Reward for completion: 500 gold crowns. Sounds good, right?"

  The princess nodded, "that seems a fair reward, if not terribly lavish for the rank, and this man probably thinks it's quite a bargain."

  "Yes. My thoughts exactly. The next quest will need to be a bit closer, so that we can walk or go by horse, but this is a good payout for the amount of gasoline and should help us get some additional equipment and provisions. Well then - the coffee is all drunk up, we've had a nibble of jerky, and we have our plan, shall we?"

  "We shall!"

  Soon, Red Lightning was gonna strike!