Jack Thatcher decided it wasn’t going to help his chances of getting a sidequest by hanging around the gallows…

  So he moved on, moving eastward.

  His gait was swift, but his thoughts were swifter still. Between the stressful entry into this town, the argument between him and Olric, the hung criminal, étain’s brutal humiliation, and his mounting disgust with this place and its people, he knew that a good distraction was what he needed.

  “How does one start a sidequest?” Jack wondered aloud after turning down a fairly busy side street off the main thoroughfare.

  Merchants boasting their wares lined either side of this winding street while the sun sails, offering shade above, rippled and undulated in the growing wind.

  “Get yer rabbit, nice and fresh!” one merchant shouted over to Jack, and the mechanic glanced over to see sizzling meat atop some sort of enchanted hot plate. “That’s right! Mine’s the best rabbit in all the nine provinces, it is! Caught by the captains of the holy army, they are! Shot them straight in the eye with a needle! Killed ‘em quick so that none of their fear spoiled their taste!”

  While the bucktoothed merchant spoke, he twisted the dark strips of meat on their spokes and poured an intoxicatingly sweet and sour sauce over each piece of meat with a long ladle.

  “That is, my stock has gone a bit dry, it has,” he continued with a morose shrug. “The captain in question got reposted over in Thurnfeld after he’s was caught samplin’ his maid’s daughter. Nasty business, that. Damn shame I ain’t got anyone to catch me some fresh rabbit so I can keep my business afloat.”

  Jack stepped closer, glancing over the man’s head.

  “What? What is it? That cat back to haunt me again?” the street vendor demanded in a considerably less professional tone. He glanced up nervously at where Jack was staring. “Dammit, boy! What is it? See somethin’ I don’t?’ His eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Yer not one of them dreamers, are ya? If ya are, ya best go on and git! We don’t serve yer kind here, we don’t!”

  “What? No, I’m not a dreamer,” Jack insisted, shaking his head. “I was just hoping that a…”

  He drifted off, not sure if his instincts about this world would hold true. So much of Aethros had operated identically to the RPGS he’d played, so he half-expected an exclamation icon to pop up over his head.

  Jack pointed above the man’s head. “There’s not a… You know?”

  “A what? Speak up, boy, or stop wastin’ my time!” the vendor shouted while he waved the ladle at Jack.

  “Never mind. Thanks for your time,” Jack muttered and walked off before the man decided to throw the serving utensil at him.

  His cheeks burned. Why isn’t there some obvious way to show that people have sidequests?

  Thinking back, he hadn’t seen a single floating icon of any kind while rushing through the slums, much less during his time here in the nicer side of town. Jack ducked under the low canopy of a vendor selling ripe fruit he didn’t recognize and continued to search the townsfolk for clues.

  Olric had said that virtually everyone had sidequests, right? How do I initiate one? Is it just as simple as asking someone if they have one?

  He wasn’t above helping people who needed it, but Jack was increasingly concerned that if the System didn’t recognize his good deeds as participation in a quest, he wouldn’t gain any EXP. A part of him felt sick at the thought that he was intentionally looking for people with unresolved issues so that he could benefit from them.

  But if no one helps, how is that any better? This way, they won’t feel like they owe me since the System will give me a reward.

  Jack bit at his lip as he considered this.

  I need to get stronger. This is the only way I have right now. Once I’m stronger, I’ll be able to really help all these people.

  His conscience mollified for now, Jack decided there wasn’t anything to it but to do it. It was time for some honest trial and error.

  What’s the most common way for sidequests in games to start? He thought. Oh yeah. That’s right. Well, this might get awkward.

  Feeling like the worst kind of poser, he approached the nearest shop. It was a bakery that seemed to specialize in all sorts of breads. He leaned against the brick wall adjacent to the entrance and waited.

  And waited.

  And waited.

  A few patrons entered and exited, but he just gave them solemn nods while his crossed arms kept him from fidgeting. A couple more people walked toward the bakery, but then moved on before entering, giving him nervous glances.

  After nearly ten minutes of waiting, a rotund woman in a thick white apron stormed out of the shop, waving a large rolling pin at him.

  “WHAT IN THE EVERLOVING HELLS ARE YA DOING A-LOITERING AROUND MY SHOP?!” she bellowed.

  Jack reeled back in surprise.

  “I was just wondering if you needed any help?” Jack answered.

  “ANY… ANY HELP?! YOU DAMNED RUNT, YOU MADE ME LOSE CUSTOMERS TO WORTISHORE! TO WORTISHORE!” she shouted and pointed her rolling pin to a bakery across the street. “That idjit couldn’t tell the difference between salt and flour if he was drowning in ‘em.”

  The baker pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed.

  “Get out before I have the bleeders cuff you.”

  For some reason, hearing her whisper the demand was far more unsettling than her earlier yelling.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Jack replied and made himself scarce.

  When he was out of shouting or rolling pin range, he mentally scratched this option off his list.

  No convenient exclamation points, and standing in an area for NPCs to approach you with a quest doesn’t work either. Now to try the most overt approach. Jack grimaced. Talking to people.

  Jack continued eastward, moving through a few neighborhoods and toward the far edge of the city. The collage of baked bread and simmering meat was soon replaced by a more salty and considerably less captivating aroma.

  Dead fish.

  There must be a dock nearby.

  It made a certain amount of sense, he supposed. That young couple had made mention of millers here in town. And while he’d seen a bit of enchanted gear here and there, he figured these people still used the time-tested method of moving water to power their mills. And that meant a river.

  After another few minutes of walking, Jack spotted the docks.

  They were ramshackle and clearly in disrepair, with worn wood and old crates composing most of what could be generously described as vendor stalls. Barely anyone was around, which struck Jack as odd. It had to be somewhere around noon. Sure, there was a storm coming down from the north, but it wasn’t here yet.

  Still, he only caught sight of perhaps twenty fisherman, all morosely hauling ropes with empty cages and other traps off their boats. The few stalls that were open had sparse pickings.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  Maybe everyone already did their shopping, and this was all that’s left?

  Jack walked toward one of the stalls, ready to directly ask if they had a sidequest he could take. Before he made it three steps, he spotted the flash of red glinting in what was left of the sunlight, and ducked behind a nearby booth.

  He knew that armor, just as he knew the bulky man who wore it.

  Sathem.

  It was that horrible knight who’d nearly skewered him a dozen times over with tree roots when Myrtle had killed his partner. He walked alone. Jack watched as he grabbed a boy no older than twelve from where he was stacking empty crates and bellowed something into his face. The boy’s father tried to step in, but Sathem shoved him hard enough to dislocate the fisherman’s shoulder. He fell with a scream, but didn’t abandon his boy.

  The boy started to whimper, but said something back to the looming bleeder.

  Sathem paused, cursed, then threw the boy atop his father, spitting on them as he stormed off. Now that he was coming this direction, Jack spotted a nasty cut across the man’s brooding expression, starting from atop his right brow and descending across his eye socket to just below his lip.

  Jack ducked fully behind the booth. He knew with absolute certainty that if that hulking brute recognized him, he was dead.

  “Oy, son. Watch’a doin’ in my booth?” a wrinkled man with a straw hat asked.

  The Earth mechanic nearly jumped out of his clothes from the sudden shock of seeing someone in his hiding spot. His eyes must’ve betrayed the extent to his worry, because the old man shook his head in something between conciliation and irritation.

  “Caught the bad manners of ol’ Sathem, did ya?” he asked.

  “Something like that,” Jack responded in a whisper.

  Jack quickly inspected him.

  [Felix Hardrove - Level 6]

  [Age: 71]

  [Starving fisherman]

  “I’m Jack,” he offered with a grim smile.

  “Oh, I know. I can read,” Felix replied with a grin that was more gap than it was tooth. “Here, come help me with this here net. Know how to knot one?”

  Jack shook his head.

  “Well, Ardent’s beard, boy. Why’d ya come this way with no coin save to get a job?” Felix asked. “Never mind that, come here and sit across from me.”

  He kicked an overturned wooden box, and Jack quickly rose and sat down opposite the old fisherman.

  “Here, wear this. And don’t say anything, ya hear?” Felix handed him his straw hat, and Jack quickly tugged it onto his head. It was a tight fit, but he didn’t care.

  Far too soon, the sound of metallic boots approached their booth.

  “Hiya, Sathem! Want some of my wares? I got a couple of freshly caught nothin’ up front, but I can head inside and grab some of the jackshit I got back there, ifn you’re interested?” Felix called out to the knight.

  “Go die in a hole, Felix,” Sathem grumbled.

  The knight kicked at the old fisherman’s booth, and a large portion of the tired structure collapsed. Jack stood painfully still, tying knot after knot into the net Felix had handed him.

  “I just might, your knightliness! Have a blessed day, you should! Been tellin’ myself for years that my humble booth needed a makeover. A good boot-stomp was just what it needed to open the place up! Can’t thank ya enough!” Felix called after the knight, who stomped away, cursing the fisherman a dozen different ways.

  When Jack couldn’t hear the sound of Sathem’s boots anymore, he finally paused in his impromptu work. He peered up at Felix, who was scowling at him.

  “What?” he asked, suddenly worried that the old man might call Sathem back over.

  “When I gave you that net after establishin’ you don’t know a hook from a trout’s nostril, I guess I just assumed you’d pretend to help me tie my net!” Felix shouted. “What is this? I’ve seen more sense come from my mother, and she’s insane! Are those even knots, or did Ardent bless you with the gift of revelation so profound a humble fisherman like me can’t discern this fancy new knot that I’ve never before seen despite my decades sailin’?!”

  Jack looked down at his handiwork. To be honest, he hadn’t been paying much attention to it. He’d wanted to appear busy and competent, and so moved with as much speed as he could. Now that he studied it, though, he could see where he’d gone wrong.

  There was quite a lot of wrong, actually.

  “I’m sorry, Felix. I didn’t mean to. I just–” Jack started, but Felix raised a hand and sighed.

  “It’s my own fault. You’re just like my daughter, you are. She’d walk off the dock if I didn’t give her explicit instructions not to. It’s fine. Just hand that to me before you summon a demon with all that unholy work you just did.”

  Jack handed the man his net back, and then his hat a moment later. They sat across from one another in a growing silence that brimmed with awkwardness. It was nearly a full minute before Jack remembered why he’d come here in the first place.

  “Oh! Felix, right? I’ve been meaning to ask someone around here, but do you have a… sidequest?” Jack asked, feeling ridiculous.

  There was no way this was going to–

  “Ardent’s beard, do I ever!” Felix shouted with a mad cackle. “Had this damned quest for a full moon, I have! The most embarrassing thing in the world, it is!”

  “Why? And could I have it? Consider it payment for the net! Doesn’t matter what it is. I’ll do it!” Jack replied eagerly.

  Felix narrowed his eyes at the young mechanic. “Don’t be so quick to accept the quests of strangers. Never know what sort of demented problems they got goin’ on behind clean sheets, as they say.”

  “Noted,” Jack answered with a dismissive wave. He was way too excited to have the chance at a proper sidequest to be chastised out of one now. “What is it?”

  The old fisherman scrunched up his wrinkled lips, but eventually gave in. “Fine. You look… Well, you look horribly unqualified, but that might just work in my favor. There ain’t a chance in hell that I’m going to let one of my competitors hear about this. I’ll give it to ya so long as ya don’t share it with a single soul. That clear?”

  “Clear as rain,” Jack replied with a grin.

  “Clear as… That’s a dumb idiom. Eh, what do I care? The young are always spoutin’ nonsense.” Felix fixed his straw hat across his balding scalp and stared at Jack.

  At least, that’s what it looked like, but when Jack focused harder on the old man, he could see that his eyes were entirely unfocused. A second later, they refocused on Jack’s face right as he got a string of system notifications.

  [Sidequest Offered: It’s Just a Pond]

  [Benefactor: Felix Hardrove, Thistlebrush]

  ╔══════════════════════════════╗

  ║ QUEST OBJECTIVES ║

  ╠══════════════════════════════╣

  ║ ║

  ║ ? Travel to the pond at the base ║

  ║ of the river near Thistlebrush. ║

  ║ Don’t die. [0/1] ║

  ║ ║

  ║ ? Catch ten fish for Felix’s ║

  ║ starving family. [0/10] ║

  ║ ║

  ╚══════════════════════════════╝

  [Quest Difficulty: HARD]

  ╔══════════════════════════════╗

  ║ QUEST REWARDS ║

  ╠══════════════════════════════╣

  ║ ║

  ║ ? 10 Silver Coins ║

  ║ ║

  ║ ? 4,000 EXP ║

  ║ ║

  ╚══════════════════════════════╝

  [Accept quest?]

  [YES or NO?]

  Jack gawked at the quest difficulty. “Hard? How is collecting ten fish considered hard?!”

  Felix appeared uncomfortable for the first time, and he pursed his lips, averting his eyes from the mechanic’s gaze.

  “Well, I’ve had a bit of trouble fishing as of late,” he admitted quietly.

  “I gathered that, but why is it ‘hard’?”

  “The pond is… well, you’ll see,” Felix said dismissively.

  Jack leaned forward on his box. “Or you could just tell me. I’m going to accept this regardless, but I’m not going to go in blind just because you’re embarrassed.”

  To prove his point, he pulled up the notifications again and accepted the quest.

  [Congratulations! You have begun the quest: It’s Just a Pond.]

  Felix must’ve received a similar system message, as his shoulder slumped in relief.

  “Fine, lad. You win.” He met Jack’s unwavering gaze. “The shroud has been encroaching on the pond for some time now, but now it’s gotten painfully close. Fishing is now a young man’s game. I’m too slow to catch the fish before they’ve fled. The shadows make ‘em all more skittish than my wife on our weddin’ night, and that’s the truth.”

  Jack grimaced at the analogy, but moved past it. He stood up and gave Felix a curt nod. “Don’t go anywhere. I’ll be right back with those ten fish.”

  “There’s a storm brewin’, lad! Rotten luck to get on that water right now, it is! Wait a few days until it’s passed!” Felix encouraged.

  Jack shook his head. “I don’t have that sort of time. Don’t worry. I’ll be back in a bit. That storm isn’t going to come until tonight, by my best guess.”

  “My knees say otherwise, lad,” Felix warned.

  But Jack was already off, moving toward the northern gate he could just barely make out in the distance.

  He had every confidence he could snatch some fish from the shallows of a pond. He’d been able to lance minnows in the small pools the ocean left after high tide as a kid. Between his enhanced body and his increased reflexes from his Pugilism skill, this was going to be a piece of cake.

  Besides, this sidequest was as stereotypical as they came. And hadn’t the System itself confirmed that with the quest title?

  “It’s just a pond,” Jack recited, feeling his confidence grow with each step toward his new destiny.

  It was time to catch some fish.