The Village of Thud…I had to confirm that name several times for myself, but yes, according to Lucia, the village's name was Thud, based on some old legend about a big rock falling from one of the nearby mountains to help carve out the little valley it was resting in. That was…just stupid enough to be awesome in my estimation, but had little to do with our entrance as we came in through the one part of the natural walls around the place that allowed it.
We did get some looks, as we entered, but not as much as I'd feared. Probably because this was a trade village, of sorts, one of the stops between the Capital and the northern reaches of the country, so they were used to disparate groups like the one we represented. My three beastmen companions did get some stares at their wrists and ankles, though most just shook their head at it.
I had a good look at provincial life as we passed along, watching merchants with their dealings, people moving freight and cargo about, and most importantly, the demographics on display. There were beastmen in the groups around us, some even without the manacles, though none that I noticed that didn't have a bit of a shock at some point from a slave seal hidden beneath their fur or feathers, or readily visible on their scales.
It made sense. This wasn't some farming community out in the boonies, this was a place of commerce, and had more traders than anything else. That meant manual laborers, which meant ones as cheap as possible. The cheapest being those you didn't have to pay. Normally, that would be economically unviable, due to the cost of food and housing, not to mention the sheer numbers would easily lead to revolt.
The slave seals made it more useful, especially if, at a glance, you could tell who was free, and who was not. This was a terrible system, and one I needed to look more into, but I put it out of my mind as we finally approached the local Hall for the Adventurers Guild, with two entrances apparent. One for those looking to give jobs, and one for those doing those jobs, with the former having the longer line.
Luckily, we were the latter, and having Strong pull the cart along the side of the building, I looked over our haul, and chatted with Lucia for a moment, asking which ones would be the most valuable first, and had Strong and Fast pick them up. I then left Lucia outside with Shadow to keep our cart from being accosted…mostly that was Shadow's job really, as he'd be better at not making a scene when doing it, but leaving him alone outside seemed like a bad idea. A human would be needed.
Inside the Hall, there were the expected sorts. Behind the counter I saw three demi-humans, which surprised me, especially since they had levels. That was illegal, but, I figured, given the Guild was itself not just for Melromarc, but did business in other lands, they were here as a bit of thumbing the nose at the rules. So long as they were working the counter, not going out and doing things, they were ignored.
"Name?" asked the one manning the counter, a bunny boy…okay man, he was clearly younger than I was, but obviously of age in this world. Still, it was hard to take him seriously with his ears, one of which was bent in half for some reason.
"Bar…Corvo Attano," I said, about to give him my real fake name, instead of my adventurer fake name. Luckily, he didn't seem to care, as he thumbed through a few pages, and pulled out one that looked exactly like the one Ray had filled out in the capital for me a week ago. Mind, he was idly going over it, until suddenly he started, and the bent ear pointed right at me with its tip.
"You're the Bow Hero?" he asked, a bit…nervously isn't quite the right word, but more in an energetic sense, like he didn't really believe someone like that would be here.
"I am, and I've come to claim some bounties, if you're taking those. If not, I can sell them to merchants on my own," I told him. That, as it happened, was how the Guild made most of its money. Adventurers came to them with bits of monsters that could be useful to merchants, most especially the gems inside Wave infected creatures, as well as bits and bobs like horns, teeth, even balloon scraps, or herbs with medicinal properties.
To be fair, you could sell to merchants directly, if you wanted, but the Guild tended to be the better option, as not every merchant bought every kind of good, and finding out who did what in a city was a pain. Worse if NO ONE in the city you were at needed what you were selling, but someone a few towns over could do with a shipment of it. Thus, the Guild facilitated such transactions, paying you a good bit for your trophies, and then getting a bit more on the back end from the sale. All in all, a good system.
Better, the Guild would take on jobs, like my first one with the rats, for when a type of monster got out of control, or just local wildlife needed dealing with. Those jobs tended to be paid for by the local kingdom, with maybe the Guild itself, nearby villages, or some aspiring merchants doing so if the monster was being a nuisance in places where the Kingdom couldn't be bothered to deal with it.
Lucia even had some amusing stories she'd heard in her time of something called a 'Hill Giant' which she described as a five meter tall creature of dirt and soil that moved around that some adventurers had tried to take on, before forcing it into the local lake to make the thing soak through, before being hit with some fire spells to dry it out, making it very fragile for a few minutes, so they could literally dig through it with shovels to pull out the crystal animating the thing.
"How much and what are they?" he asked, and I motioned the wolf and fox forward, the pair hauling in five, and two bags respectively, and setting them down on the floor in front of the counter. That done, I lifted one up, feeling really unmanly given neither one had looked like they were struggling in the slightest under their burdens, meanwhile I grunted a lot myself just getting it from the floor to the countertop.
Luckily no one made a comment, even when the bunny man easily took the first sack to a table behind the counter, and then opened it up, the contents spilling out a little as it turned back into the flat sheet of leather. This one held some balloon scraps, in a variety of colors and sizes, which he quickly began to sort out, his hands moving so fast that it looked like they were blurring for a moment, not via stat buff, but simply because he was that good at his job.
"Hmm, low quality work in the recovery, but not a bad haul. Tell me, did you find some kind of enclave of these things? Or perhaps a full legion?" he asked, and I shook my head. And held up my arm bracer, on which was mounted the Legendary Bow, that I shifted with a thought into its normal form. He just nodded, probably assuming I meant that I'd used it to somehow kill them all.
To be fair, I'd been going over my choices on skills and transformations, and some of those would have let me do that. But in reality, I'd been Support since the first day, and instead it was Sense that really helped us track these things down so quickly, especially as I upgraded the skill to give me more range to it, allowing me to find clumps of the various monsters and deal with them.
"Are the rest of your bags filled with the same? If so, I can give you an estimation based off this one to save time if you'd like," he offered.
"I'm afraid not, sir. We've been doing some hunting on the way here from the capital, and so we've got…what seventeen more bags?" I asked, turning back to the others.
"Only fifteen, twenty-two total. We've got three more filled with balloon scraps, and the rest vary in contents, though they are sorted. From a herd usapil, a flock of yatagarasu, a pack of orthros, a passel of babi ngepet, and even one Ursa that took up a bag all on its own," responded Fast, and I tapped my chin before nodding in agreement, going back over my mental list of unlocked Bow forms, and finding that covered most of them.
"That's…quite the haul…one moment," he said, and then turned back towards the two behind the counter. A quick, quiet chat between the two saw one, a woman with a lizard tail walking up to the counter to take over, while the rabbit man came around, and we soon proceeded with him out to the cart, with him carrying what looked like a monocle that he placed on his eye.
Outside we found…not niceness happening. Lucia and Shadow were standing by the cart, and some guys in armor, looking suspiciously like guards, but not quite getting the look right, were accosting them. It didn't take a lot to overhear them trying to ask for 'taxes' to have come into the city, which one of the bigger ones was quick to offer a non-monetary form of such.
"Gentlemen, is there a problem?" asked the rabbit man, startling the group, four in total, as they fumbled to spin around, the clack of their armor a bit louder than I'd have liked.
"Oh, it's you, buns. I was just informing this young lady and her slave that they seemed to have slipped into the village without paying the toll at the gates. It's not a problem at all. At least, it won't be as soon as they pay," he said, in a voice that just screamed 'I'm a bandit who found a guard uniform'.
"You know you're not allowed to do that anymore. The Council voted to allow free trade until the Waves have passed," he told the man, and then did a very nice impression of an intimidating person, cracking his knuckles. It did have the effect of the man's three goon squad pulling back, and the man himself looking towards the cart, with all those nice fat sacks on it, and then back to the bunny man.
"They did, didn't they? Must have slipped my mind. I'll be sure to remember it next time," he said with an obvious edge to his voice ,and then walked away, deliberately ramming into some poor demi-human who was running a stall and knocking her down. I was about to rush over to defend her honor…or at least help her pick up, but one of the other stall owners did so before I could take a single step, so I decided to ignore it and turn back to the Guild worker.
"I'm guessing he's a guard captain?" I asked, and the rabbit man scoffed.
"He wishes. He'd barely be above patrolman normally, but thanks to the Waves, a lot of the better guards had to go defend some more vulnerable villages, or were called back to defend nobles. Thanks to him having some adventurer levels, he's been allowed to have a squad to 'keep the peace'," he said, dismissively, as he looked back over at my cart with his monocle, adjusting it a few times, before he began reading out some numbers.
Turned out, the thing was some kind of 'appraisal' accessory, and without even looking inside, he listed the contents of each sack, and with one hand began to lift them up, easier than Fast had, though not quite as easily as Strong. Still more than me, and making me feel even worse that a guy who barely came up to my chest was able to lift stuff like that freely, as he rattled off the price for each.
When he was done, he asked the three beastmen to help him haul the rest inside, with me taking one along with Lucia just to feel useful, the six of us proceeding inside, and him having us take them to one of the back rooms. Here they kept bins of various bits and bobs from monsters. Each one was marked what came from what, though he just had us set the sacks down, he'd sort them later.
The stuff stored away, he brought us to one of the backrooms, where they kept this Hall's expanded safe. A few twists of a dial, cutting his finger for a drop of blood, and it swung open, revealing an even larger space than the Capital safe had inside it, something I commented on, and the rabbit demi-human laughed.
"Of course. The Capital is the place with the lowest density of Monsters outside of the Waves. It's one of the safest places to live in that regard, even if it presents dangers all its own. For that reason, while that Hall is the one the nobility typically use, the local chapters like my own tend to be the one with more need of more in our cash box to pay out with, to avoid situations like what you had with the Nest Mother," he explained, as he literally walked into the safe, ducking down to fit inside, and then coming out with a sack that clinked quite nicely.
"So, that's…" he began to mumble some numbers, as he slowly pulled out the coins. Not silver either. Gold this time, and my eyebrow went up a bit at that, watching as he laid ten out, and then counted on his fingers, before pulling out another ten and then another eight, before finally slapping that bag back into the safe, and grabbing one for silver, and then one for copper. We did wind up with more of those, but still, gold was not my expected reward level for this sort of thing.
"Are you sure that's right?" I asked as he slowly slid the coins over to me, and the rabbit demi-human waved the question off.
"The bounty on some of the stuff you've brought in went up recently. Healing items are at a premium thanks to the Waves, and while herbs are needed for a base, things like orthros skulls and yatagarasu claws are good for mixing in with them to raise the potency," he told me, which made sense, and I swiftly swept the coins towards me, and then slipped them into a set of bags that I split between myself and Lucia.
Originally, I'd thought about splitting the loot between all of us, but…well the beastmen wore no clothing, and trying to get Fast into a belt had proven…less than satisfactory. A bandolier for Shadow might have worked, especially since I noticed him using things like leaves and rocks to work his ninja magic, but I was told it was simply a, 'what's on hand' sort of skill, not something he needed specific ingredients for.
So I just divided it in half for now. When I filled out the rest of the party I'd separate it out more, to make sure we didn't get pickpocketed or something like so many games I'd played back home. Best to be safe now, rather than sorry later. As such, I slipped a few of the gold into the bracer on which my Bow was mounted, and then down into my boots and things, before turning back to the rabbit demi.
"Would you be able to buy my cart as well?" I asked, and he cocked an eyebrow at me, his bent ear wavering in the air a bit.
"I might be, but won't you be needing it later?" he asked, and I shook my head, holding up my Bow.
"We're headed back to the Capital now, since the next Wave is in a few days, and I want to rally there, before moving out to intercept it," I explained, and he nodded, soon pulling out a few coppers. Twelve at first, but then adding eight more to it. It was a jury rigged cart, after all, and while it had worked for us, it wasn't in the best condition. I didn't haggle, and merely pocketed the coins, before we said our goodbyes and left the Hall.
Outside, the sun was just a bit lower in the sky than I would have liked to be leaving, but looking around, I noticed the guard and his friends were still hanging around. That was…not fun, and I quickly decided we needed to be going, ordering the others to follow me as we made our way out of the city, Lucia lamenting that we'd be camping outside again, but not really arguing too much as we made our way back to where we'd started this journey at, and towards the first of many large fights.