Beginner Quests 1
An adventurer's morning always starts early.
Before the sun rose, to the crowing of roosters, I smacked the pale curve of Grace's bottom as she lay beside the bed, gently gathered her up once she stirred, and sent her back to her lodgings. Time didn't seem to flow one-to-one when she logged out, so Han Sea roughly connected around sunrise.
While novice adventurers bustled about hunting for cushy commissions that paid well without much legwork, I leisurely enjoyed my meal and turned the newly discovered facts over in my head. I'm not the type whose mind spins at lightning speed, so I need to organize things like this once to feel clear about them.
First: with Han Sea's appearance, gacha characters had begun showing up in this world. Grace, who claimed to be a girl from the slash-and-burn farming village I'd saved. Her story of falling for the back of the man who rescued her village from monsters and dreaming of becoming an adventurer was probably a kind of collection element.
In most otaku games, when you collect characters, level them up, raise affection, or meet the right conditions, side stories open.
If the 6★ Paladin Roland's side story was a ten-year grand journey, then the 3★ Apprentice Ranger Grace's side story would be something like I became an adventurer because I admired the paladin who saved me as a child~ That sort of thing. Leaving out the part where she spent her first night with the paladin she'd always admired.
Putting that aside, the problem is Han Sea's side…
The worrisome one was, of course, Han Sea.
Today again, right at sunrise, her connection notification popped up like clockwork. I didn't know how it would work inside the Tower, but if she logged out at the inn, it seemed to be morning when she connected. In ordinary RPG games, pressing rest at an inn turned the screen black and then it was morning, so I could understand the logic.
In real time, she started streaming around the afternoon, played all day, then ended both the stream and the game late at night.
In game time, she woke up at the inn in the morning, played all day, then ended the game at the inn in the evening.
…Could she even climb the Tower like this?
The middle floors of the Tower were grand expeditions that took days just to reach, and exploring the passages of the uppermost floors was extreme camping life measured in months. If she streamed that miserable stretch at a one-to-one flow, it wouldn't be playing a game—it'd be closer to hard labor. Not something enjoyable as a game, and even less something fit to broadcast.
Unless a pile of convenience patches like inventory or minimaps showed up, Tower conquest wouldn't progress quickly at all. It would just be treading water.
"Why the long face so early in the morning?"
"Drank too much last night."
"Which is why you also forgot the desserts you were supposed to buy?"
"I recruited a party member yesterday. I'll hit the café today—with both of them."
As I sat blankly at the table with my chin propped up, chat window open alongside Han Sea's stream notification, Alice quietly wandered over. For someone coasting on the cushy setup of working every other day, she sure knew how to complain about late desserts.
Today she rattled off yesterday's events as the reason I absolutely had to bring sweets.
"There wasn't anyone useful on the vanguard side. A few decent people, but they were a bit iffy to pair with Paladin Roland and a promising witch. On the priest side, too, there still aren't people volunteering for Tower pilgrimages, so we'd have to wait a while. But on the archer side, there was one pretty capable person…"
"An archer, of all things?"
"Seemed like someone from a hunter background who'd been wandering around with adventurers outside the Tower. Capable enough to complete material-gathering commissions alone up through the seventh floor…"
"Alright, I get it. Sorry for asking you to find someone and then bringing a party member on my own."
I raised both hands in surrender and joked around with Alice, who was deliberately trailing off. Even if I said it playfully, the inconvenience was still an inconvenience.
That seventh-floor ranger had probably been talent Alice had been eyeing in advance. After hearing my request, she would have immediately broached the subject of joining a party with him… but hearing that I'd already found a ranger while she was mid-persuasion would have been pretty annoying.
"By the way, where do you keep bringing such pretty young ladies from? Get me a few junior receptionist girls later too."
"I didn't bring her. She came looking for me."
As we chatted casually like that, the doors of the Adventurer's Guild opened and Han Sea and Grace walked in. I nodded slightly to Alice in greeting, sat at an empty table, and called them over. The two who'd been talking as they entered sat side by side in front of me.
Grace acted as if last night's events had been nothing more than a midnight dream. But one thing had clearly changed.
"That armor must've cost a bit."
"I spent all the funds I'd saved up when I left the village on this equipment."
Grace's plain leather armor, which had been a solid, featureless piece like Han Sea's, had become a custom-fitted set that emphasized her femininity. Instead of concealing her figure, the tightly cinched waist and the boldly curved chest section drew people's gazes like gravity itself.
No wonder the chat window I'd briefly glanced at had been spammed with nonsense like not an unnie, a mommy.
"Unfortunately, we couldn't find a vanguard or a priest. So I'll take temporary vanguard duty, we'll coordinate on the fifth floor, then head straight up to the tenth."
"The tenth floor?"
"Yes, understood."
Grace immediately nodded at my words, while Han Sea startled and asked back. Jumping from the first floor to the third, then from the third to the tenth—a beginner who didn't know the Tower's circumstances would naturally be surprised. Grace, stuck right to Han Sea's side, kindly began explaining.
"From the eleventh floor onward is a different story, but from the first to the tenth, there isn't much difference. It's true monsters get stronger as the floors go higher, but horned rabbits and horned foxes only get a bit bigger and that's it. The goblins that appear are just as scrawny."
"So that's why we're only going to the tenth?"
"Right. On the tenth floor, something that makes decent money shows up."
The two sat pressed close to the table, chatting quietly among themselves. Even as a fellow novice adventurer, Grace seemed to know her stuff thanks to some experience on the lower floors.
"Every ten floors, a special monster appears in the Tower. Much stronger than monsters of the same tier, and when you hunt it, it leaves behind not mana stones but other byproducts before disappearing."
Simply put, a boss monster. Defeat the Horned Wolf, boss of the plains on the tenth floor, and from the eleventh floor a forest awaits instead of grassland; defeat the Orc Hunter, boss of the forest on the twentieth floor, and from the twenty-first floor caves begin.
"If I'm taking vanguard, at our party level hunting the Horned Wolf is the right call. Of course we won't go straight there—we'll experience various lower-floor commissions first, then hunt the Horned Wolf."
"Horned Wolf—does that mean a wolf with a horn, like horned rabbits and horned foxes?"
"That's right. Of course, it's incomparably stronger than something like a horned fox."
I only learned this after coming to a fantasy world, but wolves are big. More precisely, I knew wolves were big—but the Horned Wolf, being a boss monster, was even larger.
Wolves I'd seen in those "real wolf photo.GIF" materials online were just a bit bigger than a person. Standing on two legs they'd be taller than a human, and a wolf's head was two or three times the size of a person's. The Horned Wolf, being a boss monster, was even bigger than those photos.
"Unlike a horned fox, a Horned Wolf's horn can pierce leather armor. With its large size, its jaws are huge too—if someone unskilled with shields uses a small shield halfheartedly, they'll get the shield and their arm chewed off whole. If up through the ninth floor you can wander based on individual ability, the reason you must always maintain a party on the tenth floor is this."
Of course, even if it pierced leather armor, it didn't pierce steel. The orthodox path of adventurer growth was saving up through lower-floor commissions, outfitting yourself with steel armor and a shield, then challenging the tenth floor.
I had gacha-character equipment that steel armor couldn't compare to, so money earned from adventures and commissions could all go into Han Sea and Grace's gear. Secretly chipping in when they bought equipment was one thing—but starting out decked head to toe in intermediate adventurer gear from day one would be a bit much.
"That's enough explanation—let's look at some commissions."
I stood from the table and headed for the quest board in the corner. The board looked a bit sparse, cleaned out by diligent adventurers who'd swept up the easy, profitable jobs since morning. I stood beside it with my arms crossed, waiting for the two to read.
Han Sea had entered the Tower twice, but this was her first time looking at commissions. Grace stuck right to her side again and began kindly explaining. Seeing the camera stop filming the board and capture the two of them together, I could tell without looking what state the chat was in.
"Most commissions on the plains are herb-related. It's a neighborhood with nothing but grass, so it can't be helped. They're used as materials for ointments, cosmetics, and magic reagents, but with the plains being vast and novice adventurers plentiful, the pay is cheap. So it's best to take multiple commissions at once. Especially you, with that inventory? magic of yours."
"What's a good way to take multiple ones?"
"This requires knowing a bit of herbology… Golden Silvergrass often has overlapping habitats with Cottonball Grass. And places thick with Golden Silvergrass often have horned rabbits hiding, so you can sometimes get additional lowest-grade mana stones too."
She'd been trained by her father, a former ranger and hunter, so she roughly knew herbs as well? Well, when we first met she'd been wandering around on herb-related commissions. As she explained, she seemed to notice my gaze and sent a slight smiling glance over Han Sea's shoulder.
A relaxed demeanor completely different from last night, captured at a perfect angle by the camera drone.