157 - Crime Against Rockkind

Alexandra sat on the first floor of her house with Willow. Kam and Nara were sleeping upstairs, recovering from the ordeal they went through.

“This much?” Willow asked, looking inside the purse Alexandra had received in exchange for the bone elemental sources.

“I’ve found some nice stuff down there.”

“Including a darkness elemental.”

“I’d trade a thousand sources for Speck,” Alexandra said. “But I don’t have to. Now we have the Speck and the money. Is there anything we need to buy?”

“Rocks.”

Alexandra shook her head. “We don’t need money to get rocks. They’re free.”

“Free? Why?”

“Sadly, people don’t seem to share your love for all things stone.”

“We don’t really need anything,” Willow said. “The coins we got from the slime elementals are enough for now.”

Alexandra pondered. She had enough money to start issuing a few quests, but she wasn’t sure it would be enough. As she refined her plan to open an adventurer guild, a few issues kept surfacing.

First among them was the volume of quests she could offer. The whole point of the guild was to gather contribution points for herself, so she had to take a portion of the profits for herself. But it would take quite a while for anyone to earn enough points to purchase a skill and understand their value. So she would need enough money to operate for a few months before she could stop paying people to do her quests.

Then, there were the limitations in the quests she could give. Her training quests were based on her skills, and most of them wouldn’t be accessible to the common man. It was especially true of her rare and uncommon skills, which had the most rewarding quests.

Of course, she could also share event quests. Those were one-time things, but if even one person managed to buy a skill, she was confident the word would spread.

Speaking of event quests, she flipped through the pages of her journal to read her newest addition.

The Sun’s End: Provide Medh with a solar elemental source (0/1).

Reward: 5,000,000 CP

Failure condition: Medh acquires a solar elemental source from someone else.

Five million contribution points was the price of an epic skill. The same reward that graduating from the Iron Library would have given her. Alexandra smiled, even if she was aware of the difficulty such a reward implied.

Anyway, this wasn’t something she could do now, and she doubted anyone else would accept a contract like that. Even if they did, she wanted those points for herself, not a fraction of them.

Which meant she had to either save up more money or find another event quest.

“Willow, give me a quest.”

The girl stared at her. “What?”

“Anything.”

“Well, you promised to clean the house every week…”

Alexandra grimaced. This didn’t trigger an event quest, but it was something she had agreed to.

“Okay. But first, Speck, hand me a rock you don’t mind losing.”

“No. Isn’t.”

“What do you mean you don’t have one? I’m going to turn it into many more rocks. It’s like magic. You’ll see.”

“Speck. Not. Stupid.”

“Come on. Just one rock,” Alexandra said, trying to coax the elemental. “Then we can go on a rock-gathering trip.”

Silence.

“What are you talking about?” Willow asked.

“Just a quest. Don’t worry about it.”

“I wasn’t worried until now.”

Just as Willow said that, a boulder materialized in front of Alexandra. The floorboards cracked under its weight.

“What the…? Speck?” Alexandra shouted.

“Alexandra…” Willow said slowly.

“It’s not what I wanted.”

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“Rock. Least. Interesting. Gift.”

“Thank you, Speck, but that one is way too large,” Alexandra said.

“Too large for what?” Willow pressed.

Alexandra waved her off. “Don’t worry. Nothing bad.”

Willow stood up. “Alexandra.”

“Use. This. Rock. Make. Many.”

“I…”

Willow put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed. “Do it. Now that you’ve ruined the floor.”

Alexandra’s shoulders slumped. Fine.

Alexandra grabbed the hammer she’d bought for the occasion. She squared up to the boulder and swung. The impact rang through the floorboards. A chip of stone skittered off toward the wall. She swung again, and again, until cracks spread across the boulder's face.

“Speck. Watching.”

“Good for you.”

She wedged the hammer's claw into the widest crack and threw her weight against the handle. A slab broke free and hit the floor, cracking another board. She kept swinging, kept splitting, working the rock down into fist-sized chunks, then smaller, into gravel, and finally into gray dust.

By the time she sat back, her arms were shaking, and the boulder was a mound of grit and sand spread across a ruined stretch of floor.

“There,” she said. “Rocks.”

Willow didn't answer. She stood with her arms crossed, watching the dust settle over everything.

Footsteps moved upstairs. Nara peeked from the ladder hole and stared at the room. Kam came beside her and looked too.

“What happened?” Kam asked.

“Alexandra happened,” Willow said.

Nara looked at the pile, then at Alexandra's raw palms, then back at the pile. She didn’t say anything.

“She’s like that sometimes,” Kam explained.

“Excuse me?” Alexandra put her hands on her waist.

“Sometimes…” Willow muttered under her breath.

Nara hesitated before speaking. “Speck agreed?”

“It did,” Alexandra said.

“No. Betrayal.”

“I made tons of small rocks for you!”

“Dust. Not. Rocks.”

“Technically they are.”

The elemental didn’t answer.

Alexandra shrugged and checked her journal.

Grind a rock into dust without losing a single speck (1/1) -> +10 exp, +1 DEX, Skill Quest Unlocked: Destroy Rock.

Daily Quest Streak: 118 -> 119

Ugh, I better not tell Speck about this skill.

Alexandra took a look at her experience. She was at one hundred and forty out of three hundred and fifty, which was twenty-one days away from the next level.

Accounting: Perform a thousand calculations (1,000/1,000)

“Oh. Cool.”

Accounting – Common:

Improves your capacity to perform calculations, especially when it comes to money.

Each level increases the effect.

This wasn’t the skill she was the most excited about, but she had to admit it would probably be useful for her guild business.

“Another way to get the guild started would be to unlock or upgrade a better class perk,” she said, thinking out loud. However, since she couldn’t really predict how her perks would evolve, she wasn’t going to let her plan rely on that.

“Yeah, but before anything else, you’re going to clean all of that up,” Willow said.

Alexandra looked at the pile of dust that was only a fraction of what was spread all over the room and coughed. “I promised Speck to replace its rock…”

“Speck can come with us,” Willow said, beckoning Kam and Nara to follow her.

“But you can’t communicate.”

“I can,” Nara said, her voice low.

“See,” Kam said. “You can clean in peace.”

*

Cleaning 1 -> 2

Alexandra exhaled as she pushed the last bit of dust under the rug. “Good enough.”

It wasn’t perfect, but she’d never claimed it would be. With the whole afternoon before her, she took some time for a nap, then headed out to Zeynep’s house. It had been a while since she’d seen the woman, and she figured she should let her know she’d come back in one piece.

Alexandra climbed up the stairs, heading for Zeynep’s house, and knocked on the door. A few seconds later, it creaked open, revealing the Gold-rank behind it.

“Alexandra,” Zeynep greeted, smiling. “You’re back!”

“I am.”

“Come in.” Zeynep moved aside to let her inside. “Your friends were worried about you. Where were you?”

“I went to hunt wood elementals, but figured it was too easy, so I looked for darkness elementals and fell into a cave.”

Zeynep opened her mouth. Closed it.

“Okay. Well, I’m glad you’re fine.”

“Yeah, I found tons of bone elementals too,” Alexandra said, sitting on the carpet. “It was more than worth the trip.”

“Bone elementals?” Zeynep sat with her. “Damn, that’s nice. Maybe you could…”

“I can give you the place,” Alexandra said, cutting in. “But I’ve taken everything. It will take time for new elementals to form.”

She didn’t say anything about Leander and his tomb.

“Of course,” Zeynep said. “I appreciate it, though.”

Alexandra hesitated. “Medh asked me to hunt a solar elemental.”

Zeynep scoffed. “Of course he did, that bastard. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that, but don’t get involved with that. All the solar elementals we know of are Platinums.”

“I know. I wanted to ask you for advice.”

“About solar elementals? That’s simple: don’t. You’ll die.”

Alexandra sighed. “It’s not that simple. I’m only Bronze-rank, yet I can fight Golds. When I’m Gold—”

“You’ll die all the same.” Zeynep held her gaze. “You’re hardly the first person who can fight above your rank. Jumping two ranks is impressive, but just in Balrum, I know several Golds who can defeat Platinums.”

“You?”

Zeynep smiled. “Damn right.” But her smile vanished immediately. “Alexandra, not all elementals are born equal. Solar elementals are Platinums, but if the occasion arose, they might be able to contend with a Ruby.”

Alexandra looked at Zeynep. “Two ranks. I can do it.”

Zeynep looked at the ceiling. “May the Seven help me. Fine, what kind of advice are you looking for?”

“Well, actually, this has nothing to do with the solar elemental. I was wondering if there was anything I could do for Balrum. I’m talking about hunting monsters, or any other task that could use my skills.”

“Oh. These tasks are listed at the city council,” Zeynep said, standing up. “Come, I’ll show you the way.”