Chapter Nine: The Quest Part Two

We stayed in the alley for a while, discussing how to raise money for our flag before we could become a proper guild. We made Wilt the leader of our party since he was the one who planned all this. Eventually, not only did we find the solution to our flag’s expense but also for our livelihoods and bills to pay once they kicked in three months — that solution was taking quests.

They were not only the biggest economy here but also the way of life in this world. Trade, manufacturing, industry, city maintenance, and defenses were built by this practice. For example, restaurants hired part-timers for labor, warriors for security, and hunters for retrieving high-class ingredients. Bounty hunting, mercenary works, barters, as long as anyone posted their quests on websites or information booths, everyone would join in to reap its rewards and profits.

Quests also ranked the same class of metals as guilds, based on their level of difficulty and importance, at the same time, the level of reward they held. Because of the nature of its risk, the city forbade minor guilds and inexperienced braves from taking quests that were two steps higher than their respective rank. Since we were newcomers here, the city could only offer us iron-class. Most of them were odd jobs.

For the past three weeks, our party took dozens of iron-class quests, like delivering goods, street cleaning, rooting out weeds in farms, and many more. We divided our earnings and amassed each of us three hundred chaffs, securing our first payment for our apartments’ monthly rent. As for the fund for our flag, we pooled together a tenth of the cost to make one. At this point, we hadn’t yet decided on the design and the name for our guild.

It was high noon. We sat on a stone bench in the Eastern District’s park, eating takeouts for lunch after we finished another street sweeping quest. To our relief, fast foods here were much healthier than in our world since their fresh ingredients came straight from outside farms. As long as we earned money here, we would no longer worry about hunger and food that had disgusting preservatives. Everything went well for us. Our finances and livelihood stabilized, so as our camaraderie. However, there was one little problem — Brock.

“Where’s Brock?” Alex asked Wilt, realizing he was gone — again.

“I sent him to buy drinks,” he answered.

“That was two hours ago!” Katie growled. “What’s taking him so long?” We could only answer with a shrug. She was grinding her teeth. “We need to talk about him.”

All eyes turned to our leader since he was the one who accepted Brock in the first place. We protested at first, but Wilt reminded us that Brock had defeated hundreds of newcomers so he could sit beside Andromeda. He believed the jock might’ve been chosen by a powerful god, so having him around might be useful to our party. Li and Alex agreed, sensing great powers within him. That left Katie and me to concede in the end, hoping our views towards him might change. After all, we were taught not to judge a book by its cover. Three weeks had passed — boy, we were wrong.

“What about him?” Wilt said.

“What about him?” Katie snapped. “Ever since we formed this party, Brock hadn’t done any work. All he ever did was either late, slacking off, or going off somewhere. He’s a… he’s….” She turned to me with a glare. “Sam, tell him what Brock is.”

“Uh, a slacker?”

“Right, he’s a slacker, yet he still gets paid!”

“Alright, alright,” Wilt said. “Calm down.”

“I AM CALM!” she roared, startling the surrounding passersby. The steam coming out of her red face made us silent to avoid her further outburst.

“Are you?” Alex asked in a softer tone.

Katie gazed at her for a bit before letting out the steam to cool down. “Yeah, I’m calm — I’m sorry, it’s just that I love this idea of us having a guild, but it’s so frustrating that we did all the hard work while he didn’t do any of it. Have you ever felt this kind of experience before?”

Wilt and I exchanged glances before turning to her. “Group projects,” we groaned, remembering the classmates who were lazy during school projects.

“We don’t have slackers among us, Shaolin.”

“My village lives in the cold wilderness,” Alex said. “The lazy ones would starve themselves to death if they don’t work.”

“That’s harsh,” Li muttered. We all shuddered from what she said.

“Okay, okay, back to Brock.” Wilt returned to the main topic, avoiding further discussion about Alex’s dark background. “I know he can be hard for us to work with, but it’s only been three weeks. Let’s give him a chance.”

“Giving him a chance?” Katie cocked a brow. “I don’t care if he’s a brave of some almighty god of I-don’t-give-a-damn, Wilt. He needs to go.” She shifted her glance toward the rest of us. “Are you guys with me?”

For some reason, we were reluctant to answer until Alex proposed, “How about we vote?”

“Yeah,” Katie exclaimed. “The five of us will vote him out of our party.”

“Shouldn’t we inform Brock first?” Li said. “It would be unfair to him for not knowing about this.”

“Li’s right,” Alex agreed. “Once he gets back, we’ll tell him what he did for the past three weeks. Then we’ll listen to whatever excuses he has.”

“And then we will vote him out, right?” Katie finished with a grin.

“Fine,” Wilt sighed. “While he’s not here, let’s have a mock vote first.”

We all nodded in agreement.

“You’ve been quiet for a while there, Sam.” Katie noticed I was less talkative than the others. “I bet you love to see Brock go.”

I smiled meekly. Sometimes stereotypes were based on truth. Jocks were supposed to be loud, quick to anger, and a bunch of stuck up. Most of all, they were bullies, just like the whole team in my school. I remembered how I avoided them many times when they went around tormenting other schoolmates. However, Brock might be a stereotypical jock, but he was never a bully, to my surprise. Sure, he was a slacker, but he was downright cheerful and treated us as friends. Having mixed feelings by that thought, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to vote Brock out or give him another chance.

“Alright, let’s start the vote,” Wilt began.

“I’m back.” Brock appeared with his right hand, holding a paperboard basket filled with six-packed bottles of juice.

“Where have you been? We’re thirsty!” Katie bolted up to grab one and uncorked it. After three gulps, her eyes bulged, realizing something wrong with the juice. “This is warm!”

“Oh, yeah…” Brock chuckled abashedly before handing us the rest of the bottles. “Sorry about that. I got caught up in something totally awesome for all of us.”

“What could be more important than bringing back our drinks cold?” Katie scowled.

“Okay, before I get to that point,” he began, “I need to address something first. I know we’ve been working hard for the past three weeks, and we have a goal. To build the greatest guild this world has ever seen. Believe me, I’m all on board with this. But I will admit, I didn’t contribute to our party very much. And I’m going to tell you why.”

We were astounded. Maybe the jock did have some redeeming qualities. Although, that was quite exaggerated when he said about building the greatest guild this world had ever seen. A modest guild was enough for us.

“I realized that we worked so hard, yet our pay is too little. We’ll never achieve our dream if this keeps up. The gods didn’t choose us for this kind of work. We are more than that.”

“What?” We all snapped. This wasn’t about him apologizing for slacking off. He was talking about something else.

“We’re in another world. Why waste our potential on these odd jobs? We should go out there. See the world, go on adventures, taking risks. That’s where the real money-making is.”

“That’s not a good excuse to be lazy.” Li gave him a deadpan stare.

“Brock, I get what you’re saying,” Wilt said. “But I don’t think we are ready. We have no idea what dangers we’re facing outside the Blue Zone.”

“Even if we are ready now,” Alex hissed, “there’s no way this city would give us a risky quest.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that.” Brock grinned. “We’ll get that flag sooner than you expected.”

“And how are you going to do that?” Katie cocked her brow.

“Coz I got ourselves a silver-class quest.”

Everyone said nothing for a moment before exploding, “You did what?”

“I got ourselves a silver-class quest,” he repeated. I took back what I thought about him having redeeming qualities. I would vote him out for sure.

“It’s not a scam, is it?” Wilt asked with doubt.

“No, no, no, it’s super legit,” Brock replied. “I got the papers, seal, and everything.” He pulled out a scroll from his jacket. Its wax seal featured a snake wrapped itself around a tree, biting its tail. As we remembered from the orientation, that seal belonged to the Jormungand Guild, one of the platinum-class. We were astonished that he managed to get that.

“That’s impossible,” Katie exclaimed. “You know how hard it is to get a copper-class. But a silver-class?”

It was true. To be granted a quest, braves could either take flyers from information booths or click one on websites. They then went to that guild or person who posted it so they could get hired or approved on taking that quest. However, no one would ever let newcomers like us from taking a copper-class unless we earned a good reputation, or we joined or established a guild. That way, people would trust that we were capable of finishing a dangerous quest. That was one of the golden rules here. It was strange for Brock to get that class.

“Where did you get that?” Li asked.

“Oh,” Brock explained, “when I got out of the convenience store, I was about to get back to you with the drinks, but there were some guys with a guild flag calling out anyone who wanted to take a high-class quest. At first, I thought it was a scam, but then people around me said they’re from the Jormungand Guild, a big shot. Libra was there, and they didn’t seem to mind, so it’s super legal. Then they took us outside the city. The next thing,” he raised the scroll in the air and widened his grin, “I have this.”

“H-h-how?” Katie stammered while the rest of us left speechless.