Back in Perseverance's End, we quickly found what we were looking for. There were many places that sold gear, and most of them had backpacks as well. The options were rather varied, offering enchantments to increase internal space and reduce weight—similar to bags of holding, or to make them less unwieldy to carry. In the end, though, the best we could buy with a single silver coin was a large, but normal, backpack.
Most gear was expensive. One silver was pretty much the baseline for cheap stuff.
The backpack was sturdy, reinforced with leather and clearly made for adventurers (or as they called them around here, workers), but that was it. And we even had to haggle for it, for which I had Elyra to thank. Unexpectedly, her innocent girl charms had worked wonders on the vendor, and Vespera's disbelief at seeing her in action amused me to no end.
With that done, I picked [Heavy Load Bearing] and felt the skill immediately take effect. The large backpack seemed to vanish from my shoulders, becoming much lighter and easier to move around with. It was still there, but its presence was diminished and I felt much less clumsy.
"Not bad," I told the girls when they asked me how it felt. "We'll see if things change once we fill it to the brim."
Speaking of filling the backpack, all three of us were more than happy to head back out immediately. Before that, though, I thought it would be best to stop by at the guild. I wanted people to get used to our presence, so that we would slowly stop being the outsiders, and it was for the best that we did. The place looked like a kicked anthill, with people running around everywhere and a big queue at the bar. There, Bib wasn't administering alcohol to the patrons, rather he was jotting down names on a list.
It didn't take us long to understand the situation. For once, our status as outsiders helped, as did the presence of two gorgeous women with me. Surprisingly, it was the drunk guy who had tried to buy my "slaves" who helped us figure out what was going on. After apologizing for his earlier behavior, which he blamed on the too many drinks he had, he pointed at the BTNO meter hanging in the middle of the room.
The beast tide counter was constantly fluctuating, numbers going up and down while strange glowing glyphs shifted and morphed on the enchanted wooden boards.
"They're talking a mini flash tide," the man said. He introduced himself as Buck, once again apologizing for his earlier behavior. Curiously, he apologized to me but didn't even consider the presence of the girls.
I shouldn't have been surprised. I saw a few people with humanoid slaves, and Buck's behavior was the norm. It pained me to be forced to adapt, but when moving to a new potentially hostile environments, it's usually best to act like the locals until you have enough power to do whatever you want.
"A mini tide?" I asked.
"Ye," he grumbled, nodding slowly and clearly in deep thought. "Fuck, I don't have enough to pay for a room, but from what I hear, it shouldn't hit the city until late night. I might have time."
With that, he rushed out. It took a while to piece together the rest of the information, but eventually I got a clear picture. The mini tides were a relatively new phenomenon, appearing for the first time a couple decades ago and becoming more frequent ever since. Their appearance also made the BTNO meter rather unreliable.
"It didn't use to swing ten, even twenty percent in only a few hours, you know?" one of the workers said. He was calm, because unlike many others—and us, he already had secured a room.
It was he who encouraged us to queue up before the line reached all the way to the door and Bib ran out of cheap rooms, and he was gracious enough to talk to us while we slowly got through the line.
"Now, we don't know no shit anymore. Working outside has become dangerous…"
He trailed off, looking in the distance. His name was Vandril. He was covered in wrinkles, leathery skin stretched by time and sun exposure, and had one bad eye that swiveled around listlessly. A hawk sat on his shoulder. Chained, like all other slave monsters. It looked intelligent and rather pissed to be here.
"I'm hoping they are right and it only lasts two days," he said. "That's what I paid for, first underground floor. Fuck me if you'll see me upstairs during a tide, mini or not."
"Are they that dangerous around here?" I asked.
The man laughed wryly. "Are they ever not dangerous? I like you, new kid. Don't go outside like so many stupid youths and die on me, will ya?"
By the time we reached Bib, prices had spiked even for the bad rooms. We ended up having to take a loan to even be able to ask what rooms they had available, because even in normal times the cheapest one went for a silver a night. Now? Two for little more than a closet.
"I'm assuming you are fine with your slaves sleeping on the floor, yes?" Bib rumbled.
I looked at the barman turned innkeeper for the guild. "No, I'm not. I want a double bed."
"Right…" the man said, dragging the word out until it was reduced to an uncomfortable whisper. "Five silver per night, then. A friendly word of advice, book for three nights. Most fools here booked for two, and they might end up sleeping in the sewers if this… mini… tide turns out to be like the last three mini ones."
There was no use trying to haggle. Bib simply pointed at the line of people behind me, and I understood. If not to me, he was going to sell the overpriced room to someone else. I almost wanted to refuse out of spite, but didn't.
I took a loan for twenty silver and spent fifteen to get a room for three nights. A room upstairs. I learned that the wrinkled adventurer (worker) with the hawk was rather loaded, his room going for twenty silver a night just to be in the safety of the shallowest of underground floors. Others were even richer, some of them sleeping in Chasm City.
It made me wonder how that place looked, but just to access the elevator you had to pay a fee I wasn't comfortable even thinking about.
◈◈◈
The key clanked in the lock, and the door opened to the dusty room where we were going to sleep for the next three nights. I threw my backpack on the floor near the bed, and the empty thing almost bounced with the force of the throw.
"Hey," Vespera complained. "You're kicking up all sort of nasty."
She threw herself on the bed, coughing when even more dust was thrown into the air. Frowning, she summoned her magic and then dismissed it.
"Well," she said. "At least the bed is comfortable."
We didn't spend much time enjoying it, though. The interest rate on the loan was two silver a day, so we headed out immediately to try and squeeze some hunting before the beast tide arrived.
I quickly dismissed the fake chains and slave collars.
"Are you sure, Sol?" Elyra asked, worried. "We are barely outside of the city."
"I read the rules at the Guild. It's only mandatory inside the walls."
Vespera clicked her tongue. "Angel girl is right, though. This will attract attention."
"Listen," I said. "I will not demean you like this, unless it's strictly necessary. I don't care about attention, I care about you."
"Aww," Vespera cooed. "You are making me blush!"
Despite her attempt to play it off, I could feel through the bond that my words had struck a chord. Even more so with Elyra, whose thoughts were a chaotic mess.
As we walked, we noticed that we weren't the only ones outside: many other workers had the same idea as us and were rushing out of the city for some last minute hunting or gathering.
Some of them were literally tearing down anything that they could see, ranging from trees to boulders to gathering immense amounts of water from the river into specialized containers.
"Those are the weakest people," Vespera said.
"How do you know?" I asked.
"Just a hunch," she replied with a shrug. "But if you need some last minute money and you can't hunt, what do you do?"
It made sense. It also reminded me that we were among those weaker people, despite our grand ambitions. Alas, I only had a normal pack, so it wasn't like I could fit a tree in it. We walked quickly, almost running, heading straight for where we had found slimes the day before. With the limited time we had, it made no sense to search for bigger game we might or might not find, and might or might not be able to take down.
No, we needed some cash to at least avoid growing our debt too much, and then we needed to head back before the tide rolled over us.