A Jaded Life

“You travelled Mundus, didn’t you?” the guy asked with a grin on his face, before shaking his head as the grin turned wry. He preempted my response by continuing, “But where are my manners, you may call me Joshua, formerly known as Kelrig,” he introduced himself. The way he formulated his introduction made me think that Joshua was his original and currently used first name. In contrast, Kelrig used to be his character-name.

“Well met, Joshua, you may call me Jade, formerly known as Morgana,” I decided to go with complete honesty, the promise on Frigga’s name making me confident enough to be truthful. This way, if I was recognised, I couldn’t be accused of entering under false pretences or with malicious deception and, sadly, recognition wasn’t impossible. By now, what little difference there had been between the face of Morgana and my original face had been washed away, leaving only the height and muscle I had gained after crossing the first divide to differentiate my current form from the form of Morgana.

“I thought I recognised you,” his smile didn’t fade, confusing me just a little as a great deal of coverage about my antics on Mundus had painted me as something of a villain. Quite a bit of that had been deliberate, sure, but that didn’t change the fact that I had pushed the boundaries of what I had considered a game quite a bit and had been impressed by how far they could be pushed. Now, with the benefits of hindsight, I knew that there hadn’t been any artificial boundaries outside of those placed in regards to resurrection, making me wonder just how that part had functioned. Maybe something to do with the method used to create the Avatar bodies in the first place and project the Traveller’s mind into them, but unless and until I understood that original method, I couldn’t even begin to speculate. Anyway, if I was confident in one thing, it was that the method relied on Divine Magic, so not something I could access anyway.

“Just remember, this isn’t a game any longer, so don’t go all evuuuuuul on us,” he grinned, waving his hands around as he stretched the word far beyond what was reasonable. His obvious amusement did a great deal to ease the trepidation I had felt, knowing that he recognised me and knew what I had done.

“What are you talking about?” the guy who had approached me originally asked, looking equally confused and worried.

“Well, meet Jade, a former Traveller of Mundus and holder of a Legacy, just like me. Only, where my legacy is that of a decently powerful cleric who focused on helping a fairly small village, hers is likely the legacy of the strongest spellcaster, so make of that what you will,” Joshua explained and I noticed that the worry only became more pronounced on the other guy’s face.

“And Jade, this is Garry, not a traveller but a decently skilled farmer now. But you mentioned trade earlier, didn’t you? What did you have in mind, both when it comes to things you are offering and things you would like to have in trade?” he asked, returning his focus to me.

“Well met, Garry,” I gave the guy a nod, hiding my amusement at his discomfort, “You said it, I most likely was the most powerful Spellcaster amongst us Travellers and I’d like to believe that I have been able to regain some of that power. A part of it is focused on the incredibly useful skill of Enchantment, allowing me to create magical items with beneficial effects, especially if you don’t have access to a dungeon or some other ready source of such items,” I explained, noticing that even more people in the vicinity suddenly seemed to perk up with interest.

“Permanent enchantments? What sort of things can you do?” Joshua immediately asked, not even trying to hide his interest.

“Depends, obviously. Generally, I’d argue that the most interesting are the classical attribute increases, especially on jewellery, and a nifty enchantment for bladed weapons, causing the wounds caused by them to bleed a lot more than normal and become more difficult to heal. I might be able to fit that particular enchantment on an arrowhead, too, but I doubt it would work all that well, arrows are difficult to enchant permanently. So, yeah, bladed weapons that cause deadly wounds and jewellery that increases attributes,” I shrugged, not explaining about my Shadow Bags. Sure, those were incredibly useful and interesting, but they also needed somebody to have Darkness Magic and a decent understanding of its use, meaning it wasn’t something I wanted to just hand out.

“I can tell you, that does sound like something we’d be interested in. The weapon-enchantment, do you think that it’d work on a spearhead?” he prodded, trying to get a better idea of the utility they’d get out of my skills.

“It should, but I’d have to experiment. Depends on materials and a few other things. In turn, I need supplies, grains and such, tea, if you have it,” I explained, looking around the area and letting my gaze linger on the various well-tended fields. Unless they were utterly incompetent, they should have a decent supply of food, meaning they’d hopefully trade some for enchanted items.

“That does sound doable. We’ll have to discuss amounts and such, it’s the first time anybody has come to ask for trade like this, especially as you have no plans to remain here if I understand you correctly,” Joshua nodded, before looking over to the various buildings set up in the valley.

“We’ll have to figure out how to house you while you are here, too. So far, we don’t have an inn or guesthouse or anything like that,” he continued, his mind obviously considering the logistics of this and not finding an easy or obvious answer.

“Do you have a quarry or something like that, a rocky area or even just a large stockpile of stone somewhere? Even a fieldstone wall would do, if you don’t mind the wall being destroyed,” I asked, thinking back to the gingerstone house I had built when meeting the dryads. Setting one up here would work quite well and the others didn’t expect me back for the next few days, though I had promised to send word if I needed more than three days.

“There’s a bunch of random stones we discarded when preparing the fields, yes,” Garry confirmed, looking quite confused at the question, “What are you going to do with them?”

“As I said, I hold the legacy of the magically most powerful Traveller. Since I have taken it on, I have learned a lot and my power now is far greater than it has been at this level while on Mundus,” I explained, my lips twisting into a grin, “While I could conjure stone outright or pull it from the Earth with nothing but a flexing of my mind, I would prefer to keep the disturbance to the foundation of your village to a minimum. So, I would prefer to make use of stone that is already here and not in use.”

By now, I had managed to make even Joshua’s relaxed grin falter, though it wasn’t gone just yet, he just looked like he was holding the smile with nothing but his will and maybe force of habit.

“If you say so, sure, you can use those stones. It’d make things easier and maybe give you something to do while I ask around and try to figure out how we can do that trading you are interested in,” Joshua suggested, driving home just how much he was doing this by the seat of his pants. But then, these people were living deliberately separate from the ruins of our former world, making it no surprise that I’d likely been the first to stumble upon them. Their groups had likely collected all the survivors in the general area, but coming across somebody who was deliberately travelling and not in need of rescue? I had a feeling there were few people like this, like me, wandering around the ruins of our world.

“That is acceptable, yes,” I nodded, turning to Garry, who looked still a little confused, making me think he was regretting that he hadn’t excused himself at the start of the conversation. Alas, he had been curious and now he had been dragged into the situation. Luckily, it had not become a mess just yet and, thanks to Joshua’s promise, I doubted it would turn into one.

“Garry, why don’t you show her the way? I’ll have to talk to the others, we’ll figure out how to do this. Jade, we’ll talk later,” he bowed his head just a little before moving off, back towards the other houses, leaving me with a slightly apprehensive Garry.

“If you would?” I prodded the guy, “And maybe tell me something about this place, I just stumbled across it and thought I’d check it out. He mentioned legacies, so are there others around or just him?”

My prodding was enough to get Garry going and as he walked, he also started to talk, apparently without even considering to censor himself.