Shapeless Hero

39 - Staff Magic

"Fylka?"

I lift the pen and look up from my desk. Rev stands a yard away, in each of his hands a palm-sized gem. Both of them are the same, translucent red, but differ in mana content. A group of adventurers watches us with anticipation from the other side of the counter.

I point at the left gem. "Fire-attribute. Looks full." Then, I point at the other one. "Nothing."

"Thank you.", Rev says, his eyes lingering on me, as he turns around to walk back to the adventurers.

I nod and continue my current task. Paperwork should be a rather mundane affair, but doing calculations for "six left ears from hobgoblins" or "two gluteal dragon scales, minor damage" makes me wonder, how they were obtained. How intense was the fight? Was it on a snowy mountain or a lava pit?

"Are you sure?", I hear one of the adventurers ask Rev.

Rev nods, putting on a professional smile. The adventurers sigh and accept the reduced reward.

As I work through my pile of documents, the prior scene repeats itself with different adventuring parties and items. They fulfill a quest, bring the proof to us, then we validate the loot and give them the quest reward. I am in charge of calculating the rewards today, since my mana vision allows for a precise measurement of magic. The more mana the looted magic items store, the higher the rewards for the finders.

Another adventurer frowns. "Argh! It was useless after all?" More objects with no magic leave them with a pitiful reward.

"Don't worry, the next time will be better. I can feel it!", someone else from the same party responds, clenching a raised fist even. With every sentence I overhear, adventuring sounds more and more like some odd form of gambling. The mana content in the items being practically random doesn't help dispel my suspicions.

Right before lunch break, Rev comes over again and casts his eyes over the piles of paper left. I sigh in relief, once he gifts me a nod of approval. "Alright, which one is the pile of discarded documents?"

I return a blank stare.

He rebukes with an expression of puzzlement.

I finally break the silence. "I...um...didn't deem any of the documents as invalid. What did I miss?"

He sighs in exasperation and starts sifting through my finished paperwork. He quickly finds a specific document and reads it. He keeps reading it, then his brows rise in surprise and he puts the document aside. He does it a second time. And a third time.

After roughly five minutes, Rev leans with both arms on my desk, his head hovering over the pile of documents he picked out. "You understand more than forty languages?", he asks, his disbelief obvious.

Crap. I knew I gained some new languages, while I was transferred here, but I paid no mind to the specifics.

He picks up one of the documents again. "I've added an invoice written in arcane runes... and you filled it out in the same scripture!" He lets the paper glide towards me.

I look at it and my eyes widen. Those are the runes, I saw on Karl's and August's arcane circles.

"Why are you surprised too!?", Rev remarks, quite a bit upset.

I don't know what to answer. I jog my memories, but nothing comes up. Before any panic sets in, I am saved by the meek voice of an adventurer.

"E-excuse me..." Only her hands reaching up are visible to Rev and I from behind the counter top. The dark, long nails draw my attention, before I realize the thin, white fur on her hands.

Lips pursed, Rev looks at me and nods toward the counter. "I'll have to check your work. Help her."

"Yes, Sir.", I answer. Relieved to have escaped Rev's interrogation, I make my way towards the waiting individual.

"Welcome to the adventurer's guild! How may I help you?", I say whilst leaning over the counter to get a look at her. Barely higher than a yard, a fox-kin of the arctic sub-type looks back at me, her curiosity matching mine.

The first give-away are the two rounded, fox ears, which protrude from her equally bright shaggy bob. Her bangs slightly cover the golden eyes and what could be mistaken as black liner around them. For the most part, her face and body are humanoid, but always have some animalistic aspect to them, barring her full-body fur.

From her hands to her shoulders, the white fur gets gradually thicker. It takes me a moment until I notice, that she's topless, for her fur is so thick around the torso and legs, that any claim of public indecency is rendered void. Around her waist, a thick belt holds loose pants in position, whilst also providing something to properly affix her daggers and pouches to.

I raise my brows as a signal for her to speak. She snaps out of it and her white, fluffy tail starts to move again.

"E-excuse me. I'd like to... I'd like to...um.", her tail moves faster, as she tries to put her intention into words. Eventually she groans and mumbles to herself: "Uh, brother was right. I should've started preparing a year earlier."

It takes another few heartbeats, before I realize, her mumbling was in a different language. I understood her perfectly, but like a person with two mother tongues, I didn't pay attention to the switch.

With her language in mind I ask: "Do you understand me better now?"

Her eyes widen. "Yes!", she declares, relief washing over her. Rev's head shoots up, as he also hears the change of my vocabulary and pronunciation. Does this have to do with my rank S in Morphing? The latter seems to absorb all kinds of traits, so why not languages too?

I smile at the fox-kin. "Welcome to the adventurer's guild! How can I help you?", I say, this time using her language.

Her eyes light up. "I'd like to sell some loot!" Then her stomach rumbles. She frowns. "And maybe eat something, once I get the money."

I chuckle. "Alright, let's see what you've got."

She removes some pouches from her belt and spills their contents on the counter for me to appraise. "I don't know what they are, but this is what I collected from a dungeon." She laughs. "It was in one of the contraptions that used some weird, ranged magic to kill intruders."

I freeze. On the counter, rolling around, happily clinking whenever they collide with each other, is a collection of metallic objects, I did not expect to see anytime soon. "Those are cartridges.", I answer absentmindedly. Their diameter exceeds the width of my thumbs. I look at the arctic fox-kin. "You should be happy they didn't blow your head off. Hells, you should be happy you didn't get hit at all!"