Halonar

The Price of Success

"What the fuck?" he heard someone behind him whisper.

He pulled the bag across the ground, the scales jumbled.

How much can I get for this?

Hans leaned forward. "Whoa, mighty big catch. What is that? Some sort of scale- oh."

The guy leaned back. "So you killed the boss, good work. I won't buy the scale, but I'm sure some sorry-ass villager here in Gavhin might. The fact is, that stuff just isn't worth much to us, not that i'm trying to downplay what you did- how'd you kill him anyway?"

"Ran his mouth too much, kept him talking, so I shut it for him." Jack replied, coldly.

Hans stroked his chin, "Thank's that guy's been bothering us for weeks. Constantly whispering shit in our ears, I was sick of it. I would have gone down there, but I'm stuck here. I sent a few Adaraians down there, they returned empty handed, well, except for the treasure they found, greedy little fuckers."

Jack swallowed. "There was treasure?"

Hans coughed. "Yeah but don't get sad about it, there's plenty more in other dungeons. If you go looking hard enough, you might find one lying around."

"What do you mean lying around?"

Hans whistled. "I dunno, it could be a hole in the ground, a weird looking rock with cracks, an old building." He wiped his nose. "You can buy stuff here. We have starter equipment. He pointed to another stand. There was a full arsenal of weapons.

"You have a nice looking sword there, and a knife" He pointed down to the bulge on Jack's hip, "Don't think you're fooling anyone, If you really want to hide it, you better get a concealment enchantment. My point being, that you don't seem to have a bow or slingshot or anything."

Hans pulled out a bow from his back, it came into existence before Jack's eyes. "You can have my old one, free of charge. Just gimme a scale and we'll call it even."

Jack tossed him a scale. Then he attached the bow to his belt.

"See ya later." The guy called out.

The first thing he did as soon as he was out of sight of the building, was go to the nearest Pawn shop, and sell the bag of scales. Of course, the shopkeeper attempted to haggle, but Jack stood his ground, and ended up walking away with a decent amount of money.

The next thing that Jack did that day was buy a better map. The one he had up until today was old and looked as if about to come apart. He headed to a nearby shop in hopes of finding a replacement.

Inside the store was relatively empty of people, but scrolls hung on the walls. Many, many scrolls.

A woman sat at a desk, she appeared to be reading something. "Hi, how are you? What do you want to buy?"

Jack observed the gallery of maps. Some were unraveled on display, some were rolled up and stored in rows.

A stone tablet caught his eye. "Is that a map?" He asked.

She looked at it for a second. "I don't really know what that is, I assume it's a map of some sort."

Jack pointed at another weird looking map. "What about that one?"

She took it off the shelf. It was a small metal plate, glowing faintly.

"What is it?"

"I don't know, I think it's a map, It's old Versurdi technology, I haven't been able to get it to work."

"How much is it?"

The girl shook her head. "No offense, but I don't think you can afford it."

"How much?"