The Hunter's Guide to Monsters

The fact that the door opened at all prove that it was part of the warehouse. Krow toed the door open wider, cautious. It stuck a bit, but nothing compared to the irascibility of the front doors yesterday.

The lights flickered on as he entered. They were dimmer here. The space was as empty as the upper floors. A line of drying shelves stood against one wall.

It was just a basement. No  hidden treasure, no lurking monsters, no secrets better left uncovered.

How refreshing.

The cleaning enchants had dealt with the pests and debris already.

He spied stairs in the corner.

There was nothing to see, so he skipped up them, turned a corner, and nearly bumped into a dead end.

What.

Krow touched the raw stone, which slid open with a hiss of air and a grinding sound.

A small room lay before him.

A preparation table dominated the space, similar to the one at Velinel's aunt and uncle's place in Gremut.

The stone door closed behind him. It didn't look like a door at all, more an inlaid tile mural depicting a night garden.

He touched the edge.

The door opened again, to his surprise. Just that easy apparently.

He stepped away and it closed.

Aside from the prep table and cabinets that lined the walls, there was nothing in the room. He walked to the other end, where a patch of wooden wall was carved, this time a garden in spring.

The door opened opposite the main doors of the warehouse's ground level. He walked out, greeted once more by cheery orange lamplight.

The lights in the small ingredient prep room turned off as he exited.

The door to the prep room was painted in forest scenes, matching the rest of the warehouse walls. If he didn't pass through it moments before, he wouldn't know it was there.

At least it couldn't be lost, being directly across the front doors as it was.

Krow sat in the middle of the warehouse space, cross-legged, brought out his Tradebook.

He'd ordered about half the crates in Nyurajke put on auction to transfer them to his trade-vault, then to his Inventory. Those auctions were about to end.

The crates in the trade-vault needed to be transferred now.

Crates appeared around him. Starfall items, monster materials, ethermica, potions.

He separated the venom sacs from the nighteye caterpillars. The venom needed to be extracted from the sacs soon, or they'd become unstable.

The potion crates, he sent up to the second floor.

Eh, he had twenty-five crates of General Antidote? Since when?

Oh, shkav, he bought those in Gremut. Then forgot them?! They'd have come in handy during his sojourn in the highland wilds, damnit.

Was he always this forgetful?

Definitely not. His memory had always been good.

An uneasy thought filtered through his mind: did he really think he'd return from death unscathed?

He shook the thought away.

So he forgot a few things. No need to think so seriously about it.

The memory of killing bandits and feeling nothing surfaced from the depths of his mind.

Oh, now that comes up.

Krow leaned against a crate, stared blankly at a wall.

Whether instigated by deity or cosmic magic or random chance, he knew there would be a price exacted whether for the transmigration or the time-travel.

Things like these, even if they were caused by random fluctuations in the fabric of the cosmos, weren't without effects good and bad.

Even if the slogan TANSTAAFL didn't hang from a banner in the Hazelnutsward bistro, he'd never forget what it ultimately meant.

All gifts were given with strings attached.

Even if it was random chance that he was back in time, there was still the question of how.

Something was happening, in the unfathomable depths of the universe.

Something that sparked certain things to happen.

A planet's destruction.

A game made real.

One hundred and fifteen million lives, changed forever.

Krow always imagined the price would be too big for him to perceive. A cosmic price. He was only a single, simple soul. He didn't expect that part of the price would be so personal.

He shook his head, returned his attention to the Tradebook.

This was still speculation.

There was no reason to jump to conclusions.

So he was a little more forgetful than before. That was natural. He wasn't working in corporate anymore and he hadn't been a student for over a decade. The habit of memorizing had deteriorated.

He had a Scribe subclass, didn't he? He'd just take more notes.

For now, he'd keep going as planned.

Crates from the auction started streaming into his trade-vault.

His fingers moved fast, slipping the crates and loose items into Inventory and from there to the storage spaces around him.

His buy-orders had run out of money already, closed.

In all, the Starfall weapons acquired through buy-order numbered one hundred and five crates, thirty-one crates containing tools of the main craft classes, and eight containing Starfall shirts and trousers.

That was more than he expected.

Of the weapon crates, a full fifty were swords of all kinds. Longswords, curved swords, shortswords, greatswords – there were six of the fifteen battle classes able to wield a sword. Though berserkers could only wield swords made of stone.

Krow ported sixty crates of weapons to Cerkanst, and a third of that number were full of swords. A fourth were poleweapons – glaives, spears, halberds, and the like. A fifth were bows. The rest were a collection of daggers, claws, staves, guns, axes, and hammers.

Twenty crates of Starfall craft tools – mostly knives and mallets, and four crates of Starfall clothing.

He let his eyes roam over the crates, and could not stop a smile.

All of these, in the future, would bring him great profit.

Every single one, a diamond in the rough.

Though, none of all these helped him with the current problem of gathering RP.

He glanced at his clock.

It was moonset already.

What kind of shadow beasts laired so close to the Forest?

It wasn't yet time to find out.

But soon.

He took out his Travelkit, laid out the bedroll, and lay down.

He logged out of the game.