Frostbitten Wayfarer

Something about a payment plan made Zoe cringe a little inside. Financially, they were hard to justify when you weren’t already wealthy. But she had a stable source of income now, as long as Ren didn’t go anywhere. Five silver per day of mana would be simple for her to put away, even if it were a busy day for her.

“How do they work?" Zoe asked the woman.

“Well, you can pay twenty-five silver per week for the duration of your time here, or pay two and a half gold coins at the end of the two month period. In either case, late payments will incur an additional ten percent fee week over week until the debt is paid off.” She explained.

“So if I missed one week of payment here, the next week I would have to pay fifty two silver?” Zoe asked.

“That’s correct.” She answered.

“Okay, and if I decide to pay two and a half gold at the end, can I pay earlier when I get the money? Is there a reduction in the cost then?” Zoe asked.

“You can pay earlier, but there is no reduction in the fee.” The woman explained.

Zoe did some math in her head. If the lessons were five days per week, that left her with two days that she could spend making money. And she’d probably have plenty of time even on school days to charge mana too, but couldn’t count on that without knowing more.

If she sat and meditated for the full two days, she could almost fill the mana orb. Paired with even just very little that she could do throughout the week, she thought that a full sixty thousand mana was doable. But that only got her twenty silver, not the twenty five she would need to pay for the weekly payments.

And that wasn’t even mentioning the two and a half gold lump sum at the end if she chose that. If she couldn’t get twenty five per week, she couldn’t get two gold by the end, let alone two and a half. And then interest payments would be twenty five silver anyway, probably compounding.

She would need to find the time for another full mana orb every week to be comfortable with the idea.

“You said it was five days per week, right? How many hours do the lessons take?” Zoe asked.

“Well, most of the lessons are done here at the school of hunting interesting targets and take between four to five hours. Your final week will be a full five day trip into the forest to the west.” The woman explained.

“Okay, and can I sign up whenever?” Zoe asked.

“Yes you can, but you will need to wait until the next rotation before you can start taking classes. Which if you signed up right now would be in three days.” The woman answered.

“And I can sign up any time before then?" Zoe asked.

The woman nodded her head, “Yup!”

“Great,” Zoe said, smiling at the woman. “I’ll be back in a few days to sign up then. Thanks for the help!”

“No problem, hope to see you back at the School for Hunting Interesting Targets soon!" She said as she watched Zoe leave.

Three days to make another seven silver. That was simple enough. She pulled out her mana orb to check on her progress so far.

[Mana Orb - 7423]

Two days of dedicated charging and she’d have another twenty silver to call her own. Enough to pay for the first week and a decent chunk towards her next week too.

There was always the option of grabbing an odd job to work on while she charged the orb. But she already got a — to her estimation, thirty percent bonus to her mana regeneration by meditating, which she couldn’t do while she was distracted.

And on top of that, her meditation would level up the more she did it, giving her even more regeneration over time. Maybe if she wasn’t in a rush and had the time to find a specific job that might teach her a new skill, but for right now she needed money. And she had an all but guaranteed means of acquiring it.

She spent the next two days munching on sandwiches as she sat in Kaira park filling the mana orb. One day she wanted one of those fancy storage items that Joe had, something to store a bunch of food on her at once so she’d never have to worry about it going bad ever again.

Or did it still go bad in his storage item and people just didn’t care about that here? She wasn’t sure, but with ice magic there was probably something she could do eventually anyway.

The mana orb was done charging in the middle of the night, so Zoe waited until morning and went to deliver it to Ren. He was dressed as proper as he always was and gave her an empty orb along with the twenty silver coin payment.

Zoe made her way back to the school and found somebody different standing behind the counter. They wore the same garb, and her identify showed the same red marked warrior. But this time it was a short man with a scruffy brown beard who stood behind the desk.

“Hello!” He said as she entered, “how can we here at the School of Hunting Interesting Targets help you today?”

Zoe wondered how they even seemed to speak the school’s name with capital letters and sighed.

“I’m here to sign up for the complete package, I was told the rotation begins tomorrow?” She asked.

“Sure does, I can get that set up for you right away. Do you have payment ready or will you be taking advantage of one of our payment plans?” The man asked, fumbling with some papers below the counter.

“I’ll be paying twenty five silver per week, I think the woman said.” Zoe answered.

“Yes, yes of course.” He said, spreading piles of papers out on the counter in front of him and placing a black quill down next to them.

He continued, gesturing to different places on the various piles of papers “I just need you to sign here, here, here and here, please.”

Zoe read through the papers. It seemed like a lot, and if she was being honest, pretty predatory. There was a whole page dedicated to defining what qualified as being late for a payment. She had to have her payment for the week in before the end of the final lesson unless the final lesson was run by a female trainer in which case it needed to be in before the beginning of the final lesson.

Unless the female trainer was one of the blue marked trainers in which case they wouldn’t be able to accept payment so payment would need to be in on the second to last day. But if it was a blue marked male trainer then payment needed to be given at exactly noon or it would be considered late and incur interest.

If Zoe wore a hat while she paid for the week and paid during a lesson, it would be considered late and incur interest. Frankly, Zoe wasn’t sure how most of it was legal. But she made a note of all the strange requirements and decided the safest way to pay would be to just pay at the start of each week, after each lesson, at the front desk. There didn’t seem to be any strange requirements that would affect her then, to her reading.

Part of her wanted to just skip out on it, find somewhere else to learn from. But the person at city hall said they were good, the skills offered were all useful to her and she could afford it. Worst case scenario she could skip the lessons and charge mana for a while. She wouldn’t get her training but she wasn’t really at risk of immense debt, unless Ren suddenly died or completed his experiments at the worst timing possible.

She read through the rest of the contract. Several pages were waivers for lessons that would take place outside the walls.

For the most part, it seemed like as long as she was on her best behaviour and didn’t get in people’s way, there wouldn’t be any problems. Just as long as she didn’t decide to buy a hat. So many strange rules against hats. Why did they hate hats so much?

Zoe signed the papers and handed the quill back.

“Thank you very much, payment for the first lesson is due by the end of the week according to the contract of course. Your first lesson begins tomorrow morning at sunrise, you can show up here and a trainer will lead you to the training facility.” The man squared off all the papers and stuffed them into a drawer below the counter.

“Okay, I’d like to pay for the first week now, then.” Zoe said and pulled out three silver coins, placing them on the desk.

The man picked them up, stuffing them into a different drawer. “Thank you very much,” he said.

Zoe nodded and left. With one day left before the lessons began, there was no reason to not spend as much time as she could charging another mana orb. She sat down at a bench nearby and fell into a quiet meditation, dumping mana into the orb.

As night fell, her stomach grumbled and she hoped they would have food available at the school. It would probably be expensive though, even if it was around.

She sighed and got up, wandering down the streets until she found a tavern. It wasn’t her favourite option, as she didn’t know how long she could spend inside before she’d lose her progress on the feat. But if she ate quick, it would be fine she thought.

For that matter, she remembered that she already spent a few hours in a restaurant making apple cider. The excitement of a new skill distracted her, and she cursed under her breath. She got lax after getting the winter’s master feat and might have wasted months of her life in a stupid mistake.

Zoe hoped she didn’t, but made two hours her new limit for time spent inside. That was still the majority of her life spent outside, that was still not enough time to get in a good sleep. It might count, she hoped, cursing her mistake again.

It would be a good test, she tried to remind herself. Even if she didn’t get the spring master feat this year, that just meant she’d have another year to accumulate even more skills, another year to work on getting even better classes.

She was immortal, learning new things about how the world works wasn’t a bad thing if the only cost was time, she tried to remind herself. Immortality was a fickle beast though. Understanding she would live forever was one thing.

Not being frustrated at maybe wasting three months? That was a whole different thing. There was no practical reason for her frustration, nothing was lost because of it but time. Something she had an unlimited supply of.

And yet she was frustrated. Getting past her inhibitions around time would be difficult, she thought. And were they even worth getting over? She might have unlimited time, but time was also where everything happened.

And besides, those three months weren’t only three months. She’d also have to wait through the winter just to get to spring again, so it was effectively six months.

Or even longer, since she intended to class up during the winter for bonus cold classes. So she’d have to wait an entire year because of a silly mistake.

And she might have unlimited years if nothing changed, but what if things did change? What if there was a war the following year and she has to suffer through it at a lower level just because she screwed up and made apple cider for a day.

She pushed the thoughts aside. They weren’t helpful. Either she messed up or she didn’t, and she’d have to work around it. It would be good in the end, she’d know more and could help spread more knowledge. Two hours was either too much or not too much for the spring master feat, and she’d be figuring that out for herself.

Zoe walked into the tavern and sat down at the bar. The bartender looked at Zoe and raised her eyebrows.

“Whatever food you have available is fine,” Zoe said.

“Sure thing boss,” the bartender said and walked into the back kitchen. She came out a few minutes later with a bowl full of stew.

Zoe scarfed the stew down, and found it to be underwhelming. Bland and mushy, without even a buff for her. Not that she needed a buff right now anyway.

Though, maybe there was a mana regeneration buff she could get. Even if she had to pay for it, if it gave her enough of a boost it might end up being worth doing anyway.

She went up the stairs to the bathroom and got changed. She put on her dark red pants with her blue shirt and stuffed the rest of her clothes into her bag.

By the time she got back to the school, the sun was almost cresting the horizon. It was time for her to go back to school for the first time in almost a decade. She was nervous for some reason, her heart threatening to beat out of her chest.

Inside the front entrance of the school were a dozen different people, all adults around Zoe’s age. Most of them showed up between level fifteen and twenty-five, but three of them were red marked warriors. One of which Zoe recognized as the woman she met a few days prior. The woman smiled at Zoe when she entered.

A few minutes later, the woman clapped her hands. The sound echoed through the room as though she fired off a gunshot right next to Zoe’s head, and yet it didn’t seem to deafen her at all.

“Right! Today we are going to get a tour of the school and talk about what you can expect from your two months of training with us. Part of this tour will be outside the walls. We have three trainers here today to keep you safe, and the areas we will be going to have been investigated overnight.” She explained, looking over the crowd.

Murmurs from several of the other students erupted at the mention of leaving the walls. They seemed to emanate a fearful excitement as everybody anticipated exploring the dangerous wilderness outside Flester.