The Insider System

Chapter 32: Road Trip

Squeezing into his seat, Lake didn't really have anywhere to put his feet. "It's ok sir, you can put them on me I wont feel it." The guard knocked his fist against his chest to emphasize his point. "Ok, thank you." Lake used the guard laying on the ground like a leg rest, and he couldn't help but think this was how royalty was treated. The only way it could be better was if the cart was also being pulled by big strong men.

Stopping himself before his thoughts got any crazier, Lake asked Joy. "Why all the guards, I thought I was good with the Assassins guild?" After he asked this, Lake felt the cart start to move, and was surprised at how fast they were going in town.

Bracing herself from the sudden increase of speed, Joy said. "You are, but our deal is only with them another guild might try and snatch you this time. Technically Last time was the Alliance but Glen turned out to be working for the Assassins guild and they were also the ones that wanted you. I doubt the others would risk any of their teams for you; they only tried it last time because Glen told them I was the only one with you." Lake felt the cart speed up again this was easily twice as fast as the last cart that had been ambushed last time. "Looks like we're out of town at this speed it should only be 10 hours or so to the capital."

"So how much did the guild pay for me and am I responsible for paying it back?"

"We actually traded them a tree whose sap is poisonous, so it plays the same role you would have."

"That's really all it took?"

"It's not a regular tree, it was from the guild leader's personal collection easily worth over 500,000 gold. He also said you don't have to worry about the debt."

"Wow, they really undervalued me." Lake didn't know if this was true, maybe that was a huge fortune.

"That's good to hear, some people weren't sure if you would end up being worth it."

"Why didn't you just ask me what my skill was before paying?"

"While everyone wants to know, it's against guild policy to ask the only person you have to tell is the guild leader so he can assign you to a branch. You're lucky our guild leader is a smart man, he'll find something for you to do even if your skill seems bad on the surface, that's why he didn't bother asking. It also helps it not spread the information around, the less people who know the better."

"I told the Temple head."

"I wouldn't worry about that. These kinds of situations happen pretty often; she probably knows more people's secrets than some of the gods. So what did she say about it?" Lake giggled a little. This was a roundabout way of asking him about his skill; it seemed people really wanted to know.

"Skirting the rules a little there."

"Sorry, I didn't mean to say that." Lake felt like he had embarrassed Joy on accident by pointing this out. He was really just joking around though, he didn't even mind telling her what the skill did if she asked Lake saw no reason in keeping it a secret. If he told the guild they would probably provide all the things he needed to get started.

"I was just messing around, I don't mind telling you. It r." Lake felt a hand go over his mouth. Looking over he saw the guard on the other side of him had stopped him from saying anything. "While I would love to know it's not worth being killed over. The guild might silence us depending on what you were going to tell us just now."

Lake pulled the hand off his mouth, and said. "In that case I'll keep it vague. It's good, it will just take time. To be honest I'm more worried about what my next two skills are going to be." From what Lake had learned so far, you got two skills at level 1 and two more at level 10. The rarer the job the rarer the skills, the only exception was with skills everyone got those were always common, but the rest were random.

Lake had noticed how his jobs with U as their rarity unlocked skills with a U as theirs, but he didn't know if there was enough U skills In his Alchemist job for the next two skills. He might just get regular skills, he was pretty sure Alchemist was a rare job so the skills would be rare as well, but if U was above Legendary maybe the skills would default to Legendary instead of Rare.

"Hey Joy What rarity is U? I got the light mage job, and I've been wondering."

"It stands for Unique. You don't see it very often; it's usually the result of divine intervention. There's another one very similar called Special but no one even knows if it's real. The only reason I mention it is because most people bring it up whenever someone starts to talk about Unique stuff."

"Special, how's it different from Unique?"

"Like I said I don't think it actually exists. It's just from old stories where people are born with one of a kind skills. Any time someone's actually born with a skill, it's always Unique or legendary so no one believes it and if they are real it's probably just stuff from another world. That happens every now and then when something from another world like a book or a person shows up and spreads knowledge from their world."

Lake was surprised it seemed like other worlds were common knowledge here. Lake couldn't help wondering how the people of earth would have reacted if they found out about other worlds, and for some reason Lake felt they would be pissed, that was usually their reaction to most things.

"I wonder what other worlds are like?" For some reason the guy on the floor felt this was a good time to talk and it kind of killed the conversation because no one was willing to answer this question even if they could.

Half an hour Later Lake was starting to get hungry. He hadn't eaten since breakfast but because of his skill Refreshed he hadn't needed to eat again. "Hey Joy are we going to stop, or are we going to keep going till we get there."

"While I would love to go straight there, we are going to stop to switch carts about half way. The horse could probably make it all the way there, but it would slow us down when it started to get tired."

"Well I'm kind of hungry. Do you have anything I can eat?" Joy started to rummage around in her pouch and pulled out a piece of fruit. "Here this is the only food I have, Also these are yours." Joy handed him the scroll he had signed the other day, he was pretty sure Donovin had called it his guild scroll.

Lake had forgotten about it and his knife Mary had given him. "I didn't bring your spear because it was kind of old, and I didn't think it would fit too well inside the cart. Master Donovin said he would keep it if you ever want to have it sent to you, just send a letter."

Lake didn't really care about the spear; he had only used it for two days ,and it wasn't very good, he had almost broken it a couple of times on his first day. "No, he can throw it away, it's trash." Lake put the scroll into his satchel, and started to use the knife to cut his fruit. "Do you guys know any games? this is going to suck if we just sit here in silence the whole ride." It had only been an hour and he already wanted to be there, but they still had 9 hours or so to go.

"If you'd like you can have this sleep potion, it will let you sleep until we get there." One of the guards across from him said. Lake thought this sounded awesome; it was like he was skipping the bad part of this day. "Alright, let me have it." Lake grabbed the potion, pulled the top off and downed it. "How long does it take to kick in?"

After Lake said this, he felt a rumble in his stomach, and his leg started to kick. He felt like he needed to get up and move, but there wasn't enough room. "What was in that potion?"

"I don't know, it's something they give us in case we have to sleep in our armor." Lake hadn't thought about it before drinking it because he had called it a sleep potion but it was probably actually a really weak poison that put people to sleep. "Oh man, I gotta get out of here!" He was starting to freak out, and there wasn't enough room for him to get up and do jumping jacks or something.

"Hey, can we stop for a second? I have to go to the bathroom." He felt this was his best bet to get them to stop. If he could just move for a few seconds he would probably feel better because right now he felt like he was about to explode. "No, sorry Lake our orders are not to stop for anything. If you'd like you can go out the door." Lake was willing to say anything so they would stop at this point. "Please I have to poop, and I'm not wearing underwear."

Lake could tell what he said had shocked them so much that they stopped thinking rationally. "I can hold you, so you can put your butt out of the door." Lake couldn't believe Joy would rather do this than stop for a few seconds. "Please, my dignity."

"We can't stop, we couldn't even stop if we wanted to. The driver has his own orders, so it's this or nothing." He gave up on getting them to stop, and just tried to run out of the door. He knew they were going close to 200 mph but he didn't care. Feeling multiple hands grab on to him, Lake said, "Let me out please just for a few seconds." Please Please Please Please Please. "No we cant."

"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH Let me out AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" No one understood how he was even still awake at this point let alone acting like this. "What the hell is wrong with him? Did you give him something?" They had all started to suspect the guy that had given him the potion. "You all saw it, it was just the sleep potion the guild gives us."

"Let me go Let Me goooooooooooo AhHhHHHHHHHHHHHHHHhhhhh!"