Unwillingly Summoned: Chapter 18 – No, It Definitely Works

“He’ll need a mana ring. One that can hold at least twenty or thirty mana if you have it,” said Sig.

“He’ll need light armor,” said Seiran. “He’s as fast as me, so we don’t want to slow him down too much.”

“Yeah, but he’s as strong as me,” objected Chrosan. “That means he’ll probably be doing a lot of front-line fighting. Light armor isn’t worth a lot there.”

“Speed isn’t worth a lot if you’re carrying around a hundred pounds of metal on your body,” snapped Seiran.

“We could get him some boots of speed,” said Sig. “Pair that up with some middle weight armor, or at least something that offers that kind of protection. Split the difference.”

“That might work,” said Seiran a little sullenly.

“I guess so,” said Chrosan looking irritated.

“Oh, we have to get him a permanent elixir of night seeing,” said Sig.

James was about to ask why, but the immediate and simultaneous nods from Seiran, Chrosan, and the dwarf told him there must be a good reason for it.

“Do you have any of those in stock?” asked Seiran.

“I’d have to check in the back. Most people are just after healing potions,” said Alvarence.

Sig and Seiran looked at each other and spoke at the same time.

“Regenerative might.”

James found himself largely sidelined as shop owner and the other adventurers discussed, argued, and used him a lot like a life-sized dress up doll. He wanted to object or interject or something that had -ject at the end of it, but he swiftly realized he had exactly nothing to add to the conversation. His towering ignorance about everything to do with adventuring made anything he said a distraction, rather than a contribution. With that sad reality in mind, he endured it all as he was put into and taken out of armor, clothes, and jewelry in about a dozen combinations.

It only came to an end when everyone seemed equally unhappy with the outcome. That everyone included him as he studied himself in a mirror that the dwarf had made appear from somewhere.

“Can someone please explain to me why in the hell you’ve all dressed me up to look like a dark lord?” demanded James, glaring at everything in the mirror’s reflection.

The clothes he had been wearing were in a small pile nearby. His very comfortable, soft, and boringly brown boots had been replaced with black boots with heavy soles that rose nearly to his knees. They weren’t the boots of speed they had been talking about. These boots were apparently boots of endurance. He was sure that meant they modified one of those numbers in the status box he hadn’t looked at. There were black pants tucked in the black boots. The pants were tighter than he’d like but supposedly offered a light armor enchantment. His new shirt was made of the same material as the pants, if styled a little looser. It sort of reminded him of a poet’s shirt, except it too was blacker than midnight.

Layered over all of that was a medieval version of a black trench coat. It didn’t have any buttons or zippers to close it up, instead hanging open in the front. The material felt like leather, but not cow leather. It was definitely made from some other animal or, more likely, monster. It was soft, but heavy enough that the bottom bumped into the back of his knees every time he moved. That was very distracting. Yet, it was also the thing that everyone had agreed on. It had some kind of enchantment on it that mimicked medium weight armor. Still, it wouldn’t impair his moment or speed much, which was why they had all settled on it.

He also wore fingerless, black gloves of the same unfamiliar leather. They didn’t have an armor enchantment. They had elemental enchantments. One for fire and one for ice. The final piece of the puzzle was several heavy silver rings. He’d been so overwhelmed by the time they were picking those out that he only remembered that one of the rings stored mana. The worst thing was that he had no idea how he was supposed to actually use any of the enchantments. He was pretty sure that the armor enchantments on the clothes and coat were passive effects. The gloves and rings were a different story. He was quite certain he needed to do something to activate them, and he had no idea what that might be.

However, while he understood how they had decided on each thing, he just hadn’t been prepared for the full effect of this combination of items. He felt like he was getting ready to audition for the lead role in some film student’s passion project about goths in love or, as he’d already complained, as the dark lord in some fantasy epic. This was not a look that he would have ever willingly chosen for himself.

“It’s not that bad,” said Chrosan with a weak smile.

“No, it definitely works,” said Seiran giving him a vaguely hungry look.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” muttered James as he rubbed his eyes.

He had to resist the urge to start ripping it all off in the name of fashion sense. What ultimately stopped him from simply saying no to all of it was that every single item had been chosen to compliment his strengths, shore up a perceived weakness, or boost his survivability in some way. Much as he might hate the look of it, survival was the kind of trump card he wasn’t willing to ignore. Everyone said there was no way to get him home, but he’d had some time to think about that. The thing everyone forgot to mention was the caveat. There was no way to get him home that they knew about. That meant that the chances of him getting home were infinitesimal, but there might be a chance. If he died, that sliver of a chance became no chance. Heaving a sigh at his own acceptance of the stupid outfit, he looked at Alvarence.

“So, what do I owe you for—” he tried to come up with a safe word to describe the ensemble he currently wore and came up mostly empty. “What do I owe you for all of this?”

“Don’t be too hasty. I still need to see if I have any of those elixirs and potions in the back. Feel free to look around. I’m sure you can find at least one more outrageously expensive thing to buy while you’re here,” said the dwarf with a laugh as he disappeared into the depths of the building.

That last comment made James feel ill at ease about what all of this was going to cost. If he’d planned on just hanging out at The Verdant Field, the money the king had given him would have been enough to last him for years and years. He had the feeling that he was about to buy high-quality gear, which meant expensive gear. He had no idea if he could afford what he was already more or less committed to buy, let alone anything else. He sulked a bit at the idea of impending poverty. He’d been rather enjoying financial security. While he did that, Chrosan, Sig, and Seiran went back to bickering about specific items they thought should be included or substituted. The dwarf eventually returned carrying two small bottles.

“I have the potion of regenerative might and the permanent elixir of night seeing,” said Alvarence. “I don’t have the rest right now. I could get them, but it’d honestly be faster if you just visit an alchemist.”

Sig’s expression soured, but the other two just nodded like it was what they’d expected. The dwarf turned to James with a huge smile.

“Well now, boy. Let’s settle up.”

The cost wasn’t quite enough to leave him completely broke, but James did break out into a cold sweat as he counted out the money. He kept directing increasingly angry looks at his new party as his cache of cash dwindled by the second. It was only after they left that Chrosan gave him an apologetic look and spoke.

“I know that hurt, but it’s not usually like that.”

“I should hope the hell not,” said James, wholly unmollified.

“Most people work their way up to this kind of gear. They also don’t replace it all at once. We usually do it one piece at a time based on our needs and the kind of quests we take. In your case, though, you didn’t have any weaker gear. You could have gotten cheaper stuff, but you would have been replacing it in a month or two. It would have cost you more in the long run to try to save money now, and you would have had worse protections.”

“I understand the idea of investing, but that was a lot of goddamn money. I could have lived off that for years. Will I at least make some of it back soon?”

“Define soon,” said Seiran. “Actually, don’t bother. No. You won’t make it back soon. We’re all going to be poor for a while.”

“Why is that?” asked James.

“Because we’re going to be running F rank and E rank quests until we can get you ranked up to D officially. The pay for those lower rank quests is not exceptional,” explained Sig. “It’s usually enough to keep you in food and to get a room if you’re disciplined about taking them, but that’s about it. Once we’re running D rank quests again, it gets a lot more profitable.”

“Great,” said James. “Ramen wages.”

“What’s ramen?” asked Chrosan.

James opened his mouth to explain those cheap packages of deep-fried noodles with bonus sodium packs that were available in every grocery store he’d ever visited, but he came up short. The damn things were so ubiquitous that they were practically a touchstone of modern life in America. If you’d never seen ramen before, though, it wasn’t the sort of food that leant itself to an immediate and easy explanation.

“It’s a very cheap noodle dish where I’m from,” James finally said. “It something you buy when you can’t afford anything better or healthier.”

“Is it good?” asked Chrosan with a touch of glutinous eagerness in his eyes.

James shrugged and said, “Not especially. Well, maybe if you like salt. Do you like salt?”