Unwilling Summoned: Chapter 5 – Gear Up

When the king had said he’d set James up for a comfortable life, James’s expectations had been decidedly low. He’d fully expected to be handed what amounted to pocket change and immediately shoved out the front door. That was assuming that the king didn’t have him beaten and tossed in an alley or just disposed of in some convenient river or canal. James had declined to go off and do whatever to save the kingdom. Not exactly the kind of decision that would endear him the local royalty. It turned out that the king had a conscience after all, though, which made James feel a little bad about thinking so poorly of the man. Not that it had been entirely smooth sailing.

It wasn’t that anyone was overtly trying to do anything annoying, except Maggie who had given him the cold shoulder and then promptly vanished. It was the opposite. Everyone was trying very hard to be helpful, which, again, made James feel like kind of a dick for unintentionally being difficult. The problem was that the king and most of the people around him had lived lives of privilege. So, when they tried to give him clothes, they were clothes appropriate to some young lord or something. They were nice but also seemed deeply impractical for the kind of life he expected that he’d be living. One where actual work of some kind would be involved. He’d finally found a lifeline for everyone involved when he pointed at a mousy young woman who looked to be some kind of servant.

“You there. Miss?” James asked.

She stared at him like a deer caught in the headlights of tractor trailer before someone nudged her. The young woman let out a squeak and then hurried, or maybe the right word was scurried, forward.

“Karissa,” she said with a hasty curtsy.

“Hi, Karissa. I have a question. Do you have a brother or maybe a male cousin?”

Her eyebrows drew together like they desperately wanted to make a solid line. She finally gave a hesitant reply.

“Yes?”

James couldn’t tell if she said that because it was true or because she thought it was the answer he was looking for. He decided to just treat it as true for the sake of expedience.

“Great. Does he wear clothes like these?” asked James with a vague gesture at all the finery.

“Oh no,” said the girl with a shake of her head.

“What does he wear?”

Karissa frowned in thought for a few minutes before she started describing clothes that sounded much more like what James thought he’d need. The royal staff seemed flummoxed, but dutifully sent people off to acquire similar clothes for him. What they came back with was still probably a lot nicer than whatever Karissa’s theoretical brother or cousin wore. Fortunately, none of it was so nice that James would feel bad about doing some kind of manual labor while wearing them if it came down to it. He swiftly changed out of the clothes he had been wearing and was provided with something that looked a bit like the bastard love-child of a high-end leather messenger’s bag and a high school backpack. Then, he watched in stunned awe as clothing was stuffed into the bag in amounts that would have satisfied a shopaholic.

“It that a bag of holding?” he finally asked.

“It is. It’s a smaller one, but should prove sufficient for most normal needs,” said a servant who finished up by dropping three pairs of boots in the bag. “We just need to bind it to you.”

That involved James poking himself with a needle and pressing the bloodied fingertip to a particular spot on the bag. A box appeared in his vision. You have acquired a ba—. James angrily swiped at the box. It disappeared, but the move also drew looks from everyone. James ignored them as he hefted the bag, which proved to be all but weightless in his hands. Even as he marveled at the bag itself, he committed himself to ignoring the lordlier items that had found their way inside of it. It seemed that the servants couldn’t wrap their heads around the idea that he would never need anything appropriate for going to court. Oh well, he thought. It’s not worth making a fuss. Maybe I can sell that stuff or something. The next problem wasn’t so much with the servants as it was with James himself.

It seemed that going armed was considered normal in the kingdom, even by people who weren’t normally called on to do professional violence. In fact, when James tried to decline, everyone had stared at him like he’d completely lost contact with his faculties. So, off to the armory they had gone. James had never been a weapon’s nut in his former life. The closest he’d ever gotten to a gun was the one time he’d been pulled over and given a well-deserved ticket by a police officer. He’d never seen a sword and the most dangerous knife he’d ever held was a kitchen knife. Even so, the armory was impressive for the simple size of the room and the scope of the weaponry available. There were rows and rows of crossbows, regular bows, knives, shields, and tons of different kinds of swords.

His job was to pick out a weapon or two to keep for personal safety. As he wandered the rows of weapons, he saw a rack that held what he thought must be great swords. The things were huge and looked like something straight out of a Conan movie. He couldn’t resist the urge to pick one up and swing carefully swing it a few times. He was surprised that it didn’t feel too heavy to him, but it was stupidly long. He couldn’t imagine what he’d have to be fighting for that kind of sword to be useful. A dinosaur maybe, he mused. That was when the trouble started. A blue box popped up and tried to announce something to him. Skill acquired: Basic Great Sw— James swiped at the box, and it vanished.

Except, it didn’t solve the problem. After that, every time he so much as picked up a weapon, a box appeared and tried to announce some kind of skill acquisition. Box. Swipe. Box. Swipe. Box. Swipe. He knew it was getting bad when he heard one of the servants comment that there must be some kind of flying bugs in the room and that they should have the mages sweep the castle for pests again. He sighed and decided that he wasn’t going to pick up anything he wasn’t seriously considering keeping.

He finally settled on a pair of short swords and a double-edged knife – box, swipe, box, swipe – that he was about eighty percent sure was called a dagger. He’d picked it because it looked like it would be versatile enough and sturdy enough to use for work or, God forbid, defending himself. He’d picked the swords because those felt the most natural in his hands. It struck him that back in their pre-isekai days on earth, Maggie would probably have described it as more naturaler-ish. He had to shoulder check that thought hard into a mental wall. Her choice to go fight the Megalomaniacal Evil Child Vampire Sorcerer of Mount Ominousness or whatever was a whole box of complicated that he wasn’t prepared to open.

The short swords and dagger were also a practical choice on his part. He expected that he was a lot less likely to accidentally stab himself or someone else with the shorter blades. There was also another tiny fact that James needed to contend with. He didn’t want to stab anyone with them either by accident or on purpose. He was going to avoid proactively going into those situations if at all possible. At the same time, he would at least look armed, which ought to help discourage anyone from doing anything too stupid. All things considered, picking the shorter blades seemed like solid reasoning.

The final stop was in a drab room with undecorated walls that contained a drab, corpselike little man at a drab little desk. The whole room felt antiseptic to James, and he wanted to leave immediately. The man behind the desk gave him a bland look before making a note in some kind of ledger. Then, he held out a pouch. James took it, opened it, and wasn’t sure what to think. There were coins in there. Most looked like brass, but there were some that looked like silver, and some that looked like gold. It seemed like a lot, but he was in position to judge.

“Um,” said James, “I don’t really understand the money here.”

The drab man gave him look of annoyance before his expression cleared and he straightened up a little.

“Oh, that’s right. They told me about this,” said the man.

He wasn’t exactly lively, but the air he gave off felt less like dry white toast to James. The man placed one of each type of coin on the desk and pointed at them as he explained.

“Brass is the least valuable but most common coin. Gold is the most valuable and least common. One hundred brass to a silver. Fifty silver to a gold. Make sense?”

James nodded. He at least thought he understood the conversion. That didn’t necessarily tell him anything about their value in use though. He frowned and asked a question.

“Let’s say I wanted to buy a loaf of bread or get a room at a decent inn, how much would that cost on average?”

The more they talked about money, the less corpse-y the man behind the desk became. His voice actually took on a little animation.

“Well, I suppose that depends on where you’re making your purchases, but you can get a loaf of bread for a bronze or two. A night at a clean, relatively safe inn would probably cost you a dozen bronze,” said the man before he paused to think. “Maybe more if they’re including meals.”

“I see,” said James.

He needed to reassess the wealth in the pouch. It wasn’t a mind-boggling fortune, but it was vastly more money than he thought most people would be walking around with openly. In other words, he needed another pouch to store pocket money in for basic safety. Before he put the money away, another question occurred to James.

“And what kind of exchange rate do these coins get if I travel to another country?”

“Exchange rate,” whispered the man.

James glanced up and saw that there was a visible glow around the man. He looked like he was growing younger by the second and wore a massive smile. He shot up from the chair and hurried around the desk. There was an almost fanatical light in the man’s eyes as he grabbed James by the shoulders.

“Young man, were you sent by the gods?”

“Um, maybe,” said James.

He really wasn’t sure how the process worked, but he supposed that some kind of gods might have been involved. At least, that’s how a lot of those isekai stories worked. In those stories, though, the poor damned souls in question usually met the god or goddess. James wondered, Did I meet a god and just forget about it? Before he had more time to think about it, the no-longer-drab little man was pulling him into another room and showing him a map.