Around a week later. It was a dark and stormy night.
The rain was an absolute downpour, and it pounded heavily on the roof of Lucia's apartment. The 27-year-old receptionist was sitting on her sofa, wrapped in a heavy quilt with a mug of hot liqueur coffee in her hands, reading quietly underneath dim candlelight. Despite the late hour, she took casual sips of her rum-spiked alcoholic coffee.
This beverage was precious — ever since the Worldshift,
coffee beans weren't available in the grocery stores anymore, and there was no telling if Adventurers would discover a coffee bean substitute in this new world. In fact, it was entirely possible that coffee beans did not exist in this new universe. Once Lucia's reserves ran out, perhaps she would never drink coffee ever again.
This was actually a slightly alarming thought.
If she couldn't drink coffee... Lucia was quite sure that her body would enter withdrawal. She'd probably
die without coffee. The receptionist had a powerful dependency on this bitter beverage, and it was beyond the level of an addiction. Some people called Lucia an "alcoholic" (and yes, she was sort of an alcoholic), but in truth Lucia was more of a "coffee-holic" than an alcoholic.
Lucia drank a lot of alcohol.
But she drank even more coffee than alcohol.
In fact, she always drank her spirits with a large cup of coffee.
This was somewhere on the order of 3-4 pints of coffee per day (with an equivalent amount of alcohol). Ninety percent of Lucia's disposable income went to purchasing coffee and alcohol, which was actually really depressing, if you thought about it seriously. The 27-year-old had virtually no social life or friends. After finishing her shift at work, Lucia always went straight home. Aside from paying for rent and a little bit of food, the rest of Lucia's salary went fueling her chemical addiction.
Lucia had very little in savings.
In truth, her entire pantry was filled with coffee beans. It was probably over 2000 kg of coffee, which was probably more coffee than ordinary people would drink in their lifetimes. However, Lucia consumed a lot of coffee. Normally, she purchased it wholesale directly from specialty merchants, but she lost many of her former contacts after Sky Archipelago landed in another world.
Her 2000 kg coffee reserve would probably last for a while, but Lucia wasn't sure if she should begin rationing her beans.
...She probably didn't have the willpower for that.
It was impossible to reduce her coffee consumption.
Lucia continued to sip her alcoholic coffee, feeling depressed as she flipped through her book late at night.
+ + +
Around 9 o'clock in the evening, Lucia's
Butterfly buzzed with a flurry of notifications.
Apparently,
Duke Grogar had once struck again with his newest controversy, and many adventurers were up in a frenzy about this "Manifest Destiny" declaration. Of course, this was hardly the first time that the duke had done such a thing, and he had quite a reputation for promoting violent and aggressive policies.
Sky Archipelago was hardly a unified country, and there were
many factions with different beliefs.
Duke Grogar was part of Sky Archipelago's
militant faction.
Politics in the Archipelago could be especially chaotic, especially since the
Queen never showed her face and she rarely provided opinions about various issues. In fact, in most cases, she was entirely absent, and there were even conspiracy theories that she didn't exist. Some people believed that the Queen was a fictional entity invented by the rich and powerful to placate the commoners.
Ultimately, the politics of Sky Archipelago involved a lot of bickering between nobles, each whom ruled their own island with its own laws and special provisions.
The islands were very much like city-states, and each island would often negotiate its own foreign relations and trade agreements. For instance, the island of Aerelieth was exclusively ruled by a single hereditary family (the House of Aerelieth), whereas the Conshire Isles was governed by a council of elders. Aerelieth had already begun negotiations with with the Kingdom of Numancy, but this did not mean that all the other islands would automatically share the same agreement.
Often times, islands were part of collective pacts and unions to increase their negotiating power, but there were several factions, and they often did not agree on major issues.
The
Adventurer's Guild had a longstanding policy of remaining neutral on matters of politics.
To avoid offending various islands and factions, the
Adventurer's Guild does not remove, censor, or take down quests based on political beliefs. Regardless of the ramifications, the guild allows any sponsor to post any quest as long as the sponsor is willing to pay for it. In the Old World, Sky Archipelago was one of the best places in the world for mercenaries and bounty hunters, and it was common to see bounties for capturing various individuals, smuggling illegal goods, piracy, and even assassination quests.
Lucia remembered a time years ago when there was a foreign kingdom that erupted into civil war.
Each side of the war attempted to hire adventurers from the Sky Archipelago to fight on their behalf. Ultimately, both quests were posted right next to each other on the quest board, and adventurers could choose which side to fight for. It seemed very strange, but some adventurers even chose to fight on opposite sides.
In the end, the guild made a lot of money by collecting gold from both sides of the war.
Lucia's personal opinion about the Adventurer's Guild was that it was very greedy.
She sighed as she listened to her Butterfly. Many of the newer adventurers were mistaken if they thought that a quest could be taken down. Sponsored quests were virtually never removed, and the only option was to post a competing quest for the exact opposite thing.
But would anyone dare challenge the duke directly?
+ + +
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