No Need for Party
As she was coming up to the tavern where she was supposed to meet her new teammates? Party members? Group? Whatever, she heard a familiar, slightly obnoxious voice as she passed under the window.
This wasn’t a high-class place. Well, it was for the town that had grown up around the adventurer’s academy since it had a window in the first place… but it was a window that used shutters to keep out the weather, though magic kept out the bugs.
(It was a regular quest for baby mages in training to touch up the magic to keep the insects out of the building. Training chores like this were a way for the poor and the commoners to make their way as they didn’t have family or a sponsor to cover the cost.)
The opened shutters did nothing to stop the voice from carrying over the noise of other parties meeting up after graduation to begin their first official quest.
She was… iffy about her supposed party members but she hadn’t had many offers and two of them were from the same village as her, though she wouldn’t exactly call them friends… annnd they’re proving it now. She’d known she wasn’t popular and they likely didn’t want to rock the boat after having been accepted into a likely rising team with some of their year’s popular kids… but still, chore doer/ monster bait? She thought not.
She shouldn’t be surprised, she supposed. They’d been a little too ‘friendly’, too eager to have her on board when they’d mostly ignored her existence or sneered during their school years. Even so, she had to admit that listening to them describe how clever they were to bait a weakling like her into joining them and now they had both someone they could toss all their annoying chores and stuff at as well as someone they can throw at the monsters to bait them if it comes to that, grated.
At least the inevitable fuck over happened NOW before it could get her killed.
She turned quietly on her heel to head back to the Adventurers Guild House and withdraw her name from their Party list. If that was genuinely how they thought of her, they could just manage without her.
She was sure they’d pick up some other starstruck patsy, but, well, it would NOT be her.
She’d go with her first plan of transporting goods for merchant companies. It was hard for people with her sort of Magic to find a Party just after graduation and no one was allowed to solo adventure straight after graduation. It was with a party or not at all. She’d only been willing to do a Dungeon Crawl with a good party behind her… and that party, sadly, for all they had the potential to be decently powerful, weren’t good. At least, not for her.
If this was going to be a ‘banished and better for it’ trope, she’d rather cut to the chase and skip the suffering before the screw over. It meant they wouldn’t have a chance to see how much better off they were with her in tow, but she honestly didn’t care.
She has the Support Magic of boosted storage. It wasn’t an infinite storage box, but it was still twice to three times the capacity of other newbie Adventurers who normally need two or three ‘porters’ to carry their equipment, food, etc and, of course, and loot.
She has a few other small odds and sods she can do but has never publically listed because she’s a cautious sort now, except for when she can’t afford to be… so no one knows of those and her status window is her own private business. If anyone else ever catches a glimpse, it will NOT be because she showed them.
She’s trying for quietly competent, but young brat’s gonna brat, and the flashy and showy always draw attention, even when all they are is two-thirds flash, one-third ability. Also, because they’re young and dumb, they’re still in the ‘flashy must mean strong’ mindset. The appreciation for quiet competence likely won’t show up until they’ve matured a bit… and had some missions/ quests/ whatevers go fubar on them.
She’s nothing to prove. She wants as quiet a life as someone with her ability (which she was careful to understate, making it seem she’s only slightly better than average) can have.
Merchants will not only pay better, but it would be safer too, so she was going with that.
She’s been told her friend is alive in this world somewhere and would very much like to meet her again. Even with the inevitable screw over having a Deity of mischance, misfortune and ill luck as a Patron inflicts on her, her friend has always stood by her once they recognise eachother as another reincarnate who gets little choice about who, when and where she incarnates too.
Meanwhile, she has nowhere to go back to and has worked hard to get through school, using up the money her mother’s small inheritance has left her to do it. She’ll quietly make enough money to live on and to cover expenses if something unexpected crops up, travel around and see if she can’t find her friend.
She has no wish to get into a confrontation with her might-have-been-party, so she simply leaves a letter at the Guild reception should they bother to ask.
She’s gone with the merchant cart before that party even realises she’s not coming.
When she returns several months later, she is unsurprised to hear that party not only had a major tanty over her not only leaving but choosing to leave that way (and someone leaked her letter to the producers of the newsletter) with only a letter left at the desk to break it off, but also that they managed to get several members, including her village mates (is that even a term?) injured and the porter forced into early retirement due to having a lost limb due to being left for dead on their first quest… They WERE warned about sticking to the newbie quest until their party properly gelled, but well, young and dumb. They wouldn’t be told.
Good riddance.