The ninth day after the Contract was signed, and more than three weeks after Pathfinder had begun, Cass recognized he was at a bit of a crossroads.

  On the one hand, the work he was doing with Pathfinder was invaluable. Over twenty-five citizens now held guildpasses, and the boards, once filled to the brim with old Quests, were now getting emptied almost as fast as they could put them up. Things had been going so well that Brendan had received orders to begin actively searching for new petitioners.

  Not that the young man was going to complain. He’d confided in Cass only two days before that his favorite part about being in the Guild was his ability to go out and meet people. It was like he’d found the calling to his Calling.

  But, on the other hand, he felt like he wasn’t doing enough. The Guild Master was still assigning Combat Quests, as Cass hadn’t unlocked them yet. And every day, after the Common Solutions and Guild Quests were done, he was left with unspent potential. Not for him, but for the city. He continued with what he’d done for the bricks. See a need, fill a need. But staring at the map would only give him so much information until Pellin’s new project finished up.

  It bothered him.

  So, as the self-appointed bringer of hope for Liora, he vowed to do something about it.

  Refilling his bag with Vellums after a rough day of negotiations in the Foundry, Cass shouldered it, then made his way out on the town. His first stop? The Goldencrust Bakery.

  His buddy Gary was apparently a natural salesman, title and all. He’d traveled the breadth of Liora over the last few months and should have a good bead on who could use his help.

  Cass got there fast. The crowds that usually surrounded the Guildhall were much thinner than he’d ever seen. Anyone who could hold a weapon and had reached Tier 2 and above was out at the Red Tower. It made the area feel oddly empty. As if the city were missing some of the core players who usually traveled across its stones.

  Gary wasn’t in, but he was told that the young man would be returning soon. Cass only had to wait a few minutes before his friend came in, a pack strapped around his waist that he removed with a giddy look on his face.

  “I sold all of it at a premium markup!” He said to the smile of the old woman behind the counter. “I told you, Gladys. If you stand in front of a school, the moment it lets out, nobody can turn down a good pastry.” Then he noticed Cass, “Oh, what are you doing here?”

  “Fancy a bit of goodwill?” Cass asked with a grin.

  “Ma’am?” He asked the old woman.

  “Go ahead, you’ve done good today,” She said with an absent wave, a pile of glittering coins already waiting in front of her to be counted.

  “Where we going?” Gary asked as soon as they left the room.

  “I thought I’d leave that up to you,” Cass pulled his bag off his shoulder and pulled out a small stack of vellums. “I have…thirty Quests we can assign today at no charge. Do you know a few people who need some help in the experience game? Or maybe a few tasks that people have put off that this might just push them in that direction?”

  Gary shrugged with a lopsided smile, “More than a few. But they’re all in the Grounds.”

  “Perfect,” Cass said as he re-shouldered his bag. “I’ve been working mostly in the Depot and the Forge. I wouldn’t want to neglect my old home.”

  So that’s what they did. The two friends went out on a hunt to help those who might’ve been forgotten. Their first stop was at a single mother’s home. Gary explained that her name was Jess and that she’d lost her husband in an accident several years prior. When they knocked, she opened the door with a cold look on her face.

  “Yes?” Then she noticed who was standing beside Cass. “Oh! Gary! You’re so sweet to visit me at home. I’m afraid I can’t afford any of the treats for my kiddos today, but-”

  “Jess, allow me to interrupt you,” Gary said with his big man charm, “I’m not here to sell you anything. My friend Cassio here is on a hunt to help a few people out in town, and I thought you could use it.”

  “I don’t take handouts, Gary.” She said coldly, her former expression returning to her face. “I’ll not have my children think that they can get by in life by leaning on everyone else.”

  “It’s not a handout, ma’am,” Cass said, slipping into salesman mode, “I’m just here to see if there’s anything you’ve been putting off that might need a fix. Something you could do yourself, perhaps?”

  “I’m sorry,” She said in confusion.

  “What Cass here means to say is that he’s a QuestWright. That means he can make you up a Quest in a jiffy,” He snapped his fingers, “Just like that. You tell him something you’ve been meaning to do, he makes a Quest that tracks it for you, and bam, you have a process to follow.”

  “Oh…okay, I think I get it.” It was plain to both men that she didn’t. “Well…I’ve been meaning to reorganize the kids’ toy chest. Hah!” She said with a laugh that hardly fit the bill, “I’ve been meaning to reorganize the whole house.”

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  “Oh really?” Cass said, running his hand across his face.

  By the time they left, a Tier 2 Administrative Quest had already been absorbed by the happy woman.

  “That felt nice,” Gary commented. “We should do this more often.”

  “Calm down, buddy,” Cass waved the still thick stack of Vellum’s in the air, “We’ve got plenty more to go.”

  Their next stop took them to Old Man Tyrek’s. He was retired now, and had a simple garden in the back of his home that had become overgrown with weeds. Rather than give him the Quest, they assigned it to his nephew, who was visiting. The man smiled as the golden glow wrapped him up, then they were on the move again.

  Milo and Denna, a pair of twins who were delivering items for their father, both got several Quests that they were informed to activate each day. Bakari, a street performer, got a hunting Quest to help clear out the area from several bug infestations.

  They even stopped by an Apothecary, where a sharp but overwhelmed assistant by the name of Anora asked for a Quest that helped her manage her time better. That one was tricky for Cass, who, instead of going with an Administrative type, developed a new Training template that he thought would better fit what she was after.

  Each time they met someone, confusion gripped the potential Questors. At least, until they gave off the golden glow Cass had learned to love seeing. Then, it was all smiles.

  Together they worked until day turned to night, and the stack of Vellums in his hands ran dry. Thirty new Quests and thirty new Questors had struck Liora in the span of no time at all. Afterwards, Gary took Cass out for a celebratory dinner, stopping in a nice restaurant called Diana’s Place.

  “Man, that was fun,” Gary said around a mouthful of food. “I can’t remember the last time I saw so many people smile in such a short period of time.”

  Cass took a sip of apple juice before saying, “Yeah, it was something special, alright.”

  “Mmm,” Gary said as he swallowed a piece of chicken, “How often do you think you’re gonna want to do this?”

  “I don’t know,” Cass moved a bit of broccoli across his plate with a fork as he thought about it. “I just feel like I’m not helping enough, you know?”

  “At least you get to help,” Gary said as he speared another piece of chicken with his fork. “Most of what I do is roll, sprinkle, bake, then sell. Honestly, sometimes I wish I had gotten a combat Calling. Not all the time, definitely not all the time. But it’d be nice to go out there and really tackle the problems of the world.”

  “Yeah, I hear you.” Cass took a dainty bite of his meal as thoughts tumbled around in his mind. “I used to stay up at night dreaming about what my Calling would one day be. A healer or a warrior or someone who touches on the power of magic.”

  “Healers use magic, don’t they?”

  Cass waved a hand, “Yeah, but it’s different. Something about shared energy that I don’t fully understand. To me, it may as well be the moon with how they explained it. I just had this itch, this feeling, you know? That I would be someone who could change things for the better.”

  Gary held up a finger, “Hold up. Isn’t that what we did today?”

  Cass made a back-and-forth gesture with his hand, “Kind of, but that’s small potatoes.”

  “Then grow bigger ones,” Gary took a drink of wine. “Cass you have a Calling that affects everyone in Liora at once, if you choose for it to be so. Hell, you changed my life with a simple request to bring a fat man some sweets. Not that I don’t love Jim.”

  “Everyone loves Jim,” Cass agreed.

  “And now I’m doing the same thing for your stupid horse. And you know what? I like Bella. She’s nice in a weird way. And in learning how to make desserts for your horse, it’s got me thinking.”

  “About what?”

  Gary smiled, “About maybe starting up my own business. Trenner’s Tasty Animal Treats, or something like that.”

  “Oh my god,” Cass covered his face with his hands, “Not another person I know starting a business.”

  “Hey, guy. I wouldn’t have thought I could do something like that if you hadn’t pushed me.” Gary poked him with a fork, hard enough that Cass complained. When he lowered his hands, the Baker smiled at him. “I’m not saying I’m going to do it right away. The Goldencrust has been great to me, and I’m still pretty low-level, all things considered. But it’s something deep enough in my mind that I’ve started to do research on what other animals can safely eat that would make them happy. Dogs, cats, that kind of thing.”

  “Don’t you do it,” Cass said, wiping away an imaginary tear. “Don’t you emotionally weenus me.”

  Gary laughed, “We all grow up at some point, Cass. Wishing you could do more is normal for those who work in the background on things. My father used to say something, like sands through the hourglass, these are the days of our lives.”

  “That’s a smart quote. You know,” he said carefully, treading a sensitive subject. “You never talk about your dad.”

  “Because he’s gone.” Gary shrugged. “He’s been gone a very long time. One day, he tells us that he’s going on a trip to another city for this big job he had lined up. Then, we never see him again. Simple as that.”

  “What was his Calling again?”

  “Mom wouldn’t tell me,” He replied with a snort. “My own father, missing for over ten years, and I have no idea what his Calling was. I do know, before the Reshaping, he was in the military. But anything after that, I got no clue.”

  “Well, I think he’d be proud of who his son turned out to be.”

  “Yeah?” Gary sat up a little straighter. “You really think so?”

  Cass nodded with a smile, “Definitely. It’s not every man who can brave seeing a draft horse once a week.”

  “She tried to bite me the first time!”

  “She told me you held the cookie there!”

  “Why can you talk to a horse!”

  They spent the rest of the evening telling jokes and talking about nothing, their favorite pastime since they were much smaller. After Cass got back, he noted that many of the Quests he’d assigned for the day were already completed, the experience locked up and waiting for the next time he saw Adya. It couldn’t come soon enough, as he fell into a troubled sleep, thoughts of monsters eating someone he’d grown much closer to over time.

  It was a cold evening.