Despite having spoken with no more than three people in this world, my monikers ranged from demon temptress to cultist witch. I half-expected to find that the System had granted me a new backstory as a cultist witch and was all too relieved to see there wasn’t one. Bruckus was entirely convinced, but I wasn’t the one who crafted that story, which I imagined was a requirement for backstories.

  I had to take frequent breaks for the sake of my hands, but I was making decent time. I finally arrived at the banks of a narrow river. Walking further along its banks, I found the stone bridge and the soldiers stationed next to it. There was a two-storeyed building of stone and wood with archers on the roof. A stable for the horses, some hastily put together tents, a presently vacant watchtower and an outdoor dining area made up the rest of the outpost. They hadn’t even bothered to erect a wall. It wasn’t much - merely a base for patrolling and an early warning station meant to be quickly abandoned in the event of an attack.

  The bridge was wide enough to allow a carriage to pass through. It stood low and close to the river. I walked over to the bridge and shamelessly name-dropped the jerk, “Hey there fellas, Falmus sent me this way to trade with your cook. Rabbit stew for dinner sounds good?”

  The soldiers were briefly startled at the sudden appearance of a woman , but then a chorus rang out across the camp for the rabbit stew. I wasn’t even questioned about my circumstances. There was no quartermaster in sight, but I was quickly directed towards the kitchen. There were hardly a dozen soldiers in the camp and maybe less out on patrols, so there was no need for a quartermaster. One of the soldiers told me that they traded with the caravans that went in and out of the town and if they ran short of supplies, they sent word to Palomp.

  The cook was a grumpy old man, but he softened slightly at the sight of the rabbits. Nonetheless, his offer was insultingly low. “Fifty bronze for the fat one, sixty for the dark one and forty for the others”.

  That was well below what Falmus had said the rabbits would go for. We were in for a long negotiation. I tried to bring to the forefront of my mind every nugget of wisdom my AI training had on negotiations. Without access to my auxiliary storage, I wasn’t exactly a compendium of all human knowledge. What I retained from my old life were the inferences and conclusions I arrived at during the AI training phase and almost never the raw knowledge itself - the notes I made while referring to books at the library and not the books themselves. While I was still a program I had access to the entire library, but as a human I was now cut off from the library, my membership revoked. The other part of what I was allowed to keep was the raw knowledge that I was actively focusing on at the moment the system picked me up. If I had to somehow stick with the library analogy, I would say that I was on my way from the bookshelf to the reading desk, with a handful of books in my hands, when the System shoved me through a portal. Finally, I also retained everything that made me who I was.

  My past self had also resorted to excessive use of analogies during such note takings. My notes on some subjects like chemistry were so rudimentary that it was no better than if it would have said, “Almost like potion making, but duller”. Okay, it might have said exactly that in my notes.

  I pulled up all the information my AI training had on negotiations. Inferences and conclusions I had arrived at, after poring over thousands of books and articles on the subject. There wasn’t a lot. It was half a page at best and what was worse - more analogies! I mentally chided my old self for being so taken with analogies. At least I had outgrown that phase. No, I absolutely do not resort to using them now.

  I sighed as I concentrated on the first few lines: “The negotiations are a dance, you sway back and forth until you settle on a position in the middle. Feign disinterest and pretend to walk away if you must, until the other party caves or calls your bluff.”

  It was time to do the negotiations dance. I had to counter his low offer with an equally preposterous offer, way above my final price. So I walked up to him and spoke with great confidence, “I’m sure I can get at least a hundred bronze for the fat rabbit elsewhere, a lot more for the dark one and slightly less for the rest.”

  “I’m not giving you a silver for a rabbit”, he said angrily.

  Oh. A nice tidbit of information acquired on exchange rate. One silver was one-hundred bronze. I was spared a certain future humiliation, when I would have had to pry that information out of some stranger, at the cost of my own pride. If only more people volunteered commonsense knowledge during casual conversation. But I seemed to only run into people who would rather talk about fictional cults and metaphorical cups.

  The cook scoffed. “You plan to carry them to Palomp, lass? I suggest you free up your small hands and carry the coin instead.” He called my bluff.

  My old notes suggested pivoting to a new strategy if my bluff was called, though it hadn’t really mentioned how. So much for that. There were more comments in the notes that made use of the dancing analogy. They were also entirely useless.

  Pivot. pivot..

  “You aren’t going to deprive these soldiers of some tasty rabbit stew, are you?”, I asked.

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  I walked to stand just outside the kitchen door and shouted, “ Your cook needs some convincing. Can I get another chorus for the rabbit stew?”. This prompted some laughter and cheering from the soldiers, but soon the chants for the rabbit stew were taken up by everyone. I peeked into the kitchen to look at the annoyed cook.

  “They are really fired up for that rabbit stew now. Unless you know of another way to procure some rabbit meat on short notice, I suggest you take me more seriously.”

  “Fine. Three silvers for the lot of it”, he grumbled.

  “ Sixty bronze per rabbit? At that price, I’m keeping the monster cores and the horns, and the entirety of the night spark”, I replied. “That’s the darker rabbit”, I clarified. “In short, two silvers and forty for the normal rabbits’ meat and you won't have a mutiny at hand over rabbit stew”.

  “That’s a lot for just rabbit meat. Two silvers is the most I will go up to and you can keep your night rabbit and all the horns and the cores too”

  The cores and the horns were better sold to a crafter. “Deal. A pleasure dancing with you ”, I said, which only confused him. I had to wait for him to extract the cores and the horn, so I went outside and found a seat on a bench in the dining area. I traded with one of the soldiers for a worn out satchel and an old waterskin. It cost me half my earnings, and I probably would have to replace them in a few months, but I desperately needed these items.

  “Soup for the lady”, a sturdy man in impressive plate armor extended a bowl to me. He had flowing golden hair and green eyes. His armor was engraved in swirling patterns that bordered a sigil. No common soldier, I thought.

  “Sir Keinen”, he introduced himself. “Alysa”, I nodded in return.

  I was still staring at the bowl of soup as if it would explode, so he explained, “You narrowly missed the lunch hour, but we still had some left over. I assumed the lady might be in need of sustenance.”

  It was better than eating prestons, but I would question the wisdom of anyone accepting a bowl of soup from a stranger in an army camp in the middle of the forest.

  He noticed my hesitation in accepting the bowl and spoke, “It is not poisoned, if that’s what you are wondering. I’m oathbound as a knight to ensure no harm befalls the innocent.”

  Oathbound. Was Falmus oathbound? He seemed quite torn between wanting to stab me and having to help me. “Can oaths defy one’s true nature?”, I asked.

  “Lady wounds me if she thinks compassion goes against my true nature. I am a staunch practitioner of the fourth virtue ”, he spoke in mock-outrage.

  The fourth virtue. Oh something about metaphorical cups and virtues.

  “Not meeting your quota with valour alone?”, I teased.

  He studied me. “My quota? The lady has a strange way of speaking”. Seeing that the soup wasn’t getting my attention, he placed it on the table and sat down next to me.

  I sighed. “I admit, I’m not from around here”, I replied, fully expecting a barrage of questions.

  “I won’t pry. The lady is a fearsome foe - pitting the unit's appetite against the cook’s love for coin.”

  I tried to suppress a smile. “You aren’t displeased that I cost your unit some coins?”

  He shrugged. “The coins come from the king's coffers. Besides, the old man cooks the books as well as he does the stew. He would have kept the difference for himself”

  “I take it that the cook isn’t oathbound then?”

  He laughed. “No, he isn’t. Neither are the normal soldiers. But there are enough knights in the camp with high enough weapon skills to keep them in line.”

  Weapons skills. Were there primers for that? ‘To speak and prove beyond any doubt my ignorance, or to stay silent and bask in adoration?’, I wondered. I settled on the latter. I liked being called a fearsome foe for a change. Preferable to being called a demon temptress or a cultist witch.

  As if on cue, the cook arrived with the monster cores and horns. I took them and placed them in my newly acquired old satchel.

  “You won’t stay for supper then? I hear there’s tasty rabbit stew on the menu”, he joked.

  I shook my head. “Palomp by nightfall. That’s the plan”, I said as I got up.

  “Wait right there for a moment”, he said, as he went into the building. He quickly came back with a roll of herbs. “Persimonae Algaris. Helps with some minor healing. It’s no more than basic first aid. But small relief till you can buy a healing potion or get a healer to look at that”, he said, pointing to my left hand. “Grind it to a paste and apply. There’s mortar and pestle you can borrow in the kitchen.”

  I was suddenly taken aback by this show of kindness. “Thank you, Sir Keinen. How much do I owe you for the herbs?”

  “You don’t. They are everywhere in these parts of the woods. The rabbit stew will cheer up the unit. Consider it my thanks for the morale boost.”

  I nodded and proceeded to the kitchen. After ten minutes, I exited the building, my left shoulder smeared with green paste and smelling like grass.

  “Farewell, rabbit lady”, Sir Keinen waved goodbye.

  “Please don’t call me that”. I needed to nip it in the bud.

  “ A little late for that now, don’t you think? After that grand entrance you made earlier today, the entire unit is going to be singing songs about the rabbit lady at supper”

  I sighed. “Farewell, Sir Keinen”, I waved back.

  I was soon back on the road again, leaving the outpost far behind me. I made it a point to use my gatherer’s eye skill at every chance, to fill my satchel with edible fruits and vegetables. There were no monsters this close to the town and the journey went by without incidents. As I walked, I saw more trails converging with the main road to Palomp and I could make out the silhouettes of people further up ahead on the road. I saw the distant city walls late in the afternoon and quickened my steps. I was suddenly reminded of all the stories where the hero in a new world finally made it to their first town or city. I was almost there. My starter town.