You roll over and push yourself to your feet, raising your gun with both hands as you run towards the wolf. It stalks forwards towards Frederic, now standing directly over your knight, mouth opening, head turning to align with his throat-

You pull the trigger, and a red spot appears on the side of the wolf's neck. You pull twice more, and the spot becomes three spots. The wolf staggers back, then turns to face you, snarling. Oh. You, did not think this far ahead.
Angry at the sting, the wolf becomes a blur in your vision as it lunges for you-
And then yelps as it staggers backwards from Frederic, armored foot raised in the air where its chest was.

Then, another blur of motion, this time from Fred, as he sweeps his sword around the ground behind him, then around and under the wolf, and then up into the wolf's chest. The monster screams as the wide sword lodges between ribs, but Frederic continues the slash with a roar, lifting the Dire overhead and back down on the other side, into the earth with a heavy slam. The ground trembles as the sword buries itself deep, cleaving through flesh, bone, and earth alike.

The now separate halves of Dire wolf spasm, the upper half lasting longer, but both go still within seconds.

Frederic: "It- yeah. Could've gone better. Karina, can, you heal me?"
Karina: "Yes! Here, stay still!"
As Karina heals Frederic, you check your own bites. Your arm and leg both have vivid red gouges in them, though Karina's healing spell stopped the bleeding and sealed the flesh. Still hurts, and you're gonna be walking with a limp for a while, but you're not losing any more blood. That's beginner level healing magic for you.
You wipe your knife clean on the grass, and then test your grip. You can't trust the left hand right now, but right still grips fine. Time to carve.



Hm. The meat of these wolves isn't super valuable, so you don't bother with much. Enough to cook up yourself, for a celebratory meal or two for the group.
The pelts, uh, well Frederic did a real number on them. Both the Dire and the first wolf got cut in half by Frederic's sword, so those are... you're not sure how valuable those will be. Well, the Dire should still be good at least; the beast was huge, and the cut was clean and fairly central. Each half of the pelt will easily be a normal wolf's worth of leather, and after processing it'll still be a lot tougher than regular wolf leather.
The fangs though... are being a problem. Despite your best wiggling, you can't seem to pop them out, they barely even have any give in the sockets. You also can't help but notice that the biggest canines are about as long as your finger. Really glad it didn't sink its teeth into you.

Leaving the Dire for the moment, you harvest the two other wolves without issue. A good few fangs, and one halved and one whole pelt. After washing your hands clean with some canteen water, you look over and see the others sitting on the grass, Karina dozing against Frederic's armless side while he watches across the field at other groups of wolves.

Frederic: "Uh. Do you want the head? I could try getting them out if that's all you're after. I am a lot stronger than you."

Frederic: "Heh. Can do. Hey Karina, up."
Karina: "Hrm? Ah, kay."

Karina gets to her feet, still looking a bit drowsy. Frederic stands too, then moves over to the Dire with you. You hand him the knife, and out of the corner of your eye you see Karina make a face and look away.
Yeah, can't blame her on that, this isn't work for the squeamish.


Frederic: "There we are. A lot of usable fangs from this one. Bet we could get a lot more from a Wolfbeast. But, I don't think we're ready for that yet."

He hands you the fangs to bag up, and you look over the sum of your loot. Pelts and Fangs from 2 wolves, 1 Alpha wolf, and 1 Dire wolf.
Frederic: "I think this was enough for now. Not as much as I would've liked, but that last fight got a bit rocky, I think Karina needs a rest. The Dire fangs should be worth a good amount though.
Ready to head back?"

The three of you head back to the ship, Karina riding Frederic's shoulder. It's pretty easy to avoid these wolves, thankfully. They don't seem to bother any people unless the people approach them first.

As you go, you first load your gun back up, then once that's done try healing your wounds. Sadly, your healing magic is on the same level as Karina's, and really isn't much more than first aid magic. It can seal small wounds and stop bleeding, but doesn't restore or knit back together flesh. The bite marks on your limbs are too big to magic away yet.
Well, there are plenty of better healers back in Madosa, including free ones at the Adventurer's Guild for any members. Well, free for general touch ups at least. Bigger work they do charge for. For instance, if you lose an arm and don't bring it back with you, or bring it back in small pieces.
The thought makes you glance over at Frederic and his missing left.




Back at the Adventurer's Guild, you first visit those healers. A medical office in the back of the building, with a half dozen booths, each manned by a white robed healer. The booth is full of cabinets and shelves, various medicines and salves and supplies filling much of the available storage space. There's a pair of stools, and a bed against the back wall.
One of the healers beckons you forward, and you head in and sit on the stool in the center of the booth while Frederic takes the next one over. First time using one of these. You show the healer your wrist and ankle, and a with just a quick spell to each, the bite marks close themselves back up like they were never there.

Exiting the booth, you see Frederic examining his forearm, a few punctures in the metal of his armor. You give him a nod, and he returns it, satisfied.
All healed, the three of you go back to the trade in stalls outside, bustling with adventurers at midday. After a short wait in line, you reach the worker, a man this time.
Guild Trader: "Hey there. What'cha got for me?"
Frederic: "Wolf parts. 2 regular, 1 Alpha, 1 Dire. Fangs and pelts from all of them."
Guild Trader: "Alright alright, let's see..."

The worker first examines the pelts. The split pelts earn a tut, but he nods approvingly anyway at the Dire and Alpha pelts, despite the damage.
Guilder Trader: "10 and 6 for the regular, 20 for the Alpha, 30 for the Dire. Lucky that the Dire is big enough to get divided up anyway."
He then takes the pouch of fangs and dumps them out onto a table, sorting them by size. They go into three general piles; 16 smaller, 10 medium, and 4 large.
Guilder Trader: "1 each for the small fangs, 3 for the medium, and 5 for these larger ones.
Comes out to 66 for the pelts and another 66 for the fangs. 122 drach all together."

Frederic accepts the money while you think. Buying the gear from Boreg was a hefty money hit, you pretty much sank all you had into that. Frederic said he still has 335 drach, but that was his traveling reserve. Your share should be 41 drach, and you've got that meat you took from the wolves and your apartment. Food and roof's not a problem for a bit, but you won't be buying much gear. Could stock up on a few potions, or some specialized ammo.

Frederic: "Gram. Your share."
He holds out a small pile of coins to you.

You take the coins and tuck them away in your purse for now.

Gram: "Think I'm gonna wind down a bit, then maybe do some window shopping.
See ya here tomorrow?"
Karina: "Sure! Find a good souvenir shop for me to visit later!"



At home, after your gun is cleaned and reassembled, and your knife wiped clean and restored to pristine condition, you check the money Frederic passed you.
A quick count totals up 60 drach. That's, 20 more than the split you were expecting. You wonder if Frederic made a mistake with the coins.

You then head out to walk the firearms district. There's a lot of various workshops and forges and stores on Madosa, and most are grouped together by general product. Cannons and large scale weapons are over in the shipworks, but for all other things gunpowder and bullet, you can find them here. And you're pretty familiar with it by now. There's a lot of variety in what you can find, due to Madosa's nature as a central trading hub city and every adventurer under the sun passing through at some point.
Most popular are smaller guns like pistols, or smaller blunderbusses, stuff that can be easily pulled out and used in a pinch. Long rifles or pellet guns are less popular, because of not being able to synergize with Willpower as easily as melee weapons or larger projectile weapons like bows.

Ammo wise, well, that depends on your firearm's mechanism obviously, but unified cartridges seem to be in vogue right now. The bullet and powder come prepackaged together in a relatively thick paper wrapper. That's what your pistol takes! Makes it easy to swap out for special ammo, too. Separate powder and bullet setups still have their devoted users though, the weapons that use it also tend to be more rugged to account for the variable strength of the shots, so that's a plus. Really good riflemen seem to swear by individual powder charges and bullets, letting them mix special bullets and powder on the fly, but frankly with a bit of preparation you can get the same effect with cartridges, so you're not convinced.
Though you admit it is nice to not be constructing highly explosive gun rounds in your bedroom.

You pass across an ammo shop and stop for a moment. One of the few shops that always grabs your attention! Let's see, this week's specials... Looks like they're newbie themed for the recent adventurer academy graduates.
Basic elemental cartridges, 25% off, 4 for 6 drach, comes in all 8 elements.
Cracker rounds, 10 for 15 drach. Those make a loud bang when the bullet hits.
Piercing bullets, case of 30 for 30 drach. Harder metal than the standard lead, good at punching into armored monsters.
Yeah, basic general use ammo that would fill out a new gunner's kit nicely. Not cheap though. Well, you suppose it'd be cheap if you're not a newbie. But, you'd also be graduating to better ammo. Some of the higher tier stuff is crazy. A single round costs more than you made on your hunt earlier, and could tear the front wall of the shop down.

Currently, you've been using basic black powder and lead ball rounds. The Adventurer's guild covers the cost of basic ammo for gunners and bowmen, thankfully. Any specialized ammo you're on your own, but for the basics you can walk in, show your card, and top off your ammo bag for no charge. They don't outright say it, but really it's a measure to make sure newbies don't get discouraged from using ranged weapons by the price.

You head for your preferred pistol shop for some ammo. On the way you ponder larger guns for boat usage, but well, the boat is not quite yours to modify for one, and that's a good chunk of money... probably a few thousand drach for one that you're certain won't blow up in your hands. That said, if you did want that... well, you could get a big old rifle from around here, but really if you're looking for a ship mounted weapon you'd be better off in the shipworks. Plenty of business for that sort of thing, so non-magical people can defend their ships.

A few minutes of walking, and you find yourself outside Small Armory, a shop mostly dealing in pistols and handcannons of all sorts. It's actually where you went to get your current pistol, so they should know best what to get. The bell on the door jingles as you enter, and the person leaning over the counter looks over. A thin woman with glasses and dark hair in a bob cut, dressed in a prim white dress shirt. She cocks her head to the side a bit as you walk in.
She's the one who took your weapon order and walked you through what exactly you wanted a few months ago, when you came to get your gun.

Cassily: "Hello there, can I help you?"