This is the town Helen and I grew in.

As I return to the guild to deliver yet another day worth of more bunnies and some wolves I hunted, I greet the gate guards. Everyone seems happy as they see me with a big bundle of dead bunnies on my back. Some guys offer to help me carry, but I shoot them down. If I can't carry my own haul by myself, I wouldn't be an adventurer.

Our town has tall stone walls. Everyone lives inside the walls, and there are some livestock pens inside too. The pens are placed away from the gates, so the smell of manure won't reach the main streets.

The real reason, is to attract hungry monsters away from the gates, and to places where the walls are thicker and taller.

We cannot live outside our walls. Monsters would attack at night and raid our houses if we did. Only in the safe shadow of these walls, can humans live.

But there is not enough walls to go around our farm fields. They are outside the walls, all around town. Every day in the morning, the farmers go outside hoping their crops are fine. Every day at night they go inside dreading their crops will be eaten.

I heard that in the capital, there are three layers of walls, and even some farm fields inside the walls. The capital's walls are strong enough that even a naked giant couldn't go through them.

We are proud of our walls. Humans are weaker than most monsters. Only those with exceptional talent and training can stand against them. If we do not stay close together, we would be wiped out.

I cross some traveling merchants. These guys are really scary. They are rugged, seasoned and brawny folks that dare to cross the roads in their armored wagons to bring goods from one place to another. They hire adventurers ranked E and above to escort them. But their strength wouldn't lose to a D rank one on one.

Everyone is a free citizen. A long time ago, there were slaves, but there was trouble with shady merchants depleting entire communities to sell elsewhere, and it weakens the whole of humanity against the monsters. So the previous king, grandfather to the king freed all the slaves.

There are three classes of people that are exempted from paying the poll tax. The first one are soldiers. They work for the lord and earn money from the lord anyway. It would make little sense paying back taxes. The second one are traveling merchants, if they can prove they visited five cities in a single year. The third are adventurers of rank D and above, that take a pledge to kill at least twenty monsters ranked D or above in a year.

If someone cannot pay the poll tax, they become tax slaves under the Lord. For one year, beginning on early autumn to the start of the next year's winter they have to work wherever the Lord commands. They receive meager wages for their work. It is common for some troublesome characters to become tax slaves every other year.

There is even a lifestyle that goes around never paying taxes. Live as tax slave in one year, do whatever you want in the next one. Don't pay taxes, and life goes on.

A kind lady that has a stall near the Guild gives me fruit. I offer to pay, I have no money problems these days. But she refuses, and say the fruits are thanks for killing that much bunnies. She watches me come across every day these days carrying lots of prey, and those fruits would go bad if they weren't eaten. I'm helping her by taking the fruit she doesn't want to carry back home anyway. A white lie, but one that I don't mind.

I enter the Guild, and take the hunted critters to an evaluation table. A receptionist joins me before long, and we negotiate the sale and the request payment fee.

I ranked up to F yesterday. Since I am Master's apprentice, I need to prove I am strong, or Master might lose face. My accomplishments are my Master's as well.

I also leveled up! Now all that remains is to wait for the day I can visit Helen.