-=Plush POV=-

“Goodbye and have a nice trip!”

The morning after we leave the elves while waving and saying our goodbyes and walking a separate direction to theirs.

“You said we were heading to Eastern lake city right?”

“Yup.”

“And the elves said we just left the Agrian country, which means we’d be entering the Seran country now.”

She puts back the map inside her shoulder bag.

‘It always amazes me how she’s able to do everything with only her feet.’

“We head along this path-” She points her wing along one of the roads on the crossroads we’re on. “-And we’ll get to Eastern lake, no extra stops on the way and we should be there by sundown I think.”

“Sounds good.”

And we both start walking along the path, every so often Shiona would stop and use on of her legs to try one of the tree belts fruits.

*chomp*

The edges of her feathers turned light blue from eating a fruit of the same color.

*fwoosh*

When she waved her wing a white cloud of snow and glimmering ice particles appeared and traveled a small distance along the ground, leaving a thin layer of frost on anything it touched before disappearing.

*CRASH*

She then swung her wing faster than before, the cloud still appeared, however it traveled much faster and soon shrank into a small five centimeter large spiked ball of ice which lodged itself in one of the trees, more ice then started growing around where the ball was stuck, eventually forming an ice shell three times as large as the small ball, or fifteen centimeters.

“Huh.” Was all she said before eating a somewhat see through gray foggy fruit and continued to walk, the fruit having returned her feather to normal once again.

“Do you think you could help me with something using those powers sometime?”

“Well that depends on what you want me to do.”

“You know how I use a kitchen inside the book to cook right?”

“Yeah, Cy opened the book and showed me when we were at the elves place.”

“Well the freezer in there doesn’t actually work so I can’t make cheesecakes or popsicles without someone’s help.”

“Popsicles…? Do you… Do you think we could make a few right now…?”

“Hmm… Now that I think about it that would be pretty good right about now. Sure, let me just send out Lizz again.”

But before Lizz can finish I find myself in the kitchen.

‘Don’t worry, I’ll make you one too.’

I then enter the fridge freezer, it was the kind where it was a small fridge standing a an equally small freezer, or rather it used to be but now the two doors had combined into one large one that you opened to enter the inventory, meaning neither the fridge nor freezer worked.

While there I grabbed a few fruits which looked reminiscent of oranges and went back outside.

I opened one of the cupboards and grabbed a plastic mold, it had six popsicle shaped indentations and a plastic popsicle stick in each which were shaped in a way that made them stay at the right height and place where a popsicle stick should be rather than sink down inside fully.

I put the popsicle mold down on the table and grabbed a carafe, I cut one of the citrus looking fruits in half, tasted a small bit of the juice and after having decided it tasted fine I squeezed to fruits juice into the carafe, I then filled the rest of the carafe with water and mixed it with a spoon, then I poured the juice into the popsicle mold, put in the popsicles sticks which then covered the openings on the mold so that the juice wouldn’t spill out.

‘Lizz, I’m done so I’m coming out.”

I blink and find myself outside again, a blue hand giving me the popsicle mold.

I put the mold down on the ground.

“Okay, your turn.”

She eats another of the lightblue fruits and waves her arm and created a cold cloud which quickly froze the popsicles and I walk up to them.

I get to the mold and try to take them out, however I’m not strong enough so I phase three of them out instead, I hand one to Shiona, put both one of the popsicles and the mold which still had three of them in it in the inventory and kept one for myself.

*chomp* “This is pretty good.” *crunch*

“... I seriously don’t understand how you can bite popsicles like that.”

“Pft!”

“Hm?”

“Lizz got a brainfreeze…”

“Pft!”

Lizz then stops talking completely.

After we finish the popsicles we continue to walk for a bit before we stop to try another fruit, this one being dark blue rather than the previous one which was sky blue.

*chomp*

“What do those even taste like?”

“Err, it’s kind of like those mini tomatoes actually.”

*splash*

When she waved her arm at a moderate speed water came out and soaked the ground in front of her.

She then swung her arm again, much faster than the last time, this time the water which came out traveled soundlessly at a high speed and left a three or so centimeter deep gash in

on the tree it hit.

She then pops another foggy fruit and we continue walking again.

“Hey is the belt supposed to look like that?”

I look at Shiona’s waist and see that both the copper color on the outside as well as the lush green leaves on the iide have faded in color, and I now also noticed that the last fruit she ate hadn’t grown back yet.

“I, I don’t think so? I’m not exactly a magic tree researcher you know? Ehm… Maybe it’s running low on fuel or something?”

“What do you mean?

“Can’t imagine it can keep creating those fruits over you know? Not that I’ve any idea what it runs on though.” She then shrugs her shoulders.

“Well it’s a plant right? I think? Then maybe it needs sunlight or water or something, try going into the sky with it maybe.” And I too shrug my shoulders.

Shiona takes off into the sky and faces towards the sun but soon comes back down while shaking her head.

“Nope, still looks just as sickly as before.”

“Uhm, maybe try putting it in water? Check the map if there’s a lake nearby.”

She does just that, she takes the map out of her bag using one of her talons and starts using her wings to fly in place so she can read the map with both her talons.

“According to this map there should be a river coming up soon if we just follow the road.”

She then puts the map back in the bag, however rather than land she grabs me by my shoulders and we take of into the sky to see ahead better.

“There!” I say and point forwards, Shiona also finds the river and then takes off towards it, not letting me down before she dives into it, drenching us both in the cold water.

“Still no luck.” Says Shiona when she gets back to the surface, I had floated before her by quickly covering myself in an air filled bubble.

“We’ll think of something when we get out of the water, I really don’t want either of us to catch a cold before we get there, we’ll probably need all the energy we can muster.”

When I get out of the river I look behind me and see Shiona still floating where she had broken through the surface of the water earlier.

“No… It can’t be that simple…”

She then swims towards me at a speed that would make olympic swimmers envious, once she comes out of the river she quickly takes out a blue jelly from her bag and liquefies it on top of the belt.

The drops of the blue potion disappear the moment they touch the belt, restoring a part of its color with every drop.

“It’s working!”

She puts her wings on my sides and squeeze them together, effectively grabbing me without needing any fingers, and started shaking me.

“It’s working!”

“I- get- it- so- please- stop- sha- king- me!”

“Ah.”

She stops and puts me back down on the ground.

“Sorry.” She turns away from me while blushing.

“Why are you so excited about this? I’d understand you being happy, but this much? You’re as excited as when we first met here.”

“Aww, someone's getting jealous…”

“Shiona…”

She throws her arms in the air.

“alright, alright. It’s just, you have the book and all those fancy ghost things while the only thing I can do is fan people, of course I’d be excited to at least have something.” After saying that she shrugs her shoulders again.

Not really sure how to respond I just let out a weak “Ah.”.

“Well let’s keep going.” She says and starts walking before I think of anything else to say.

After *step step step*-ing our back onto the road Shiona pops another fruit, this one green, it hardly even changed the color of her feathers..

When she swung her wing fast it looked as though several of her feather shot out from her and embedded themselves into a tree with what sounded like an echoing *THUNK* sound.

We look closer on the feather in the tree and see that they weren’t actually feathers, rather that they were leaves, these leaves quickly withered up and disappeared completely.

*woosh*

She then swings her wing more slowly yet again, this time a greenish-yellow cloud appeared from her wings, traveled slowly and then landed on the ground.

“...” “...”

We watched where the cloud had landed, however nothing happened.

*woosh*

She tried again.

*woosh*

And again.

*woosh*

And yet again.

*woosh* *woosh* *woosh* *woosh* *woosh* *woosh* *woosh* *woosh* *woosh* *woosh* *woosh* *woosh* *woosh* *woosh* *woosh*

She tried many, many times, however time and time again nothing happened.

I look worriedly at Shiona and see sweat dripping almost like a stream down from where her chin is behind her mask and I quickly take out a handful of blue jellies from the inventory and splash her in her face with their liquefied versions, finally snapping her out of her trance and dragging her back to reality.

“Thanks, I think if you hadn’t done that I would’ve fainted…”

She’s still panting heavily however the stream of sweat dripping down from her seems to have stopped.

“Don’t worry, but I think the best we can do with this if we use it in battle is to just hope whoever we use it on is allergic to pollen…”

“Probably… Oh well.”

After a few seconds she gets back up, eats a cloudy fruit and feeds a jelly to the belt, we then continue walking along the road again.

A short while later we come out of the

forest and enter a large plain, the road that we're walking on converges with others into a larger one which leads straight to a very familiar city with tall walls and even taller buildings.

“Is that it?”

“Yup, that's the Eastern lake city, now come on, let's go.”

We walk along the roads to the city, nothing special happening on the way, I show the guard my temporary license, there was a fuzz at first about how the photo didn't match my face but once I took out the mask they calmed down a bit, makes me wonder what the guards at the previous city were doing, maybe they weren't as professional as I had thought at first.

I pay five copper for Shiona and we enter the city and walk down the main road.

While we're walking towards the inn Shiona keeps looking around at everything, possibly feeling nostalgic as this city is the most developed city she's seen in three years.

“Here we are, this is the inn we'll be staying at.”

She looks up at the inn.

“Quartets’ inn? Barbershop quartet?”

“Not quite, it's run by four sisters, that's why they named it this.”

“Oh, okay.”

I knock at the door and Anna soon comes and opens it.

“Welcome back Plush, you all disappeared without saying anything so we were really worried about you until Charlie and company came back and told us.”

I'm honestly somewhat disappointed by her lack of reaction to me not wearing the mask, but I come to the conclusion that Charlie must've told them.

‘At least I still have something I can surprise them with, something Charlie didn't know about when we split up.’

Anna then continues:

“And then I assume this is your wife Shiona?”

“Wh-”

“Yes! Nice to meet you!”

Before I could clear up the misunderstanding Shiona agreed very excitedly and when I look up at her I can see the corners of an elated smile below her mask.

I just sigh and let the two of them talk for a bit before before Anna invites us in.

“How is the price going to change now that there'll be another person staying in my room by the way?”

“Well the pickits moved out into their own room after they came back so there's a lot of space in your room now, so let's just call it a family discount.”

“Really? Sure, Joanne likes all things magic but I really don't understand how you guys can be this kind to me.”

Anna tells us not to worry about it and walks of, but before she disappears behind the corner she tells us dinner will be ready soon and to come back down soon as we can.

We get back up to my, now our, room. We look around for a bit before realizing that we didn't actually have anything we needed to do here so we go back down to the dining room

“Welcome back!” ×8

I hear as we enter the room.

‘Wait, eight voices?’

I look around the table and see Anne, Anna, Hannah, Joanne, Charlie, Baom, Diifan and-

“Cathy? Hugh?”

“Hello.” Says Cathy calmly as she eats with one hand and holds hands with Hannah with the other, Hugh though-

“Ga-ha-hah! Thanks for introducing me to this place earlier! The food's delicious! Better than anything I've ever had!”

When he shouts this Joanne starts blushing and looking down to the ground.

“Now introduce us! Who's the lass!?” Hugh asks, still shouting.

Shiona rapidly introduces herself to them as my wife, possibly worried I wouldn't have included that detail on my own.

“Shiona, these four:” I gesticulate to the four colorfully haired girls sitting on one of of the table. “Are the people who work here,

blue's name is Anne, she's the receptionist.”

“Yo.”

“Yellow is Anna, I'm not really sure exactly what she does but I think you can think of her as a maid maybe? Would that be right Anna?”

“Maid, aide, I take care of most of the housework and customer interaction outside the receptionist desk, if you ever need anything just ask.”

“That’s Joanne, she’s the cook.” It might be a habit from the other world but I don’t quite feel comfortable just calling someone ‘brown’.

“And a damn good one!” Shouts Hugh with a mouth full of food.

“H-hi…” She barely manages to say her greetings through her raging blush after Hugh’s praise.

“And red here is Hannah, she’s an adventurer and the inn’s bodyguard.”

“That… That sounds pretty good, Red huh? I like it…” Murmurs Hannah. “Ah! Hello!” Before catching herself and saying hi.

“The cat-kin is Cathy, she’s a receptionist at the adventurers’ guild and takes care of most of the paperwork.”

“H-”

“And my girlfriend!” This time it’s Hannah that shouts and interrupts, causing Cathy’s cheeks to shine almost as red as Joanne’s.

“And finally this interrupting obnoxious prick is Hugh, he’s the guild leader or the local adventurers’ guild.”

“Hello!” He doesn’t even refute my claim. “Speaking of the guild, your new guild license arrived yesterday, you’ll have to come and get it tomorrow.”

Anna then leaves the room and soon comes back with two chairs, she puts them next to the table and gesticulate to us to sit down.

Shiona sits down at one of the chairs which had a plate and utensils in front of it while I sit down on the other chair which didn’t, however when I do Shiona picks me up with her wings and puts me down on her lap.

I shrug my shoulder and look at the other’s, Cathy and Joanne blush, possibly imagining themselves in similar situations while the others seem to be holding back their laughter.

I start putting food on Shiona’s plate, the peanut gallery which has now stifled their chuckles look at us with warm eyes as they think I’m helping the hand-less Shiona eat.

I then use the fork and knife to cut apart a piece of pork, and while everyone is still watching I open my mouth which was previously hidden and start eating.

The mouths of everyone open wide as they see me doing something they thought I couldn’t do, and they open even wider when they see me hold out another fork and Shiona using one of her digitigrade legs to somehow bend it so she could grab the fork with her talons and started eating as well, though I did still have to cut up the pieces for her since she wasn’t quite comfortable with bending both her legs up to her heads in front of strangers.

After we finish the meat I grab a piece of hard bread, when I eat it a loud crunching can be heard and it wasn’t until then that the others snapped out of it.

“Wai- You- wha-”

Anne, Anna, Hugh and the pickits simply continue eating when they come back to reality while the rest start combining words into a cacophony of unintelligible sounds, except for one…

*SLAM*

Hannah slams her hands on the table and runs up to me.

*WOOSH*

Only to get blown away by Shiona.

“You-! You’re getting in the way of my experiments!” Accuses Hannah.

“I’m not letting some girl I don’t know run off with my husband!” Refutes Shiona. “At least consider that you’re in the same room as your girlfriend before trying to forcefully elope with someone!”

When Shiona said that we all look towards Cathy who we now see has her arms raised with a magic wand in each of them.

“Wait-, No! I can explain!”

“Oh? You can? Are you sure?” Says Cathy while half her face was smiling, the other half however wasn’t doing anything of the sort.

“Yes! You know our father right!? Magic researcher guy!? Well-”

“Really? You’re blaming this on your family now? Tsk tsk.” Interrupts Shiona, causing Cathy’s eyes to sharpen further.

“Oho? Is that what you were trying to do?”

She then activates one of her wands, it starts glowing in a very bright blue color as Hannah begins to float off of the ground and out of the dining room while followed by a small angry cat-kin.

“I… I think I lost my appetite.” Says Joanne while blushing as she starts cleaning up the table.

The pickits finish their meal first, likely due to their small stature, and they sluggishly walk back to their room while yawning, followed soon by Anne

Anna and Shiona both finnish around the same time, Shiona and I walk back to our room while Anna starts helping Joane to clean up while Hugh is still eating.

We leave the dining room and walk back up to our room, lay down in a hug like we did in the elves carriage.

-=Elizabeth POV=-

*yawn* I wake up after a long peaceful nap and walk towards the TV to see what Plush and Shiona are doing.

‘Before I went to sleep Shiona said they should be there sometime today, I can’t wait to get to eat more of that Joanne kids cooking!’

I turn on the TV using the remote and-

‘They’re already asleep!? I missed lunch!? No!!!!’

-=Cy Tha Adel POV=-

‘Aww… They really looked like they enjoyed that food… It must’ve been heavenly… But there were so many new people…’ *cry*

I then hear another cry coming from the direction of Elizabeth’s room joining mine, creating an eerie melody.

* * *

-=Shiona POV=-

I wake up the next morning and get out of the bed as quietly as I can, so as to not wake up Plush.

“Morning.”

When I leave our room I’m greeted by Anna who was standing outside.

“How long have you been standing here?” I ask.

“Not too long, in fact I was in the middle of dusting everything off.” She answers.

“Without a dust cloth?” I ask, my suspicions of her rising.

Without answering me she takes out a stick, similar to the ones that the cat person used to carry off red head yesterday, and soon leaves start growing out of the stick, eventually forming into a dust brush.

“Oh. By the way, when is breakfast usually?”

“It’s usually in about an hour, feel free to get to know everyone a bit better until then.” She answers while smiling. “Anne will probably be sleeping at the receptionist desk, Hannah might be either at the entrance or in the basement, and Joanne is in the kitchen preparing for breakfast.”

“Alright, thanks.” I say and walk towards the stairs. “Wait, one more thing!”

“Hm?”

“Do you have a shower?”

* * *

I get out of the bathroom, turns out they didn’t have a shower however they did have a very large bath.

I’ve already dried myself off and put on my clothes so I start walking towards the kitchen to get to know the chef better.

“No no! Like this!”

When I get to the kitchen I see that she’s already preoccupied, she seems to be teaching the muscleman from yesterday how to cook, also she is acting a lot less shy now than yesterday, maybe muscle guy has had a good influence on her?.

“Alright alright, like this then?”

“No! Like this!”

They seem to be arguing over the proper way to peel a potato, I decide to leave them to their own devices.

I walk out of the kitchen, the two people there not even having noticed I had ever entered, and walk towards where we entered the inn yesterday and see that, just like Anna said, the blue haired girl was sleeping while resting her upper body on the receptionist’s desk, seemingly not caring about her job one iota.

Looking at her and at how the customers are choosing to stay away from her I decide it wouldn’t be a good idea to try and wake her up and instead try to find the red head.

“Hey! Shiona!”

I hear someone shouting at me from a seat next to the door, looking over I see the red headed girl sitting there.

“Good morning, err, Hannah was it?”

“About that, just call me Red.”

“Isn’t that what Plush called you yesterday?... You’re going to change your name, because of something MY husband told you? Didn’t your girlfriend teach you anything about being faithful yesterday?”

“Oh she taught me alright.” She says, flabbergasting me due to how casual she is when someone starts talking about her and her girlfriends nightly activities. “But I have a real reason for getting a new nickname, and it is just a nickname mind you, not a lot of people take me seriously when I introduce myself as Hannah, it’s not a very adventurer-like name you know?”

“Ah, I see… I have to say I agree with you on that one…”

“Also I hate to be rude but, what’s the deal with your mask? And what’s the deal with Plush suddenly being able to eat yesterday?”

I avoid the question about my mask and go directly to her second question.

“Well we don’t really know how it works, but Plush said that when he ate it felt the same as when he uses those blue energy jellies.”

“I see… Has he ever gone to the bathroom?”

“Err, I dont think so?”

“Interesting…” She says and puts her hand on her chin.

*FWUIT* *SHUNK*

Only to throw the sword stuck to her waist forwards just a few seconds later.

“Don’t think I don’t see you guys trying to steal from each other just because I’m not looking!”

She gets up and walks towards a person whose clothes had gotten stuck to the wall thanks to the sword.

“If I see you doing that again I’m calling the city guards!”

She jerks her sword out of the wall, the man falling to the ground, and puts it back in its scabbard, she then walk back to me.

“Now where were we?”

* * *

“Breakfast!” Shouts Anna from the other room over.

Everyone looks towards where the voice came from and start scrambling around to be first to the dining room, however-

“Why are they all going a different way than us?”

“Hm?” I look to my side and see a sleepy looking Anne. “Don’t tell me you thought we all ate in the same room? Our dining room is only for our acquaintances or our acquaintances’ acquaintances, you should’ve realized that that room is nowhere near large enough for all these people.”

“... Right.”

* * *

We arrive at the dining room and see that the pickits, Hugh, and Joanne were already there.

“Anna is getting Plush and Cathy, she’ll be here soon.” Says Charlie.

Just like she said, a few minutes later they all come into the room while rubbing their eyes, this time they’re followed by Lizz who was flying next to them.

“Good morning.” I say.

“Morn...*mumble mumble*”

“Good... morning…”

“Breakfast!”

They each respond in their own way and sit down, Plush sits down on his own chair so just like yesterday I lift him over to my lap.

We all finish eating our breakfast without anything special happening.

“Shiona, I’ll be going to the guild today to get my new license, do you want to come along?”

“Of course she does!” Shouts Hugh as though it was any of his business. “And you might as well have her register as an adventurer too! We need all the han- people we can ge-Gah!!”

“Stop trying to pressure people into joining the guild!” Shouts Cathy after having thrown a shown a… Shoe?

‘Where did she even get that?” I wonder.

*cough* “Thanks Cathy, but I was already planning on joining the guild anyways.” I say.

At this Hugh bursts into a loud boisterous laughter while Cathy sends him a glare.

“Then we can depart together!” Suggests Hugh.

We all agree and finish the rest of our breakfast while talking about various unimportant matters.

“Thanks for the meal! As good as always!” Shouts Hugh while us others respond in a more normal tone.

‘Can he do nothing but shout?”

And we all leave the inn and walk down the main road i the opposite direction of where we entered the city until we enter a large plaza with a single building and bell tower in the center.

“I don’t remember that part, did you expand while I was gone?”

“Yup!” Answers Hugh. “That’s where Rupe set up his shop, turns out it became a lot more popular than we expected! In fact we’d even say he’s the one who works the most despite no longer having any booth duty!” And then he starts laughing again.

‘Booth duty?’ I think.

“I’ll have to go say hi later then.” Responds Plush.

We make our way to the building and enter it, Cathy opens a door on the left side of the furthermost walland asks me to follow her.

“You said you wanted to register as an adventurer right? Well follow me and we’ll get started, we need to do a small examination you see.”

I follow her and we walk down a set of stairs which were on the other side of the door.

-=Plush POV=-

While Shiona and Cathy were taking care of the registration I follow Hugh up to his office, once we’re inside he takes out something from one of the desks and hands it to me.

“Here you are, this is what a real adventurer’s license looks like.”

It was just a small black card with a weird swirly copper colored and green pattern on one side while the other was completely empty and glossy.

“… What?”

“I know you’re confused but just listen, this things magic, think of it like the thing you used to see your skills and abilities during the examination.”

After hearing that I channel some energy into the card, just like I’d done during the examination, and when I do the glossy black side starts glowing with white letters.

“It’s been attuned to you specifically so only you can activate this, if you try to enter a city and refuse to activate it the guards will assume it’s stolen and arrest you.”

While half listening to Hugh I looked at the license.

the side which was previously fully black now had a thin white border, a picture of me, and four words.

‘Info, quests, rank, accomplishments… What?’

As I’m thinking what info could mean the black card changes and now displays something else.

“To use it just think about- Oh… You already did…” Hugh was trying to tell me how to use it but when he sees I already somewhat got the hang of it he started sounding dejected.

The license now showed my name, my species (Which said plushy rather than fleecy by the way), and…

“Guild titles? Guild’s little Helper?”

“Yes!” Shouts Hugh back, now looking happy again. “The people who made the guild had no idea how to create actual new titles that got displayed on things like the status orb or other such magic items! So they made their own system!”

I waited for a bit, however Hugh seemed finished with his explanation.

“... And what does guild’s little helper mean?”

“Well what does the card say it means?”

“... Right.”

I look down at the card again and see that it does indeed display a small explanation of the title now.

“Awarded for helping a branch of the guild during dire times. Current level: ⅔. When level reaches max you will be allowed to… apply for work… as guild staff…” I was slightly flabbergasted and confused. “... If this is a thing then why did you allow Rupe to work here? Did he already have this title maxed out or what?”

“Desperate times call for desperate measures!”

“And you’re saying that those desperate times have passed?”

“Yup! Now that he’s here and distracting all the adventurers with his shop we have a whole hell of a lot more time on our hands!”

“... And you use that time to go eat food at an inn rather than help Rupe in his shop?”

“Yup!”

I sigh and look back at the license.

When I thought about the quests it showed how many quests I’d done in each category on each type of quest and when I thought rank it showed three letters, B, C and C.

However, when I thought ‘Accomplishments.’ the license just turned black again.

“That means you don’t have any accomplishments yet, don’t worry though, those are reserved for big things so it’s normal for people to not have anything yet.”

“That reminds me, why did it say that guild’s little helper was at level two? I can understand if I got one from sending Rupe your way but what about the second one?”

“That was from introducing us to Red and the others during the whole goblin ear incident, you helped us get through the night without dying from boredom as well as give us some ways of relaxing outside the guild now that we have more free time.”

“... That’s all it took?”

“Yup, we can’t be too picky.”

“And then what about this pattern on the back? what do the colors and pattern mean?”

“Well you should be able to tell that about two thirds of the color is green while only one third is copper, this means that two of your ranks are C or below while one is B or above.”

“But why copper and green?”

“Shouldn’t you have gotten an explanation about this from Cathy?”

“Ehm, I don’t remember her saying anything about this…”

*sigh* “An adventurers rank goes from F to A, you at least know this right?”

“Yeah.”

“Well once you get all three ranks to A you go back to F rank but climb from a copper and green card to a blue card which turns silver when you get to B rank, after that comes a red card which turns gold.”

“Wait, so the highbreed goblin subjugation which I thought was a big deal was actually pretty bottom of the barrel all things considered?”

“Yup.”

*sigh* “I understand why you chose copper, silver, and gold, but what about the secondary colors? Why those?”

“Wow, you’ve gotten really talky since you came back, in a good way too, that lass must be having a good influence on you!” Aaaaaand he starts laughing again. “The secondary colors were chosen because that’s what the respective metals look like when they rust. Now get out, I’ve spent way too long explaining all this, I have work to do.”

“You mean sleep?”

“Yup.”

I sigh and walk out the door and back downstairs and see Cathy explaining the quest types and ranks to Shiona.

“I’ll go get you a couple of quests of each type, it won’t take long.”

Cathy then walks off to the quest boards and taking a stool with her to stand on.

“How’d it go?” I walk up to Shiona and ask.

“It went well, though we haven’t really done a whole lot. We only did a few tests on how strong the gusts I make and my legs are.”

“Well that’s good to know at least, right? And did you use one of those identification orbs? If so did you find out anything new?”

“Yeah, I’ve got one skill and two abilities, the skill had something to do with me being a specific type of bird kin, it’s what allows me to create gusts of wind with my wings, also it said I can use this to fly fast, I’ll have to try that sometime. Looks like Cathy is coming back, I’ll take the abilities later.”

And like she said Cathy was walking our way again.

“Here you are, three deliveries inside the city, three gathering quests in the forest outside and three subjugation quests. Take care now, I need to go work.”

Cathy hands Shiona the papers and then walks up the stairs to the stairs on the right.

“Well what did you get?” I ask and look at the notes, and when I do I notice something-

‘These delivery quests, they have maps just like when I did the initiation quests, guess the maps on the notes themselves are reserved for new people for whatever reason…’

“Uh… all the deliveries are from right next to here and g to all over the town, the gathering quests are for… Restorative herbs, luminescent mushrooms and oily oranges…”

“If you need any help I know where the herbs and mushrooms are, but I’ve no idea what or where the oily oranges are.”

“Are you even allowed to help me?”

“When the pickits were registering I overheard Cathy say that apparently gathering strong allies is also a part of being an adventurer, apparently it’s fine.”

“Okay, but I’d like to try on my own first.”

“Sure, but what’s the subjugations for then?”

“Uhm, three Slimes… Speaking of slimes, we need to ask about that slime you said was so different, next is one… Orc? Really? They’re throwing orcs at new guys? What the fuck? Well it’s just one so I guess that might be fine… And the last is three lesser chi- chimeras!? Okay what the fuck!” Luckily she was still talking quietly enough for people to not start staring too much.

*sigh* “Okay, I’m pretty sure I’ll need your help with the chimeras.”

“What’s up with chimeras then?”

“... You don’t know? Well you’ll see later then…”

“Alright, fine. Also I need to go say hi to someone who works here, in the meantime you can probably go and ask Hugh about this thing...” I take out the weird translucent rock and give it to her. “ his office is straight ahead after you go upstairs and then we’ll meet up here at the exit once we’re done, Hugh’s the guy who knows the most about monsters of the people working here.”

“Alright, see you in a bit then.”

And we walk separate ways, Shiona walks up the stairs while I start walking towards a door on the right side of the room which wasn’t here before.

*ding ding*

When I walk through the door I hear a bell ringing, just like in Rupe’s previous shop, however unlike his last shop this place was actually kept fairly organized with weapons, jellies, powders, and monster parts in glass cases all around.

“Hello?”

“Welcome!” I can hear Rupe’s voice coming from further in somewhere. “I’m a bit busy now so please hang on a little while.”

I keep looking around the place at what he’s selling and after a minute or so Rupe comes out from wherever he was.

“Plush! Welcome back, what can I do for you?”

“I just came to see how things were going and to browse a bit.”

“Fair enough, browse all you want and just ask if there’s anything that catches your… eyes?”

“Sure thing.”

Rupe walks off to somewhere and I look around.

‘This place is a lot bigger than I’d expected.’

There were many shelves and display cases, a lot of them had a large multitude of different kinds of weapons, ranging all the way from magic wands to giant war axes and bows.

There was a table with large glass containers, each container filled with a different kind of magic jelly.

“Hey Rupe, what’s these white and black jelly do?”

“The white ones are simple antidotes, they can negate most weak poisons and venoms, heard you can even make edible foods out of poisonous stuff if you mix some of this in. The black ones were originally failures, kept exploding all the time, but they’ve since been able to fix this by making it harden rather tham tur to liquid when it's filled with energy, making it easier to throw as well as making it take a few seconds for them to explode.”

“Huh, alright, thanks.”

I keep looking around and see a couple of mannequins wearing armor and holding weapons, bear traps hung up on the walls, large jars of goblin ears and other small monster materials as well as what looked like a meat and fish display for larger materials.

He even had a bookshelf with books meant for adventurers, things like “100 ways to kill a goblin!”, “How to avoid kobold ambushes” and many more.

In the end I end up buying magic jellies, a large number of every kind, leaving me at five gold, seven silver and twenty copper left, when I did i did I also asked for their names, however-

“They don’t have any official names other than just ‘magic jellies’, though most just call them things like healing jellies, energy jellies, tough jellies, strong jellies, tasty jellies, antidote jellies and bursting jellies, but no names are set in stone so anything from ‘red jellies’ all the way to ‘restorative candy’ is usually enough for people understand what you’re talking about.”

After I paid for them all I walked back into the main guild room.

‘The purples really don’t have any other purpose than to be tasty…’ *chomp* ‘It’s pretty good actually…’

I was kind of disappointed that they didn’t have any real names, but at the same time this is also good, I mean what’s the point of giving them overly complicated and hard to remember names when you can just do this?

-=Shiona POV=-

I’ve walked up the stairs which Plush pointed me to and gone through the door which was at the stairs end, now I stand face to wood with another door, this one slightly gaudier looking than the ones around it.

I take a deep breath and steel myself, I then knock on the door by kicking it lightly.

*knock knock*

“...”

After not having received a response I try again.

*knock knock*

“...”

To be fair at this time I had completely forgotten that Hugh was the kind of person he was so I wasn't quite prepared for what would happen next.

*knock kno-*

*SLAM*

“SHUT THE FUCK UP!”

“!”

“Oh, it's you Shiona, I was expecting Cathy. What can I do for you?”

“... Please stop trying to salvage your image, you're only making it worse…”

“GAHAHA!” He starts laughing for a bit. “Well it was worth a shot! It's useful when the adventurers think you're actually capable of doing your job! Well what can I do for ya?”

I hand him the see through stone which I had held in one of the folds of one of my wings.

l”Plush and I came across this weird slime creature on the trip, when we hit it with fire magic it absorbed it and grew stronger, we were wondering if you knew what it was.”

“Hm…” He holds the now red slime core and observes it for a bit before saying:

“Slimes are very adaptive creatures, every so often they will turn completely clear, just like the one you said you saw, and absorb energy from its surroundings, it then uses that absorbed energy to change its attribute as a way of fitting in better, so even a water slime would be able to turn into a fire slime if they were to fall into a fire while in the so called adaption phase, now as for the core itself it can be used to create magic wands, say, do you happen to have any skill that specifically states it lets you use magic wands?”

“Can’t say I do.”

“That means if you were to have this made into a magic wand it would have to be of the same kind as Plush’s bangle, the ones that can only use one specific spell no matter what, otherwise you would have needed some sort of advanced magic shaping skill to be able to use them.”

“Well how do I go about making it into a wand then?”

“That is a really long, complicated and boring procedure, lucky for you though I happen to have an acquaintance that can do it or you for a relatively cheap price, you’ll just have to decide what spell you want it to have first.”

“Well what spells can I choose from?”

“How the hell should I know, I’m a swordfighter not a mage! Go ask Cathy or something. Is that all?”

I think for a bit before replying:

“One more thing, could you tell me a bit about lesser chimeras?”

“You don’t know about them? They’re pretty well known you know?”

“Well I know a bit about them, but I’m not sure if it’s enough. All I know is that they’re amalgamations of a bunch of different animals.”

“Well that’s pretty much all you need to know, just be careful with the males, they’ve got these weird reverse claws on their feet which are venomous, the venom doesn’t do any lasting damage but it hurts like hell.”

“Do you have any idea where they might be?”

“Oh for- Do you want me to just do the whole quest for you!? I’ll answer this but no more! Lesser chimeras can usually be found in rivers! Now go and decide what spell you want!”

With a loud *pomf* sound Hugh lays down on his sofa and immediately starts snoring, whether he’d actually fallen asleep or whether he was doing this to get me to leave faster I didn’t know, another thing I didn’t know was:

“But I don’t know where her room is…”

Hugh doesn’t respond so I leave his office and on knock on all the doors in the corridor until someone responds.

“The doors unlocked!”

*creak*

“Cathy? Could I have your help with something?”

“Shiona? Sure, just hang on while I finish this.”

She is sitting at a desk next to a window and looks to be doing some paperwork using a very stylish feather quill as a pen.

“Okay, now I can take a small break, what’s up?”

“I was wondering whether you could tell me what kinds of spell wands could be made with this fire slime core.”

“Single spell type or multi spell type?”

“Single.”

I hand her the red core.

“Hm… This thing isn’t the highest quality, it was killed before it had absorbed enough energy to let you make anything big with it, but on the other hand it doesn’t have a single scratch so what small amounts of power it can create can be used almost freely, just tell me what you want it to do and I’ll write down the name of that spell on a piece of paper for you.”

“That’s… I have no idea honestly… Do you have any examples?”

“The most common ones for this size would be to either just have it create a very small fire at its tip for lighting other things on fire, condensing the flame and making it even smaller to make it warm enough to melt a few more things, or to make the flame really weak but make it focus on giving off light instead. But just think of anything a fire could do and there’s probably a spell for it.”

I start thinking again, however I’m still unable to decide on anything.

“Could I come back later?”

“Sure, but I’ll probably be staying at the inn tonight to so you may not need to come back here, depends on the time. See ya.”

“Good bye.” I walk out from her room and down the stairs.

“Are we ready to go then?” Asks Plush who was already there waiting for me.

“I think so, did you buy anything at the shop?”

We then walk outside the town and towards the forest while talking about what we’d done, throwing around a few ideas for the wand as well as commenting on the nice coincidence that Plush bought antidote jellies when we were going to fight something poisonous.