“You aren’t hearing wrong for being eligible for the assessment.”

“But hasn’t it only been two weeks since I joined?” I held my chin in wonder.

“That may be so, but your accomplishment in completing quests in a swift and perfect manner helps in providing you the needed quota for the assessment.”

Sweet. I mean, I had been doing the guild quests for this exact reason. So next, I asked her about the details. And to sum it up, starting from Iron rank, there would be an assessment for each rank proceeding it, all the way until you reached the peak; especially this Iron rank assessment which would be conducted in mass for three days.

“Be careful on your assessment tomorrow and be prepared adequately. You won’t know when the enemy will strike — the forest to the north is dangerous.

“Don’t frighten them, Raklum,” Tia reprimanded which Raklum took with a laugh. “I can’t spill the details right now, but you have to be prepared to spend the night in the forest.”

Lara was all tensed-up and said, “Ah, um… Zeth, Pallad, we would better prepare right now before it’s too late.”

“Uh-huh. It’s almost evening, and we just got to this city this morning, after all.”

“Ha! No matter what comes about, I’ll face it head-on.” With complete confidence, Zeth pumped up his fists.

“Enough with your self-confidence, let’s go.” Pallad grabbed Zeth and said farewell to us.

“V-Vincent, if you don’t mind, you can also join us to get some basic necessities.”

“Yeah, that’s a great idea!”

“Certainly. I know a lot of places that sell cheap, quality tools and equipment.”

Zeth, Pallad, and Lara looked at me, waiting for answers, and somehow, I felt that this had happened right before I was transported to this world, but the memory of it was hazy. It is déjà vu, but why…?

“Thanks, but I’m good. And I still have something to do here in the guild.” There were some things that I wanted clarifications about to both Tia and Raklum — mostly about dungeon matters.

“Ah! What a shame. Okay then, see you tomorrow.”

The trio said their farewells and soon were out of the guild.

Then, I inquired about dungeon liberation to Raklum since I hadn’t been listening to his bragging earlier. I’d gained little information concerning dungeons these past two weeks, so I wasn’t well aware of the exact benefit of conquering dungeons except for riches. After all, the age of people living in fear over dungeons had long since passed as sung by the bard.

“…And just like that, I grab that chance to destroy the Core deep within the dungeon.”

“So you are the one who destroyed the Dungeon Core?” Would adventurers and liberators rush to destroy Lorelei the instant they found her? I grimaced at the thought of dying because of that, but the asterisk mark beside his Vocation must have come from that.

“It has to be done,” Tia continued, “the dungeon suddenly sprang up near a village and destroyed the surrounding ecosystems.”

“I see.” Well, as long as the dungeon wasn’t invasive, there wasn’t much of a reason to destroy it. Though no matter what the case, increasing the defense and floors would still be of my greatest interest for now.

Noticing my silence, Raklum tapped the desk. “Anything wrong?”

“Nah, just that you two seem close, huh?” This had made my curiosity flare up for some time, as it’d be quite interesting to see this kind of “development.” But his answer wasn’t as I expected.

“Oh, she and I are cousins. His father is my mother’s little brother.”

“Mr. Steve is?”

“You bet! He’s a former Silver-ranked adventurer and a famous liberator to boot.”

We continued to have a discussion a bit more, but now that I had all my questions answered, it was time for me to go — I had to prepare for tomorrow as well. Therefore, I asked them if they knew about any good weapon shops right before leaving.

“A weapon shop, huh?” Tia was the one who answered as she took out a map and circled to a certain spot. “Right around this corner, there is a shop called ‘Ironmonger Blacksmith.’ Master Sutton the Ironmonger, its owner, has a bad temper, so be careful not to get his ire. But I can assure you the weapons and equipment sold there are of the best quality in this city.”

“All right, thanks.”

“Anytime.”

Once I said my farewell, I headed to the location while looking at my own map that I had gotten a few days ago. The place was actually located near Cornelia’s workshop — sounds of metal hitting against metal were rampant around this place. Speaking of her, she had been preoccupied with something, and I didn’t get much of a chance to meet her. Also, her father was still not home, so I couldn’t ask her to make me the weapon that I wanted yet.

But anyway, soon a building with a glaringly obvious sign of an anvil came into view. Below the sign was a plaque with “Ironmonger Blacksmith” written on it. Seeing that it was vacant of people, I went for the door.

The shop’s door let out a creaking noise when I pushed it. At that time, I remembered Tia’s words not to anger the owner, but the grumbling of an old man could already be heard from inside. Bad news!

On the backside of the shop was a bearded grumpy-looking old man in the middle of hammering a searing hot metal rod on an anvil into a shape that appeared to be a blade. This place seemed to be a store adjoining a workshop.

“…Who is it? If you’re the messenger of ‘that person,’ I already said I won’t make those weapons!” He stopped and glared at me. “Get the hell ou— Oh, it’s just a customer.”

“Hello… I heard I can get weapons of good quality here?”

“Hmph. You can’t find a better blacksmith in this city,” the grumpy-looking old man remarked, no longer giving me any more attention. “You can choose whatever is on the display, but if you want a custom order, don’t you dare ask something extravagant, ya hear me?”

Yikes! He’s pretty grumpy, alright.

Anyway, the shop was packed from floor to ceiling with weapons and armor. There were all kinds up on display as well: swords, spears, bows, axes, whips, shields, gauntlets, and what have you. I even spotted some top-shelf magic weapons up for sale on holders displayed above a long table, but I didn’t see any magic staff in here.

Whereas the armors were put on the mannequins on the side, which ranged from full iron armor to something made from unknown leather. So many choices, so many weapons and armor… What a place indeed.

Um, I already have a sword… and what I’m looking for by coming here is a bow.

I moved to the bow section and inspected things displayed there. The bows here mostly consisted of short bows with shorter lengths compared to longbows, but crossbows were also not that uncommon. I picked a random crimson short bow that looked nicer than the others around and tried to pull the string… Hard! The string was way harder than the one used in the practice ground, and I figured that with my current strength, I would be having a hard time using this — but that was fine since my set of clothes would help in this field.

“Master, how much for this?”

“That one?” The old man raised an eyebrow at the short bow and sneered. “Forget it. With your constitution, it won’t be of use to you since the string is made from a minotaur tendon; it can shoot like a longbow. You should consider another on the display.”

“Oh, really?” But the information regarding this bow just made me want it even more. “So, how much is it along with this quiver and a stack of arrows?”

“You! Whatever, it’s on you. Ten thousand Zernial for the bow. Two thousand for the quiver and arrows. Take it or leave it.”

“Da— I mean, it’s hella expensive…” I didn’t believe that haggling with this old man would bear any fruit. But still, a thousand bucks for a bow… another two hundred for the others… that wasn’t too expensive. “Alright, consider it sold.”

“Fine then. Still looking for something else?”

“I guess I will. Sorry for the inconvenience.”

“Then be quick.” He went back to hammering.

I strolled around the shop and chanced upon a sword with a color similar to the one used by Leon — green. The greenish color appeared to have been caused by mithril, but I didn’t dare to have any idea about it due to the exorbitant price tag.

Just when I was about done, I noticed a nice steel dagger displayed near me.

“This dagger…” I picked up the dagger and inspected it. The design was simple yet sharp like it was made to cut anything with ease.

“Twenty-five hundred Zernial, no less.”

“Ngh… Okay, you got a deal.” I thought I was rich after robbing Rowan and his henchmen, but I was no more than a nouveau riche. However, in the past two weeks, I had gathered about seven thousand Zernial from doing adventurer quests — would be more if I could do higher ranking quests.

I put the money on the counter after counting the total amount and coins needed which added to a hefty sum of 14,500 Zernial.

“Thanks for your patronage. Done now?”

“Yup. Please excuse me.”

“Good. No more disturbance in my smithy. Go, I won’t see you off.” He motioned at me to get out with his hand without even sparing a glance at the money. Is he not afraid of being swindled?

Putting all the purchased weapons inside my backpack, I went outside the shop, paying no further attention to him.

Now was time to go to the general item shop… I had been frequenting several shops nearby for the past two weeks, so I knew what I lacked for tomorrow, and since it would be a three-day assessment, I must prepare adequately.

***

“Look, when you first come here, you don’t look like any adventurer — skinny, almost bare of any muscles. But here you are, about to have your Iron rank assessment.” The landlady was placing down the dishes for my dinner.

“Well, it’s just luck.” I shrugged.

“What luck? It isn’t rare to see adventurers like you dying in the forest while running an inn. You know, my husband, Steve, is a former Silver-ranked adventurer and a high-rank liberator to boot. He was very gallant when he was still active. Oh… I would fall in love with him all over again whenever I see him practice with a sword,” said the landlady with a yearning look in her eyes.

“I see…” But a high-ranking liberator? Wonder how the liberator ranking system is determined… Does it depend on the difficulty of the dungeon itself?

“Yeah, one more thing, you should tell her; she was such a worrywart whenever it pertains to stuff like this.” What she meant by “her” was Tina.

“Er, sure.”

By the way, today’s dinner was a steak smeared with what was believed to be a cameline sauce… The tender and juicy meat that melted in the mouth with a strange sauce that was unlike BBQ, mushroom, black pepper, or any other modern sauce, was satisfying to my mouth. And coupled with the mug of ale—

“Ugh… it’s weirdly fruity and a bit rancid…” No matter how many times I drank alcoholic drinks here, it was always not up to my taste. I wasn’t a heavy drinker, even though I quite liked wine, but still, wine was an expensive drink here.

Though I remembered that alcoholic drinks — especially in cities near a river in the Middle Ages — would oftentimes be drunk by people of old and young alike. This was in order to avoid contamination in water sources. Hence why I kept forcing myself to chug down the ale despite my reluctance.

“How is the food today, big brother?” Here comes the daily surveyor…

Recently, I noticed that she liked to call anyone older than her by a few years “big brother” or “big sister.” Maybe she had a fondness for being the younger?

“It’s all good,” I said.

Tina was dressed in her usual working clothes, but there was this one metallic hair clip with the shape of a red ribbon on her side hair. It was just about a week ago when she had her birthday, so I gave her a clip as a birthday present. Yet it seemed that a present for a birthday wasn’t a commonplace custom around here.

“Mm-hmm. Oh yeah, are you going to talk more about your adventurer stories today?”

Under her constant request, I was forced to cough up stories about RPG games I played in the past — what luck that I didn’t often skip the dialogues. But today…

“Sorry… tomorrow I’ll be having an assessment, so I won’t be up till night.”

“Ah, I see. Then I’ll prepare something for big brother tomorrow.” She put her small finger over her lips and winked at me before darting off to the kitchen.

What was she up to?