I stared at Antonio of Corner Produce (again, misnomer since there was no corner within a decent radius of the produce - I really wanted to ask Antonio about this, but I was kind of dealing with something right now), willing him to burst into laughter and tell me he was joking.

My stare must have been pretty incredulous because he shrugged. "Look, Harper, I wish I had something else to tell you. I don't do forest. That's adventurers. I do fields. Farms. Orchards. You want some salad to go with your dishes? Maybe some fresh apples for a lovely juice? I can provide. Can't do mushrooms."

I rubbed at my forehead, trying to ignore the growing headache. "I mean, I'll need an absolute ton of potatoes, tomatoes, carrots, and some greens, too. Whatever you've got."

Antonio produced a little notepad from seemingly nowhere. I wondered if it was a magic trick or something related to his particular system. "Potatoes, tomatoes, and carrots I can do, easy. For greens, you want lettuce or...?"

"For a curry. Broccoli or peas or something. Whatever'll hold up to a little cooking."

"Hm... never had anything called curry before."

"It's a specialty dish from the north. Eatery in Kinon specialized in it. Kind of like a spicy stew, but with lots of potatoes to soak up the heat."

"Huh." Antonio pondered the dish, and then grinned. "If you don't mind, I'd love to come over and try some."

"Oh. Uh. Sure." I shifted uncomfortably. Right. If I wanted Ambition to do well, I was going to have to talk to people and promote it. Ass. I was about as skilled about talking about myself and my interests as Mel was with dealing with humans. "The, um... we're not open yet. But we should be before the week's over."

"That's good!" Antonio was smiling, big and wide, like I'd done him some sort of favor. "I'll bring the family. Have a good time out of it."

"Well, only if I can figure out how to get some mushrooms," I said, smiling thinly.

"I'm serious. Adventurer's Guild should be able to help."

"Yeaaaaah." I drew the word out as I scratched the back of my head. "So, I've had some bad experiences with them. Between their setup and, um, an old associate fucking me over, and then no one taking a perfectly legitimate quest I had... just not the best experience."

Antonio smirked. "Ah, right. You're new to town. You need to bribe the secretary."

"Say what?"

"Slip the person at the front door a gold or two and they'll actually take your quest to people. They're also more likely to look the other way if someone comes looking for you. Although, that depends on how much money the other guy has, I guess."

"So, it's extortion or nothing?"

"Pretty much. Small town like this, the Guild runs on its own."

I thought of Kinon, where the Guild was run by the lenders. Where men and women who just wanted to do good in the world were funneled into a system of corruption and extortion. A system that promoted getting better and better stuff to take on the scarier things without paying enough to ever pay off debts. It was one designed to kill and to wrestle every coin from the corpse in the process. "Could be worse," I said, a bit hollowly.

"If you say so." Antonio looked at me, concern bleeding through his normally jovial attitude. "You alright, Harper?"

"Remembering why I want to try to avoid the Adventurer's Guild, even if it's the only way."

"I mean, if you want, I can open the quest for you. You'll have to put up the coin for the, ah, encouragement, as well as the reward. But I'm not afraid to put my name into their system."

"Does Mari Belle have anything to do with the Adventurer's Guild?"

"Who? The money pixie?" He laughed, sharply. "She doesn't have to. Has her own market." He suddenly frowned, and looked around the market as if scoping out curious eyes or ears. "Why? You got something to share?"

"Nah, just paranoia." I waved the question away, but Antonio seemed unsatisfied. "In Kinon, place I'm from, lenders are pretty deep in the Adventurer's Guild. Like, to a bad place."

"Ah." He nodded quickly. "Your apprehension makes sense, then. No, she stays away from it, and there ain't any others that want to mess with that."

I felt my brow furrow. "Any particular reason?"

"Well, it's volatile. You're basically betting that you can keep the kid alive, while also putting him in situations where he's gonna get roughed up enough to need to borrow more money to get better stuff. Too many variables. And if you estimate wrong, you set yourself up to lose a lot of money."

Hearing Antonio talk about people - people that used to include me - turned my stomach. I suddenly wanted to be anywhere other than here. "You know, I think I'm just going to redesign the dish." I was lying, but Antonio didn't need to know that. "It's not worth the hassle."

"That right? Well, real shame. Second you think of something you want to replace with, let me know. As long as it comes from a field or orchard." He winked at me in an over-exaggerated way.

I laughed and assured him I would.

Felt sorta bad about lying.

What the hell else was I going to do? Tell him I was planning on taking my sword and zero armor and marching in the forest to pick my own mushrooms? Because that's exactly what I was going to do.

I'm sure Mel was getting some like supernatural premonition that I was going to do something stupid and she was likely looking for me right now.

But this wasn't so stupid.

The woods themselves weren't too dangerous. I wouldn't be going far enough in to really scare up anything dangerous, and would likely only need the sword to scare away anything that was super hungry.

If I could get a few dozen mushrooms into my inventory, it would provide me with enough of the fungus to experiment with, and then if the dishes actually worked the way the system seemed to think they would, I'd be able to actually set up a supply line. Maybe wrangling an adventurer into a little side work that didn't go through the Guild. Risky, but within the realm of possibility.

And so that's how I found myself on the edge of the woods, staring between the trees as if the shadows were going to sprout legs and ravish me just for daring to walk between them.

"You are a level twenty three fighter, Harper Emerson. Get your fucking sword out, put on your big boy pants, and go gather some fucking mushrooms."

My feet didn't magically start moving forward at my pitiful attempt at a rallying speech.

Shit.

"Right. So, good first attempt. A+ work. How about, instead, this time, we actually move forward. Those mushrooms won't gather themselves!"

My left foot lifted off the ground as if it was going to start the trek forward, dragging the right (and the rest of me) behind it or die trying.

But then it just went back to the ground anyway.

I rolled my eyes at myself. "Fuck you, Harper. You're so weak and I don't know how you thought you could fucking do this."

"You know what, me? I don't know why I thought I could do this. When I was safe in my armor cage, I was fine. Monsters scared the shit out of me, but there was a plate of steel or better between me and its claws and fangs and antlers. I'm all alone out here, man! And all I've got is a sword to... do what? Poke things that come my way? Wave it at them ineffectually?" I gestured with the sword for emphasis.

"You're still a level twenty three fighter, asshole." I threw my arms up in the air, bringing the sword with them. "Even if you just flailed the sword in something's direction, there's a pretty good chance you'd hit and do damage."

I sniffed indignantly at my own logic. "Right. Damage. To a thing that wants to eat me. Enraging it."

"THEN GO HOME, HARPER."

Hindsight, yelling might not have been the best idea.

Something in the forest made a very angry noise.

Like the snarl of something with more teeth than common sense.

Which was hungry.

And watching me.

"Oh. Oh, shit. I think I left the stove on. I should, um, go. Take care of that."

I didn't turn and run. Only an idiot ran from hungry things and like, I might not have had the most sensible plans sometimes, but I wasn't a fucking idiot. Maybe the level back from that. Stupid idiot? Was there a hierarchy to idiocy?

So, instead of running and making myself a snack, I calmly walked backwards. Keeping my weapon ready, just in case the thing made of teeth and hunger decided to have a Harper meal.

It takes a considerable amount of self control to just walk backwards away from danger. My entire brain was screaming. Bells rang, drowning out the common sense. I wanted nothing more than to just turn and sprint for town, but I knew it would be the last thing I did.

When I got about ten feet away from the edge of the woods, the creature made itself known.

I got about as far as the tufted out tan fur and elongated fangs before I regretted even getting out of bed this morning.

How the hell was Mystic Falls not full of corpses with a fucking Helltooth in the woods?

"GOTCHA!"

I barely had time to register the small bundle of armor and knives that flung itself out of the trees, at the Helltooth. The creature cried out as twin blades dug into its sides, tearing the flesh. It whirled and snapped at the attacker, but the humanoid was already on the move, circling in the opposite direction from that ferocious bite.

I'd never really watched an adventurer work before. And I assumed the tiny figure was just that. They were certainly armored like an adventurer, almost as if they preferred metal to skin. It meant I couldn't see much in the way of features, aside from a tuft of what seemed to be bright pink hair poking out of the base of their helmet. It also could have been some weird collar.

The adventurer moved quickly though. Circling and dodging, diving in and out to land strikes on the Helltooth, but moving back out of range before the creature could catch up.

"Don't worry, citizen! I'll have this wrapped up in a moment!"

The voice was muffled by the helmet, giving me no defining characteristics there either. "Uh, thanks, um, friend," I said, not actually sure what else to say. Instead, I just kept watching.

The Helltooth was slowing down. Its attacks grew sloppier as it tried to catch up with the metal creature that kept harming it. After another futile swipe it decided to abandon its free meal (yay me?) and head back into the forest, but the adventurer cut it off.

And then cut its head off.

Brutal.

"And that's five! Woo! Quest done!" The adventurer raised a fist in the air, their bloody dagger glistening in the light filtered in from the trees.

It felt... morbid.

"Oh, hey. Right. Townie." With a flourish, the adventurer flicked the blood from their knives and put them away, before removing their helmet to reveal a round, smiling face. Surrounded by a matted mop of bright, unnaturally pink hair. "You're really lucky I was already hunting that fucker. It's dangerous out here."

"My hero?"

"Close! Berry," she said, smiling wide and extending her hand in greeting. When I shook it, but added the Adventurer's Guild flare to it, she frowned. "No shit. Why the hell are you out here without armor? You a fucking idiot?"

"Close," I said, grinning. "Tier down. Stupid idiot."

"Pretty stupid. That Helltooth is the least of your worries. There's a fucking dragon out here. At least, that's the rumor. Haven't seen it with my own two eyes."

"You're fucking kidding me."

Berry shook her head, enthusiastically. "Never joke about potential quest rewards." She pointed to the dead Helltooth. "You don't mind if I claim the kill, right?"

"Not at all. You're the one who actually killed it."

"Good man." She knelt down (not that she had far to go) and started milling about the corpse. "Some folks in town will pay real nice for these drops."

"You're not afraid of working around the Guild?"

"Dunno where you're from, Stupid Idiot, but the Guild out here doesn't have a whole lot of quests to offer. Good to make some coin where I can."

I thought to what Antonio said - it was likely that there were more quests than Berry knew, but the secretaries at the Guild weren't filtering them her way. Well, their loss. My opportunity.

"Cool. Want more?"