As we leave for our little expedition, one thing clearly annoys me pretty quickly. Though the roads are impressively large and even compared to before, like they dug down into the dirt and replaced it all with interlocking stones, my travel companion does not seem particular well adjusted for such an endeavor.

Her pace is slow and after twenty minutes she is already sounding like she is dying from a lack of oxygen.

“You know, you can just wait here?” I suggest to her.

“No, sir! *huff* please don’t *huff* abandon me” Seriously what is wrong with this girl? I decide on an inelegant solution. I crouch down in front of her.

“Climb on”

“I couldn’t *huff* sir! I just couldn’t!”

“Climb on or I leave you here and go ahead!” Man, why is she being so fucking difficult. Soon after I feel her pressing against my back. The cloak disguised her figure, but now I suddenly become aware that she is a woman. One with rather large assets, at that. I shake off the thought, and I start running.

It really made no difference carrying her on my back, and I start picking up pace. Once I reach a speed I thought impossible without a car. I hear a concerned voice from behind me.

“Are-Aren’t you going a little too fast??” Man.

“Shut up, can’t talk, running” I say, as I speed up even more. It is a wonderful feeling. I suddenly feel incredibly liberated to travel at this speed with my own body, something I would likely never have experienced had I never come to this world. I can’t stop thinking of how fast I could go, if I sprinted with all my might, but I keep the admittedly still insanely fast pace, as I am also afraid of tiring myself out.

On the way, bombarded with a few weak protests accompanied by even fewer, but louder screams, I notice something weird. My Read is picking up signals constantly along the way, even if they are far away and don’t really move. Following the route, we arrive at the dungeon, and I decide to investigate one of them. It is a small monster. I immediately stomp on it, where it proceeds to make a minor blood explosion, spilling its innards to one side as it dies.

Weird I have never heard of monsters outside dungeons before. I want to ask Amina about it, but I have to wait for her to finish puking. It doesn’t even yield much when I do, it just seems to be common knowledge, but then an idea hits me.

“What type of requests were available at the guild?” I ask.

“Eh? There was one for guarding miners for a few weeks, but the rest were all fetching some fruit or plant or monster part”

“There was no request to clear out the top few floors?”

“No, not in that guild.” Those requests were usually pretty unpopular, left for the association’s own hunters to deal with. Guess they did away with the policy and as a result, the world is now populated with monsters, but how does that affect the smaller settlements? The cities probably all have walls, but the village I was born in at least had none.

“Well, never mind, stick close to me” I was originally planning to leave Amina out here, but if there are monster about, I can’t very well do that.

The request itself goes relatively smoothly. I use read to avoid most monsters as we climb down and collect the fruit. It is around a foot long and has a green color and is weirdly thick. We both try one, and they send up tasting like… A sour banana? I can’t count on Amina’s strength at all, and it starts being real awkward carrying the full sacks. I have to keep the ends together with my fingers and walk around with three in each hand by the end. I constantly have to set them down in order to readjust my grip. I don’t want to spill them all over the floor.

It should have taken some six hours to get here at caravan speed, but because I ran like the wind it was cut down less than an hour. I feel with the sacks between my finger, and Amina desperately clinging to me on the way back, I have to go way slower and I make it in somewhere between two and three hours. It is annoying having to readjust my grip on the sack all the time, but not being absorbed in running at superhuman speeds, I immerse myself in the feeling on my back on the return trip.

All in all the return trip that should have taken us a day, ended up being somewhere between 3 and 4 hours. Adding in the time it took for us to get the sixth floor and pick the fruit, I say somewhere around 6-7 hours in total? We left in the morning and it is still fairly bright out.

When we arrive at the guild, it is fairly empty. Another clerk is at the counter, a 40-something woman, that’s quite heavy-looking. There’s no line, so I just walk up.

“I am here to complete a request” I say.

“Please show your hunter tag” I am sure I just saw her wrinkle her nose at us. We still don’t look or probably smell very good. I hand over the tag, that was hung around my neck by a chain that accompanied it when I received it.

“For the future, you are supposed to deliver any materials and have them verified through the side entrance” she says, as she stares at my many sacks.

“Sorry” I say.

“Doesn’t matter now that is slow anyway, but I wouldn’t verify it if there was a line, you understand”.

She looks through some papers.

“There appears to be a mistake, it says here you accepted the request earlier today.”

“Ah, that’s correct.”

“But… it’s half a day’s travel away, and on the sixth floor to boot?”

“That’s correct”

“Did you have the fruit already laying around or something? They are supposed to be fresh, you know!”

“Nono, we ran there, went to the sixth floor, picked them, ran back and got here just now.”

“Really?” She looks very doubtful. Well, I guess it basically was a superhuman feat, but I don’t sweat it.

When I receive the pay, I contemplate letting her hang on to it, so she can give it to the guy who lent me money, but I don’t know his name, and I am not sure I can describe him adequately. Guess I will have to wait for tomorrow anyway, I don’t think I have the stamina in me to make it all the way to meadow while it’s still bright enough to navigate.

“Do you know any inn around, old lady?” I ask.

“Just who are you calling old? Also, nobody is going to let you stay looking like that” She says and points to me, or rather, my bloody and dirty robes. I guess we spend another night in the alleys. Not that I sleep, though.