“Erhmm, we have gotten some complaints from the other officers.” The lady receptionist starts, looking a little scared of doing this. “If you keep taking so many requests for the local dungeon, many people will be troubled how to earn their money.”

I sigh a little. We merely took the requests for the main dungeon because it was the one dungeon that had many requests for it. There are other requests for abandoned dungeons, but they seem to only really request a single thing per dungeon, and most of the day would be spent in travel and we would earn less. To be honest, I’d rather not.

“Do I have to? Is there any rules regarding it?” I asked the lady. She shrunk a little at my question.

“Well, no… Bu-but you are disrupting a lot of people’s livelihood! Do you not feel sorry for them?”

I look to Kassa for help, but she merely shrugs. Well, guess I will comply for now and take it up with Patir later. But I feel like they’ve got to do something in return. I get an idea.

“Okay, but on one condition.” As I say that, the lady shrinks to the point where I feel like the reaction is appropriate to scary guy hustling her down.

“You have to let us lend a cart for free.” She beams up the moment I say so. “Is that all?”

As she seemed eager to accept, I decided to also throw something extra in, though the only thing I could think of…

“Those two youngster over there.” I pointed to the supporters who accompanied us yesterday. “I had promised to hire them today, but I won’t need them now. Pay them a day’s wages for me.”

She appeared a bit more distraught. “A whole day’s wages? Can we not pay them a smaller sum, since they did no work?”

“Sure, go ahead.” The lady cheerfully went back behind the counter.

We ended up picking three requests for abandoned dungeons around the city. When we were shown the map revealing their location, I had Kassa memorize it. I don’t know if it is because I didn’t grow up, the first time at least, in this world, but I just can’t deal with directions, like the natives can. I feel like they don’t veer off course at all, even if there are no landmarks present to navigate by.

The lady seems concerned with how far apart the dungeons are, and if we really can complete all of these requests today, but I simply tell her not to worry about it. “We have our secrets” followed by a little wink.

We get shown the cart. Two massive doors open to show the main street, which we easily pull out on and head towards the first objective of the day.

We get stopped by an awake guard at the gate.

“Halt!” He shouts and I stop the cart.

“You there, show me your face!” He points to Kassa. She looks to me, but the Loffreq has acknowledge, so shouldn’t it be fine? I nod at her to say that it is okay.

She pulls back her hood and reveals the nonhuman hair and ears. The guard immediately looks a bit more suspicious of us, and I even hear a nearby person gasp.

“Your papers?” My tag was hidden beneath my clothes, since some people seemed to treat with eerie attitudes, but as I reach to pull it out, the guard stops me.

“Not you, that one.” He points at Kassa. Kassa finds both the request papers and her blue plaque to show the guard.

“Second rank? For a subhuman?” He sneers a little. “You sure you didn’t steal this somewhere?” The unrestrictive nature of our identification is abused here.

“Hey. I vouch for her, we’ve been together for more than four years.” I try to intervene.

“It’s not about you!” The guard almost hisses at me. I try to pull the power move by revealing my 1st rank plaque.

“She’s with me.” I say in a bit harsher tone, while forcefully drawing his attention to the plaque by almost showing it in his face.

He pales a little. “All right sir. Move along, sir.”

As soon as we are bit away from the gate I complain.

“What an asshole he was, huh?”

“I don’t think he acted any worse than the average person would.” Kassa replies. “It’s more you, that’s the weird one.”

If I think about it, that is true. Heck, back when I was a kid, my mother even repeatedly told me Sylvestri were not to be trusted. If I hadn’t been raised by anti-racist parents in the US, I probably would have adapted the same viewpoints…

“Still doesn’t make it right or fair.” I grumble on Kassa’s behalf, who seems to mind less than me, strangely enough.

“Don’t mind it, let’s just get to work.”

“Hey… Do you mind if I try something with the cart?” I had the idea of levitating the cart as I pull it. If I keep it off the ground, I can go very fast without smashing it, right? Though I have never tried levitating such a huge object before.

“Ehhh, how confident are you? If it’s anything the last time you pulled the cart… Or the thing you tried with running that ruined the road on the way here, I think you better not.”

I am reminded of my previous failures and decided to play it safe today.

Even though the requests pay a lot better, we won’t earn as much as yesterday. In addition, it took several more hours, as we had to get from dungeon to dungeon at a fast, but not dangerous pace and after turning in the requests and getting back to the inn, it was almost dinner time and we didn’t have the extra leisure time to spend idling with Patir.

The only two bonuses about today was that Patir had bought some rather tasty drink. It was very sweet and a little spicy and made our meal a lot more enjoyable. The second was that there were no guards at the abandoned dungeon, and if I thought anything looked delicious, I was free to pick it up without having to hand over a cut to the guards.

As I drank with Patir, I went over the issue we experienced earlier today, but he was fine with the arrangement. "If you want to live somewhere, you better make sure that other people can live there too." He said. "If we moved in here and took over all of the business, we would be sure to see people plotting to get rid of us in no time." I guess he is right, but it bums me a little that he sees it as "our" work, when he hasn't really done much.

After dinner, I passed the day much like the day before with Yasia. This day almost repeated for two weeks with only minor variations. It was not bad. I got to spend time with Kassa on the hunts, try some weird foods we found in the dungeon, drink with Patir around dinner, and comforting Yasia until she fell asleep. The only one I neglected was really Dixy, but she had as much time as I, so I didn’t feel bad about leaving her on the backburner for a little.

However, after those two weeks, a forceful break into our routine was inserted.

As Kassa and I stood in front of the board with available requests, she voiced out the issue perfectly.

“There’s not really much left.” She said.