“I would like to congratulate all of the adventurers and guards that participated in the protection of our esteemed city.” Mayor Rickett’s voice boomed from a stage in the town square.

The sun had almost fully set and lamps now illuminated the whole square. Almost everyone in the city had gathered and were now applauding at his words. Even Aurus, who was standing among the crowd, clapped a bit, recognizing that they had indeed defended the town.

He motioned to the adventurers who were standing closer to the stage. “Most importantly I would like to personally thank all of you for bringing me my tea leaves. I was ecstatic when I heard that some of the goblins killed were carrying with them the exact leaves I was looking for, and it is for this reason all of you will receive the reward for the quest!”

The adventurers started cheering and screaming. Some of them even throwing their things in the air. Aurus wondered if the mayor had that much money to be able to pay almost a hundred adventurers, knowing him though, this probably meant that the single reward would be split among all of them. Aurus could already picture several dozen adventurers coming to him to complain about the gold received. He decided to think about that nightmare later. The cheering quieted down and the mayor prepared to speak again.

“It is with great honor that I would like to call up to this stage the ones who worked their hardest out of all of us. Dorus’ party! New Frontier!”

The crowd once again applauded and cheered for the three adventurers making their way to the stage. Nia, who was standing beside Aurus, clapped slowly before asking him.

“Wait how did they work harder out of everyone?”

“No idea.” Aurus answered stoically, eyes fixed on the adventurer group.

“These two brave men and one brave woman, masterfully planned to have all the goblins routed and brought to the city to be exterminated. It was thanks to them that I was able to get my tea delivered only a few hours after I put out the quest. So it is with true pride that I present Dorus, Drieva, and Riesh with the official Kingdom’s Honor Badge!” The mayor bellowed just before handing one to each of them.

“They didn’t plan any of this. Did they?” Nia asked.

“Nope.”

“But Honor Badges are really valuable. It means they are officially recognized by greater nobles.”

“The mayor is a greater noble.”

“Yes but, umm… he’s different. The Honor Badge gives you the recognition among all greater nobles in the kingdom. These guys didn’t even plan anything!”

“Mayor Rickett once announced a chicken to be the Captain of the Guard because it made him laugh. I’m not surprised by anything that man does anymore.”

She lifted her eyebrows in shock.

“I guess I’m not used to it like you.”

“Don’t worry. You’ll get there someday.” Aurus responded deadpan.

The mayor finished placing the badges on New Frontier before turning to the crowd once again.

“And now to commemorate a victory we should have a celebration. I was planning to throw a city party tomorrow but now is as good a time as any. I even called in a few favors to get a special band to play. I welcome to the stage: Death Paladins!” The crowd erupted into cheers as the music group got on stage.

“Let us revel!!!” The mayor screamed just before jumping into the crowd.

This is going to get messy. Aurus thought

The moment the mayor joined in on the party was usually the time where it grew out of control. This time the party had started with him already in it, not a good thing in the eyes of the guild master. He glanced at a few people already bringing out the barrels of beer and decided to take his leave. At least for now, taking care of this mess was not his job.

“I’m leaving. You can take your leave too, work day is over.” Aurus told Nia.

“Alright. I think I’m going to stick around for a bit. I kind of like Death Paladins.”

“Ok just don’t oversleep. Lots of work tomorrow.” He said just before walking away.

“Yes sir!” He heard Nia say from behind him.

He moved his way through the people, hands in his pockets to protect his money pouch. Despite being a town filled with adventurers and otherwise strong people, there were thieves here and there. He never carried any more than what he would need in an emergency. It was only about 10 gold, but Aurus was not going to take his chances. Even so, he had heard rumors of a supposed thief group that had established themselves somewhere in the downtown of the city. Sending adventurers on quests outside of the city was one thing, but quests in the city itself carried with it several risks.

“Hey Gherson!”

He turned to see a familiar large man walking towards him with a grin on his face.

“Hey Roren. You look… good.” The large mas was completely covered in blood. Goblin blood Aurus hoped. “What’s with all the blood?”

“My bosses sent me out to fight with the adventurers.”

“That’s odd. Normally they have you defending the building, don’t they?”

“Yeah! I was surprised too, but they said something about not spending more money on the reconstruction in case the goblins made it in.”

“I see. Well, I’m off. See you Roren.”

“Ok bye… wait I forgot. Here you go.” Roren handed him a few papers he was carrying with him. “They told me to hand this to you.”

Aurus took the papers and eyed them over. It seemed to be shipment orders for construction equipment, directly from the capital. The Master Builders probably sent this to him to confirm that they would be keeping their end of the deal.

“Thanks Roren. Anything else you might have forgotten?”

“Oh yeah! They also said never to show up there ever again.”

“Tell them that I’ll do that as soon as I can be sure that they can do their job without me, and that I’ll be there sometime tomorrow to go over these shipment details.”

“Alright! I really like it when you visit. Everyone plays hide and seek. Bye Gherson!”

“Bye Roren.” Aurus decided not to dwell on that idea for too long. His only worry now was going home and going to sleep.

He resumed his way back to the guild. As he walked, he looked up. As the sky darkened, it began to reveal all of the stars that had been hiding during the day. Hundreds upon hundreds of different colored lights painted the night sky. If Aurus had to choose one word to describe it, it would be magnificent. He didn’t really stop to look at them all that often but when he did, he felt a strange sense of peace. In this particular moment, peace was exactly what he needed, so he stared at the sky for a few more minutes before reaching the guild building. His gaze turned from the stars to his upstairs office; the windows were still broken. He would get someone to replace them tomorrow.

The guild was fully lit when he walked in. Unlike the lampposts outside, the lights inside the guild were of magical origin. Light magic was rare the further away one moved from the capital, but the guild had collected quite a few light magic rocks throughout the years. This allowed them to keep using these light-emanating stones at low cost, something that Aurus was always keen on doing. A few staff workers and the bartender of the tavern were still there, particularly those who worked in the inn and the tavern. They were probably taking some time off since most of the townspeople were in the assembly/party the mayor created.

Aurus made his way to the door that led upstairs when he heard noise coming from the kitchen. The only person who would be in the guild kitchen while a city-sized party was happening would be the chef. He decided to ignore the noises until a head popped up from the kitchen door.

“Aurus! Just the person I wanted to see!” The man jumped out.

Marc Tonellus was an extremely skinny and tall man. He wore an apron that had a few stains on it and a small white hat, of his own making. According to him, the hat distinguished him from the rest of the kitchen staff, though even without it people would notice how tall he was. He had an odd look in his eyes, an artist’s gaze he called it. Maybe at one point in his life he wanted to be an artist, but for whatever reason, he became a chef. Most of his dishes looked good, but Aurus knew from experience that they were closer to being fertilizer than actual food.

“I have a brilliant idea for a dish!” The man said, smiling more than Aurus had in his whole life.

Of course you have an idea, just when I’m done for the day.

“Fine. What is it?”

“I was sitting on the kitchen thinking about my next dish, when a thought occurred to me.” The man gestured as he spoke, almost as if in a theater performance. “We have a lot of adventurers, and a larger number of regular people who come here to eat everyday correct?”

“Correct.” Aurus folded his arms and stared at the eccentric man.

“I believe we may be able to use certain specific ingredients that will allow us to feed everyone and make the food here magnificent.”

“And what do you need me for?”

“You are the connection I need to acquire those ingredients. Just today, there was a major battle outside the city, and I believe we can use the remains of the goblins to their fullest…”

Aurus’ eyes widened.

“We are not cooking goblin meat.”

“Oh, but it doesn’t have to be the meat. We could also use…”

“We are not cooking goblins!” Aurus leaned forward as he raised his voice.

“There is so much wasted potential and ingredients that we could use. We would be missing an opportunity to create a true artistic expression in the form of a culinary masterpiece.”

“You need to rethink your definition of masterpiece. If you recall, goblin meat, or any other part of goblins is incredibly toxic. Just a bit will leave a man incapacitated.”

“But pain is inevitable when creating art. Just think of it.” He put an arm around Aurus’ shoulder and reached his other arm outward. “A plate of food so delicious it leaves you bedridden for days. Pain and pleasure, mixed together perfectly.” Aurus removed the arm from his shoulder and faced him again.

“The only perfect thing about this idea is how perfect of a disaster it is. I will repeat myself. We are not cooking goblins! We have good beef and chicken already in our supplies. Use that for your next dish.”

“It’s so boring though. Regular meat has no real artistry to it. One can only go so far when using it.” He whined.

“Consider it a challenge for your incredible talent then.” Aurus turned to go upstairs.

“I will hesitantly accept that challenge.” Marc declared as Aurus walked away. “Now I have to get rid of all these ingredients I brought in.”

Aurus froze for a second before deciding it was better not to think about what kind of things were infecting the kitchen at that moment. He had better things to do, like sleep. He made his way upstairs and into his office. The unfinished paperwork sat at his desk much to his surprise. He expected the wind from the lack of windows to have blown them all on the floor. He would have put them all away or at least covered his desk with a sheet to keep that from happening, but during the rush to make sure the town was prepared for the attack, it completely went over his mind. Thankfully, there was no additional wind and the papers sat there, mostly unorganized due to the events that had happened earlier during the day.

He sat on his chair and quickly piled them up accordingly and placed them inside the various drawers on his desk. Even with the overwhelming desire to sleep, he knew that this was necessary. Keeping documents organized was incredibly important, especially considering how much paperwork flowed through the guild on a daily basis. Finishing his work, he started at the door for a few moments before looking to the left of his desk, to an exposed part of the wall just past the bookshelf facing the windows. He touched a key in his pocket and a door seemingly appeared out of nowhere, in the previously empty spot on the wall.

A small bit of illusion magic Aurus had devised some time ago. The door remains invisible to anyone who is not holding the key that can open it. Once the door is open, anyone can see it, regardless of whether they are holding the key or not. Everyone knew that he lived in the guildhall itself, but only a few people knew where his room actually was. Not that it would have made much difference if they knew. The door was reinforced with several enchantments, in addition to the invisibility, to keep anyone unwanted out, and only the key could open it.

He went into his room and locked the door behind him. Despite referring to it as his room, there were actually two separate rooms in his home. One larger loving room with a window facing the back street behind the building, and the smaller bedroom where he slept. There was also a bathroom but it was small so he didn’t really consider it a third room in his house. The walls were lined with all kinds of maps, and the tables in the living room were filled with different books, some closed, some opened. Among the organized mess, there were all sorts of materials and items laying around. These were all part of different kinds of researches that Aurus did on magical items. As someone who was in contact with magic regularly, he liked to make sure he understood it. The last thing he wanted was to be surprised by some unknown magic of mysterious origin. If he could understand it, he could deal with it, whether ‘it’ was a novice mage who accidentally fired off a spell or an enchanted item that was causing unwanted chaos because it was not used properly. This attitude and the fact that he had studied in the Wizard’s College, gave him quite a bit of experience in the matters of magic.

He took out the Gale Glove from his jacket pocket where he had stored it and placed it on one of the tables.

Have to make sure I don’t forget this out in the open again. Good thing the only spell Nia remembered was Sho’en.

He stared at the dimly lit room thinking to himself. He knew creating a magic item came with risks, and the glove was proof of that.

I need to be more careful the next time I make an item. Also, need to find a way to reduce the power of the glove.

This wasn’t a new thought, he had already thought of a few ways of doing that after witnessing how powerful the glove made, otherwise weak, spells stronger. The current idea in his mind was to use magic transference to achieve that. It was one of the cornerstones of magic application, and how he managed to create the glove in the first place, but considering how strong it was he wouldn’t have the time to set up everything to transfer part of its magic into another item. He would probably have to store it in the Guild Warehouse for the time being, the one place where it would be completely safe from anyone stealing it.

An unexpected yawn snapped him out of his thoughts and reminded him of how tired he really was. He had been going up and down the city all day and it was only now that the exhaustion caught up to him. It was as if someone had turned off a switch and suddenly he felt ten times heavier than before. It honestly didn’t matter to him if anything happened downstairs, he was done for the day. He went into the bathroom and took a bath, almost falling asleep in the process. As he finished and made his way to the bedroom, he heard singing coming from downstairs.

Some people probably decided to take the party from the town square to the tavern. This was nothing new. The parties the mayor threw usually spread way beyond the place where they started and it once made its way outside the city walls and into a nearby settlement. The villagers were helpless as a group of drunk adventurers, and even some regular townspeople, destroyed their homes and accidentally burned down their farms. All of which the guild had to pay for since most of the damage was caused by the adventurers themselves.

Aurus at this point couldn’t be bothered. They already had a hard enough time listening to him when they were sober, now that they were drunk there was little he could actually do without making some extreme effort. Effort he would not be making considering his legs felt like they were made of steel. He would leave whatever destruction they made, a job for tomorrow. He jumped into bed, hearing the sounds of singing and partying turning into the sounds of crashing and fighting. Before he could even register that the party had turned into a fight, he was knocked out by his own exhaustion.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

Cleanup is one of the things Aurus actually enjoyed. Not the cleanup he had to do every time someone messed up their job, but rather the physical act of cleaning. It was something he could do mindlessly, without thinking or worrying too much. The only reason he didn’t do it more was because he didn’t have time, one of the many reasons his home was a mess. On an off day he would gladly spend time organizing his things, and maybe even cleaning up the tavern. Unfortunately, cleaning up a tavern filled with passed out adventurers and hungover townsfolk was not something he enjoyed doing.

If it wasn’t bad enough that the room looked like it had been turned upside down, the stench of spilled alcohol and vomit was icing on a very disgusting cake. The real issue wasn’t that the tavern looked like this, it was that the whole town looked like this. It usually took upwards of two days for the whole town to recover from one of Rickett’s parties. From what Aurus could see, when he walked downstairs, this time it would probably take three days for the city to go back to normal.

Even with the work he had to do, he decided there was some time to clean up the tavern. Grabbing a bucket and a mop, he began by clearing the floor between the knocked out patrons. Every so often, he would poke someone laying on the floor to get them to move so he could clean better. He knew that trying to get them to wake up and leave all at once was not going to work, so cleaning was the best option he had. Waking up a few of the guild employees from the floor, he ordered them to help as well. It all seemed to be going smoothly until he heard loud stomping come from the outside.

“GHERSON!” Dorus screamed as he slammed open the tavern doors.

A few people who were on the floor grumbled and complained a bit from the sudden loud noise. Aurus was actually surprised that Dorus seemed to be composed and not hungover like most of the town. It was probably the effect of a potion giving him the feeling of alertness, or he didn’t drink much last night. Knowing Dorus though, it was most likely the first option.

“Someone stole my badge!” Dorus raged as he approached Aurus.

“Then just get a new one at the Info Desk.” Aurus responded as calmly as he could. He had seen this happen a bunch of times.

“No not my Adventurer’s Badge! My Honor Badge! Someone stole my Honor Badge!”

“Are you sure you didn’t just drop it somewhere while partying?” Aurus continued to mop as he spoke.

“NO! It was pinned to my shirt. I didn’t drop it!”

“I’ve seen you lose your shoes without realizing it during parties. I’m pretty sure dropping a badge pinned to your chest is not hard.”

“Gherson! Someone stole it! I want you to put out a quest for it. I’ll pay extra if they bring me whoever took it.” His speech was beginning to slur.

“If you are so sure that someone took it, then maybe it was one of your party members playing a trick on you.”

“I’m completely sure it…” Dorus drifted off as he stopped to think about what Aurus had just said.

“You’re still drunk aren’t you?” Aurus turned to look at Dorus.

“I may be… a bit…” Dorus began to stumble a bit as his speech became more and more slurry.

“You know drinking potions to increase your tolerance doesn’t last forever, right?”

“I didn’t… It was a potion to…” Dorus looked like he was about to fall over. “I’m gonna go… talk to Drieva… Riesh…”

He stumbled his way out of the tavern, leaving Aurus and a few employees to clean the mess. Eventually Nia showed up and began helping as well. From her attitude and demeanor it seemed she was one of the few people who didn’t take part in the revelry of the previous night. She was also one of the few people who took their job seriously; the main reason Aurus hired her in the first place. Seeing that more employees were waking up from their stupor and joining in, Aurus decided to go upstairs to grab some documents before heading to the Builder’s Guild.

Those pompous slackers are probably completely hungover. This should make things easy for me.

Hiding was a lot harder to do when your head felt like a ton of bricks, so Aurus knew that he would have no trouble in finding them all easily, laying on the floor of their Hall. He would get stuff done quickly since they all would be begging him to leave as quickly as possible. If all went well he would be able to finish talking with the Master Builders before lunch. This would leave him with plenty of time to do the paperwork he wasn’t able to do properly the previous day. There were still a lot of item descriptions that needed to be verified and quest reports that needed to be read.

Despite the mess that the town was probably in, it brought with it something that Aurus was thankful for, peace and silence. Most people were too hungover to do anything crazy, and, with the exception of a particular adventurer who liked to indulge in potions, the only thing people wanted as they recovered was silence. He walked outside and breathed in. The air was fresh, and for once Aurus was glad he was wrong about the smell of the city. Even with the few people laying on the ground near the street, it seemed that it was mostly vomit free. Compared to some of the other parties that the mayor had thrown the street actually looked nice. Something in the back of his head told him this would not last, so he decided to enjoy the general quietness of the city as he made his way to the Builders Guild.

As he made his way to the next street, the air began to turn fowl. His suspicion was right after all, the city was going to smell as bad as he had imagined. The street the Adventurer’s Guild was in, seemed to be the exception. Part of him was glad; the other part was warry that the smell would make its way there. He still had no windows after all. As he turned to go to down another street, a very young man, probably not even in his twenties approached him. He was wearing a weird outfit Aurus had never seen before, but other than that he looked completely average.

“Excuse me. What happened here?” The young man asked worriedly.

“Not from around here are you?” Aurus wanted to confirm what he already knew just by looking at him.

“Is it that obvious?” The kid did a half smile.

“A bit. This is what happens when the mayor throws a party.” Aurus was about to keep walking when the young man asked another question.

“So… does this happen often?”

This kid doesn’t know anything about Anderess. I should probably answer any questions he has. Otherwise I might have another problem to deal with later, I am tired of having to call the undertaker.

“Not really. The city functions properly most of the time.” Aurus responded.

“Oh, so it’s like a beginner town!”

Aurus furrowed his brow a bit at those words. Anderess was founded quite recently compared to the other cities in the kingdom, but calling it a beginner town seemed weird to him.

“I mean…” The kid fumbled a bit as he saw Aurus’ confusion. “It’s a town that’s good for starting out, like a new life.”

“Depends on what kind of life you want to live.” Aurus said, his expression of confusion dissipating.

“Well, I want to go on quests and fight monsters and stuff. Is this town a good place for that?”

Aurus held back a sigh as he realized that this kid wanted to be an adventurer. He held nothing against people wanting to follow that path in life, he followed it at one point as well, which is how he got his job in the first place. Despite his generally dismissive attitude, he never really discouraged anyone from becoming adventurers. Even with all of the extra work they gave him, adventurers sometimes provided the kingdom with great services, like the defense of the city from a goblin attack. Even if they were the cause of the goblin attack to begin with.

“I guess it is.” Aurus answered his question. “The Adventurer’s Guild is that way. Mind the fact that everything is a mess.” He pointed towards the guild.

“Thank you! Umm… What’s your name? Mine’s Ren Saibara!” He extended his hand in a friendly manner.

“Aurus Gherson.” He shook Ren’s hand. “If you have any more questions someone at the guild can answer them. I have work to do, so have a good day.” Aurus said curtly, trying hard not to sound like he was getting rid of him.

“Alright! Thank you Aurus!” Ren said.

Aurus kept walking, thinking about the quick encounter. With that name and those clothes he must be from a kingdom that is really far away. He seemed respectful enough though, so I don’t think I have too much of a problem. Just another kid wanting to be an adventurer.