“Hannem Refinery? That place is for bozos.” Reco said, sitting on the edge of a stair to the mansion’s upper floor. After talking with the [drake] tamer, I went back and asked Reco about the ‘Hannem Refinery’. Apparently, it was a really good way to level up and upgrade skills if you had the money.

I cocked my head in confusion. What was so wrong with the place?

“I guess you wouldn’t understand why immediately...to put it simply, you should get real training at a college or guild. Refineries give you good exp, sure, but teach you zero practical skills.” She shrugged. “In other words, they’re the crapshoot. They lure you in with promises of leveling you up really quick and make you feel good by going through with that promise. But, in the end, that’s all you get and nothing else.”

It still sounded interesting, though...how did they go about leveling people up? Well, no reason not to sightsee it while I was here, except...I had better things to do...?

I leaned against the wall, causing Reco to mimic me, leaning back on the mansion stairs.

After a few moments of standing aloof with her, she prodded me. “How’re you liking Hannem?”

I shrugged.

“Yeah, this heaven-forsaken city was never my jam. It’s too small for me to have real fun and too big for people to be happy, yknow’?”

I shrugged, then reluctantly wrote on my slate, {‘real’ fun?}

“Yeah, like, if a city is big enough, I can go around the place doin’ what I want, with people thinking I’m a fellow citizen. I guess it works in the east city n’ all, but that place is lame...Hey, do you have any entertainment lying around? I’m bored outta my mind waiting for the match I booked yesterday.” Whatever that meant.

I thought for a moment before opening my menu. I wrote to it, {play death metal}

“Play death metal? what’s that supposed to-”

Playing ‘Warm Enough to Make Me Crack’

Suddenly, from my menu, an eerie sound of crackling fire began to build in intensity.

“What’s this, a skill?”

I shrugged again, {You can call it a gift from a god.}

Suddenly, the sound of a loud, intense instrument burst through the room. The noise spiraled out of control, whatever instrument they used being pushed to its limits as its player frantically hit the notes.

Reco didn’t know how to react, “Huuuuuhh? What is this?!”

In response to the music, I stomped my foot on the floor and swung my arm out wildly.

A voice boomed from my menu, screaming out in a foreign language, though with such a hoarse, questionably human voice, I doubted it would be easy to understand even if I knew the language.

“Is this music?!” Reco didn’t seem perturbed by it, but she was certainly surprised.

I nodded quickly to her, then the tempo of the music became tamer, though still loud and heavy enough to resound through the house like a falling rock.

Reco stood and began moving with me, both of us beating our feet on the floor with savage excitement-

“I don’t know what in Hell that music is, but you better get rid of it, or I’ll be inclined to eject you from this abode!” Symantha peeked from behind the stairs, aggravated.

I crossed my arms. What a killjoy.

Reco returned my sentiment, “What a killjoy.” She shrugged and shook her head with disappointment. “Maybe somewhere else.”

I wrote to my menu, {stop.}

Paused.

“Well, I think that’s a bit too loud for the city, but in the meantime...” Reco lazily fell back onto the stairs. “I’m stilllllll bored...”

Well, she seemed to dislike the refinery, but it was worth an ask. {Why don’t we tour the refinery?}

“Why wouldja wanna do that?”

{Sounded interesting.}

She held her mouth open, then closed it without saying anything, then opened her mouth again, and after a moment of silence, let her head fall back onto the stairs. “Uuuuuuuuuugh. Fiiiine. We can do it...not like we have anything better to do...”

“So this is the place. Looks even more boring than I imagined.”

Hannem refinery was a three-story tall building built of wood. They broadly displayed what laid inside the building with windows, showing people hard at work behind the glass. Small colored flags were hung about the building’s front.

Reco stopped to lean on the lamppost in front of the building. “The architecture is about uncreative as it gets, cause it’s just a giant square. They didn’t even bother buildin’ the thing outta bricks!”

She had a point, as the building, while being one of the largest in the city, was about as basic as it could be. I didn’t know enough about architecture to make any judgments, though.

“I guess you still want to give it a look?”

I nodded.

“Fine, let’s go waste our time. Why not?

We walked to the double doors in front, and I knocked on the door.

“...Saya...you do get that we can just walk in, right?” Reco opened the door and didn’t bother leaving it open for me. I wasn’t used to being expected to just...walk into buildings. People tended to be upset if I did that in my village.

Inside was a large hallway, with a female [krook] receptionist reading a thin binding of paters with text on the inside and cover. She placed it down as she saw Reco stroll in like she owned the place, as she normally did.

The receptionist opened her toothed mouth, speaking in a gruff, hoarse accent. “Hello, how can I hel-”

Reco didn’t bother being polite. “I want a tour of this place.”

“Err, I can get you one, of course.”

“Good.” Reco stared at the crocodile person with what I could only interpret as daggers of impatience.

“So, I-I’ll call someone up.” The receptionist stood from her seat and walked to a nearby room.

For the half-minute we spent waiting, Reco leaned back on the front door. I tapped my foot on the floor in impatience and only noticed just afterward that Reco was doing the same.

Finally, the [krook] and a [human] walked out of the room. The [krook] just walked back to her desk and sat down. The [human] woman walked to Reco and spoke politely. “So I heard you wanted a tour of-”

“I want a tour of this place.”

A cackle came from the receptionist as she saw the human reel back in distaste for Reco’s rudeness. “Yes, well, my name is Yanae. In that case, I’ll be your guide. What might your names be?”

“I’m Reco.”

I swiftly unlatched my slate with one hand and pulled a piece of chalk from a side pocket, fumbling a little with my chalk, {Saya}

“Nice to meet you, Reco, Saya. We can begin if you follow me.” She ushered us along towards one of the rooms on the lower floor’s hallway.

While I walked with my slate and chalk in hand, Reco made her skepticism in the establishment known, crossing her arms and glaring at everything and everyone she saw. She came off as pretty rude, all things considered.

The first room had an array of knitting equipment laid in many bins scattered about the room. While there were ten desks, each outfitted with knitting supplies, only five were occupied. The people knitting looked bored to tears. Beside each of them was a small pile of knitted gloves.

Yanae walked over to a student and picked up one of their gloves, presenting it to us. “To level you up, we use our well-researched studies on Exp gain to find the easiest, risk-free leveling option. One of those studies found that gloves were the optimal size project when it came to gaining experience, giving out three experiences for each glove made, early on.”

Reco took the glove from Yanae’s hand, then looked at it critically, “What do you do with these?”

“Hannem academy founds many small businesses in Hannem with art and supplies made by our patrons.”

“So, what? You get free labor?”

Yanae placed her hand in front of herself with practiced defensiveness, “Of course not! Everything you make as you train here contributes towards your credit, so you could even pay for your whole tuition just by working hard!”

“Sure.”

The guide refused to return Reco’s glare, instead smiling at the warrior with an almost challenging passiveness. “Why don’t we visit some of the other workshops?”

As it turned out, the first and second floor was entirely filled with ‘workshops’, where people worked on building and training to gain experience. We walked from room to room, with Reco and Yanae arguing passive-aggressively the whole way. There was room for pottery, where people built essential ceramics to be sold, another for woodworking and carving, and one where a complicated process was used to refine wood into paper. With the oversight of a [papercrafter], who used their [paper refinment] skill to turn the rough, primitive sheets the enrolled made into well-made paper, the refinery mass-produced the stuff.

After visiting many of the workshops and finishing another aggressive conversation with Reco, Yanae looked to me. “So, are you interested in Hannem Refinery at all, Saya?”

The place looked interesting, and I’d probably level up in no time if I enrolled in the academy, but what Reco had said about refineries seemed true. It looked like a boring place where the desperate spent their time trying to level up. It might have been a little useful if I’d planned on a more intellectual career, but...even if I wanted to enroll, I didn’t live in the city...technically I didn’t live anywhere, though.

{Not interested.}

The guide’s eyes widened just a little, giving her a somewhat maddened, fake-happy expression. “Are you sure? Our students earn around twenty exp a month!”

I didn’t move my slate.

She continued, “And the tuition cost is only twenty gold!”

...

Did her eye twitch? “You must know, there are a lot of people willing to invest in young workers like you, I’m sure it isn’t too difficult for your mother to get a loan.”

{You didn’t really just imply that Reco was my mother, did you?.}

“I know she isn’t,” she practically spat, breaking her nice-girl attitude.

Reco decided to pour salt onto the already-frustrated guide’s wounds, “Are you sure? it really sounded like you thought I was-”

“Please...I invite you to leave if that’s all.”

“My pleasure,” Reco instantly mocked.

I followed Reco as she unhesitatingly turned and walked out of the building.