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Teleporting was weird. It felt like someone pulling your skin in all directions all at once. It wasn’t really unpleasant, just annoying. And it was not instantaneous, it felt like couple of seconds passed, before I stepped on the other side of the Portal.

Portals were a stone gateways, 20 feet long and wide, with slightly distorted air inside. They were standing on the edge of dwergverds, so as to smoothen the incoming and outgoing traffic.For one entry, you had to pay 50 silver to the guards at the checkpoint in front of them.

Contrary to what I heard from people in Plenty, not every dwarven city had those. Only 4 of them existed, and they were connected linearly to one another. The city in the middle, where I teleported, had 2 Portals, one leading north, towards the Rasgar Hold, one leading south.

So unfortunately, it wasn’t like in a game, where you just chose your destination from some kind of board, or imagined the location. You had to move in a straight line, from one point to the other, at least by Portals. I sincerely hoped that this wasn’t the extent of teleportation.

The middle city, HammersVille, was situated in a small mountain range in the central plains. It was centre of commerce for dwarves, as well as a capital of sorts, since the High Dwarven Court was based in here. Commerce with other races prospered here, dwarves sold their equipment, and alloys, for commodities like furniture, food, alcohol...

After asking guards at the checkpoint for directions, I walked through a bustling street, and observed the town around me. It was bigger and wealthier version of Rasgar Hold. Buildings were a bit more colorful, there were a lot more citizens on the streets. People here looked like nobles compared to average commoner of Rasgar Hold. It was also the first time I saw poor of Avalon. They were much like beggars in a real world, but here you could see missing parts of their bodies, describing their situation.

At first when I saw people staring at my eyes I was worried, but I seemed that it wasn’t really that rare in here. Monster Legacies changed people’s eyes into that of the monster’s they slain, also giving mosters abilities. Reward, granted randomly for killing some kind of evolved species, like hobgoblin or giant bugs.

When I entered the guild, there weren’t many people inside. There were couple of tables with long benches on the sides, a big guild board filled with requests hanging on a scraps of paper, and a counter. Behind the counter stood female dwarf, arguing with male mercenary in front of her.

“Look Rodrik, I can’t post emergency request until I get a definitive proof of what you are saying!”

“Do you really think I would have joked about that? What the fuck, woman? The human villages we passed through were deserted! No people, nothing! It was like they disappeared! No one in the Southern Pass knew anything about it! Don’t you find it a little suspicious?”

“Even if what you say is true, it’s not a reason to post an emergency quest. You forget we don’t interfere with humans conflicts! And it may have just as well been some kind of a raid, or prelude to another damned war of theirs.”

“Bah!”

The mercenary punched the counter finally and walked away while grumbling under his nose. When we were close he glowered at me, and was startled by my eyes. I paid him no mind as I continued to walk to the counter. The receptionist had a beaming smile on her face now, as if nothing happened before, and greeted me, ignoring my eyes.

“Hello to HammersVille’s Mercenary Guild! How may I be of service to you?”

“Hi, I am looking for a caravan travelling to Desert Kingdom.”

“Desert Kingdom is quite big, sir, so it would be helpful if you had specific destination in mind.”

“Oh, in that case are there any travelling towards Depository of Knowledge?”

She looked at me with curiosity now, but answered nonetheless.

“There is one going to the city nearby the Depsitory. The required rank is C or higher, payment is 30 silver at the destination. You need to bring your own food. Journey takes 20 days, and you pass through one city along the way. If you want to sign up for it, you better hurry, there are only.. 3 spots left.”

She stopped and looked at me expecting an answer. I didn’t hesitate to accept, and, after seeing my guild card, she gave me paper slip saying I was a member of convoy to Mur’da. I was supposed to go to the meeting place at dawn, two days from now, at the east gate. Wasn’t really hard to get there, since streets layout was a cross, with east and west having gates, and north and south having Portals.

I spent next two days simply walking through the town and enjoying myself. I made trips around town, watched forge masters work, met few mercenaries in the bar and drank with them… Had fun. Time went by really fast, and at the determined time, I went to the east gate. I wore simple cloth clothes, which I had lots of in my bracelet, and to keep up appearances of having real baggage. I didn’t bother buying a weapon, if anything came to pass I would simply use my claws.

The scene before me reminded me a little of my first journey from Lumber to Plenty. Many people were bustling along the 5 carts filled with goods, and an armed group stood on the side talking with fat bearded dwarf. I was surprised to see an elf – elven female to be precise – with twin blades strapped to her back, standing among the dwarven mercenaries. She noticed me staring at her and turned to look curiously at my eyes.

She was beautiful. I honestly wondered whether these dwarfs were sane to simply ignore her, standing right near them. Long, brown hair, bound into ponytail, slender, but not skinny figure with clothes emphasizing all the right curves. And boy did she have those. But the worst were her eyes. They were green, like grass. No. Green like grass ocean! Yes! That describes them better. But still not enough.

I regained my wits when I tripped, almost falling on my face. When I embarrassedly looked up she wasn’t looking at me anymore, but there was a slight smile in the corner of her lips. Yes, I must have looked really stupid at the moment.

Red from embarrassment, I got close to the group, and introduced myself. They stopped talking when I did my falling maneuver so I didn’t interrupt them. The fat dwarf, merchant and emplyer quickly informed me about general information, after I showed proof of my participation in the journey.

Best ranked mercenaries were to ride at the front, rest would spread around convoy on all sides. We were 19 dwarves and elf lady, so we would be spread quite thin, but we had C and above ranked personnel, so no simple bandits could interfere with us.

I had just slight objection in my mind. I was the second A ranked mercenary in caravan, and I was supposed to ride up front with the other one. Guess who that was. Yes. Her. Elven goddess. Just kill me now…