Vigil looked down at the contents of the bag, mouth slightly agape, as he realized what must have happened. Ilo used himself as a distraction to lure him away from Mark, which gave Mark the opportunity to make a break for the guild unhindered.

Hearing a roar of laughter from the guild hall, no more than ten meters away, Vigil’s suspicions were confirmed. Letting out a heavy sigh he spoke rubbing the side of his head, “I’m going to be hearing about this until I die aren't I.” Picking up the somewhat conscious Ilo he headed towards the guild.

Opening the door he saw twenty of his guild mates standing in a circle around Mary, Ethan, and Mark as they shared their recent exploits, staying mostly true to the actual events.

Hearing the door open Maruccio turned, seeing Vigil he called out while shaking his head, “Oi, did you really lose to a bunch of children?”

Walking past his friend, Vigil responded, slightly mumbling through gritted teeth, “Stuff it Maruccio.”

Seeing Vigil carrying Ilo Mary suddenly stopped her explanation, and ran to check on her friend. Shaking him a bit her face relaxed as she heard his pain filled groans, realizing that Ilo was fine she turned to Vigil with a smirk, and asked, “So you finally going to train us to pathfind?”

Lightly hurling Ilo at the girl, Vigil responded, “Come back in the morning, I’m going to sleep for now.” Ignoring the children’s protest he walked up the stairs, opened the door to his room, and passed out as he landed on his bed.

***

Mark called after the pathfinder while stomping his foot, “What do you mean comeback in the morning? Wait where are you going, do-” the sound of a door slamming cut him off mid sentence.

Grumbling he felt someone pat him on the back, turning he saw the man who was accompanying the pathfinder earlier.

“At this very moment, I know exactly how you feel,” Cronk spoke to the kid.

Ignoring the man he walked over to Ilo and hung one arm over his shoulder while motioning for Ethan to do the same. Hefting their friend up they walked out the door and back to their houses.

***

Walking back to the bar Cronk pointed a thumb to the children, and asked the bartender, “Hey Perry, what was that all about?”

Putting some liquor in front of Cronk the small bartender replied, “Well you see kids don’t normally like random people touching them.”

Giving Perry a quick look of disgust he downed the liquor, and spoke, “You know I meant about stealing the coin pouch,”

Shrugging at the larger man Perry feigned a look of innocence, “No in fact I didn’t” getting another look from the man Perry decided it was time to stop teasing him, “Well you see about half a year ago a lot of the local kids wanted to learn how to pathfind, but the age requirement to start learning is 20, mostly because of the amount of risk pathfinding has. Even after learning the risk they still wanted to do it, so we...”

Thinking over his next words the bartender continued, “We made a task for them to accomplish, that task was to steal the coin pouch of our top pathfinder, and deliver it to the guild hall. If they did that we would train them. Of course we didn’t actually expect them to succeed especially since over half of their team left.”

Downing more liquor Cronk spoke, “Looks like pathfinder put you in a very precarious situation,”

Setting down the larger man’s order of fish, Perry spoke, “Are you sure you should be getting this drunk? You know you have your observation test tomorrow.”

Eyeballing the unseasoned fish Cronk responded, “Yes I’m sure, getting drunk is the only way I can eat your southern food,” and with that he tentatively started chewing on the fish.

Waking up the next day Cronk had a massive headache, but his stomach was finally full, so that was a plus. Getting dressed cronk opened the door, and was about to head off towards the warehouse when he was stopped by the children from yesterday,

“Vigil told us to go to the warehouse with you, while he gets our lessons ready.”