Whew, that was a huge amount of paperwork we had to fill. Who would have thought that we would have to declare every single thing in our respective treasuries? I guess since I just made my Treasury Ring recently and started collecting things for it less than a few months before it completion, I didn't have all that much. Alexius on the other hand, oh boy, his father really did leave him him quite the inheritance in terms of items in his treasury. I wonder if that's how it goes for every noble family in Meridia.

After hours going through everything in Alexius' Treasury Sack and filling the appropriate paperwork we were finally able to enter Tarkatore. At that point, it was already night so we decided to just look for a place to to spend the night. While we did that, I took a good look at the city and its sights. The first thing that struck me was the sheer amount of different races one could see in this city. Humans, gnomes, orcs, ogres and minotaurs were a common sight. I believe that I even saw two tengu leisurely talking to each other at a cafe. Then there was the amount of stone buildings. I knew nothing of the surrounding regions, but I have to wonder how did they transport here such an amount of stones, it couldn't have been easy.

Distracted by these interesting sights and thoughts, I was easily able to distract myself from the acid conversation between Helena and Alexius. It worries me that the relationship between the two of them might not survive our travels, but even I know better than to comment on it with either of them. When we finally found an inn, we discovered that we had another problem we would have to take care of later. The innkeeper was nice enough to inform us that most shops in Tarkatore would gladly take Meridian coin at a fair exchange, most other cities in Asren tended to devalue money from the Northrian continent, therefore, if we planned on traveling after the siege was relieved, we should probably exchange a good amount of our money for Tarkatoran coins, which were accepted in most cities on the southern side of Asren that we were on.

After a pleasant dinner during which I was able to have a long talk with Kardenon about his Armor, due to which we were able to come up with a very good improvement to it, we retired to two different rooms. Me and Kardenon slept in one, while Alexius and Helena in the other. I ended up sleeping almost nothing. Since Kardenon was too excited and decided to revise his armor's project immediately to add the new improvements, he kept a small light on all night. Infected by his intellectual excitement, I decided to add my own light and work on thinking up new spells or improving existing ones. So great, it's been so long since I just dedicated myself purely to my very own pursuits. Teaching is fun in its own way, but I guess it''s just not the same as research.

Despite having spent the night awake, I was able to accompany the rest of the group to the recruitment officer. I must say, the coffee thing that Kardenon is obsessed with really helped with the fatigue that I was feeling, a truly fascinating beverage! We were able to learn exactly how it worked to be part of the mercenary auxiliary group. It seems that at the start of every week, the city's gates are open and the army pours out in order to push back the monsters. During roughly 6 hours, people with the appropriate tag can freely enter and leave the city. After these six hours are over, the gates are closed again and are not opened for any reason. While most mercenaries spend these six hours trying to find the monsters' leaders and come back before the gate closes, some courageous souls spend the entire week outside the walls. Not all of them come back, unfortunately.

Mercenaries are paid by how many monsters they are able to kill, with regular monsters worth very little, up to the leaders being worth fortunes, after all, once all of the leaders are dead the monster swarm subsides and goes back to being restricted solely to the dungeon area, although this is not all that demarcated. Some say the jungle itself has become the dungeon.

As luck would have it, tomorrow would be the start of the week in Tarkatore. Having filled the appropriate paperwork and received the tags of mercenaries, Alexius decided that it would be a good idea to go up to the walls and have a look at the monsters outside the walls. Good thinking, it's always good to be aware of what kind of enemy we are going up against.