Noram was looking around anxiously, in a way that felt rather painfully familiar to Vex. It reminded him of himself, but also... "Do you think all this is my fault? Some people are acting weird. I don't know if the mana changes caused it, but..."

"You opened a door," Vex said, shaking his head, and trying not to think about his little brother. He offered Noram an encouraging smile. "We don't even know what that did yet, if it did anything. But maybe you can—"

"Porridge!" Anyati announced, the innkeeper bustling over and startling both Vex and Noram; Derivan was as stoic as ever. Two heavy bowls of porridge were slammed onto the table in front of them; it smelled heavenly, and Vex's mouth began watering just from the sight of it. It came with crunchy pieces of fried dough on top and thick slices of meat, sprinkled with just the right portion of greenery —

Noram was staring, too, and he looked like he was starving. Vex hesitated, but before he could say anything, Derivan seemed to notice, and spoke up.

"My armor negates the need for food," the armor said. "Would you like my meal instead?"

"I— I couldn't do that," Noram said, but he looked like he desperately wanted to. "I mean, are you sure? It's not like I haven't eaten, it's just I'm still hungry, and I don't really know why..."

"I am sure," Derivan said, and nudged the bowl over to Noram. Vex couldn't help but smile slightly at the sight.

It didn't take long for Noram to begin devouring the bowl like he was starving. He took the first bite like he was being cautious of his food, but the next ones came more and more rapidly, until he was practically shoveling porridge into his mouth; Vex took more polite sips of his own meal in comparison.

It was delicious. But he wondered if it meant anything that the food Noram had eaten apparently hadn't been filling.

"Maybe you can show us where the dungeon is," Vex said, continuing his earlier thought as they ate. "It's not very far, is it?"

"It's not," Noram said, pausing for a bit so he could wipe off some of the porridge that had gotten on his nose. "Uh. It's pretty close. It's a small, low-level dungeon. Doesn't usually give much in terms of rewards; we just use it to try to level. Not much success so far, either."

"What level are you?" Vex asked curiously, then blanched a little as he realized the faux pas he'd made. "Um, you don't have to answer that. I was just wondering."

"We're around level twelve," Noram said with a slight shrug. He didn't seem embarrassed about it, or bothered by the question. "We figured we wanted to at least get past ten before applying to the Guild, you know?"

"The Guild doesn't really have a level requirement," Vex said. "You don't have to do that."

"I know," Noram said. He looked down slightly. "We just wanted to prove to ourselves that we could do it, too, you know? The other jobs around here are all farming and taking care of the town, and those are important, but we wanted..."

He trailed off a little bit, looking embarrassed, and dove back into his porridge. Vex exchanged glances with Derivan.

"You do not want glory," Derivan said, cocking his head slightly. "But you want... something more than this town?"

"Yeah, exactly," Noram said. He sighed — he'd finished about half of his food, at this point, and was finally starting to slow down. He looked around, as if to check if anyone was listening to them, and then lowered his voice and spoke again. "And Fendal is low on mana crystals, too. They won't admit it, but the supplies from Elyra are dropping. We're going to need more, and we want to try to help farm more."

"Why not just farm at a Nucleus?" Derivan asked.

"It's normally less dangerous than a dungeon," Vex added.

Noram grimaced a little at the question. "There aren't any nearby. We'd have to travel further out, and there've been attacks lately. Monsters and bandits. A low-level dungeon is actually safer."

"The bandits shouldn't be a problem anymore, at least," Vex said, but he frowned a little at the mention of monsters. "When you say monster attacks, do you mean the goblins that have been raiding Fendal?"

"Among others," Noram said with a nod. "The goblins are just the closest ones. There are some slime-insect colonies further out that are almost Silver ranked. Elyra said they would send out one of their elites to take out the colonies, but we haven't heard anything about that since."

"That is... concerning." Derivan glanced at Vex, who sighed.

"It's not unusual for Elyra, I don't think," the lizardkin said, uncomfortable. "I don't like it, but if one of the noble houses called in to use the elites, they'd get priority."

"It doesn't matter," Noram said, and Vex opened his mouth to argue — it very much did matter — but the younger lizardkin looked... tired. He shut his mouth again. "Let me help you guys out. I know I must be pretty low level compared to whatever you guys are at, but... I want to help. Please. Especially if I caused this."

There was a small pause, there, while Vex considered the danger, and the pleading look on the young lizardkin's face. He'd even stopped eating his porridge.

"If the dungeon is low level," he said slowly. "And we make sure we don't get separated."

"I promise it is. All the enemies are less than level ten. I can handle them," he said. "And... I want to know more about how professional adventurers do things. I think it's important."

"What about your friends?" Derivan asked. "Would they be coming as well?"

"I... can talk to them," Noram said. "But I don't know if they will. They think chasing this is a waste of time. And experience gain is really bad if you're with high levels, so..."

Noram sighed and went back to finish off his porridge — Vex was still only about halfway done, and surreptitiously channeled a bit of fire magic back into his bowl to warm it up a bit.

After a moment, though, Noram spoke up. His tail was still wrapped nervously around the leg of his chair, and he was tapping his foot; it was like what he did when he was nervous, Vex recognized. Heck, he was nervous right now, and his tail had already subconsciously begun to curl around the leg of the table —

Derivan seemed to recognize this and reached out again, calmly placing a hand on Vex's once more, and the lizardkin felt heat rising to his face. The armor's hand felt warm against his own, though he was just made of metal; he wasn't sure if that was his imagination... But what Derivan was doing worked, and his tail relaxed and spooled down onto the floor instead.

"Can we... change the subject?" Noram asked, oblivious to what was going on between the other two. He'd finished off the last of his food, and now was tapping the spoon on the edge of his bowl. "I want to know more about adventuring. Um. If you don't mind. What kind of adventures have you had? Did you fight any crazy monsters?"

Vex blinked.

He hadn't expected that. But Noram's eyes were bright and interested, if a bit nervous; he'd wanted to ask this question from the beginning, but he'd only mustered up the courage after being treated like an equal.

He smiled a bit. "We've had some pretty crazy adventures," he said. "So crazy I think I should start with one of the tamer ones."

"What!" Noram seemed to forget his nervousness for a moment; he leaned forward and made the most pleading eyes Vex had ever seen a lizardkin manage —

— except for his little brother. Vex swallowed back the sudden swell of emotion, and managed to smile at the younger lizardkin. His brother was fine, he was sure. He had time to get him out.

"—please," Noram was saying, and Vex blinked and refocused.

"Fine, fine," he said, injecting just a touch of playfulness into his voice, and he could swear that the other lizardkin wiggled in his seat.

...He did the same thing, sometimes, so he supposed he couldn't really judge.

"There was this one time I convinced my team to go explore some old ruins," he said, his voice low and soft — he leaned in like he was trying to keep a secret, and Noram leaned in too, almost instinctively. "You know how there are all those ruins about, right? The ones that are said to have ancient magic secrets?"

"Yes," Noram said, nodding rapidly; he looked like he was holding his breath. Vex couldn't help but chuckle slightly.

"The one we went to was trapped," he said. "We didn't know what we were dealing with at the time. But have you ever heard of runic circles coming to life?"

"They can do that?" Noram asked, his eyes wide. He was a mage himself, so he no doubt was imagining what that meant — his hand tightened around his wand, almost like he was getting ready to defend himself.

"They're not supposed to be able to," Vex said with a chuckle. "But they could there. We still don't really know why. The ruins were littered with runic circles, and some of them were designs for new spells — but some of them, if you tried to draw them and channel mana into them? You'd be attacked by a living manifestation of mana."

"Whoa," Noram said. Vex blinked, holding back a laugh. When had the lizardkin gotten out a notebook? "How did you beat them?"

"I figured out how they worked," Vex said with a grin. He was genuinely proud of this particular story — neither Misa nor Derivan had been able to fend off the circles, since they were largely ephemeral things, creatures of mana that followed them around and blasted spells at them. "They were slightly modified versions of the spells they could cast. There was a sort of runic program attached to it; the circle as a whole resists mana manipulation, but you can still tear apart that attachment point."

"But you said it doesn't work outside the ruins?" Noram asked, still scribbling notes.

"Believe me, I tried," Vex said with a chuckle. "Derivan will remember it."

"He would not stop complaining about it not working," Derivan agreed, but his tone was fond and affectionate. "It was cute."

"It was not!" Vex complained.

"We all agreed," Derivan said whispering conspiratorially to Noram, who nodded seriously and began taking notes—

"You're not actually taking notes on that, are you?" Vex asked, groaning.

"Course not," Noram said, laughing. He seemed more comfortable with them, at least — he grinned, and flipped the notebook around to show them. It was just a list of notes about the ruins, and a small diagram for what he thought the runic circle might look like.

It was astonishingly accurate, actually.

"I've got notes on what the circles looked like," Vex said, trying to gather himself. "I can share them with you, if you like."

"I would love that!" Noram said. He said it maybe a little too excitedly — some of the other tables turned around to look at him, and he blushed and sat back down in his chair. "I mean, I would love that. Thank you."

"He is giving you quite the honor," Derivan said gravely. "To this day, Vex will not show me his notebooks."

Vex squeaked. "I have a good reason for that!" he argued, though he really didn't. He just couldn't let Derivan see his notes.

...Or Misa. Or Sev.

He couldn't let Noram see his notes, now that he thought about it; he'd ask questions about the sketches.

...He could copy the circles out. That would work.

"I am sure," Derivan said, sounding amused, and Vex groaned.