We're Out

Another day, another story. As if yesterday's fog had never come, the skies were almost cleared up and the sun basked the city in its light once again.

"Morning glory, well... Give me a little time to wake up..."

It's unfortunate that Verhund felt especially lazy today, and as if all of his mental boasting until now never happened, it took him over half an hour to jump out of bed.

After almost bumping his nose on the wall and totally stumbling through the inn in search of the bathroom, he finally managed to wash his face and once again become the happy go lucky Verhund of every other day.

He probed the elf attendant again for some chat, but nothing came out of it. Verhund's opinion of her was not poor, though, as she expertly dealt with work matters and showed no disrespect towards any kind of customers.

She was a bit of a machine, however.

The rest of the clients didn't have that good of a chatting atmosphere either, Verhund was starting to wonder if the mood was contagious.

Leaving The Living's Rest, Verhund's eyes were met with the sight of the long stretch of debris being cleared by countless people, contracted workers and previous residents alike, a body would be found every now and then before being taken away.

Verhund looked towards the closest city gate before leaving for the Maiden's. Although the inn served some good food, that pub was as good as a restaurant, almost for the same price too.

Thankfully, the edge of the market and Daedalus districts, along with the dungeon's entrance were pretty close together, taking only an hour of walking between one another.

To reach the gate, though, Verhund would need one of these taxi carriages, the people of this world had much higher stamina than normal but the trip in itself would be boring if it was simply walking or take too long if he were to search for distractions.

As Verhund thought further over his future actions, he reached the Maiden's Paradise and, strangely enough, didn't see anyone leaving with smoking hair this time.

He entered anyways, immediately heading over to the counter stool and sitting in front of good little Cinthia before bumping fists.

"Hello there, friend! Came for more soup?"

"Good morning! Casual soup for me."

"I hear and obey! Wait a sec."

Cinthia saluted and retreated to the kitchen, the words said inside were too muffled by the distance and the cloth in the door to be heard by Verhund.

She came out again - unharmed this time - and smiled at her recent best friend before whispering to him, cautiously looking towards the kitchen.

"People are such pedos nowadays, you just need to be a cute kid and anything you ask goes, I even managed to convince grandma to put some cheese on your soup!"

"I just hope the cheese is not filled with mold..."

"Ha ha ha! What are you saying? This is a restaurant, she would never go bonkers like that... probably."

"I thought this was a pub?"

"It is, though?"

"Can a pub be a restaurant?"

"A restaurant can serve beer, isn't it also a pub then? Besides, we serve 'good' beer and 'good' food!"

"Makes sense, I guess."

"By the way, how old are you?"

"I'm twenty."

"What a coincidence, I'm eighteen."

"...Really now?"

"Oh! Your soup seems to be ready! Sit on tight, I'll be back!"

Just as Cinthia promised, the soup had a little cheese in it, no mold.

"It was barely a minute and she already finished making the soup, how does she do that?"

"Right?"

"...Where have I heard of that one before?"

"It must have been from a wise person!"

"Agreed!"

Breakfast passed as the two chatted about completely random and unimportant things, the duo's jokes hiding a deep distrust and doubt towards all of existence.

These things were obvious for Verhund, but Cinthia visibly awakened from her long dream of normalcy and slowly explored her own hidden thoughts, previously sealed away due to the estrangement of people around her and grandma's constant 'guiding'.

Either unaware of or ignoring the girl's swirling thoughts and growing excitement, Verhund left the pub with a lunchbox, entered the closest tramway car - they have these, apparently -, and headed towards the gate.

The tram was uncharacteristically silent - almost reminding him of his temporary resting inn - and people mostly kept to themselves, not even bothering to take a look on the other passengers.

Of course, Verhund didn't care one bit for this strange culture, so he openly scanned the place, noting the lack of adventurers and the huge presence of normal civilians.

Obviously, no one cared for his actions, much less spoke to him during the ride.

It didn't matter, though, for as Verhund left the trolley car and looked at the city gate a couple of hundred meters away, excitement for an adventure rose within him once again, perhaps he could also find a gift for this crazy city he lives in.

Verhund stopped for a moment to look at the guards, their plate armor and knightly equipment completely wasted on the boring task of accepting bribes and letting illegal products pass or arresting the occasional Rando who wasn't respectful enough.

He also realized that he didn't have any kind of identity or pass to allow him in and out freely, though he soon realized he wouldn't be needing it anytime soon since the guards only really stopped merchant carts and the like.

Like the modern world, it seems there was no need to keep constant track of identities.

Thinking that it was really nice that things were this simple, Verhund left through one of the doors for peddlers and faced the outside of the city for the first time.

There wasn't much to it, really, just a long road reaching the horizon with a few branchings and a forest somewhat scarce of trees with a relatively inviting environment in the close distance.

The forest occupied quite a large space, comparable to the city itself, though it seemed rather devoid of almost anything but grass, shrubbery, and trees in its edges.

"Well, we're out, finally. Now we just need a good monster tide and we'll be set."

Clearly, circumstances and status quo were not interesting in Verhund's point of view. After yawning one last time to completely clear his mind, he grinned at the forest hiding countless monsters almost sure of the presence of something fun hiding behind the trees beyond.