Wolf sat down across from Rich and brought them both food. He just sat there eating and Rich did the same. It was eggs and bacon today. Rich silently wondered if he should warn Charles from eating the trash but decided he couldn't do that to his familiar. Just imagining how sad Charles would be if he couldn't have his mountain of trash broke his heart. After they both had their fill and put the scraps in Bear's bowl they sat there enjoying the rowdy and busy inn and listening to a particularly raunchy sea shanty. Rich eventually asked "Hey can I borrow Bear for a bit to go out to the forest and try to level?" but when he asked Wolf seemed quite upset. "Rich you remember that joke I made about the Rich cleric yesterday, it'll cost you to borrow bear". Rich thought that seemed quite fair and asked "How much" expecting a large sum for the day and Wolf said "1g". Rich said deal and Wolf amended "1g.... for the month" and Rich saw the problem. "I didn't expect to be charging for services but I have too" Rich started and Wolf cut him off "You misunderstand" Wolf said waving his hand "I was just telling you you're going to have a lot of gold coming in soon. We'll house you and you can borrow Wolf on the cheap. I don't even think he would stay if I told him. I just felt the need to point out you're going to be a lot wealthier than everyone else in the town shortly and you should think about how long you're going to stay around. The town needs you but you will out level the area quickly. You can stay here as a minor star but if you want to move on you should start considering what you want for adventuring and we can work on getting it here on a caravan or ship". Wolf then dropped the "Weeeeellllll" and slapped his knee and walked out back. Rich had not really thought about the future yet and wasn't going to now. It was time for adventure. Apparently after the gruesome healing before breakfast Wolf was starting to warm up too Rich. That probably won't last too long.

  Rich got up and walked out of the front door of the Inn and with Bear on his heels. Rich then turned back around and went back in the Inn to go upstairs and change into his armor before leaving. Bear looked confused but started running up and down the street and ran over to a small town Kid. Bear completely bowled over the kid in excitement and started licking the kids fact and nuzzling the kid. The poor dire wolf just wanted to play and the kid happily obliged but his mother was scared half to death. While Bear is a popular dire wolf and well known by everyone in the town he was still a massive dire wolf. The mother screamed before realizing it was just Bear. She started yelling at Bear but by then the kid was on his feet and chasing after Bear. He probably didn't even hear her.

  Rich got upstairs and looked back through his inventory and picked out the large shield, a set of chain mail, Bright leather bracers, a thick cotton gambeson, and a pair of brown leather reinforced trousers. He also found a thick belt with an included U hook that conveniently holds the hammer he pulled out perfectly. It was starter gear and nothing matched color wise but at least everything fit well and was sturdy. Rich noticed there was no helmet in his inventory. That seemed odd as fuck. he had everything else he could have possibly wanted but no helmet. Maybe they were more expensive to make than chain mail? Maybe there was one in a backpack. Rich didn't worry about it and picked up his trusty Lite-Tech baseball cap. He just didn't want the sun in his eyes and he knew he would have to get another hat soon. Rich did NOT want to advertise his old employer in a new universe.

  After Rich got redressed and headed down stairs to see that Bear had roused Charles from his endless trash pile and they were both trotting up and down the street waiting on Rich. There was a gaggle of kids chasing them at this point and the animals just kept slightly ahead of the kids. Rich called over the two companions and off they went back to the farm and beyond. Rick almost made it to the edge of town before putting the large shield back in his inventory. Being in shape was different from looking like you were in shape. Rich didn't really plan on being in melee range any way with Charles and Wolf around so he figured it wasn't a big deal after all. He shooed the kids off and they ran back into town. There was a little girl who had started riding Bear and an older boy that was riding Charles. They were harder to shoo off but they did eventually get the message that the trio were off too kill scary things.

  They kept walking up the Wolf's Run, which was the main road out of the town to the west, and eventually past the farmers house. Another couple hundred yards and the rolling hill turned into a thick forest with a wide path through it. The trio kept walking for what felt like hours and they hadn't seen or heard a single thing. Charles and wolf were running up and down the road and eventually Rich had to take a break. Walking off the path for a few steps and sitting down with his back across a tree he asked "Charles why are there no monsters here?" and Charles looked at Bear for a second and then back to Rich and said "Sir, I regret to inform you that Bear has been scaring off the low level monsters. He thought we were just going for a walk. He thinks he can be sneaky and stay back a couple hundred feet and lure a monster into attacking us". Rich knew he should have remembered the farmer saying how over leveled Bear was but he couldn't be mad at the overgrown puppy.

  Rich told Bear that he had the "bestest plan" and bear ran off down the road back to town and then stopped, turned around, and hunched down like he was being sneaky. "Sir, wolf says we're ready to march on" said Charles and It wasn't long before we ran into a sickly looking goblin sitting in the middle of the road. I pulled back out my shield not being quiet at all, made sure I had my holy symbol on, readied my stance, and began to cast Holy flame. Only to have wolf run in front of me and stop me. He was shaking his head and barking. This had no effect on the poor little goblin.

  Rich looked at the goblin again and noticed the creature wasn't poor at all. The goblin had a faceless full helm, a set of chain armor not too different from Rich's, a nice looking short sword, a spear on it's back, and a crossbow next to his limp other hand. The goblin was just slumped over in the middle of the road. Baffled Rich looked at Charles who said "Sir, that's an adventurer. Goblins are not always monsters. We're duty bound to aid the goblin... Or I can eat it" and started walking towards the goblin. I started walking towards the little adventurer to stop Charles and Bear whirled around and ran in front of us and snapped his muzzle on a large spider that had been slowly coming out of the tree line to the left of the unconscious goblin. What was freaky was the spider wasn't just a spider but also had crab like pincers out the front and a scorpion like tail. It didn't really matter what it was because Bear just shook it apart and all the vial stitching of mind fucking nastiness. Charles ran off to the other side of the goblin and munched down, eating another Sciderab in one gulp. Charles said something like "Spicy" before Rich saw another on the road on the other side of the goblin and hurled a holy flame at it. The holy flame struck true and while the sciderab surely wasn't dead the different parts of the body that were stuck together fell apart as in Riches horror the sciderab was literally stitched together with what looked like thick woven twine. The one that was dismembered screamed out in blood curdling pain and Bear ran at Rich at full mind bending speed. Bear was a blur and just shot past Rich and when Rich turned around it was a sea of still pinching claws, spider bodies trying to move with only half their body, and still twitching scorpion tails. It was a disturbing site as Bear didn't even bother biting the Sciderabs now. he was just stepping on them and crushing them before the sciderabs could react. He immobilized or killed at least 10 and then started rolling around in the dirt and guts of one of the sciderabs. It was a truly mind wrenching site. Charles to not be out done started going over and slipring up the scorpion tails. He looked at me and said "Sir, Bear has left 5 alive. You should hit them with holy fire while we clean up the mess. Bear says those were the only ones around" and went on with his task of eating everything that wasn't apart of the party. Rich wanted to throw up but he managed to get 4 holy fires off on somewhat intact sciderabs but at that point the smell of the cooking flesh and burning twine was too much. Rich fell to his knees and threw up the once lovely breakfast. He got up and cast the final holy fire and turned around to examine the fallen goblin which Rich now knew was used as a trap meaning these sciderabs were at least sentient and that made the carnage and slipring sounds worse. Rich tried to ignore the sounds so he focused on the goblin.

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  Getting his mind off the "battle" he looked at the goblin and instinctively knew he was dealing with poison. Rich had not prepared an anti poison spell, he could only identify the poison, and wasn't sure he had the herbs on hand for a basic anti paralytic potion, which he was aware having that knowledge wasn't something he should be aware of. Thinking out of the box he removed a rope from his inventory and tied the goblin to the shield and then called over Bear. Rich quickly made a harness for bear and then tied the harness to the shield. They started trotting back to Sneles and by the time they got through the forest and to the farmers cleared pastures Bear was well ahead on his way back to the Wolf's Den. Rich had to slow down at this point and walked slowly to the inn. His legs and body were done and he could hardly put a foot in front of another when Charles helped him into the door of the inn. Rich was not even sure when he had started leaning on his familiar but he was thankful for Charles being so helpful, and big.

  Stepping through the door he expected to see Wolf or Sally fretting over a fallen adventurer but instead the inn looked like nothing was amiss. Rich stepped up to the bar and plopped himself in a sturdy but comfortable chair. Armor and blood and all. Wolf came down from the second floor and casually said "The goblin will be ok, just a bit of poison and he's sleeping upstairs across from your room. Don't worry and relax". Rich couldn't really relax with the nasty messed up carnage he just saw. He didn't feel bad about killing the sciderabs but just how gruesome combat was. He didn't like it. Wolf saw the stare and said "Those stitchings are rough. I will have to go take care of another dungeon soon if they're popping up". Rich couldn't respond. He was still processing how disturbing it was watching creatures on their last point of HP trying to struggle to stay alive even though it was obviously completely pointless. They couldn't even handle just Bear, let alone the three of them together. It was nasty and wrong.

  Rich went to get up and wolf stopped him "Rich if what wolf told me is true you just had a really nasty wakeup call about this world today. Use your left over spell slots and help people. It might help". Wolf paused for a second and then sternly said "but go change and cast mend on all the chair. You tracked in a pretty fair bit of gore. I'm not going to clean the damn chair".

  So rich did. He got up as cast mend until his head was throbbing and went upstairs to change clothes. He put on the pair of white vestments he was given. They were pretty comfortable if a little scratchy. Rich thought he should probably put on the costume to help show people he was done being an adventurer and the start of being Clerical. He started walking back down stairs and his hat fell off. It was too pointy and tall to fit through the door. He held it while walking down the stairs and realized that was probably the pope often held his hat. It would be very silly for someone so regal in the old world to make the same mistake. Rich then remembered a video he saw of it happening and guessed it wasn't actually a big deal any way. With all the dignity Rich could muster he slowly walked down the stairs and back over to the booth he sat at earlier when healing the man with a cut off foot. No one was sitting there and Rich saw why. There was a lot of blood. He cast mend a few times to clean it up.

  He sat down in the booth and waited until the dinner crowd cleared out and heard about people's aliments. Many issues were minor or almost even a joke. The same guy came back about "an exorcism on his mother in law" and Rich turned him away after learning that "She was just acting really mean and different after his recent marriage to het daughter". While it didn't make fighting monsters less scaring it did make the day worth it. He sat there for another hour or so fixing a few hunched backs, a broken arm, and a set of missing teeth. all minor wounds that didn't seem to bother the people getting healed. That and they were drunk. The smiles on the people he helped and their kind words made the day worth it and since he was all taped out he walked upstairs, changed out of his vestments, cast mend a dozen times on everything, and walked back down to the bar and got a victory pint. Then another. Maybe even a few shots. Even though the people of Sneles paid for the healing a few insisted Rich wouldn't pay for any drinks that night.

  Everything went fine until rich started to do party tricks with minor magical wonder. While changing the color or flavor of a drink was entertaining and making his finger into a laser pointer was harmless, fireballs are not an inside spell. Wolf was not as forceful as the first time Rich tried to case holy fire inside the Wolf's Den he did wallop Rich hard enough to disperse the small fireball and cut rich off for the night.

  Rich was carried up to his room by the lumberjack with a new foot and helped into his bed. As soon as his eyes closed he was accosted by his guide for forgetting to save the changes they worked on. Rich couldn't exactly follow the yelling but he did manage to find the save button this time and drifted back to sleep. It was a deep, drunken, heavy sleep. The inn could have burned down and Rich would not have stirred.