By the time we were let in and parked the wagon in the main plaza, the sun had completely set. I notice real quick that there is no light coming from any of the houses, except for one building which I identify as being some kind of tavern as it had an insignia with a badger skewered by an arrow called “The set’s den”. Other than that though the village was gloomy, the houses being made of rough lumber and the silence made it even more gloomy to me, but, well, I’m still used to things being made of squared-off concrete and bricks, so I probably just need to adjust.

Evan bumps me gently and says in a hushed tone:

I shake my head to clear my mind and say:

Evan sighs:

I say annoyed, I might look like a child, but being treated like one it's getting more and more irritating.

I swallow my annoyance and follow the adventurers into the tavern, I expected the place to be noisy, but there are only what looks like two groups of people sitting around a table.

One group is made up of two humans both of them look in their late 30s with nothing remarkable about them and they are both males, and wearing leather, but I spot a glint of metal under it, probably chainmail, one has a spear leaning against his chair, while the other has a two-handed double ax leaning against his; the other 2 are more peculiar, they look like wild cats, but they are the size of a fully grown human, one looks Linx-like with light brown fur and dark spots, the other instead looks like a panther, with pitch-black fur, my best guess is that they are female, or very slim males, as they lack breasts, they are wearing light armor, and both have a bow & quiver next to their chair and also a mace, most likely the demi-human version of the cat people.

The other group is made of only 3 people, and one is an older man with white hair but trained body, another is a young male, must be 18 at most, well built but other than that unremarkable, the last one is a nice looking girl, around 20, with braided Caramel colored hair, she is wearing leather armor too and has a bow and a short spear leaning against the chair.

They all are talking about something being in the woods and when they notice us they stop talking and look at us, Lionel steps forward and says:

The group with the Demi-humans look at Lionel with distrust and the man with the double ax says: He sounds very stiff like he is choosing his words very carefully.

The girl from the other group says sounding sad and exhausted:

The old man gestures for our group to join the table and says:

As the old man is talking all four of the adventurers cross their arms as our group joins the table.

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Lionel says:

The Lynx-like cat-girl says barely holding disgust in her voice:

Lionel nods and says nicely:

The man with the double ax raises his hand in front of the Linx woman as she seems like she was about to shout and says:

I can see Lionel rolling his eyes as he says: more focussed on the old man side of the table, probably knowing he wouldn't get much out of the foreigners.

The girl nods and says:

The old man says: as he gives a kind pat on his son’s shoulder next to him, the boy just nods

Layla says to the foreigner group:

The foreign Adventurer’s party is clearly not liking our group words nor do they like Layla’s worlds and seem like they don't even wanna share their names, but Pick says still being very stiff:

Bothersome… if we can't act on our own accord I doubt I can do anything “foxlike” and it's gonna be hard to harvest life energy like that.

Lionel says:

Man, this is all boring stuff, they discuss stuff I don't care about, but still, I listen to most of it. The gist is that there are 5 cat Demi-Humans, 3 of them are dangerous as they know how to set traps and hide, one of them is a decently powerful mage that uses wind magic, and another one was supposed to be the Necra’s bodyguard, the plan is to have the Ranger guide us to points where the renegades might be waiting and kill or capture all of them, or if they are scattered find as many of them as possible.

The thing that makes everything boring is that Pick and his entourage are all stuck up and what should have taken an hour of planning, instead takes what seems like 4 hours with Lionel and the ranger lady having to pry every bit of information out of him like he was a drug dealer being questioned by police. I do not look forward to this mission, not one bit, I can't wait to be ordered to march straight into a trap, but whatever, I just need to use my keen senses and hope for the best… no point in being negative, I already did plenty of that in my past life.

Anyways the Prying stops and George offers us a room in the tavern to get some decent sleep as there was no point in walking through a possibly trapped forest at night.