Before Lan could think long enough to let despair set in, he pushed through the flow of people over to a lamp pole and climbed up the raised stone base, looking for something. Anything. Obviously, He didn’t see anyone suspicious.

Just when he tried to convince himself that somehow he could make that much coin again, it wasn’t just the dumbest of luck that had put it in his lap.

Lan saw someone look down as if they had almost tripped on something or someone smaller had pushed past. With a spark of hope returning, Lan watched as a line of people reacted in the same way in line toward an alley. Before, a small tuft of red hair shot into the passage.

Faster than Lan knew he could or should have been able to move, Lan threw himself through the people and was able to make it to the alley just before seeing the red hair disappear down another street.

With panic driving his muscles, the alley flashed by, and Lan found himself standing in the mouth of the path; the red hair had gone down. Lan's lungs worked to their limit to pull in some air.

‘Stop!’ Lan managed, and to his and seemingly the young boy’s surprise, he stopped and looked back at Lan as if wondering what he was doing there as Lan tried to catch his breath. Then the boy took off again. And Lan forced himself to move.

Suddenly the boy dashed into another alley, and when Lan reached it, he was greeted with nothing. Unlike the other two streets, Lan had run down. This one was little more than the space left over between rows of joined buildings, and aside from some disrepair and half-hearted attempts to mend it, there was no sign of the boy.

Lan didn’t know how he did it. But he managed to stay on his feet as his hope shattered. Just like that, he had let the best start he would get as an adventurer slip through his fingers.

There was no way that he could catch up now, but for some reason, Lan felt himself start to move; maybe the boy would stop once he thought he had lost him. Then there was the boy’s hair, not the orange that most had, but the red of oak tree leaves; there weren’t too many people with that hair colour.

If… if he looked long enough… he would get nowhere. No doubt the boy would already be heading to his hiding place for that exact reason.

Moving forward, just because Lan couldn’t bring himself to do anything else, he reached the middle of the street when he heard a sneeze… Coming from inside the wall to his left. Looking down, Lan found a wooden board standing against the wall next to him. It was hard to see at first, but there was a small gap between it and the wall.

Taking a few large steps so he was out of the way, Lan made the next few quieter and waited. Not even a minute later, the wooden board fell, slamming to the ground and kicking up dust, and the red-haired boy popped out and turned the way they had come without even looking Lan’s way.

‘Sucker,’ The boy laughed before Lan grabbed him by the shirt. ‘Ah, hey! Get off me.’ he shouted as Lan turned him around.

‘I don’t disagree. I almost fell for that stupid trick.’ Lan growled, staring the boy in the eyes as he looked up.

He was young, no older than nine, with scruffy yet clean red hair and a faint scratch on his left cheek, which Mirrored a bruise under his right eye, and though his clothes were dirty, it looked like they had been patched more than once.

‘Give it back, and I won't get mad.’ Lan lied. That ship had long since sailed.

‘I don’t know what you are talking about.’ The boy cried as he fought to get away, which seeing as he could not even gain levels yet, meant Lan’s pitiful five points were impossible to break from.

‘Listen, I don’t have time for this. You are in real trouble. And you better not have hidden it.’

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‘Let me go!’ he shouted and pulled Lan’s arm as he moved over to the hole in the wall to see if he had left it there. When he found nothing, Lan turned to look at the boy. It had to still be on him if he hadn’t hidden it elsewhere.

‘I said let me go!’ he shouted, pulled a hand full of sand out of his pocket, and threw it into Lan’s eyes. With a curse, Lan tried to clear his eyes and realised he had let the boy go when he heard little footsteps drawing farther away.

‘Get back here,’ Lan shouted, finding the red hair through half-closed and running eyes and started after him.

Soon, however, it became clear that this wasn’t any back street but the boy’s own neighbourhood. Knowing where to turn without having to look. On top of that, the boy had help. Which Lan learned when he saw a man coming out of a building in front of them. When Lan called for him to stop the boy, he just started to pick his nose as he looked up at the sky before grinning and shrugging at Lan as he passed.

Still, he was nothing compared to the large woman who kicked open her door and stepped into the street with large man-size laundry baskets hung on either side of a large pole on her shoulder. A pole that she turned in time when the boy passed so they would block his path—making Lan have to squeeze between her and one of the baskets.

‘Hey, get your hands off there.’ She barked as Lan unintentionally learned her baggy clothes hid more muscle than fat. Untangling himself, Lan found the boy cutting down another gap in the buildings. Even though he knew the streets, once again, the fact that he did not have any levels meant Lan’s poor excuse for stats was more than enough to start catching up.

A few times, Lan almost had him before he would dash down an unseen alley, making Lan have to correct and lose ground. Even still, the boy started to slow, and Lan was just about to grab the boy, his fingers moments from the collar of his shirt, when eight or more children, all younger than the boy, rushed out of nowhere and grabbed onto Lan.

‘Mister, we want sweets.’ They yelled as a chorus as they clung onto and swung from Lan’s arms. When he was finally able to get free, there was no sign of the boy, and the moment he turned back, all the other children were gone too.

‘Damn it,’ Lan shouted, unable to stop himself from punching the nearby wall. Why did he have to come so close to getting his money back only to lose it again? Maybe this was the will of the Lords of Light, punishment for coming to the money by luck. Like before,

Lan found himself stepping forward as if running away from reality for a few more seconds.

He walked down the alley, the next one, and the one that came after. After some time, Lan ended up on the same street the boy’s accomplices had been. What would he do now?

Lan still had to pay Cawl for the armour that he had damaged. Now he couldn’t even pay for it, let alone get it repaired so he could use it again. If nothing else, the guild job had shown him how unqualified and unprepared he was for adventurer work. He had hoped to make up for that with gear. But what now.

Maybe, Locke and the others would take pity on him again and help. If he followed them around for some jobs, couldn’t he gain enough levels and gold to start helping? That thought made his chest tight.

As stupid as pride was in his situation, the idea of begging them to accept him, to hold his hand even more than they had, and to help him grow felt wrong. And he knew why. Lan liked them. The time he spent with them had been some of the best he could remember. And undoubtedly one of the only things he wanted to never forget in the last ten years.

He liked them, and he wanted to be one of them, and he wanted them to like him and, more importantly. Lan wanted them to see him as an equal and someone they could respect. Starting that relationship by grovelling on his knees for help. How could they ever see him as more after that?

No, Lan had to prove to them that he could be more, prove it to himself. That he could reach that moment in the middle of the Razer-wolves again but with his own strength this time.

Even if he had to compensate by using his attribute points to survive, he would do that. He had hoped he could find the stats that worked best for him. No one got a second chance at choosing their attributes, but he would if that was what he needed to do.

Even though his experience in a fight was next to nothing. What was left was like it had been engraved on his bones. With the hit from the razer wolf, every stab he made, dodge and near miss. Lan could remember them like he was still living them.

The next time he would better understand what he was getting himself into. With his new plan in mind, Lan headed for the guild, passing the man who had grinned at him—turning down an alley that he thought would get him back onto the main road.

A voice.

‘Let me go!’ it was far away. The voice only carrying through the same narrow alleys Lan was lost in. But even this did not hide the voice. The same voice. He thought and started towards it.

‘Stop!’ Lan stopped and turned as the voice came from the alley he had just passed, which after following, ended at a crossroads. Lan waited, bouncing on his feet, hoping he would hear the voice again. Just when he thought it would never come.

‘I don’t have anything!’

Lan ran as fast as he could manage as he rushed towards the voice, and though it did not come, new voices did.

‘Shut him up!’ an older voice commanded just as Lan reached and turned down where the voices were before he blacked out.