“Say it again?” Lucillus asks with a raised eyebrow.

“Beer with the boys,” I repeat.

It’s been a week since Tiberius and Quintus started working at the bakery, and they have both crossed level 10 already in their respective [Baker] classes. Apparently, that’s almost unheard of. Flaminia also told me she’s a few levels from level 40.

But while I like Flaminia and all the gals at the bakery, it has been a while since I have gone out with a testosterone-filled crowd.

Therefore, since Tiberius and Quintus had already moved up the ladder in the bakery in such a short time and got a bonus, they decided to offer a round of drinks to us and a few other dudes at the camp.

I look at our gang, including the dude with the messiest hair I have ever laid my eyes upon, Gregorius, and his two pals. He’s a jolly, middle-aged fellow with a big belly and one of the kindest dispositions I have ever met in anyone.

Tiberius and Quintus told me he is the best candidate for the next spot in Happy Bakery. Clodia told me she’s very reluctant to hire homeless people—and I’ll be honest, I understand her concerns. We can only take people who will actually behave and not act all crazy.

There are safety concerns at Happy since so many women work there, while the homeless crowd is almost exclusively male.

But Gregorius is a good guy and has fallen on hard times mostly because he couldn’t repay his [Vow: Debt of Honor] like Tiberius and Quintus. Plus, they are both vouching for him.

He’s got a missing leg and an eye. If that’s any indication of baking proficiency, he’ll be twice as good as either of my two friends.

One can only hope, honestly.

Anyway, Gregorius is the only new addition to our little crew. The others are my personal [Guards], Stan and Truffles.

And we are going to get plastered, baby!

I rub my hands, having sorely missed a good night out. Apparently, we are entitled to rest days, and I asked Clodia if it was a problem if we all missed one night to rest and celebrate. Now, she could have said no, given all the money she’s putting behind me, but she also saw that I didn’t shirk from my responsibilities one bit.

If anything, we have completely ramped up the bread production, and thanks to Flaminia focusing on the ‘low’ type of work with us, we are now baking insane amounts of Altamura Bread each day.

“[Guards] are not supposed to drink on duty,” Lucillus states matter-of-factly.

“Well, since I’m paying, I get to decide what duty you are on. And if we can get a couple of wooden balls and enough cups, I’ll declare you all on beer pong duties.”

“What’s beer pong?” Antoninus asks.

“We throw balls inside cups from the two ends of a table. If I throw the ball and I get it inside your cup, you gotta drink. It’s a drinking game.”

“Oh, like fallen leaf,” Antoninus nods wisely.

“What?”

“It’s an Elven drinking game,” Lucillus sighs, clearly resigned. “We both throw a leaf in the air; the first that catches the leaf loses. But if your leaf touches the table, you lose. You have to catch it as low as possible. The one who catches it at the lowest point wins, and the other person has to drink.”

Now, I have never been more inclined to ask where all these ‘leaves,’ ‘roots,’ and ‘green’ stuff references come from, but my sixth sense is clearly pinging me for a side-quest. Or worse, a main quest.

Eew.

The only main quest today is drinking and, if God wills, fondling a massive pair of—

“Where should we go drinking?” Tiberius asks. “It’s been a while since the last time I frequented a tavern or an inn.”

“The Drunken Elf is a good one,” Truffles suddenly says.

We all turn to the thin blonde with an eyebrow raised.

“If I have any extra coin, I spend it there. Alcohol helps me think and talk,” Truffles says, looking unashamed.

“It helps everyone do that,” I say. “Lead the way, blondie!”

Truffles shoots a slightly annoyed look at me, and then we all follow him.

I look around at the people, a smile going from ear to ear on my face.

I mean, can you believe this? Not even a week ago, I was on the path to messing my life up. And that would have probably been the case if Lorenzo hadn’t appeared to me.

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But that’s just how life is, right? Humans – or Elves, I guess – get to the brink of despair pits and then pull back. It’s that easy.

Unless you are thoroughly depressed and just fall. You know what’s really interesting about this metaphor, what makes it so fitting for this moment?

You can’t get out of a pit on your own. Not unless you are willing to torture your hands and cover them in scars; your hands would come out bloody and unrecognizable from such a fight against yourself. And some do it, sure. But it’s much easier when someone extends their hand to you.

And I’m not necessarily talking about therapy here. I mean, I’m probably the biggest example of how spending a lot of money on therapy can do absolutely nothing. Sure, it made my therapists much richer and reassured my mother, but me? Nothing. Nada.

But I didn’t exactly suffer from depression, to be honest. While anxiety is a close, blood-related sibling, it’s not the same.

But yeah. People, books, stuff. Sometimes I saw people getting more help from a good read than anything else, you know? At the end of the day, our interactions mirror some aspects of ourselves and make us either great or miserable. But the only thing they can really do, again, is to act as mirrors of ourselves; the clearer the mirror, the better the results might be. So yeah, all is good as long as it puts us in a deep conversation with ourselves.

Therapy? I don’t know.

The Internet has taught us that every Human is fallible. ‘Never meet your heroes’ is a saying for a reason, am I right?

Therapy is like ‘never meet your heroes.’ It can help, but much less than you could ever anticipate. And it’s so easy to abuse it.

Whatever.

I take a deep breath.

“So, blondie,” I say, poking Truffles. “What’s your poison? Beer? Wine? Cyanide?”

Truffles looks at me and wrinkles his nose.

“What’s your poison?” He mumbles. “As in, what is the thing that you like so much that you could destroy your life over?”

I blink a couple of times, realizing what just happened.

“Holy,” I smack Truffles’s back, “you just deciphered a saying from where I come from. Interesting. These other dummies have never managed to.”

Truffles just stares at me with a displeased frown.

“Don’t slap my back.”

“Oh, come on. Don’t be a wuss. What’s the problem with a friendly slap? It’s all in the spirit of camaraderie.”

Truffles steps away from me and puts Stan between us.

“Truffles doesn’t like being touched,” Stan explains with his benevolent voice.

“You don’t say,” I eye the blondie from behind Stan’s back.

“Yo, Truffle-Dazzle, if you want me to help you make the soap, you better behave!”

“What?! You promised me that you would help me if I came to—”

“Well, what if lied, huh? Now, I am officially holding this over you. You either have a great time or no soap for you!”

“Joey,” Tiberius says from the side as his leg clacks on the paved street, “you know that soap-making is kept a secret, right? [Merchants] will withhold ingredients from you. Even if your formula worked, they would never provide you with the necessary materials. [Alchemist] might try to blow you up too.”

Truffles looks really truffled—sorry, troubled. I sneak a last glance at the blondie before shrugging at Tiberius.

“My mother had me learn every single step of soap-making. Before she became my full-time manager, she actually opened a small lab in our house to make soap. She was just not patient enough to let it take off. But that’s what a mid-life crisis looks like for a woman.”

“A what?”

...

“The speed at which you two advanced should be commended with honors,” Stan bellows so solemnly that the whole inn gets quiet to listen to him. “Your levels are a testament to your great talent but also to the great generosity a Human has brought forth to Elves.

“The journey of this Human child among us has just started, but only the [Great Prince] Vespasianus had ever inspired a greater collaboration between Humans and us. Now, I believe Joey shall be the one bridging the gap, starting from the very lowest parts of our society. And may the spirit of the poorest and the least fortunate be the fundament on which to build a future of peace and confraternity.”

Holy.

Fu—

“Stanimal,” I say, drying a little tear from the side of my eye with my sleeve. “When I asked for a little speech, I meant something fun. Not to make me cry, for God’s sake!”

"Those who do not commemorate great achievements are just as self-centered as those who pilfer the hard-earned wealth of others."

“Christ,” I say, “cheers to whatever you just said.”

And with that, we start drinking beer from the fancy wooden mugs of this inn. They are carved so that the handles look like little Elves in different poses.

“Stanimal, can I ask? What did you do before you developed a taste for camping in the park?”

Stan nurses a few sips of his beer, staring at me with his intense eyes.

“My past is in the past, friend. I left it behind so that it would never be brought up again.”

Huh.

That’s a dodged bullet, I suppose.

Right?

I mean, the chances he’s a secret expert with a world-saving quest are basically 99.9% by now.

"Lucillus, come on, tell Joey," Antoninus elbows his friend.

"Tell me what?"

"Nothing," Lucillus states, somehow embarrassed. And as soon as I see the usually super-serious guy blush, I immediately smell some juicy gossip.

"He's interested in Flaminia!" Antoninus basically shouts.

"What?! Really?! That’s great!" I tell him.

"It's… nothing," Lucillus waves his hand and scoffs. "Antoninus just likes to gossip. That's all. I just said Flaminia is… attracting."

Damn.

My man Lucillus down bad.

Attracting?

Oof.

That's what a man says when he's about to pull up to a girl's house with a boombox.

“Have you entertained other professions before becoming a [Baker]?” Stan asks conversationally, changing the topic.

Look, the tall Elf is not just a secret expert, but he would also make Shaq look like a dwarf, and currently, the whole inn is looking weirdly at us—they are probably wondering what this group of misfits is doing here.

But the old man, probably several times – if not lifetimes – older than me, still commands respect and attention. Initially, when we entered the Drunken Elf, I thought it would take me quite the effort to get us in since Gregorius, Stan, and Truffles, albeit cleaned up, are still homeless.

But the [Waitress] first, and the [Innkeeper] second, both treated Stan extremely respectfully.

“Meh, I’ve pretty much always been a baker. Not yet a [Baker], for some reason, though.”

“Nothing else?”

I pause for a moment, noting how several people are looking at each other and leaving the inn in a hurry. Huh? Did someone fart so badly? Whatever.

"I have a prestigious certificate in dough-kneading and bun-slapping, actually. Learned it through hands-on experience," I said, letting my inner baker shine through with the boys. "It's practically a post-graduate degree, but I'm not talking about food if you catch my drift."