"Hello James," Eve's voice greeted him when he opened his eyes to see the near empty undecorated cabin room. "Or would you prefer your avatar's name, Jim?"

"Since I'm going to be coming here before I enter Astrana quite a bit, I'd say that you can call me Jim," he said as he approached the brunette AI avatar and sat across from her at the wooden table in the center of the room.

"You have a question?" she asked bluntly.

"Is there a time disconnect or something between Astrana and reality?" Jim asked.

"Astrana's time can move at a rate of four times faster than your mind is used to experiencing," Eve told him. "Within that accelerated cycle, we are able to slow your perception enough that you feel it as normal. It isn't that there's a disconnect; it's that we are using the Pod's technology to allow you to experience four times the amount of moving time when compared to time outside the Pod. You experienced this during your calibration testing. Don't you remember how long that took?"

"It did feel like hours," Jim said thoughtfully. "I wasn't worried about how long it had taken since I was too excited to be so close to the finish line."

"Do you have further questions?" Eve asked him.

"Nope," he answered.

Jim rose from the bed groaning at the stiffness in his shoulders from the mattress he'd slept on.

"Back to the Guild for a Job, stop by the Minotaur for breakfast cause Willow said she'd treat me, and then spend the day out of the city," he muttered to himself, marveling in the back of his mind at the groggy state he was experiencing despite knowing that he'd been wide awake and alert less than a moment ago when he spoke to Eve.

Pushing himself off the bed, he began to move through the inn's room he'd rented and prepared for his day, dressing in the new clothes that he'd bought and armoring himself in his leather armor.

"Need to remember to stop by that blacksmith, Barny wasn't it?" he reminded himself as he strapped his skinning knife to his belt and hefted his pack before leaving the room.

"Well, if it isn't Jim, one of our most capable newcomers," Inkfingers greeted him with a smile as Jim approached his desk, Job flier in hand.

"Morning Inkfingers," he greeted the Gnome with a smile. "Surprised to see you here so early."

"As the most senior secretary of the Hunter's Guild, I have to be here the earliest and the latest," the little, blue man told him as he accepted the flier and stamped it. "I come in early to discuss important matters with the Guildmaster, file paperwork, and post new Jobs on the boards. After all that, I start my day job of helping Hunters like yourself and, once the Guild's doors are closed, I spend more time repeating the first part of my day. Most find the work tedious, but I rather enjoy it."

"My uncle always said that you have to love what you do or you'll work yourself to death," Jim said.

"A wise man," Inkfingers said, lacing his fingers together and leaning forward as he spoke to Jim. "Don't suppose I can meet him?"

"Afraid not," Jim told him. "He passed away when I was ten."

"My word," Inkfingers all but gasped. "I'm truly sorry to hear that."

"It was a while ago, so I'm alright now," Jim said. "If it hadn't been for Axel and Pear, I don't know if I'd have been as okay as I am."

"You're truly lucky to have such friends," Inkfingers said with a grin.

"I am," Jim agreed with another smile. "Have a good day Inkfingers, maybe I'll see you again today."

"I hope so," Inkfingers waved him off with a smile as Jim left the nearly empty Guildhall for the rest of his day.

"Hello," Jim called out as he entered the Barfing Minotaur. "Willow? It's Jim. Hope I can still get breakfast."

"Please, don't talk so loudly," a voice groaned from a corner, prompting Jim to look toward the source. "I am never drinking with Pear again.

"Well, Axel," Jim told his friend as he groaned and covered his head desperately while Pear snored away across from him on the table, "if you didn't insist on partying like tomorrow was coming, then you wouldn't start the day regretting the night."

"The night's aren't what I regret," Axel said, his voice muffled by his arms and the table. "It's the mornings after them."

"Don't worry about him," Willow's voice pulled Jim's attention from his hung-over friend. "He did a job for me and I promised him free drinks for the night. Didn't expect him and the High Elf to start a drinking contest."

"Who else lost?" Jim asked as he watched the Wood Elf woman pull an apron over her head.

"My father," she nodded toward the door she'd come through as a red-headed Dwarf pushed his way through with a groan.

"Will," the Dwarf groaned in a gruff, carrying voice that made Axel moan in pain again, "don't ever let that High Elf talk me into drinking with him."

"Yes, Father," Willow said with a smile as she pulled out a pan and placed it on the grill over the hot coals in the fireplace. "How does bacon and eggs with toast sound for breakfast?"

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

"Wonderful," the Dwarf grunted. "Do you need any help from me?"

"I have Jim there for that," Willow told him as she prepared a pot of water for the fire as well. "Coffee will be done soon."

"Willow, I love you," Axel groaned from across the room.

"Drunkards pay three Copper per cup," she told him.

"I retract my previous statement," Axel said.

"So," the Dwarf said, blinking up at Jim as he sat at the bar, "you're friends with my daughter?"

"I'd like to say that I am," Jim said, "but that's more up to her than it is me. She's just been very kind to my friends and I and helped us all out in different ways."

Muttering to himself, the Dwarf sat heavily on a bench as he eyed Jim critically. Finally, he spoke more clearly.

"Well, just don't do anything stupid and I'll not have a problem with you," he told Jim before Willow grabbed his ear.

"I haven't needed you to intimidate boys since I was twenty," she scolded her father as he winced and her cheeks reddened. "Given that that was nearly forty years ago, I think that means that I don't need you to do that sort of thing now."

"Move out of my damned house and I'll stop worrying about your friends and love life," he told her, wrenching his ear out of her grasp. "And stop tugging on my ears. I'm a Dwarf dammit, you can't tug them out to match yours."

Looking on as the father-daughter duo moved through an old argument, Jim couldn't help but smile to himself as he waited for his promised breakfast to finish cooking.

"What time is it?" Pear's voice broke through the arguing voices.

"Too early," Axel said as he scratched at a large wolf Jim hadn't seen earlier. "Too early."

"I ate too much," Axel groaned as he leaned back on the bench he sat at, his breakfast plate empty.

"It was delicious," Pear told Willow with a smile. "Thank you."

"No trouble," she said.

"Thank you for inviting me over for this," Jim said. "It was really good."

"Kind of a shame that Markus wasn't here for it," Axel agreed.

"Any idea where he is?" Pear asked.

"Not a one," Jim told them as he scratched at Axel's tamed Rockwolf's head. "Do you need me stay and help with the dishes?"

"I can just make the drunks do them," Willow told him, waving her hand toward Pear and Axel.

"Good," her father, since introduced to Jim as Wulf Stouthammer, said as he pushed up from the table. "I have to run some errands."

"You're one of the drunks," Willow's firm statement made him return to his seat. "And there's a lot of cleanup to do around here before you can run off again."

"If there's nothing for me, then I'll be going," Jim said with a smile as he stood up. "You should think about opening some sort of restaurant, Willow. It was really great."

"I've looked into it," she told him with a smile. "Thank you for coming Jim, have a good day."

"You too," he said with a smile and a wave as he stepped out into the cobbled streets and hefted his pack. "Time to look into that haunted farm."

The dilapidated house rose two stories to tower over Jim as he eyed the structure critically.

"Note to self," he muttered as he nocked an arrow on his bow, "do not build with whatever this kind of stone and wood are, no matter how poor you are."

Pushing through the rotting door, Jim entered the structure warily and searched the large front room that seemed to double as a kitchen with his eyes before making his way deeper into the house, his eyes searching for holes and rotted sections of floor so he didn't enter the cellar the wrong way. The further he went through the ground floor of the house, the more his anticipation and seeming paranoia grew until he jumped at a shifting shadow that made its way across the room.

With a slight gasp, Jim raised his bow and fired immediately in the direction of the moving shadow as he crouched and nocked another arrow. Eyes wide, he whipped his head back and forth for whatever it was he'd seen before he saw it.

A common songbird was preening its feathers on the banister of the stairway that led to the second floor of the house. Sighing to himself, Jim returned the arrow to an undrawn position and stood up.

"I'm way too jumpy for this and it's the middle of the damn day," he muttered to himself as he rose. As he finished speaking and standing, he whirled around as fast as he could with a loud "Aha!"

Nothing was behind him.

"If there is something here, then I'm not seeing it here," he told himself before approaching his arrow that stuck out of the wall. "Let's try the second floor and finish with the basement."

Ascending the stairs, Jim crept onto the second floor and groaned quietly to himself. The roof had rotted through and that had left the second floor more damaged than the first, which left spots of rot in the floor and he couldn't guarantee that they would hold his weight.

"Come on, Jim," he muttered to himself as he looked at the hall that led either direction on the topmost floor of the house. "You can do this. Just go slow and careful and you'll be done soon enough."

Carefully, Jim made his way through one room after the other on the top floor and found nothing of interest in any of the rooms. Even when he attempted to catch potential ghosts peeking at him through walls. Gratefully, he made his way down the stairs and moved to the cellar stairs next to the kitchen's wall. Eyeing the wooden stairs that lead downward critically, Jim searched them for signs of damage or rot before making his way down the stairs and seeing a wide open room that didn't have anything inside of it.

"Just the barn and well house left," he muttered to himself as he moved back up the stairs and then out of the uninhabitable house. His examinations of the two remaining structures went much as the one he'd made of the house earlier. Fruitlessly. Satisfied that he had completed the Job's requirements, Jim took one final look at the three structures and the fenced off property, carefully double-checking any open windows for signs of people or creatures inside before he turned and left for the city nearly two hours walk away.

"And you're certain that you found nothing?" Inkfingers confirmed as he wrote Jim's report down carefully.

"There was absolutely no sign of anything, animal, person, or otherwise using that house for any reason," Jim confirmed. "The dust wasn't disturbed and there wasn't anything in the buildings until I let a bird in one of them."

"That's good," Inkfingers said as he finished writing. "I believe that's three Iron coins for checking the abandoned Garmen's Farmstead for ghosts."

"Why did someone want it checked for ghosts?" Jim asked as Inkfingers prepared the money. "And they paid so well for it too."

"Ah, you wouldn't know given that you are a Last Star," Inkfingers said, offering the money to Jim as he explained. "Places like the Garmen's Farmstead were abandoned after a group of raiders passed through and killed the people living there. The city's Army sent a small squad to empty the house and property of the previous owner's belongings and any surviving livestock before it was offered for sale to the people of the city and the surrounding area. That was nearly twenty years ago and when buildings sit for so long, they have a way of attracting wandering spirits which then make it more difficult for others to move into the buildings. To prevent a loss of life, the Hunter's Guild is asked to send someone to check that the buildings are empty of such things before a group is dispatched to destroy the falling apart building. It can be dangerous work which is why the city offers Iron coins for a routine and safe check, in the rare case that a dangerous spirit or other beast has made the building its home."

"So I got lucky?" Jim asked as he pocketed the reward money.

"In a fashion," Inkfingers nodded. "Will there be anything else?"

"No, I'm good for now," Jim said before leaving the Guild building for the day.