"Okay, so I'm supposed to make a right at the bar and the local town office will be just on the other side..."

After lunch ended Roy helped Jensen to clean up and put away everything they used to cook the boar meat. Jensen also tasked Roy with throwing out the garbage on his way back to Inicia Town. Roy's had reasons to leave the farm for a while.

There wasn't much to do on the farm and after lunch, Jensen didn't need much help. He didn't raise livestock; his farm focused purely on crops and harvesting said crops. He already harvested what was ready to sell and had just come back to the farm about an hour before Roy found him. As for the matter of water the crops...Roy could never hope to be as effective and quick as the farmer when he used water magic.

And although they had made an agreement to teach Roy about living in Ostrand, dinner wouldn't be for several hours from now. He needed something to do until then, and Jensen recommended that he go to the town's office. The office was the center of local government, where one man, through the input of the residents, established the rules of the town and collected taxes. It was also the same building that housed a community posting board for odd jobs and requests, although none were ever urgent.

It made no sense to post an announcement of an emergency and wait for someone to notice that. That would just be silly. There was a separate board for posting news coming from other parts of the Grand Duchy of Lycris. Jensen explained this much at least, before he let Roy explore on his own.

The town office was a little plain-looking, but they tried their best to make the sign look nice and neat. It did its job, at least.

Roy opened the door and stepped into the building. Immediately he saw a long counter with various shelves of papers and books, writing implements, and boxes filled to the brim with a random assortment of objects and tools. Right before the door and sitting on the counter was a bell, the type which looked exquisitely ringable. Roy resisted the urge to smartly smack the bell and took a moment to scan the room. To his left, he saw the news board with the appropriate sign above it. On the opposite wall hung the request board, it had a few pieces of paper tacked on it, much less than the news board.

Without ripping them off, Roy glanced at what the postings were about.

"Honestly, I'm surprised I can read this. You'd think this would be in a whole other language." It felt weird to read the words on the page. Roy understood in his mind that what he was looking at was not written with characters or letters he was familiar with, but nonetheless, he had complete comprehension. He understood the entire meaning of what was written.

"Help wanted. Lost family memento by the river, willing to pay 300 Lycra if found. Nah~."

"Materials wanted. Talons and feathers from Killingjays. Price by quality. That's a maybe. I'd need to know where to find them though."

"Materials wanted. Valia flowers, willing to pay 10 Lycra per flower, non-negotiable. Hmm. These last two seem promising. On the one hand, I could probably kill a monster or two to collect the feathers so long as I don't roast them to death." Roy just reminded himself of the Living Stump and wondered if its body had any special properties that regular lumber didn't have. "On the other hand, I'll know exactly how much I'll get if I just collect flowers. The other person might only pay a hundred for several bodies worth. I should probably ring the bell."

Roy tapped the bell. It made a crisp Ding sound which was pleasant to hear. He was tempted to keep tapping the bell though, just to hear the noise again.

A woman's voice called out "One moment please!" Roy heard the sound of heavy objects sliding around and settling into place. Then he heard the subtle creaking of the wood floorboards made with every step.

"Hello there. I haven't seen you in town before, are you a visitor? We don't get too many of those."

"Hi, yes, uh..." Roy was at a small loss for words. It wasn't because the woman was unexpectedly beautiful or anything. He just had a moment where he knew that he had wanted something but immediately forgot what it was, for a breath or two.

"Uh..."

"?"

"Sorry, I forgot what I was gonna say. Um...uh...oh umm, I think it was about the request board over there. How does that work?"

"Are you looking to put in a request?"

"No, actually, I was wondering how to complete them."

Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.

"I understand. It's very similar to the adventurer's guild if you've been to one of their branches. Our town isn't big enough or qualified to have one though, so we've set up a system of our own here. If you're looking for big rewards, I'm sorry but that doesn't happen here. But if you're looking to make a little extra coin there's usually something on the board. Did you already have a chance to look?"

"Yes, I'm interested in those two. Oh, but I've never been to an adventurer's guild before."

"Truly? You could've fooled me." The woman eyed the sword behind Roy's head.

"I just started out."

"Well, I'll take those two down and set them aside until you complete them, or until 30 days pass, whichever comes first. In the future, if you see requests on the board, it means no one has taken them up yet. So, let's see."

The woman lifted a section of the counter to walk through it and take down two of the requests Roy wanted.

"Killingjays and Valia flowers. You're in luck, you can find them both in the same place. I'm actually going to leave the flower one up for a while One thing I do sometimes is leave certain requests if they come up often enough. Valia flowers are often sought out by an apothecary I'm acquainted with in town and she appreciates a steady supply of them. The other is a request from the same person but I've never seen it before. If you find the flowers just bring them along with the talons and feathers and I'll sort out the money for you."

"Great! So where do I find these Killingjays and flowers?"

"Do you know where the Quinn farm is?"

"I do actually, I just came from there."

"Oh, good. If you hike north from the farm you'll reach a forest filled with Wadsley trees. You know, the ones with purple leaves in the spring. Oh, but maybe you don't have those wherever you come from. Anyhow, they should've lost most of the color and have turned green but they'll still look different enough that you'll know it when you see it. The flowers you're looking for grow in that forest near Whitethorn bushes. Not on the bushes, near the bushes. They grow properly out of the ground but they tend to blend in. They have an unusually dark green color. As for the Killingjays, they tend to live and make nests within the forest. But you'll have to hike further in to find where they like to be. They hunt creatures smaller than the wild boars in the forest but they'll fight back if you make a move first. They're protective of their young so be careful they don't start attacking out of nowhere."

"Wow, I appreciate all the advice."

"I try to stay as informed as possible. There have been an accident or two in the past and I'd like to avoid them."

"Right. So how long do you think it'll take to get to where the Killingjays are?"

"Perhaps half an hour to an hour from when you first get to the forest. I'm not sure, I've never been to the forest before. It's a bit too dangerous for someone like me."

"I get it. Okay, so I'll try to get those bird bits and see if I can find those flowers while I'm at it."

"Good luck! And don't forget to bring a bag to put the materials in!"

"Thanks for the reminder, I'm gonna need one of those."

Thankfully, Old Man Jensen had a small spare roughspun sack that Roy could tuck into his clothes.

"Wait a minute," Roy lightly smacked himself in the forehead, "I have an inventory." Roy shook his head in slight personal embarrassment. "I never needed the sack to begin with. I can just take everything I need to keep and shove it into the skill."

"[Inventory]." Roy brought up the inventory and kept note of unused potion to restore his MP, should he need it in a pinch. He took the sack from his hip and threw it into the inventory. Perhaps he might find a potato field to dig them out from the ground and fill the sack with.

"Now that that's taken care of, I can be on my way."

Roy gave his farewell and promised to come back in one piece to Old Man Jensen and kept his eyes fixed on the forest to the north. When he reached the boundary of the farm he transitioned into a run, moving as fast as he felt he could go. His SP started dipping by one point each second, the second digit rolled down to be replaced by the next lower-valued number from above. He thought it was a nice touch, that the numbers rolled from one to the next while the resource bar gave the visual representation as it steadily decreased in length. Roy didn't have much SP from the outset, more, he thought he remembered correctly, than if he picked a different class, but still not much. He had just over a minute's worth of time for running before depletion. He ran the straightest line he could from the farm and when his SP hit zero, he was forced to feel the physical burden of trying to run as fast as he did.

"Oh go--"

Roy ran hard and he knew he had by the sudden intense burning sensation he felt in his lungs. He slowed down as much as he could to a stop without tripping over himself. As his pace slowed the intensity of the burn also diminished. He had no idea how fast he ran, but when he looked back toward Jensen's farm, he guesstimated to have gone close to half a mile. The last time he remembered running a mile it took him just under nine minutes and he put everything into that time, so that had to be...

"Four times as fast? Is that right?" He didn't like the mental gymnastics, but it felt right to say that he ran the pace of a two-minute mile with little more than a cough to prove it. "There's no way anyone back home could go that fast. Speaking of home...this dream is quite extensive. I never imagined I'd get to really feel what it's like to see one unfold. They aren't all like this are they?"

Roy forgot himself, it seemed. None of what he saw, what he felt, was real. Everything around him would surely disappear as the sun rises each morning, which it probably would in a few hours.

But until then, Roy pressed on to the forest alternating between walking and running on SP. Even with walking the majority of the time, his average speed of movement was higher than he could achieve with regular running effort, and he could sustain it for longer too. If he tried to go as fast as his legs would normally carry him, he'd slow down into a walk after 30 seconds.

When he could touch the first Wadsley tree he saw, which was something of a mix between an oak tree with a weeping willow, Old Man Jensen's farm was too small to see anything meaningful beyond general shape and color. He was several miles away by now, long enough that it would take him more than an hour to return if this was real life.