One rank two identification and a meaningful pile of money later, Terry was stomping his way out of the Adventurer’s Guild. He wasn’t mad at anyone in particular. He was just mad. He’d tromped over the rules of the Adventurer’s Guild like a drunk elephant and expected to get away with it forever. As a programmer, he knew better. There were workarounds in any system, but you couldn’t brute force every problem and expect great results. You also needed to know the rules before you went bending and breaking them. He treated those guild rules like a trope he could ignore instead of a system he had to manipulate, and it came back to smack him upside the head.

“It could be worse,” said Ekori.

He stopped walking and turned to look at her.

“Really? How long do you think I’ll be able to keep that rank two thing from spreading? How long before everyone knows wherever I go? How long until people are hounding me to fix their problems because I’m strong?”

“A while,” she said in a weak voice.

“Yeah. A while,” said Terry.

“I’m sorry,” said Haresh. “This is my fault.”

Terry was tempted to agree with him, but he knew that wasn’t fair. He’d been the stupid one in this situation. He’d acted like one of those trust fund babies who didn’t understand why it should matter that they crashed their Porsche because they still had a Ferrari and a Maserati. No bigs, right? He’d just blithely ignored reality. It wasn’t his reality, but it wasn’t so wholly alien that common sense had zero foothold. Some things were predictable. The people he was encountering weren’t NPCs in some game that he could treat however he wanted. Well, maybe they were a little bit. The whole might makes right thing sort of suggested he could impose his will, but he couldn’t do it without consequence. Plus, who wants to be that asshole?

“No,” he admitted. “It was my mistake. I was being cavalier about the rules.”

Haresh looked relieved but not altogether satisfied.

“Well, perhaps a bit, but I didn’t really help you convince her. I feel bad about that because you were trying to do something kind.”

“It’s for the best. Well, it’s for the best for you. You don’t need the guild investigating you.”

Haresh nodded in agreement, but Ekori and Jaban both looked startled. Apparently, it hadn’t occurred to them that there might be some kind of fallout. Terry didn’t know if it was just the stupidity of youth or if they weren’t as up to speed on the rules as they probably should be. He considered the pair for a moment. Yeah, it was definitely the stupidity of youth. I don’t know what Haresh’s excuse was. Maybe he thinks he’s a better liar than he is. Whatever the case, it was done. Now, Terry just needed to figure out a way to make sure people didn’t find out. Before any of that, though, he had something to take care of. He turned and started walking again.

“Where are you going?” Ekori called after him.

“To get a damn rice hat.”

It didn’t take him too long to get back to the market, but another pass through didn’t reveal a convenient rice hat seller. He finally made the ultimate personal sacrifice and asked someone where he could buy one. He was painfully disappointed to discover that the woman who sold them wouldn’t be back until the next day. With the market sellers packing up and sunset approaching, he decided to take advantage of that room he’d already paid for. It had been a while since he last slept on a bed. He’d also been outside in a town way more than made him comfortable. If he kept tempting fate that way, who knew what might happen? Church assassins might start literally falling from the sky like a rain of pestilent, kill-happy frogs. It didn’t seem terribly likely, but he wasn’t about to discount any possibility in this place.

He made his way back to the inn and stowed his pack in his room again. He also made a point of getting a meal in the common room. He took a table in a corner and was blessed with a bit of alone time, or as close to alone time as he could get while in public and glaring at anyone who looked like they might ask to sit at his table. It was only after he finished his food and retreated to his room that he was able to relax at all. He knew that the bed he sprawled on wasn’t comfortable by the standards of his old world. This world had clearly never considered the benefits of pillowtop mattresses or the glory of memory foam. After spending so much time sleeping outside on the ground, though, even the vaguely lumpy thing beneath him felt, although he hated to use the word, decadent.

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Dusk didn’t share his reservations. She’d spent a few minutes wandering around the bed before curling into a tiny, purring ball next to his head on the pillow. He hoped that Drumstick didn’t decide to try to follow them into the town. He was pretty sure he’d convinced the chicken-lizard to wait for them on the far side of town, but he worried he’d put too much faith in the beast. While he was fairly certain that none of the local adventurers could kill Drumstick, he cringed to imagine the havoc that would ensue if they tried. That’s a problem for future Terry, he assured himself. It might not even happen. Now that he had a bit of downtime, though, he figured he should probably try to have a conversation with other-Terry. Before he could get started with that, though, he fell asleep.

He woke with a start and an awful feeling of uncertainty. He had no idea where he was for a few awful seconds. He’d been dreaming about something that he was ninety-nine percent certain had never happened to him. There had been a lot of sitting around and doing things with his core. It hadn’t really felt like a dream. It came across more like a memory. Except, he’d never done anything like meditating in the pre-Chinese Period Drama Hell days. It had all felt a little too New Age-y to him. He’d read about the supposed health benefits of meditation, but he’d also read that eggs were terrible for him, good for him, and maybe not terrible if ingested in certain amounts. That kind of thing had made him decidedly wary of jumping onto any bandwagon. Of course, cultivating in novels always sounded a lot like meditating to him, just with extra bells and whistles thrown in to give it style. That’s what his dream seemed like.

He poked at the spot in his head where the other-knowledge and other-Terry lived. Was I dreaming about how to cultivate? Is that what I’m supposed to be doing? There was a protracted silence. Just when he was ready to give up, other-Terry finally chimed in. Something like that. You aren’t from here, so it won’t work exactly the same way for you but that’s the general idea. Terry considered those words and tried to decide what he should ask next. Why won’t it work the same for me? There was another pause and regular-Terry could almost hear other-Terry trying to decide what to say. Other-Terry came to a decision and said, Well, it’s because insert spiritual mumbo-jumbo here.

“Seriously?” said Terry out loud. “That’s your answer?”

You say that like you’d understand if I told you, answered other-Terry.

“I might,” said Terry.

You do realize that I live inside what passes for your mind, right? I can see what kind of information you possess. You already know that you don’t know what you need to know to understand what I’d tell you.

“You’re a dick.”

Oh, and you’re a shining example of courtesy.

Terry didn’t have a good answer to that, so he scratched Dusk’s head. The little kitten had woken up when he started speaking out loud. She swiftly put her head down and went back to sleep as he pet her. A glance at the window told him that it was still dark outside, even if he could hear some people moving around in the building and outside. Jesus Christ, since when did I get that kind of superhearing? He didn’t manage to get back to sleep and settled for dozing until it was morning proper. He didn’t have any more dreams about cultivation, although he spent a lot of time daydreaming about steak. He found the others downstairs eating breakfast. He'd given it some thought and decided that he didn’t mind traveling with them, but he didn’t plan on waiting around forever for them.

“I’m leaving today,” he told the trio.

“But—” started Jaban, but Haresh cut him off.

“Do you mean to leave immediately,” asked the older adventurer.

“Not immediately. I’m going to the market. I should be able to get the kind of hat I want there today. After that, though, I’ll be on my way. You can either meet me there or catch up with me on the road if you want.”

“We will,” said Haresh.

“But—” Jaban said again, only to be cut off by Ekori.

“You can be lecherous somewhere else,” she told her brother, earning a glare.

Terry left them to their bickering and returned to the market. He had to wait for nearly an hour before the hat woman arrived. When she set up her little stall, though, he was waiting eagerly. He didn’t even haggle with her, just forked over the asking price. He knew he overpaid based on her shocked expression. That didn’t matter, though. He had a rice hat again. He was holding it out in front of him when he heard a sharp twang. He turned toward the noise, the rice hat still in his hands. A crossbow bolt punched through the hat before crashing into his chest and splintering into pieces. Terry stared in horrified shock at the disfigured hat before he held it up to the sky. He could see blue through the neat hole the crossbow bolt had left in the hat.

“Are you fucking kidding me!”