I left Ironcliff on foot this time around… After heading to the closest dungeon, I was planning on following the border toward the West in order to check another dungeon there. In the East, Louise’s family territory was there, so I had to stay clear of it.

The southern gate was open, but few people were crossing it. It was the snow season, just like the time I arrived in the city two years ago. The snow was knee-deep and the cold winds were quite strong too. So, it wasn’t a popular time for people to be traveling south on foot… some caravans would usually go north and the people on return by train. The people in Ironcliff already stocked up for resources to last the whole season.

I was fine in crossing the area because I enchanted my boots and gloves… they would only last three days thanks to it, though. My cloak wasn’t enchanted, but it was warm enough to protect me from the wind and I had a winter cap that protected my head from the cold and hid my short hair and ears too.

‘Perhaps I should only live in these areas to keep these all the time…’

I had to walk for three hours despite that… the dungeon wasn’t that close to the city because the other countries could try to use it to spread chaos and attack the city. Thanks to that, there was a small settlement around the dungeon. The place granted a lot of materials to the city, from wood to ice scales. Thanks to that, blue armor was quite popular in Ironcliff.

I wanted to increase my rank as an adventurer, but I didn’t want to stay in that settlement for too long. We were close to the border, after all. It was impossible to say where a spy would be. Some humans obviously were selling information to the enemies… I realized that when I heard that some officials were killed in the city when they were in some bars. They were poisoned… after some lengthy investigations, it was confirmed that the barkeeper wasn’t involved in that and that someone put something in the drink of the official while he wasn’t looking. That clearly had to be a human.

‘What a scary world… you can’t even drink in peace.’

With that in mind, I had to keep a low profile and avoid interacting with as many people as possible. Perhaps I should just stack those scales in my magic bag since I wanted to do some experiments with them and then just leave the dungeon after reaching the last floor.

The dungeon didn’t have combat classes, and that would make things easier… it had only twenty floors as well. It was feasible to clear it in a single run since I also had enough information about the place and the monsters there. However, that would make me have less time to check fewer things in the area, thanks to my new skill in the Enchanter class, I needed a constant supply of money to buy equipment to study their effects.

While I was thinking along those lines, I reached the top of a hill in the area and was able to see the dungeon settlement in the distance. It was covered in snow, but I could see the sides of the buildings there. It was bigger than a village, but a lot smaller than a town.

One hour later, I arrived at the settlement… it was a bit after lunchtime, but the snow-covered streets were still pretty empty. I had heard that this place was a bit more crowded than the others since Ironcliff City needed the resources found here, so I imagined that most of the people were working inside their homes processing the monsters or in the dungeon gathering them.

In the first section of the dungeon, the monsters found were the wood golems… they were as slow as their other counterparts, but they could grab their targets with vines and use seed attacks too. Still, since they were made of wood, they were barely above goblins in terms of difficulty.

In the second section, the enemies were lesser ice salamanders… the ice scales could be gotten from them, but since they were small, they didn’t have many of those. Still, they were elemental monsters and they could use magic, so they were many levels above the wood golems.

‘I guess I can use my short swords against the wood golems and see what I can do with the lesser ice salamanders…’

While I was thinking about that, I heard a weird sound coming from the side. When I looked in that direction, I saw a cloaked figure eating food from the ground and snow. That certainly wouldn’t be digested well… I could see some dogs eating the rest of the food too. On the side, I could see a tavern… lunch time just ended, so perhaps the food wouldn’t make that person have a stomachache.

People were normally stronger in this world since they unlocked a few parameters over their lives… but I wondered if that guy did that. Come to think of it, I had never seen beggars until now in this world. I had heard of battle slaves, warriors from other countries captured during battles. Criminal slaves were people who committed crimes and needed to work to pay for them. There are also debt slaves… people who owed too much money or fell for scams and needed to work for others for a period to pay their debts… Still, I never heard of or seen beggars in the Bastion Empire…

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‘What a messed up world…’

I was keeping things to myself and focusing on my own problems, so I didn’t know much about the problems of this world aside from wars and discrimination between the races. Still, what could I do? I didn’t even have the strength to protect myself. I couldn’t even dream of thinking of changing the world… I wasn’t naive enough to believe that I could do that in a world of magic, monsters, and countless countries.

While I was heading to the guild, for the first time in a long while, I wondered if there was any reason for me to be in that world… I didn’t know if even I truly died on Earth. I had read enough books and watched enough movies to think that my memories could have been just copied and transferred to this body for whatever reason.

‘Well, let’s not get existential all of a sudden…’

I arrived at the guild and then got inside… the place was quite warm thanks to a magic chimney in one of the sides of the hall. Not many people were there… aside from the receptionists handling paperwork, it looked like the adventurers here took their job seriously.

I checked the surroundings for any poster with my face… I had grown a bit in the last two years, but I was still recognizable. I didn’t find that or a quest with information about me either. Still, I couldn’t be careless… there was a chance that those in the guild received the quest to report about anyone calling themselves Regis.

I could start over as Clive, but I wasn’t planning to do that in this guild… it was better to do that once my face changes a bit more. The benefits of the guild could wait… the downside was that I couldn’t earn that much money, but it was fine since I had better uses for mana cores and the monster materials.

‘Hmm, I guess the rate here is five mana core points and Breeze coins per scale. Not bad… I could try to raise my rank here pretty fast as Clive instead of Regis. Should I try this?’

It was a hard call to make… I was no longer using a bow, so that would help me stay with my identity hidden, but my green eyes were a problem. I never saw anyone with green eyes as intense as in the Dawnshield family. Most people won’t immediately think of that family when they see my eyes, but after seeing that a bunch of times, and if I stood out, it was bound to happen.

I could get those quests even as a stone-rank adventurer.. perhaps I could just buy some sunglasses and hid my eyes, but I already had too many weird characteristics being presented to the world. Regardless, sunglasses weren’t a thing in that world, but glasses were… perhaps I could enchant one to make my eyes look from a different color. The enchantments made the items glow, after all.

‘Let’s write this down and then work on it once I develop this idea a bit more.’

It looked like I hadn’t planned things as perfectly as I had imagined. Still, I could learn from that. I left the guild without doing anything and then checked the shops in the area. There weren’t many, but they had some options since they were branches of the big ones in the city… the trip toward Ironcliff was three hours, but in that line of business, time was more valuable than money. Besides, time can decide if an adventurer will survive or die as well.

All of the things being sold there were enchanted or had runes on them… I even found an identification glasses. Guild receptionists used them. if I tried to pass the enchantment to another item, I could understand a bit how it worked, but it could fail and I would lose five aqua coins. The plus side was that I wouldn’t have to use mana when using those, it would only last a month, though.

Ordinary glasses weren’t sold there, but if I learned that enchantment, I could find another good source of income. I still preferred to make bows and similar weapons since they granted more experience, though.

‘It is an investment… let’s buy it.’

To earn money, sometimes, you have to spend money… I bought the glasses and then stored them in my magic bag. At that point in time, it was already late afternoon, so getting a job would be a waste of time. It would make me suspicious to register at that time as well.

The settlement had two inns, and fortunately, one of them had a single room free to be used. At the same time, I had a clear view of the guild and saw the adventures arriving there and then reporting their jobs.

‘That guy…’

The cloaked figure moved to the dungeon at that weird time and hid on the side of the building. It was a pretty weird time, for a beggar to head to the guild… adventurers were quite the rough bunch, after all. They aren’t that wise with money, so it was hard to imagine them being that generous.

In the end, the cloaked figure approached the adventurers while pointing their hands together toward them… the guy was really begging. It was hard to see from that distance, but they looked disgusted by that guy. I could even see the adventurers moving away and then spitting on the snow.

‘That reaction…’

No doubt about it… that guy was a mixed-race person. I wanted to sigh, but in the end, it wasn’t surprising. Even back on Earth, for a very long time, people couldn’t see others who were different eye to eye for the longest time. Sometimes, just being in another country was enough to hate them.

As if things weren’t bothersome enough, discrimination was something that most people did in the whole world… only the people in the kingdom of Talimor respected each other. That made me wonder why that guy didn’t head to that country then…