A job board, organized by difficulty. Thankfully, due to the organization, the thing was pretty easy to find jobs within our range, despite how absolutely full it was. Most of the jobs seemed new, too, not like they’d been sitting around for forever—a testament to just how full of adventurers this town really seemed to be.

“Okay,” I said, “we just need to find something quick to finish, so we can get money by tonight.”

“Monster elimination would probably be best, then. Nothing else that quick would pay well.”

“So, monster elimination, monster elimination…” I scanned over the board, looking for decent jobs. I could certainly find some that seemed safe and quick, but there was one problem. “How much is an eyt worth?”

“Yeah, pretty tough to figure out what to do when we have no idea what it actually pays.”

I looked over at the receptionist by the desk. “You think they could be of any help?”

We walked over to the front desk, keeping to the walls so as to not be forced to push through the crowd. The woman sitting there looked up when she saw us approach, her eyebrows rising when she saw our appearances, but she said nothing.

“Hey,” I said when we got to her, “do you have, like, an inn? Can we pay you money for rooms?”

She chuckled politely. “Yes, of course. Six hundred eyt for a night in a one-bed.”

I nodded. “Alright. And when we complete a job, we can get the reward immediately, correct?”

“Yes, just come to me with proof of completion, ideally. If you don’t have any, it’ll probably take a little longer to ensure you actually did it.” I saw her eyes glance over us—again, understandably, given my armor and Erani’s shadowy state. However, I noticed her eyes lingering on one spot in particular.

Erani coughed awkwardly as she, too, noticed the receptionist staring straight at her missing arm. The woman blinked and looked back up at us, obviously unsure whether to apologize verbally or just move on in the conversation.

I just wrapped my arm around Erani and pulled her close to me, so that her left arm was wedged between our bodies—unable to be attacked by wandering eyes. I was sure the receptionist didn’t mean harm, but still. “Got it. So, like, for an elimination job, we can just bring heads or something, right?”

Her eyes widened, looking at me like I’d said something wrong. What had I done? Hesitantly, she spoke, “...No, bringing a sack of bleeding monster heads into the guild lobby would probably not be a good idea. Perhaps something else? Teeth or horns, for instance, would work just fine.”

“Oh. Sure.”

“Are you looking for a job you can do to get a room for tonight?”

“Yeah, ideally something we can do fast. And I guess something that pays at least, like, two thousand, or something. With the room and then food and stuff, that’d get us this night and tomorrow, maybe. I mean, ideally we’d end up getting enough for a change of clothes, too, so maybe closer to three thousand. Shouldn’t be too hard, right?”

“Hm,” she frowned. “Finding something that pays that well would probably be quite difficult, in these parts. Lots of adventurers—lots of competition.”

“Yeah, but we’re two silver-degrees,” I gestured to Erani and myself. “Getting enough money for a few nights in an inn shouldn’t be much of an issue at all, even given the competition, right?”

She shrugged. “Even still. We get a good many individual adventurers coming out here looking for work, so even the work that’s rated for one or two silver-degrees is slim.” She pursed her lips. “Well, even if you can’t find any official jobs that pay that well, we always have the ongoing bounty for Gloomspurs.”

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“Oh? How much?”

“Thirty each. We typically ask for people to bring in the front left tooth as proof of killing, that way we can ensure there’s nobody taking two trophies from the same one.”

“Thirty?” I thought back to the cost of six hundred eyt for even a single night in a one-bed room. “That’s…not much, isn't it?”

“Definitely isn’t. But there are a lot of them out there, so as long as they don’t pose much of a personal threat to you, it wouldn’t take too long.”

“Well, like, how much really is thirty eyt?”

“Are you not from around here?”

“Yeah, we’re refugees.” I paused, realizing it would probably be better to not advertise the fact we were new arrivals—the Demons could let the empire know that we’d just now escaped to their borders, so telling people we’d just arrived would probably tip people off to our identities. “Been here a while, probably a week or so, but we haven’t had the chance to really try to integrate into society yet, so y’know…Anyway, like, what’s it worth?”

“Uh,” she glanced around, obviously trying to come up with an example, “if you went up to the bar asking for food, with thirty in hand, you could get…a piece of bread, I guess?”

I chuckled. “Killing monsters for bread crumbs. Great.”

“That’s what happens when you’re an individual, or even a pair,” the receptionist shrugged.

“Yeah, I guess.” I sighed, but then remembered something and frowned. “Wait, there was a board up there for people looking for party members. Could we put our names up?”

“Absolutely. Probably won’t get any takers in time for tonight, though. Normally takes at least a few days, maybe a week or two, before you get anyone. People normally only work with friends, or at least people they’re tangentially aware of. Not total strangers. But I can still put you up on the board.”

I shrugged. “Couldn’t hurt.”

“Great. I’ll make some of them just with the default templating, unless you had anything in mind for a specific design in how you want your request posters to look.”

I glanced over at Erani, who shook her head in a sign of indifference. “Yeah, whatever works. You probably know best about what gets people’s attention more than we do.”

“Great. It’s best to put your exact Levels and Classes on there, plus some basic info on your builds, personality, history, who you work best with, that sort of thing. So if you want to give me whatever you think is most fitting, that’ll work.”

“Uhh…” I glanced over at Erani again, then looked back to the receptionist. “Just say…two Magic-Types, is fine.”

“No more info on your Classes or builds?”

“Nah. Probably not that important, right?”

She sighed and shook her head. “You won’t get any takers like that, but sure. I’ll just put down what I already know about you two.”

“Yeah. That’s fine.”

She nodded. “Well, if that’s all you need, there’s kind of a line, so…”

I looked back and saw a group of people impatiently waiting on us. “Oh, right. Yeah. Sorry. We’ll get out of your way.”

With that, we hurriedly walked off.

“Gods,” I muttered to Erani, “I’ve gotta get used to all of this again. Feels so weird to just be…back.”

“You and me both,” she nodded. “Maybe it's the looks I’m getting from everyone because of Distortion Strike, but I feel so on-edge around all these people. Can’t keep them all in my vision at the same time.”

“Yeah, well. Guess we’re just gonna have to tough it out.”

“At least we can get back out of the walls now. I’m worried about Ainash.”

“Yeah, it’s only been, what, half an hour? Not even that? But I still feel uneasy not having her with us.”

“Well let's head out, then. If we’re only getting thirty eyt per Gloomspur killed, then it’ll take a good bit of killing to get a night’s rest.”

“Yeah,” I shook my head. “Twenty killed monsters for a single room feels criminal.”

She laughed. “Maybe turning to a life of crime wasn’t so bad an idea.”

“We should probably try to at least wait one day before we resort to that, I think.”

“Perhaps.”

“Okay, well let’s get out of here. It’s stuffy and loud. I want to hurry up and get back in our element. Killing shit in the middle of nowhere.”

“Y’know, when you put it like that, it kind of makes me worried about us.”

“Nah. Not a bad thing to have a set of skills.”

“A set of skills,” Erani laughed again. “I guess you could call it that.”