Quest completed! All pizzas delivered!

Aurias OP Pizza Delivery stat boosts fizzled out with a few faint, scattering sparks of light and a quiet, defeated 'psssht'.

Curious, she eyed through the little bag of miniatures. They were mostly Minotaur units, unpainted metallic things, plentifuls and commons, but a quick [Inspect] revealed they were triple-star quality, which was as high as commons would go. That was nice. She pulled one of them up.

[Unfinished Minotaur miniature. Dungeon make. Rarity: Plentiful. Quality: ***

Minotaur society is a violent meritocracy. Warherds of thousands of individuals fight against each other for supremacy among their kind, and can move great distances quickly if given open terrain. Their ranks shift with each victory and defeat, with the losers joining the winning warherd and starting anew in their quest to reach the top of the hierarchy. An adventurer should always be wary of a warherd as all minotaurs are aggressive, but they are rarely interested in open conflict with other races. The bigger threat are the smaller groups of 2-10 individuals who seek levels and violence on easier battlefields. This unit gains a small boost to movement speed and stamina when deployed with 4 other Minotaurs or more. Benefits from Minotaurean Leadership skills.]

She took out another one.

[Unfinished Mono-taur miniature. Dungeon loot. Rarity: Common. Quality: ***

Mono-taurs are solitary loners who have left their warherd to pursue strength. Mono-taurs have historically been rare, but their numbers surged in recent years after a particular warherd general was introduced to power-fantasy lightnovels. Great solitary hardship did not phase the over-powerd protagonist of "I alone became OP with a basic tactic that should've been blatantly obvious to everyone and then I became God". Neither does it phase the Mono-taur. Mono-taur units are immune to all buffs and de-buffs from other minotaurs, including Leadership skills.]

The descriptions hadn't changed from the last batch, and Auria smiled at all the warherd bullshit that SHE DIDN'T HAVE TO DEAL WITH. Joy. She decided to have minotaur pizza for dinner because eff those masochistic testo cows. With no more work to be done here, she put the miniatures in the bag, stashed the bags in a pocket, and started jogging back through the roadless forest. It was fairly dark now and she couldn't see as well as she had until now since she wasn't delivering pizza anymore, but getting lost was hard when the right way was simply downhill. It took her a few minutes to reach the edge of the forest where the fields opened up and the town walls of Armindale stretched out. The walls enclosed the town proper, with the great dark cliff that housed the dungeon entrance rising from the center like an evil-looking, jagged monolith. Guild raid season was almost upon them and so tents were pitched on the fields in great numbers outside the town gates, belonging to the adventurers, merchants and craftsmen hoping to make a buck. Dire-goats pulled wagons full of supplies and dungeon loot through muddy wheel tracks, and lanterns and fires turned the low-hanging smog of the noisy workshops dirty orange.

It all smelled worse than a warherd.

Good thing she wasn't staying. She moved through the motley crowds to the goat station and spent a few moments waiting in line in front of the counter until it was her turn. She could run on foot back home the way she came, but without those Pizza Delivery stat boosts, getting a ride was both quicker and more comfortable.

"One ticket to Applevale." she said, sliding a coin over the counter. "And a newspaper."

She got both and skimmed the newspaper pages while strolling to the third platform of the goat station. [All the big names you must know of the Eastern regions upcoming Raid season!], [Everything that's known about the trade deal between the Crown and the Anvil], [Crown crack-down on dungeon cores may lead to material rationing, Adventurers Guild warns] [The Crowns missing herd of übergoats spotted in the North - goats confirmed stolen by terrorists]...

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.... and then, as the goat-drawn train appeard on the track and approached platform 3, an article made her pause. The temple of Luen was holding some sort of flashy prophecy reveal.. in the Capital... oh yes look at this, during the final market day. Eugh. Everyone and their porters were going to the capital market to stock up for the raids. Aurias party too. It was already gonna be crowded as hell, and now they'd get a flood of pilgrims? Lily was definitely gonna be interested in whatever 'holy prophecy' they were spray-painting the metaphorical porcelain bowl with this time. This pretty much meant they were staying 'till the end of the market, then. Ah well, she could always-

- and then she slightly bumped her shoulder into someone on the platform.

"How dare you bump into me, peasant!?" said a voice so haughty that it would put to shame some of the First Vampire nobles that Auria had met in her days. She non-plussedly looked up over the edge of her newspaper, at the face of a tall and well-groomed young man who looked down on her along the ridge of his nose, looking like she's just kicked the mother of his puppy. A strict-looking knight stood slightly behind him. "You have gotten my overcoat dirty! I DEMAND that you pay for a new one!"

Auria lowered the newspaper slightly and looked at his coat. "Looks squeaky clean to me."

"It's not about what you can SEE, peasant! You've gotten PEASANT BACTERIA on it! As the young master of the house of Eldergriffin, I demand compensation for this slight upon my honor!!"

"Yeah well, nobles are usually taught basic manners, just saying. I wouldn't mess with the Eldergriffin if I were you." Auria said and returned to leafing through the newspaper. "You know what they do with scammers who impersonate them, right? Like, there are other houses more lenient about stuff like this. Why be a moron about it."

"... a scammer!? PEASANT, HOW DARE YO-"

"Am I a bird?"

".. what?"

"A pheasant is a ground-dwelling bird. I am a lot of things. Didn't know I was a bird, though." Auria muttered, turning the page and passing the young 'Eldergriffin' to get to the train cart. "Oooooh. A dungeon loot auction market..." she muttered as she boarded.

"Charles!" the young man shouted, and the knight at his side stood at attention. "In the name of the ancient and forever unblemished honor of my house, MURDER THIS MINOR IN COLD BLOOD IN BROAD DAYLIGHT!" he shouted imperially, causing half the platform to turn their heads, murmur, and wisely decide to inch away.

"But, young master Edmund-" said Charles.

"She has insulted the Eldergriffin marquise house!"

"You're an insult to the Eldergriffin marquise house...." Auria murmured and ignored them. The cart would start moving soon and she wouldn't have to see this batshit insane guy anymore. Like, wow. What the heeeeeeell.

"Young master, your parents wouldn't appro-"

"I AM YOUR LAW!!"

"... I want a raise." the knight, Charles, sighed in drawn-out regret as the whistle blew and the dire goats pulling the carts to Applevale bleated in unison. As the animals took off, and the cart started moving, slowly at first and then faster and faster, knight guy made up his mind and held on to the outside of the moving cart. He grabbed the door handle and tried to open it, but Auria on to the handle on the other side and kept it shut. The door had a window though, and the knight didn't give up.

"Look miss, I know this doesn't look good, 'cause it really kind of ain't-" he winced, and Auria threw her newspaper at him. It splatted across his face. "- but this doesn't have to be a bad deal for you. I'll just bring you in and let his parents judge the case. The Marquis and Marquess won't stand for this kind of outrageous thing, they'll set you up with a nice hotel room, a carriage home in the morning-" he said and pulled the newspaper off his face, "- and then you get to make a fuss and demand compensation for their sons misbehavior. You can leave unharmed with a commoners yearly salary in your pockets -"

"You're the most dedicated scammers I've ever met, I'll give you that, but I make more than that every Raid season so nah."

"..... wait, you what?" Charles said, his eyes opening wide as he contemplated the severity of his potential fuck-up.

Auria took that opportunity to jank the door hard, opening it inwards. The knight lost his footing with a yell, fell into the cart, and then out of it as Auria buried her heel in his solar plexus and kicked him out into the night, accompanied with an undignified 'oof' sound that quickly quieted as the dire goats pulled the train along down the tracks at a high speed.

"What a pair of morons." she mumbled and regretted the loss the newspaper she hadn't finished reading. Ah well. The Eldergriffins would probably deal with them sooner or later and their heads be placed on the spikes of their garden fence. They were kinda serious about offenses like that. She took a seat in the otherwise empty cart and leaned back until her station, eyes closed, and thought about minotaur pizza toppings.