A now familiar ceiling greeted me as I opened my eyes, and I somehow feel amazed to not hear S’s voice immediately upon awakening..

Still groggy, I continued to lie on the hard wooden floor as I fought my heavy eyes by intaking the surrounding noise; most being the unadulterated noise of indistinguishable conversations from people on the bustling streets below my window.

Eventually, enough incoherent noise let me win against my tiredness and I rose to my feet. I next headed through one of four rooms leading out of the simplistic room to start running a bath, using this to remove the final remnants of my mental stress from the last few days wash away; rotating two enchanted stones at the head of the bath which let water of both hot and cold, mix together in the tub. During which, I rummage through a wardrobe in my room in search of a change in clothes. Although as long as I had one of each clothing type, any choice would look nearly identical; therefore the process didn’t take long.

As I have my bath, I watched the sky out of the window; locating the sun- now overhead- swiftly. A small smile came to my face as I realize how lucky I am to have such a place to live in, which continued throughout as I eventually washed my body and left to dry up and get dressed.

-

Upon getting dressed, I left the room and headed downstairs to the dining room as a voice interrupts me.

A subtle, succinct voice behind me said, “Mind helping?” Causing me to turn around to nod to whoever asked.

Grey stood there, carrying ten-odd shieved swords in his outstretched arms. Making them vanish into my storage, he sighed of relief before beckoning me to the storage in front the foyer connecting the place with his workshop and Helen’s; where swords covered most of the visible shelves, likely with at least one other hidden behind each visible sword.

“How many do you wish me to bring?” I asked, wishfully assuming that it would be moronic to sell all the over one-hundred such swords at the same time.

“Just those,” he answered, pointing to a shelf on the left with about twenty in all. All of which promptly entered my storage.

Hunting through his various wares once more, he hands me three more swords. One of which being the sword we found in the chest, which although I could tell was the same sword, seemed changed in a couple ways.

After telling me to wait in the foyer, Grey went into Helen’s workshop. I couldn’t hear anything for the duration, but as it took a couple minutes until returning with Helen and Serv, I could tell something had happened. As I didn’t care, I took the bags Serv was carrying, which she doesn’t even acknowledge, and leave with all three of them.

When we leave the main building into the front garden, I get interrupted. And even though Helen and Grey take a while to notice me stopping, Serv, somehow, stopped immediately with me and snapped to face whoever stopped us.

‘Hey Sam...’ S said from who knows where. It takes me almost a full rotation for me to see her waving towards me. Unlike before however, when she had minimal if any chainmail armour, she was wearing full-plate and was training her swordplay against another skeleton- this one wearing leather and using a bastard sword and knife against her.

Although this other skeleton looked battered, it still had some life in it and made the occasional strike whilst S continued to talk to me, halfheartedly fighting back herself.

‘So Sam, you’re going with those three, right?’ Waiting until she wasn’t focused on parrying, I nodded in response to which she informed me, ‘It’s fine, can you drop off the remaining royal slime bottle here though? We’re going to report that quest in whilst you do your selling, maybe grabbing a quest as we do it.’

As I did as she said, she swiftly stepped to the left as the skeleton lunged into where she was. Then, in one hit, she swung her blade- this time a weirdly curved blade instead of her normal, plain greatsword- at its neck, decapitating it with only an impact wound.

Once it’s skull clunk to the ground, she came next to me to receive the jar, nodded, and went back inside.

A minute later, everyone- par Jessica- stood next to Jacq’s carriage, went in and headed off. The ride went smoothly, but uneventfully as I nodded off onto S’s shoulders.

-

Eventually woken by S’s yelling, me, Helen, Grey and Serv left first, dropped off before a wider, shorter and overall more classy looking building than the guild hall; the others heading off a bit further to the tall building we could see even from here. Without time for more sightseeing, we headed in with both Serv and Grey leading Helen by her hands, as she mainly yawned with a drooping tail as if she was about to pass-out like me.

Inside, similar to the guild hall, the first floor has a room mainly designated to people waiting for a counter, and a lot of people doing so. Furthermore, there were papers spread amongst the wall. But unlike the guild hall which was filled with quirky adventurers, this, the merchant’s hall, was filled with mostly mildly dressed folk which made me blend in well. Additionally, the walls were separated by domain, on which the papers indicated the ‘needed’ items worth temporarily extra. The counters were also split by domain, having counters designated to: ‘crafters’, ‘smiths’, ‘farmers’ and ‘others’.

As we didn’t care to split, we ended up queuing in ‘others’ instead of either the two Grey and Helen should’ve went to. A benefit of this, however, was that this queue was extremely short. So we reached the counter in half the time we likely should have.

“Greetings. First time here? Please fill in the form and hand over the relevant ID.” the female half-elf clerk explained succinctly in a peppy tone, not giving any of us a chance to even answer her question before shoving the said form in grey’s face.

Stolen story; please report.

Only Helen and Grey hand over their IDs, and meanwhile- handed off by Grey- Serv filled in the form asking an occasional question to him before handing it back.

Taking a minute to read it, she leaves the counter from a door behind her. Grey uses the time to double check the boards under ‘Crafting specials’- making small notes in a small booklet he had in his pocket before returning. He then hands it to Serv, who whispers the contents in Helen’s ears, as her ears perk up slightly.

A while later the clerk finally returns, handing us both our form- which now had a blue stamp on- and a small slip of paper which had a floor and room number listed on it. Then sends us off after vaguely pointing out the directions to where it was.

It takes some time to get there, but relatively soon- for three stories- we reach the room, which we immediately enter. Upon doing so, there was a female full-elf- having full, pointy ears jutting out of her otherwise perfectly straight hair- on the other side of a table.

Serv- having it in her possession- places the form and slip of paper on the table, which the elf promptly plucked from the table before scowling over both; setting the slip aflame after she was done.

Having done so, she turns to the door we came from and left after explaining, “So, I have to call out both a specialist in crafting and smithing. So if you can sit down and wait for a while, I will return as quickly as possible.”

Not really caring for the conversation about what they made between Serv, Helen and Grey, I remain silent and space out reading the random guideline posters propped up on most of the walls. Most being about potions and alchemy, although bits were on furs, ropes and other miscellaneous items.

Reading them for the nth time, I was alerted to the door finally opening again. In came three people including the elf from before and two new people. With one male and one female dwarf making up the ‘specialists’.

“I am Ixora, your generalist for today. Here are Nabul Alebreaker and Yosselin Shadowflayer, your crafting and smithing specialists respectfully. For now, please place your crafting goods on the table for Nabul to judge.”

I appeased their request, bringing out the bag I took from Serv onto the table. Although rather than the bag, they first are audibly and visually shocked at how I do that…

Their amazement clears, and Nabul, the Male dwarf with help from Ixora, take out: firstly, fifteen bottles filled with a blue liquid and four with a golden liquid. Next, six red-spotted black, deflex-reflex bows with golden threads acting as the bowstring and small slime-cores each of the bow’s sides. After that, two two-metre red-spotted black staves, each encrusted with a fully intact medium slime core, and finally the remaining slime cores. This notably not including the fully intact royal slime core, eighteen small cores and six medium cores. All of which came out of the mighty bag Serv didn’t even react to suddenly vanishing from her grasp earlier.

Clearly underestimating how much a newby guild had to sell, Ixora fainted and the other two remained space out with gaping maws.

Given a couple minutes they snapped out of it, with Nabul starting to count. Half-way through the elf woke up, joining in. Using swaths of paper to keep a running total and every now and then scratching their heads due to how many calculations they had to do...

Panting, they eventually reach a verdict on the Helen’s stuff, “Okay… For all of this so far, I would suggest the sum of sixty two gold and fifty silver… Now then, please produce your smithing goods for Yosselin to examine.”

Obliging, I do as such. Showing off the twenty-two red bladed, red-spotted black handled swords which ranged from seven small bastard swords, three greatswords, six cutlasses, and six quirky curved swords- which although seeming like cutlasses, curved multiple times. On the hilts all of these had medium-sized slime cores in their handles. They all had the same insignia under their cores, this being a simple picture which looked like a tail wagging and the initial ‘G’ in the middle of it. Finally is a bluish-grey bastard sword with a leather hilt, being the sword we found in the cave.

This time all three go down for the count before I’m halfway done, and unlike last time, it took what feels like an hour for them to regain consciousness.

“How did you get so much dragon bone!?” Nabul yelled, waking up Yosselin in the process.

“Our other half found a wild, red dragon on their way to get slime cores, so we just used their resources,” Grey subtly explained, which thankfully seemed to sate the dwarf’s curiosity.

In silence, Yosselin goes to work, using the same paper Nabul used to do her calculations.

“I can give you one platinum and ten gold for this… Giving you a final total of one platinum, seventy-two gold and fifty silver… with taxes, that leaves you with one platinum, thirty-two gold and fifty silver.” the dwarven smithing specialist mumbles, letting Ixora take over.

“Do you understand how much that is? That one payment means you are currently in the top one-hundred guilds in the country in terms of finance… And your guild is six days old! I know it’s only april, but come on! How can you be so apathetic with that much money lying around?!”

Us all shrugging at this news caused Ixora and the dwarves to simply give up trying, instead mumbling to themselves. Then, after telling us to stay put, the three left the room through an entrance hidden behind a bookcase- returning after another few minutes of awkward silence with the money.

After counting and confirming the amount, Grey- followed by the others- demanded I store the contents in my storage. Unanimously agreeing that carrying such an amount of money on-hand was simply stupid.

Finally, with the three onlooking with bemusedly staring eyes, we left money in tow.

-

Although the plan had been to have the others meet up with us here, S and the other three were nowhere to be seen. So, after waiting for another few minutes in an awkward break, we headed off on foot.

We had been in there for hours, and so even though the sun had been around central- approximately two-ish PM- sunset was now approaching as a thick crimson dominated the cloudless to-be night.

For the sake of time, we ended up taking the occasional back-alley in tandem with the main streets as miniature short-cuts. Eventually getting from the shopping district to the more run-down outskirts between it and the base made by the goddess. Apparently sketchy enough to warrant the need of a half-hour detour around it when arriving by carriage.

As evidence of that, a couple streets in we were accosted by a group, who demanded, “Give us everything, or die.”

Replying to our blatant apathy in standing there, five or so more people stood from each of the paths offshooting from where we were; all brandishing their weapons which ranged from simplistic clubs to rather neat-looking swords. With one person wielding a club next to me, I subtly summon a small hand-crossbow and shoot downwards.

With the wielder’s shriek, a bolt magically appeared in their wrist. And seconds later their weapon fell behind them with a metallic thud. Then more shrieks in anguish followed, which felt odd as I didn’t fire anything else.

Turning around I found the cause, Serv, who was literally unfazed by the bandit’s feeble, desperate attacks was punching them. Each landing and shattering their leather- or even steel-plate- armour in such a cluttered melee that it felt absurd. Additionally, using a mace he for some reason had on him, Grey also joined in the fight and showed a similar contempt for those he hit.

With the person I fought the least maimed, we continued on with nought a word. Reaching the our building without so much as a casual glance back.