*snore*

*Thud*

“Gah!”

Cathy had picked up a shoe from somewhere and thrown it at Hugh, waking him up with a jolt and making him fall off of the sofa he was laying on.

“What was that for Catherine?!” Hugh stand up from the floor and points at Cathy while shouting.

“That was for sleeping on the job after you left the booth saying you had ‘important business’ to attend to!”

“Sleeping when needed IS important!”

At this point they’re both pointing at one another while accusing eachother of various things.

I decide to simply sit on the sofa and wait for them to finish their, *cough*, “argument”.

However when I start walking towards it Cathy turns towards me, seemingly only now remembering that she brought me with her.

“All of that’s besides the point! I came here with important news!”

“Important enough to wake me up?!”

At this point I could no longer feel any general “proper member of society” vibes coming from Hugh any more, instead I know thought he was uncannily similar to Lizz.

“Yes it’s important enough for that!”

“Well?! Out with it!”

She then face...paws? She then facepaws with her right paw while grumbling something that I couldn’t quite catch.

“This guy says he can talk to spirits.”

“Dead people or alcohol?”

“...”

“Gah!”

Lizz then threw another shoe at him, now letting me see that she picked both this one and the previous one up from right next to the door we entered through.

“Spirits of the mountain you dolt!”

Hugh then decides to point at me rather than Cathy and continues.

“I’ve been trying to do that for years! Like hell those stupid rocks would suddenly choose someone like him!”

‘Ah. Now he really reminds me of you Lizz.’

“Like I said! He says that he can talk to them, only way to find out for real is to take him there!”

*creak*

“You guys might wanna stop shouting, you can be heard clear as day below.”

*creak*

Rico had suddenly opened the door and poked in his head while telling both Hugh and Cathy to be more moderate with their volume and then leaving.

“Ah...”

“Erm…”

“”...””

“So… What are we going to do, oh great guild master?” Asks Cathy, the second half of her question drenched in sarcasm.

“Well, like you said the only way to find out if he’s telling the truth or not is to bring him to them, you alright with that little guy?”

Wait what? Sorry, with how you guys were shouting at each other I stopped paying attention.

*sigh* “Fair enough, we decided that the only way to find out if you really can talk to spirits is to bring you to them.

Oh. Okay, sure, but when?

“Well as soon as possible preferably, however I’ll be busy the day after tomorrow so either today, tomorrow or after the day after tomorrow.” Says Hugh.

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“What about you Cathy, any days you’re unable to come along?”

Well since rico seems to have taken over in the booth I’m available today, but tomorrow I’ll most likely have to take over Rico’s shift to make up for it.”

“So that means either today or in three days, what about you then Plush, anything keeping us from going right now?”

Can’t say there is, I was thinking of maybe sightseeing a bit in the town since I’ve been here for… about five days I think? But that can wait until tomorrow.

“Alright, though we will need to gather our things first. Let’s meet in the storage room once we’re done.” Says Hugh

Storage room?

“The place where we pushed the bookshelf in front of rico’s booth.” Explains Cathy.

Okay, see you guys there then.

I exit the room, the door making a *creak* like when we entered, and make my way to the storage room.

Once I get there I simply sit down in one of the corners and start practicing Solidification again.

Remembering how much easier it was to make the small orange glow stick to my palm when I first used it rather than when I tried to make a detached pole I tried to cover my entire hand in it.

Turns out, it really is a lot easier to do it this way, I now had an orange glow on my hands which extended outwards at my claws, practically doubling the length of my claws, as well as actually being sharp unlike when I tried to make a sharp point on the water bat I used against the goblins. In fact it left scratch marks on the walls when I applied a very small amount of force.

“What’s that?”

‘Fuck.’

Erm.. an upgrade to Hunting Claws?

I try to bullshit my way out of Cathy’s question when she arrives before I can dispel Solidification.

“Oh? Longer range is it… That does sound goo-”

“I am here! Let’s go!”

However before Cathy can finish Hugh bursts through the door while yelling excitedly.

Alright.

I get up and walk towards the door, now seeing the getup that each of them has.

Hugh is wearing a large metal gauntlet on his left arm going all the way up to his shoulder and a broadsword on his waist. Attached to the gauntlet is a very small shield, no wider than the rest of the gauntlet, however it looks to be made of a different material than the rest of the gauntlet.

Cathy on the other hand was wearing leather shoulder bags, one on each side, making the straps of the bags form an ‘X’ over her torso as well as a belt around her waist with a multitude of small leather pouches on it. One of the straps covering her torso had multiple cylindrical objects stuck to it, making it look almost like those machine gun ammo things, however what would’ve been bullets were much longer and they were each a different color, and they don’t actually seem to be attached to the strap in any way, they look more like they’re attached by magnets or something.

As we exit through the guild’s front door both me and Cathy walk underneath it while I can see Hugh grinning from ear to ear.

‘Guess that’s why he doesn’t want to get new doors.’

We then proceed to walk along the same main road that leads towards the inn, and due to Hugh being with us I don’t have to worry about being stepped on, everyone else just sorta avoids him, and in turn us since we’re next to him.

*tap* *tap*

I can understand how Hugh fights with him wearing a sword, gauntlet and shield, but what about you?

“I use magic.” She says and taps one of her claws on the sticks stuck to her bags strap.

How? I don’t know a whole lot about it.

“Well it’s hard to explain, but the easiest way of explaining it is that I channel the same type of energy as we use to use skills into the wand and then magic happens.”

You channel the same energy into it? Is it any different from a normal skill then? Would anyone be able to use magic if they had a wand? And why do you have so many then?

“Slow down a bit, yes, it’s different from normal skills, the only skill needed to use magic is a skill that lets you control the energy, there’s lots of those so it’s fairly common, and as long as you have on of those skills you can use a wand. The reason I have so many is that they’re each attuned to a different spell, technically you can use any spell with any wand, however it becomes much easier to use it with a wand meant for that spell, I have more at the guild but these are my favorites.”

Huh… What’s in the pouches?

“These.”

She then opens some of the pouches on her belt, letting me see small jelly cubes in them, differently colored for each pouch.

These are?

For a moment she seems very surprised by my question, however she soon recovers.

“Right, you only came to a city a few days ago, o wonder you don’t know. Well, you might have seen small glass vials of brightly colored liquid, right?”

‘Now that she mentions it, I do remember seeing some of those in the shop run by that lizard guy.’

Yeah?

“Well those are potions, they’re made by alchemists and can help you recover from injuries, restore energy, or temporarily make you stronger.”

She then looks for me, seemingly wondering whether I understood.

Alright.

“Well not too long ago some adventurer decided that they were tired of how fragile the glass bottles were and started experimenting and trying to make it better. Eventually he got tired of failure after failure when he was using normal means and instead decided to try something new and different, he threw a slime core into a cauldron of healing potion, and out came a red slime made entirely of said potion.”

But don’t slimes just turn back to liquid after you remove the core from it? I don’t see any cores inside those small cubes.

“Normal slimes do turn back to liquid, and so did this new red one as well, so the man then tried grinding the core to dust and mixing it with the potion while it was being brewed rather than afterwards, this time a slime didn’t jump out of his cauldron, but instead the liquid became like these cubes and had to be dug out of the cauldron using a shovel.”

Okay, sounds useful, is that why slime cores give so much of a bigger rewards than goblin ears?

“Yup. But there’s also the fact that slimes are just so much stronger than goblins.”

Well what do each of them do?

"This red one makes the body heal faster, the blue one restore energy, the yellow one makes your skin hard as leather armor, letting you withsand blows easier, and this green one makes your muscles stronger, making you hit harder as well as move faster."

And the purple one?

"These?" She says as she eats one of the purple jellies.

"These taste good."