Early the next morning, I left the sweet woman a note with the embellished words her dead husband wished me to tell her. The husband wasn’t all that loving or tender with his last words.

And now the guilt was getting to me. I sat in the guild’s bar sipping on some coffee and trying to reorient into work-mode. Around this time, the woman would be waking up and reading the goodbye letter, and she would cry.

Damn this body. Why were my kind made this way?

However I will do what I need to; I still have to find my family. They had saved me, given me a chance to create a life among the humans, and I have finally earned enough skills to rescue them.

Somehow.

But first I need money and status.

I looked at the sheet of paper on the table in front of me. I had just accepted this request to subjugate some orcs at a farming town not too far from Alesdale, the town I have been living in for the past several months.

The black-haired receptionist gave me a strange look when I made to accept this request, probably because I had yet to take a request more difficult than herb gathering and weak monster subjugations. Goblins, slimes, and wild dogs kind of monsters. Well, the reason why I didn’t take on more difficulties despite being able to was so I could situate myself in the city and the adventurer’s guild.

I had gained a rather unlikable nickname for it too: Career Rookie.

I wasn’t exactly being bullied yet, but I think that is only because I was not presenting a financial competition to those mid-rank adventurers who’d given me the name. Emphasis on the 'yet.'

They’ll surely be antagonistic when I become the “Local Hero”: my solution to get enough prestige to come into contact with the wealthy merchants and nobles. A well-known adventurer with a solid track record is favored and preferred by the wealthy for whatever work needed done without having to account for responsibility on their part (like contracts and injury compensation).

After all, adventurers were that sort of lot—cheap, no consequence labor—a fact that causes quite a few adventurers to be perceived as unruly ruffians.

The perception isn’t always wrong.

I downed the last of my coffee and confirmed I had enough supplies for the trip. It would be late in the evening by the time I make it to the town by walking.

…

White Creek was less a town and more a village of several large farms that circled the local inn, bar, and townhouse. Cut out of the forest nestled against the mountain region, which stretched across the northwestern edge of the country, the town specialized in timber and wheat farming. Its fields of white-gold stretched for miles.

I made my way along the dusty road surrounded by endless rows of wheat. Just when I was feeling trepidation at the endless, unchanging journey, I finally spotted wooden buildings in the distance.

Frankly, my meeting with the town head was brief. With more detail, the man had little faith that I would be able to solve his orc problem, and was probably already sending someone to Alesdale to request different adventurers—likely a party of adventurers.

Whatever, I was capable of taking care of orcs. As long as there wasn’t a huge community of orcs with a chief, my practiced skills were enough.

“Could I get a room for three days and nights please,” I asked the middle-aged woman who manned the only inn in town.

I liked how she was professional and straight to the point, unlike that balding town head.

“It will be three silvers, dinner included. If you want water served to your room it will cost another half silver each.”

I handed over five silvers.

“Is it possible to get breakfast also?”

She answered in affirmative and handed me a small brass key, with a ‘2-3’ written on the attached tag.

“Your room is upstairs, third door on the right. Dinner is being served now if you want it. I’ll let the cook know you want breakfast. It will be made when the sun comes up, and I’ll have your water in the hour.”

“Thank you.”

The room was much like the one I rent in Alesdale. A bed was up against the window overlooking the fields of wheat, which were dusted auburn in the evening sun. A wooden chair was pushed under a matching small desk, and a stool sat beside a square dresser. The dresser itself had a brass lock, opened, with the key still inserted.

A thoughtful addition to deter theft.

Fortunately, I had gotten into the habit of sleeping with my most precious possessions: Mother’s dagger, my recently purchased sword, and the pendant that had been passed down through the patriarchal lineage of my family.

The night moved rather slowly for being in a different town, a new environment, and I enjoyed the plain, but flavorful, meal and warm wipe-down that constituted my shower.

[~850wds]