Step four: pretend step three never happened.

I pulled the hood of my cloak over my head as I stepped through the doorway and reentered the lively ground floor of The Roach and Rat. I didn’t want to run into Alice just yet, not until I had some time to compose myself and figure out what I was going to do after… that. I scanned the guild’s interior as discreetly as I could from the entrance, but my former party member was nowhere to be found.

And my ‘disguise’ didn’t do anything to stop the clerk from spotting me.

“Welcome to The Roach and Rat!” Pascal greeted cheerfully.

A sudden wave of déjà vu washed over me as I turned to face him, the unremarkably average man doing a double take the instant he recognized me.

This is kind of awkward… “Hello, have you seen Alice around?” I asked.

He nervously scratched his head. “I’m afraid you just missed her again today,” he said. “She hurried out a little while ago.”

I really hoped she didn’t leave just to go out looking for me…!

“But since you’re here,” he quickly continued, “the guild mast—I mean, there is someone who wishes to speak with you.”

At first I had no idea who he could possibly mean, and I still had no idea when Pascal pointed out an unfamiliar figure seated near the front desk. A tall girl wearing a polished form-fitting breastplate and leg armor was sitting at a table all by herself, a redhead with her long hair tied in a ponytail that bobbed and bounced with her whole body from how hard she was tapping her boot on the floor. When our eyes met, she shot up out of her chair and approached me.

“Hey, you!” her strong voice rang out. “Are you the new girl in town I’ve been hearing about?”

That did not sound right. “Only good things I hope?”

“This is serious!” she replied in a matching tone. “You could be in real danger here!”

I gulped. “Okay, so, if I was her… what kind of danger are we talking about?”

The tall girl paused to take a much needed sigh of relief. “Oh, thank God I got to you in time. This is critical info for newbies, so listen up: there’s a certain nobleman in this city that you need to watch out for. His name is Ciedrich von Brauer. Whenever the Gate lights up the sky and a new Outworlder comes through, he… You’ve already met him, haven’t you?”

There was no way I could have hidden the look on my face. “Uh, yeah, you could say that.”

I gave a start as she reached forward and grabbed my shoulders. “What happened? Are you—”

“N-No, it’s fine, really. He… won’t be bothering anyone anymore.”

Her mouth hung open as she processed that for a silent moment. “Is he dead?”

“…Well, I mean, you know, kind of? Just a little bit?”

Slowly, her eyes widened in amazement—until all at once she wrapped her arms around me in a heavy embrace. “Oh, that is the best news I’ve heard in my life!” she cheered, lifting me up with her hug.

“H-Hey!” I yelped as I felt my feet leave the floor and my breasts squish against hard… breastplate.

She quickly set me down, blushing and rubbing her neck. “My bad! I just never thought I would see this day, you know?”

This could be rather inconvenient… “Look, I really don’t want you to get the wrong idea about th—”

“It’s alright, say no more!” she replied with a big, beaming smile that made me doubt the former. “If I had a good chance, I would have run him through myself! But enough about that. You hungry? I’ll get you anything you want, on the house!”

***

My head was still doing somersaults from that sudden whirlwind of events, even after I finished eating my free lunch and my armored female host sat down across the table from me.

“Sorry about that super intense intro,” she said with another anxious hand on her neck. “I was sweating bullets since this is the first time I’ve been out of town when a new arrival showed up. By the way, I’m Titania the freelancer, at your service!” She hoisted a towering metal lance at her side and brought it down with a thud. “Get it?”

She’s a lance knight with a… curious sense of humor? Well, she definitely looked like she could handle herself in a fight.

“Yeah, good one,” I offered. “And I’m… Beryl. Just Beryl, I guess.”

As much as I wanted to go for a walk and clear my head a bit, I couldn’t think of any better long-term plan at the moment than to keep this going and try getting more intel out of my new acquaintance.

“If you don’t mind me asking,” I continued, “do you own this place?”

“Sure do!” Titania smiled, setting down her lance against the table. “It’s only been a month or so, but I like to think that if there was a leaderboard, I’d probably be at the top for speedrunning ‘achieve the rank of guild master’ among us Earthers.”

“You’re really from Earth too?!” I blurted out. “I-I mean, I’ve only met a few others like us before here, and they were kind of…”

I looked around for that group of elitist roleplayer girls I ran into yesterday, but fortunately they were nowhere to be found.

“Yeah, some people can get pretty uptight,” she said. “You know how it is, especially with that huge bounty on the Demon King. Most people I’ve met in the last couple years have been alright, though!”

She’s been in this world for two years already? If everyone was at least eighteen when they arrived, then… Wow, I wouldn’t have guessed she was twenty…

“That makes me your upperclassman here, right?” Titania winked.

“Fair enough,” I agreed, “but don’t expect me to call you ‘senpai.’”

“Oh, I think the two of us are going to do just fine! Hey, it’s been a while; you want to be the next one to hear my story?”

Before I could answer, Titania began rattling off details of her ‘incredible journey’ in the world of Gadea that started with some surprisingly relatable circumstances. Back when she first arrived, there were far too many other newbie warriors aspiring for greatness, which made her adventuring opportunities virtually nonexistent as someone without any real gear. As a result, she ended up signing on with the Miners' Guild for one year of mining mana crystals until she could afford a basic weapon and set of armor.

Even that wasn’t good enough, however; she tried running with a few different parties, but never stuck around with them for more than one quest or bounty for some reason she didn’t want to elaborate on. After a few more gear upgrades, Titania was ultimately able to prove her worth to a different guild that let her take ‘party quests’ all by herself, which also meant she didn’t have to share the reward. Her greatest feat was allegedly slaying a giant rabid bear with a single thrust of her lance, but I had some serious doubts about that.

“And you used all the extra gold you made just to buy a newbie guild?!” I asked.

“You really should have seen this place back then!” she said, giving the table a couple pats with her hand. “It was practically falling apart with the old guild master wanting to close up for good, so I was able to buy it dirt cheap. I pulled together a good crew from my contacts to help staff it, and here we are!”

“Okay, that’s kind of impressive, I’ll give you that. But of all things… why’d you want to do something like this?”

Titania blushed, her confident appearance softening as she wrapped her arms around her body like she was giving herself a hug. “It… It was a dream of mine. All my life, I’d always dreamed of running my own business. That’s what I was trying to do—even to the very end on Earth.”

A lump caught in my throat before I finally managed to ask the question. “So… One more story?”