In fact, she noticed an even further detail by focusing on her peripheral vision to sneakily get a glimpse of their table. Zefaris wasn’t just ogling her, she was using the Homunculus Eye to surpass a normal human’s ability to stare at another’s ass.

Zelsys found this endlessly entertaining for some reason, to the point where she went out of her way to lean on the bar in an exaggerated manner, propping herself up on her elbows whilst holding her head in her palms. She passed the minutes like this, taking on various vaguely suggestive poses for the sole purpose of making the deadeye’s snow-white face turn equally varied shades of light pink, ignoring the leery gazes of the other patrons. 

After perhaps three or four minutes of this, while she was in the midst of genuinely stretching her left arm to loosen a stiff muscle, the barkeep emerged from the kitchen, his gaze darting back and forth until he locked onto her and shined with a smile so brilliant not even she could replicate it. 

“There you are, my new favorite beast-hunter!” he exclaimed, approaching her. Confused, Zelsys returned to a normal, relaxed stance, raising an eyebrow. 

“I’ve not yet done-” she began, but he interrupted her with a laugh.

He broke into a rant, simultaneously deriding Halxian with a surprising amount of venom whilst smiling ear to ear at Zelsys all along. “I don’t care,” he began, “that arrogant little runt has been racking up a tab every goddamn day for months and getting his daddy to pay for it, and every goddamn time that stingy bastard just pays with imported goods from Grekuria. It’s good stuff, sure, but I could get the shit he pays with for half the market price from local suppliers. But enough bitchin’ from me, I take it y’want to know more info on your quarry, eh?”

Zelsys gave a nod, and the barkeep gestured for her to step behind the bar. He led her through the kitchen and into a secluded back-room containing no more than a table and chairs. They each took a seat, and the sunny man briefed her on the situation that led to her contract down to the nitty-gritty details, including how many people the beast has wounded and what the wounds were like.

Halfway through the briefing she felt the Tablet thrumming in its holster. “Just a moment,” she excused herself, retrieving the device. It came alive with a simple message, her hand buzzing as it did so.

FUNCTIONALITY RESTORED: RECORDS

It flickered to that very readout, but it didn’t show any text as she had expected. In fact, it only stated the name of the page, the day, and the title of one entry.

RECORDS

Beast-slayer Contract No. 1 - Briefing Record

Curious, she tapped the name of the entry, and with a brief pulse of warm buzzing, she suddenly remembered every minute detail of the briefing up until that point. Not wanting to hold up any more of the barkeep’s time, she placed the Tablet down and prompted him to continue.

“Always found these old handmade Tablets nicer than the mass-produced ones,” he remarked and continued on with the briefing as if nothing had happened. “So as I was saying, I don’t have much of a description of the beast beyond the fact it was humanoid, tall, and lanky. That really doesn’t say much. Could be an animal, a former human, a remnant of the war. However… There’s one thing the contract doesn’t tell you. How many beast-slayers have attempted it before.”

“How many?”

“You’ll be the seventh to try. You’ll also be the second Fog-breather to try.”

“Was the one before me…”

“Halxian? Oh no. Not for a lack of trying, but his father isn’t stupid enough to let him. The one that came before you did use the same breathing technique, though.”

She wasn’t sure how long it took, but when she stood from her seat at the end of the briefing, she couldn’t help but stretch again.

The barkeep only rolled his shoulders, querying, “You gonna head out now or in the morning? The sun’s getting pretty low.”

Now that the offer had been made, Zelsys suddenly became uncomfortably aware of how much filth she must’ve accumulated during the trek through the forest and the battle against the rot-beast. 

“Sure, how much for a night’s stay?” she asked, assuming the price of a nice room would be higher than a day’s rent - six gelt, perhaps seven. “Preferably in a room with a bathtub.”

He chuckled, reassuring that, “All our rooms have their own bathrooms, I don’t run some roadside hostel. I have two free rooms, two beds each, eight gelt a night. Four gelt for you and your ah… Three friends.”

“Sounds good,” she agreed, retrieving her Tablet, opening Fog Storage, and retrieving a single silver gelt. She handed it over alongside three coppers, thinking who it would be easiest to sleep in the same room with. Sigmund, maybe? He seemed the most in control of his own urges, perhaps due to the deleterious effects Rubedo had on him. 

“Poor guy’s entire body probably goes stiff before his dick can,” she inwardly chuckled to herself, filing that sentence away for later use. “Say, you don’t mind us splitting up by gender, do you?” she asked, driven by a mischievous spirit. She didn’t have any reasoning beyond wanting to see how things would play out, and whether anything would happen at all if she didn’t actively initiate.

The barkeep gave a nod and a smile, stowing the money into one of the many coin pouches that hanged on the underside of his apron. “I’ll give you your keys,” he responded, making his way towards the door and gesturing for her to follow. 

The barkeep led her to a small alcove in the kitchen which held a small standing-height pedestal with a ledger and writing supplies, above which there was a rack of many keys with numbered tabs attached. He took two pairs of keys off the rack, two labeled with the number four, and two labeled with the number five.