I awoke to a familiar sight. Part of me expected this, admittedly. The room was the same as it always is, with one key exception. A familiar exception, at that. Mr.DYN2 putzing around in the mirror. This time, he's dunking a tea bag in and out of a cup. Also, he's back in the tan coat getup, and his stupid grin is in full force today. 

"Morning, sleepyhead! Care for coffee?" he said, letting go of the tea bag. No 'good' this time, eh? 

Wait, coffee? What? But that's not... whatever. "Uh, morning. Is this gonna be, like, an every day thing?" I ask in response.

"Most days, probably!" He responded jovially. 

"Don't you have anything better to do?"

"A better question would be, 'don't we have anything better to do?!"

... "Sure."

 "Anyways, you had some fun yesterday, didn'tcha! A productive day of work, dealing with an unreasonable child, coming face-to-face with a thrilling revelation, dark magic, and explosions!" He made odd hand gestures relating to each event as he said all of this. 

"Yeah. I was there." I suppose it was a rather eventful day.

"Right you are, friend!"

I heard the door on the other end of the hall open. S must be awake, I wager.

DYN2 must've heard this as well, because he quickly declared "Well, I must be off, then!"

"Uh, okay. Bye."

He began to disappear, but he paused for a moment. "Oh, be careful today. You've got a big day tomorrow, so don't blow it!"

Wait, what? I begin to ask what they meant, but as soon as I do, they disappear from the mirror, gone without a trace... What did he mean by that? Was he just messing with me? Probably... but I'm not one to take risks. I'll keep an eye out.

*knock knock knock*

Looks like someone's at the door. S, I wager. (This feels familiar.) I open the door, and, predictably, I am greeted by S. 

"'Morning" I begin.

"Yeah, you too." He responds, yawning. Looks like he's still pretty tired, but he still seems excited to begin the day. "Let's hurry up and eat breakfast so we can get going!"

"Where to? You already have plans?" 

"Well, nothing in particular, but I want to see your new magic in action. Plus, I'm itching for a fight, since I was missed a big one yesterday."

Man, he gets so excited about fighting... Though, I guess that makes sense. In a world as violent as this, that's probably not a very uncommon characteristic. It's possible I might start enjoying it at some point, too. That's a bit disturbing, actually. "So long as it's not too dangerous, I guess... In the mean time, lets eat."

Once again, we ate our breakfasts rather quick. S is excited to go, and I kind of just got caught up in his flow. S had some weird oatmeal like dish. Only difference I could see was that it looked fizzy. I haven't the faintest idea what must taste like. I got some pancake-esque dish, and it was delightful. I'm rather fond of sweet things.

After we left and began making our way to the guild hall, I recalled something important from a few days back.

"You booked the rooms for 3 nights, right?" I ask S.

"Yeah, one night left." He responds.

"What's the plan for tomorrow, then?"

"Dunno. Play it by ear, I guess. Maybe we could head to the next town over, camp on the way or something."

"If we use holes, we probably wouldn't need to camp." I can just repeatedly warp us as far as I can see, cutting down travel time considerably. Also, I'm not too fond of camping, so I'd like to avoid that regardless.

"Right, that's true. Though, someone might see you if we use normal trails." 

"Yeah, that's true. Well, that wouldn't be the end of the world, 3 people already know about it."

"3?"  

"Yeah, remember the guy with the sickles, and the kid? Plus you, of course."

"Right, right. Speaking of sickles, before we leave we gotta get yours from the blacksmith."

"Oh, yeah. Let's check on them once we're done at the hall."

"Speaking of which..."  

Before we knew it, we had made our way to the guild hall. Once again, it was fairly empty in there, probably because it's pretty early in the morning. I imagine most people who do adventurey, killy stuff like this like to sleep in, 'cus it can be rather tiring. We wiped out a lot of the jobs when we came yesterday, but the board still seems mostly full. The amount of people who need weirdly specific yet dangerously obtained stuff is a little absurd, isn't it? Or maybe it's all, like, 1 insane alchemist or something. Regardless, it is convenient. 

That being said, there is one peculiar thing about the board today. 

"Not one kill quest?!" S exclaims in disappointment.

I'm very excited about this, but I'd hate to rain on S's parade, so I try not to show it... not that that's hard, given, y'know. S scours the board for a while, but he is ultimately unsuccessful in his search for a kill quest. Guess the world's feeling passive, for once. 

Eventually, however, one sheet does catch his eye. The illustration is crude, looks like some sort of scale, perhaps? The amount of skulls is... 1? Or is that 4? It's 1 full skull and 3 transparent skulls. 

"What's that mean?" I ask S, pointing at the skulls.

"Means danger varies. Depends on your luck." He responds.

"That doesn't sound good."

"Eh, we can take it. Plus, the reward is 30 coin each, for just a few small slabs!."

"I am short on cash, I guess..." and he does seem pretty enthusiastic about this, soooooo. "alright, lets do it." I mean, we'll probably be fine, right?  What are the odds this goes poorly, anyways?... likely, I wager. Crap, there's also that thing DYN2 said earlier... I'll need to be careful in the event things turn south. 

"Deeee-lightful!" 

After we informed the attendants that we were selecting that job, we left the guild hall and headed towards the blacksmith.

"What're the specifics of that job?" I ask S as we make our way there.

"It's simple, we just gather some bark from wintermore trees."

"Wintermore trees?"

"Y'know, those white trees with no leaves? They remind people of winter, and are like that year round, so, wintermore." 

Thinking back, I think I saw a tree or two like that back in the forest... I guess I just assumed they were birch trees. Still, "What's dangerous about tress?"

"They're pretty deep in the woods, and there's the possibility of getting attacked." Yeah, the forests can get pretty dangerous, I suppose. Lotta nasties around there. Wolves, probably bears, maybe even bugs. Speaking of bugs, I wonder if this world has, like, giant Venus fly traps... Yikes. I'm... gonna think about something else. 

Eventually, we arrived at the blacksmiths shop. 

"Oh, you two again. What do ya need?" The blacksmith asked, shoveling coal into the forge. 

"Uh, j-just checking on the sickles." I respond. 

"Ah, yeah, those were a lot easier than I thought. Good fun too, actually. It was nice to try something different. They should be done in a few hours, for sure by tomorrow. I just gotta put the finishing touches on 'em."

"A-Alright, we'll come back later." 

"Yeah, cya." He said before looking back down at the forge. 

"Right, that's that done with. Maybe we should do some more jobs after this to kill time." S said as we headed towards an alley, where I'd warp us to the forest.

"Yeah, sounds like a good idea."

I would like to stock up on cash for tomorrow, whatever that's gonna be... Man, I'm getting nervous. Regardless, I gotta focus on the situation at hand. I open up the holes here and in the forest, and we hop through, ready for our first job of the day.