Sam woke up a little after the sun rose. He was still a bit tired as six hours was not enough to rest him up from the last two days. Though a real bed helped a lot. He yawned as he left his room and went to wash himself in the bath. His room was on the first floor, Kita’s room was next to his. He was a bit envious of her as she could sleep in while he had to work. 

He opened the door to the bath and walked in, there was another man washing up when he got in. 

“You are the new assistant?” The man asked as he put on a uniform, that kind of fitted with the inn's style. 

“Yea, who are you?” Sam said as he started to wash his face.

“I am the chef and you will call me Chef too. Put that on when you have washed up” The man said and pointed at a uniform placed on a stool as he left the bath. 

‘Ah, so he is that kind of chef, well he seems professional at least.’ Sam thought as he remembered a chef he had worked with on earth. 

He put on the uniform and carried his old clothes back to his room. When he was done, he went to the kitchen through the door behind the bar in the dinner room.

The kitchen was nothing Sam was used to as he had worked in modern restaurants. Sam thought he needed to rethink his ability to navigate a kitchen. Beside Sam and Chef, there were three teenage girls in the kitchen. The three girls worked as helpers. 

“Breakfast starts at seven as usual!” Chef said with a commanding tone, Chef then pointed at one of the girls. “You! Get bread from the baker!” 

She ran away quickly as Chef started to give the others orders. The other two girls got orders to check the pantry for what they were low on. Chef ordered Sam to help him with preparing the rest of the breakfast.

The customers could choose between two different breakfasts, porridge with yam or bread with sausages. For those that rent rooms, the breakfast was free and the others had to pay five small copper coins. A cup of tea was five copper coins extra, no matter if you stayed in the inn or not. Therefore many choose to drink water as it comes free with breakfast.

Sam started to prepare the breakfast as fast as he could. He only had an hour, but making porridge was nothing that took any time and the rest was mostly done already. The bread came from the baker and the sausages and yam were in the pantry. So he had only put them where he could easily reach them when the orders came.

When the girl that ran to the baker came back, the chef ordered the three to go to the market to get the ingredients they were missing for lunch and dinner. It seemed to be their regular morning work. 

Kita woke up around nine, she gave the ceiling a flat stare while she thought. ‘Okay Kita, you survived the week with the brothers without anything happening and Sam seems to be a nice though weird guy. Now you're back in Myrdall and this inn.’ 

She stood up and put on her clothes, then went outside her room. She yawned as she walked down the hallway towards the women’s bath. Her plan for today was to get to the guild and withdraw some of her money to pay for the inn.

After she had washed, she went to the dinner room and ate breakfast, which reminded her that Sam started working in the kitchen this morning. After she ate, she pushed the door to the kitchen open, smiled and made her morning greeting to Sam and the rest in the kitchen. 

Sam looked up and smiled back while greeting her. Chef just grunted a greeting that was typical for him. The girls ran up to greet her, they always wanted to hear about her last adventure. She told them that she didn't have time right now as she had to go to the guild.

She left the inn and started heading towards the guild. The streets were filled with people and their noises. There were no stalls inside the walls, only restaurants and shops. She walked for around five minutes to arrive at the guild that she was a member of. Sam had said he wanted to join the same guild, she didn’t know if they would register a person with no background at all. 

She had guessed that Sam had no history or rather that it wasn’t possible to gain any information on him. It was about his inquiries that made her think that he was hiding a few things from her. Then again they hadn't known each other longer than two days. He was weird though, some things that should be common knowledge, he had no knowledge of. While other things she knew almost nothing about, he seemed to know well.

She entered the guild and went to the reception. There was a bit of a line, so she placed herself at the end and waited her turn. She began to think about Sam and how weird he had been, she fell deep in thought… 

“Hello, hi… huh, Hey!” She jumped as someone shouted just next to her, it was the receptionist. 

Kita looked at her for a moment without understanding what she wanted, before she saw that it was her turn at the reception. 

“Ah, hi, um… I need to withdraw from my account please.” Kita said to the reception and gave her her guild badge. The guild badge was an identification, it couldn’t work without it’s owner in the vicinity. 

“Wait a moment.” the receptionist said and put the badge on a flat stone surface at her desk. 

It shined as the receptionist poured a bit of mana into the runes of the stone. The badge lit up and projected some information. The information was Kita’s name, her registered occupation as a scout and her account. 

The receptionist wrote the number of Kita’s account and how much it held on a piece of paper and showed it to Kita. Kita already knew how much it had, but the guilds all did this when someone deposited or withdrew money. 

The number that was written on the paper was; ‘Balance: 574’. She wrote ‘Withdraw: 150’ down on the same paper and gave it back to the receptionist, the receptionist then went through a door behind the desk and came back a few moments later with a bag. 

She gave Kita the bag that held the money, Kita opened it and counted it and checked the receipt. The receipt was the paper from before, what was written was; ‘Balance: 574, Withdraw: 150, New Balance: 424’.

“Was that all?” The receptionist asked in a professional way, but Kita could tell that she wanted to get rid of her. 

Kita was poor and not well known, therefore no one that the receptionist really wanted to deal with. 

“No, I have to report the completion of the scouting mission near the northern forest.” Kita said and got in return a survey to fill out.

She went to one of the tables and began writing her report. It took her not that long as they hadn’t found anything. Only thing she wrote that was of note, was that the brothers were missing. She wrote that they got separated under an attack. 

She didn’t write anything about how she met Sam as they might judge her party's action as banditry and she would hang if that came to light. The only thing that could save her from that was if she had actively defended Sam in the brothers attack. 

She would have been slain by them if she had tried and the investigation would take long too. So she hid Sam and her party’s actions in her report. She wrote that she and the brothers got seperated in a monster attack and that she met Sam while she was heading back to town.

She left the report in the reception’s report box. The receptionist would go through them when they had time or after closing. The pay would be deposited directly to the member's account. She waved to the receptionist, the receptionist only glanced at her. Kita sighed and left the guild.

She didn’t go to the guild today to find a job or anything, she actually already had one in the town from before. She only came to get some money and report the completion of the scouting mission. 

‘I never told Sam about my job did I, not that I had too… But well it will be a surprise for him in a way.’ She smiled to herself as she headed back to the inn.

Sam had finished cleaning from breakfast, then he and Chef had begun preparing for lunch. The three girls had bought what was missing from the pantry and then helped with the preparations. 

They finished early so he and Chef took a bit of time to rest in the courtyard. Sam didn’t know if the three girls got time off too or not, but he didn’t care as he was too tired for the moment. He drank some water as he watched the clouds drift by slowly in the blue sky.

“Beautiful.” He whispered to himself. 

‘Working here and training my skills, that should be a good plan. Problem is that I have to work between six in the morning to ten in the evening, not much time to train. Have to talk to the owners about it.’ He sighed in satisfaction over the light breeze that swept by as the sun shined down on him.

Sam had fallen asleep outside and was woken up by one of the girls before lunch started. He and Chef double checked everything one last time.

The day’s lunch was simple, the leftover soupstock had been boiled down and made into a stew with potatoes, carrots and some light meat. To the stew was black bread served yet again. He had asked Chef about rice, but it was a luxury in this town, both expensive and hard to get. 

Sam saw Kita come back from her errand to the guild. She paid her debt to the innkeeper and talked to him about something, what it was Sam couldn’t hear. She asked for a portion of the stew and ate it fast, then went back to her room. Sam looked at Chef questioning as they had yet to open for lunch.

Chef seemed to not notice his quiet inquiries, but before Sam voiced them. Kita was back, but with changed clothes. She had changed to the same uniform as the barmaids. 

‘Huh, looks good on her. So she works here too? She didn’t say anything yesterday when I asked about the job offer I got.’ He thought as he looked at her. 

“Looks good on you.” He said with a smile, he could see her blush just a bit. He was surprised as he had only seen her work as a scout and thought it to be her only job. He then came to the conclusion that she needed day to day jobs between her scouting missions or she could probably not survive on only the pay from her guild jobs.

“Thanks, you too.” Sam heard her whisper before she left to clean the tables. 

‘Huh, she had to pay for yesterday even though she worked here? Well I had to pay too, if I hadn’t changed the deal.’ The thought passed him by and the first guests arrived to start ordering lunch.

Sam became quite busy with orders from customers. He had learned how useful modern kitchen machines were as they had none here. That was why they only served between one or two different dishes. Some magic tools existed, like the pantry had a tool to keep it cool. 

A freezer was a bit harder as the amount of mana needed became too much. The runes to enchant a freezer were more or less the same as a cooler, Chef told him when he asked. The difference was that the enchantment ate up the mana quicker. So while the cooler could work a whole day on a full mana crystal, a freezer needed many more crystals or a refill more often. Sam believed this was because no good isolation material was known, but he didn't know.

Before he knew the lunch rush was over, the cleaning and preparation for the dinner began. Chef organized the work, the three girls were to clean, as Sam and Chef prepared for the dinner, just like they had done with lunch. Today's dinner was going to be black bread with mushroom soup built on a meat broth. The meat broth Chef had made from the soup that was left from yesterday.