After hugging his Ma and his siblings one last time before his departure, he thanks his neighbor old lady Mandy for the hospitality that she bashfully accepts. It was really weird to see an old lady blush as she swivelled her head.

As for Pa who is still in a coma, it turned out that he had Jack grab Ma and Amice as well as telling him to warn the old lady alone in her house. The man with the back problem on the other hand decided to stay and hold the bandits off as he knew that he would only slow them down. It worked too well as their hut got destroyed by the infuriated bandits while Mandy's only got a few torn holes that got patched up easily.

The lad then has visited the witch doctor for his pa while he is away and Tia happened to be not around as he entered her hut with the table not yet replaced. 

"Three months," Mama said, with words just like the twin healers, she promised to help his Pa as long as possible, side by side with the healers even. But they expect his pa's condition to worsen because of his age and the nutrition he can take, "it will be best if you can find a better healer in Tradewood or somewhere further, but please be quick."

'Wait for me, Pa,' with determination in his eyes as the goal seared in his mind and he stepped out of the town for good for the first time.

***

Yawning at the lack of stimulants as usual, the young guard Tom stretches his back while in post next to the eastern gate that is always open from dawn to dusk for the poor amount of merchants visiting the town. His senior next to him is doing the usual trick of sleeping while standing.

"Tsk, flimsy old coot," shaking his head at the usual display, he digs his nose while looking at the sun that has risen for a while and thinks about how long it would be till lunch, when all of a sudden, he spots a figure running towards them. Using the wooden end of his cheap spear, Tom prods the older guard Ives hard, shaking the man out of his slumber as he woke up flaring.

"Shut yer trap!" Ives the senior guard roars while the figure is already up front while the men raise their spears at him.

Upon seeing the lad clearly though, Tom mutters in shock and raw disgust, "goddess Eiar, what the fuck are you? You ugly freak!" 

James is currently wearing his cleanest tunic and trousers with nothing to cover his scarred face, the remark from the younger guard had caused him to frown for a moment but he chose to ignore the insult as he requested an entry into the town while fishing out the ten coppers for toll, as told to him by the village teacher. "I do not have any papers on me, so here are the ten coppers."

The young guard had prepared to receive the coins but his senior, who was impassive, suddenly stopped him as he stares at James inquisitively before his face turns greedy, "that is the old fee, the toll is now 20 coppers!"

James is slow to learn things, but he knows a bully when he sees one. In his pouch are the copper coins he had been collecting since mid summer this year and some more pitched in by the village chief for his assistance in the raid. Thus the bulky wallet has around a hundred copper and due to him holding the sack on his back, the clinking of copper actually tipped off the older guard.

***

Walking through the open gate after paying his toll, which James did after some futile thoughts on climbing the stone walls surrounding Tradewood as the older guard was constantly trying to trick the lad from forking up more coppers with ridiculous things he sprout to handing the duo the entire pouch "for inspection" . The only thing they didn't try to do was to straight up snatch the pouch, which James immediately stuffs it underneath his clothes, earning him some odd looks and others more calculated, not that the country bumpkin noticed. The lad then takes a good look at the town and got slack jawed by the new sight.

Stone buildings as tall as three storeys covering the majority of the town with a big stone pavement right in front of him that is clean and cutting through the entire town to the small castle in the middle of the town, there are multiple shops and wooden stalls by the sides of the path selling food and stuff. The sights and sound of people haggling and horse drawn carriages trotting around brings marvel to the lad who had never left the tiny village at all.

"Wow…" he continuously gasped at the scenery like a fish out of water at the stores filled with trinkets. It took a while for him to recall his objectives as James then rushed through the street to find the adventurer guild house as told to him by the ex-adventurer.

Registration for entry permits into towns and bigger cities has always been a hassle, much so before the time of the adventurer guilds. Back then, the document could only be given by the nobles who were governors of the area and the fee for their signatures was astronomical even for the merchants, so forgeries were abundant and some non-governing nobles residing in the area decided to join in the chaos to earn some coins as well. Disputes soon became imminent when the nobles argued about the legitimacy of the paper they gave out, using their noble ranks, wealth in possession and small skirmishes just to have a word on who they could allow into the area.

It was frustrating for merchants who had to fork up silvers just to enter a new town with their goods and some governors were greedy enough to ask the merchants to pay more if they wanted a more permanent document as most documents back then were either one-off so that the city could tie the merchants down to them or riddled with limits such as number of entries or an expiry date. It might be counterintuitive for the nobles to do such a thing, but when some of them were having their own knights acting as bandits to raid the wares, suddenly the need to pay protection fees and taxes felt less painful.

And for the individuals who were trying their luck in finding jobs in different towns, it was even tougher for them as the odds of asking the lord to sign for them is much, much lower, so much so that the only way was to join under their house instead. Which meant that it was either toll fee up front everytime one entered the gate or becoming serfs, none of which were attractive options.

These issues were then slightly mitigated with the creation of the merchant guilds and subsequent guilds of various professions. By binding the free people into the guilds funded and owned by their respective groups of nobles instead, this gave the people a false sense of freedom due to the laxer rules, but the bondage remained.

Of course, the permit issue got a minor remedy coming from the guilds, but it does come with numerous problems that Don had never informed the farmer and the sword genius, because it is only a burden to know things you can't affect.

A brisk run later and James had reached the adventurer guildhouse, a two storey building made of stone and wood with the sign outside showing two swords crossing and a shield behind them. He pushed the double wooden door open to see a couple of tables around and a counter at the far end, there it stood an obese man with thin moustache and receding hairline and four people occupying a table right at the middle of the place, drinking heavily with bottles and mugs splayed on table even before lunch. The obese man is wiping the desk with a rag and gave James a quizzed look while the four had already lost their interest and went back to their merrymaking.

Unperturbed by the lacklusterness, James went straight to the counter, "hi, I want to register as an adventurer." 

"Name and age?" The man questions mechanically as he takes a filled paper that James can make sense of and wetted quill as he prepares to scribble.

"James. I'm 17..." Uncertainty filled the farmer's words as he did not bother with keeping track of his own age, most in the village only care when their adult ceremony was passed.

The man ignored his inner dilemma and continued, "from?"

"Woodlands." If James had been more observant, he would have notice the change in pitch as the obese man repeated the word loudly when he wrote the info down. The lad did, however, notice the chatter behind him was gone. The man behind the counter raised his face as he finished writing, his grin reminded him of the disgusting face made by the blonde armored man who tried to kill him. The sound of a chair being dragged is heard and James turns to see one of the four drunkards is standing up and staring daggers at him while the other three are facing him, faces warped in anger.

"What's Alex to you?!" Akin to a growl, the person who stood up has a large horizontal scar across the nose bridge that covered his entire face. 

James, seemingly dense, decided to answer simply and honestly, "a childhood friend."

"Hoho, a friend is it?" With the obese man suddenly speaking with that odd tone of his, catching James' attention as he turned to see the paper with his name written on it is now on a small metal plate that can fit into his palm, the sheet then glows and burns away, leaving the words inscribed onto the plate. 

James grabbed the card as soon as it was handed and half expecting the scar man would jump on him, he shuffled swiftly out of the place while enduring the death glare as he passed the fuming drunkard, preparing for the jump that thankfully never came. 

As the wooden door closed with no fanfare and the lad let out a sigh of relief, the drunkard screamed out Alex's name with all the anger he could muster, causing him to scurry further. As puzzled as he was with the man's problem, James decided to go find the Church of Light healer first but stops as he jogs his memory once more when he recalls what the teacher had told him. 'Wait wait wait, teacher told me to say hi to his friend and pass him a letter.'

After asking the locals for directions, he soon reached a simple looking house where the old teacher said his friend resides. Throughout the search however, he had received numerous odd looks from the passersby by the mention of his name and while that left a weird taste in him, he quickly dismissed them and knocked on the door. He did not wait for long as a grumpy middle aged woman who immediately barked at him, "who are you, can't you tell that I am bus-" and paused as she was aghast by James. That hurt the lad a little.

"Good afternoon ma'am, I am looking for," pausing once again to jog his memory, "Wesley, mister Wesley, is he in?"

"No!" As abruptly as she shouted, she slammed the door hard on the befuddled James, leaving him puzzled by the hostility of the occupant. Though the query was soon solved by the voice that came next to the house

"If you are looking for Wesley," the neighbor of the woman, who had exited his house after the ruckus continued, "he is in the slums, I will not go there if I were you." 

"Why is that sir?"

"Because he pissed off someone he shouldn't," and gestures towards the house, "that was his wife, though she immediately cut him off after. Can't blame her though."

***

A frail and wrinkled man had set up a shabby arrangement of a wobbling wooden table and stool, with a small stack of writing paper, inkstick and quill placed neatly on the table. He would have purchased a bottle of ink but he still wishes to eat black bread instead of tree barks to quell his hunger. Donning a simple cotton tunic instead of the linen clothes he used to have with badly stitched patches all over the clothes, its tailor was none other than the scribe himself with little scratches on his fingers as proof.

Sulking under the afternoon sun, Wesley knows that Allard and Tim did not kill him not out of good will, but rather to humiliate him. The bastard who he once was blind enough to call a friend that comes into the slums daily under their nudges to harass him. His wife, whom he had been with for 30 years, did a perfect job to disassociate herself from him as her stream of insults and his things were thrown out right in front of the guards who were with him to condemn his property. Her scalding words on his impotence was the one that sealed the deal for the lord of the land to pardon her and the final straw that made him understand how naive he was.

Staring blankly at the obvious lack of traffic, he knows that this location where he can set up shop in the slums was done on purpose, so that he can glance at the handiworks of Badrick daily by looking at the wall next to his table.

Sitting away from him are a trio of crippled beggars, eyes dead as though resigned to their pathetic fates. If Wesley isn't senile, that red haired guy who is caked with filth, has his right hand missing and oddly bent legs is an archer. The man lying next to him in a pile of trash, who was a swordsman, had the tendons of his four limbs severed and spine broken because he wouldn't bow to that brat. Then there is the newly added member with brown and burned hair, sitting at the corner with freshly made burnt face, both of his thumbs are missing and tongue cut as previously when the old man offered food, the missing organ is obvious. Wesley had no idea what caused the lad to incur the fire mage's wrath, but it is terrible to see such youth withering in the back alley.

There is not a single woman inside the crippled group, solely because if there are any, they will be wrongly accused of crimes they did not do, debts they did not incurred and get turned into debt slaves, a legal euphemism as they will be used by Badrick and his men. A common phenomenon ever since the baron decides to do things his way.

Gnashing his teeth before sighing once more, Wesley slams his palm on the desk with impotent fury that only serves to hurt himself and the wobbling table. He soon stopped when he noticed a figure walking towards him. 

"Mister Wesley?" Quizzed with a groan by the scarred man towards the hobo with a desk.

Upon the scribe's closer examination, the man standing in front of him would fit nicely into the group and looking at his scar ridden face sporting a hideous smile, Wesley frowned as he inwardly squirmed, "who sent you?"

The farmer who had finally located what he came for cheerily, according to himself, spoke, "Teacher William from Woodlands, sir."