A couple days and many practice battles later we made it to the border of Rocksford. To enter we were supposed to launch a fireball into the sky, and leave an arrow pointing the opposite direction of where we wanted to meet. After we did that and got to a spot about a mile away from the launched fireball we waited a couple hours before a dwarf in rags and goggles walked into the clearing we were in.

He nodded at us and held out his hand for the second of three payments we needed to make. After storing it he walked away and motioned for us to follow him.

"Well he's weird" Greg complained "I thought we were gonna meet a cool thief in all black who would sneak behind us and said 'I'm Batman' in a cape and everything."

"You don't even read books, how do you even know about Batman? It's like fifty years old and many consider it literature. Li-ter-a-ture, as in books for intellectuals" Hannah shot back.

Greg twiddled his thumbs a bit "It looked cool" he huffed. Hannah smiled at that since she had finally found a way to get Greg to read. In this case, a weakness to exploit.

She went on about other "cool" books she had read, mostly mentioning superheroes and a couple of her own personal favorites which I'm sure Greg had tuned out despite actually looking interested now. The only problem was that he was a slow reader, he could read but he isn't finishing that 20 page children's book today.

I kept making sure that we didn't fall to far behind the dwarf since he was small enough such that we wouldn't be able to see him over some of the taller bushes. He did his job and showed us to a stump and carved a line into it and said something I wasn't able to hear.

He looked back and finally said "This is the entrance you can enter and exit for 10 minutes. If you want another way in its going to be another job and another place. Don't try something similar, it won't work." With that he walked away looking the most bored I had ever seen someone look. Strange but I guess he makes his money.

I picked up a twig and put it partway into the stump, it shimmered and went in easily. I pulled it back out and I put my face in next with a hand covering most of it. Standard procedure to check a portal's locational safety for its travelers. I had only gone through one before for a magic show when my parent we still around but the safety tips I remembered him showing. 

This was a real magic show and was as spectacular and flashy as anything you could imagine. Moving illusions of dragons, storytelling, flashes of light, and the teleportation tricks the magician put on to entertain the mostly low leveled commonfolk. 

It looked to be a quiet back alley in some poorly constructed area. I dipped back out "All clear, let's go you bunch of nerds." Greg scoffed but Hannah merely shrugged.

"If you look at the words it's really a complement" she said before jumping into the stump. 

Greg didn't look convinced but a slap on the shoulder and a "I'm Batman" while jumping into the stump made him smile before I couldn't see him through the portal.

I looked more closely at the surroundings and saw that we were definitely not in the nice part of the city. Wooden doors with holes, random nails everywhere, and a smell that would kill a skunk bear made up this area. 

We put on hoods and went first to the market with some directions from some scruffy kids. I felt bad for their situation and gave the ones who helped us each a coin for their trouble. They looked just like we did before the awakening and while I didn't care if they made it till then particularly, I remember how tough it was to live on the streets. Even if they had parents they were either useless or very very poor so it was pretty much the same thing. 

In the market we restocked necessities and Hannah found some masks that she insisted we needed. She put on one that was a face made of flowers, I had a plain white one with a mustache, and Greg got a full head mask with tusks and metal spikes styled after a monster. He accidentally tore off one tusk and looked pretty funky.

With all of this settled we went off to look for the Candy Factory store in the city. It was pretty packed during the late afternoon but we saw the standard building and front layout. In the back they had extended the building and had a place for carts to unload underneath a roofed area like a mix between a garage and warehouse. It had plenty of tough and sly looking guards around the back acting as warehouse hands but I noticed the weaponry and knew right away. Once I noticed one of them head into the building and a minute later another came out.

Other than that there wasn't much I noticed. A couple of them did look like Ria and Sophie with more outwardly displayed affinities to the elements but about half of them looked normal. They looked like heavily styled players that just dyed themselves or hand special prop gear so it wouldn't have been suspicious had I not known about the potions.

These players must have gotten an older version to look this way, maybe a less refined version of the devil's turning if I had to guess but from my dreams I knew these were tame changes compared to what could have been.

A human looking man with ever slightly purple skin walked in and started ordering a couple guards to bring some crates somewhere. The poison slime man if I remember correctly from the letters I stole. He looked like a normal human except for that fact which could be passed off as having been born a half blood.

He didn't actually look very strong since a poison slime is just D- rank. I guess the monster chosen can impact the growth he received but if he was a low leveled human to begin with it would be a serious increase in strength, even one rank difference can make things seriously challenging let alone 2. There must have been downsides to this too because the system would never have allowed it otherwise but it looked like the guy was pushing into his level 30s so growth likely wasn't the drawback. 

Either way he went back inside before too long and we needed to come up with a plan.