The following morning, on the first light...

Cornelia and Mika woke up with a hangover.

"Ugh... Shouldn't have drank the entire tankard..." Cornelia held her head.

"Nya... Head hurts..." Mika rubbed her face.

"That's what you get for not building a tolerance before drinking a lot." Tenta thought inside the familiar space.

After several minutes, the two girls geared up and headed downstairs, where they saw Callum working at the bar.

"Ah, good morning, girls. Did you sleep well?" Callum asked with a warm smile.

"Too well. Now we have a hangover." Mika grumbled.

"Haha, that does happen when you drink too much the first time. You shouldn't drink more than a pint next time." Callum chuckled.

"Thank you for treating us yesterday." Cornelia thanked him.

"Oh, no. Thank YOU for saving my elder brother." Callum said. "I would like to thank Tenta personally."

"Ah... Sure. Summon Familiar." Cornelia said and summoned Tenta.

"He does resemble a Tentacle Monster... But he is markedly different." Callum nodded. "Tentacle monsters are not this smooth, and many have a wart-covered, rougher, and hostile look. And the shape is also less grotesque."

"Wow... Tentacle Monsters must look horrible..." Tenta thought.

The gaunt-looking man exited the bar and kneeled in front of Tenta. "Thank you for saving my brother, young fellow." He extended his hand for a handshake.

"I am probably mentally older than you, but fine." Tenta thought and shook his hand with a now-healed tentacle.

"You are indeed intelligent." Callum had a somewhat surprised look but wasn't shocked. He was already mentally prepared.

"I would need to have mental problems if I wasn't..." Tenta thought.

After standing up, Callum walked back behind the bar. "So, want some breakfast and something for your hangover?"

"That would be great..." Mika said and put her key on the bar.

"Me too..." Cornelia placed her key.

"I will be right back." Callum nodded and headed inside the kitchen, fetching two plates with baked pancakes with vegetables and cheese and two glasses filled with a greenish liquid. "This will be on me. But next time, you will need to pay."

"What is that?" Mika looked at the green liquid.

"Sniff* Sniff* Anti-hangover decoction," Cornelia said after taking a whiff.

"Oh? You recognize this?" Callum raised an eyebrow.

"I made some at my master's shop," Cornelia said.

It was a simple decoction produced by boiling certain herbs over a low fire. It was a good seller since many were heavy drinkers in the slums. You didn't need to know alchemy to make it, but you did need to use cooking magic.

"Ah, I see." Callum nodded. "Well, enjoy. Oh, and if you are interested, my brother reissued the request. You are welcome to work with him again."

"That will be great." Mika smiled.

Working at his farm was very lucrative because of the Horned Rabbits.

"Oh, and is Tenta hungry or thirsty?" Callum asked, looking at the dog-sized octopus thing.

{A bowl of water would be nice. I'll be eating rats anyway.} Tenta said to Cornelia.

"He said he wants some water," Cornelia said.

"Alright." Callum nodded and fetched a bowl of water, placing it near Tenta. "Here you go."

"Thank you." Tenta gently waved his tentacle.

Callum nodded and went back to work.

After the trio finished their breakfast with renewed energy, they went to the request board and found the 'Vermin in the fields!' request was still there. The only difference was that the granary part was removed. However...

"It is taken..." Cornelia bitterly said.

"Aw..." Mika grumbled.

It wasn't just that. Most of the other G-Rank requests were taken. The only things remaining were the constant bounty requests and the Sewer Patrol.

{Well, it isn't all that bad.} Tenta said. {Now that I have that skill of mine, the Sewer Patrol might be a good thing.}

{Oh, right!} Cornelia widened her eyes in realization.

Indeed. They would be paired with four experienced guards. Along with them, it would be the same as six people power-leveling Tenta. It was indeed worth it.

"Mika, want to do the Sewer Patrol?" Cornelia suggested.

"Ugh... I will stink..." Mika grumbled, clearly not excited about it.

"No worries, I'll cast cleaning spells on us." Cornelia comforted.

"It's good to have you as a teammate..." Mika smiled again.

Going to the reception desk, after receiving the rewards from last time, letting it enter their guild accounts, they requested the Sewer Patrol request.

"You want to take that request?" The clerk raised an eyebrow. "You should have read the warning, correct? Bad smell and dirty water aren't the only things to worry about."

"I'm sure." Cornelia nodded.

"I'm with Cornelia." Mika also agreed.

"Okay... You asked for it." The clerk helplessly conceded.

After assigning the request to them, the two girls departed to the City Guard Station(Tenta was unsummoned, of course). After walking for a few minutes, they arrived where a guard wearing medium armor and a halberd stopped them.

"Halt! State your business." The guard stopped them.

"We are from the Adventurer's Guild, and we took up the Sewer Patrol request," Cornelia said, taking out her guild card.

The guard took her card and looked at it. And then his expression changed.

"Oh! You are Cornelia! And that one must be Mika, right?" The guard looked at them. "Deputy Owen told us about you two. Please go and see him for more details." He said, respectfully handing back the card.

Cornelia and Mika looked at each other.

"Deputy Owen?"

 

Moments later...

They were inside an office with a lot of paperwork and maps depicting patrol routes, dangerous areas, and more critical areas.

Behind a desk, an armored and muscular young man in his early twenties with a masculine face resembling Walter was smiling as he greeted the two girls.

"So you are the girls who saved my father! Thank you! I am in your debt." The man bowed his head in thanks.

"It wasn't us. It was her familiar." Maki corrected.

"It is true, Sir. We were at the house at the time." Cornelia added.

"I know. But I consider you as saving him as a party." The man nodded. "And please drop the Sir and call me Billy. Oh, and can you summon your familiar, Tenta? I want to meet him."

"Well, alright..." Cornelia nodded. "Summon Familiar."

With a flash, Tenta appeared.

"Hah... So it's true. You do look like a Tentacle Monster." Billy nodded and walked over. "Nice to meet you, friend." He said and extended his hand for a handshake.

"A pleasure." Tenta would have said as he shook hands with him.

"Heh... Intelligent. Just like uncle said." Billy grinned and went back to his desk. He then opened a shelf, took a sheathed knife, and placed it on the table.

"This is my gift to you. I heard you get injured, so I thought you could use a weapon to reduce damage to yourself." He said.

"Oh, wow... I didn't think about that..." Tenta thought.

"Eh... Billy... I am not sure Tenta can use that..." Cornelia said, not wanting her familiar stabbing itself with a knife.

"Yeah... That sounds pretty dangerous..." Mika agreed.

"Well, it used utensils, so why can't it use a knife? I refuse to believe its tentacles are that weak." Billy said.

{Cornelia, give me the knife, please.} Tenta said.

{... Alright.} Cornelia conceded.

She took the knife and gave it to Tenta, who carefully picked it with two tentacles. With one tentacle holding the sheath, Tenta used another tentacle to draw the knife out.

It was a pointed dagger, more suitable for stabbing than slashing, but it was a good knife. With his tentacle, Tenta used it to stab and slash the air a few times before sheathing it back.

{Good knife!} Tenta happily said.

"..." The other three in the room blankly looked at the weird scene.

"Well... I didn't think it would know how to use it so fast." Billy commented.

"My familiar is weird..." Cornelia bitterly thought.

"A dog-sized Consentacle, wielding a dagger... That is scary." Mika shivered.

Usually, monsters only used their natural weapons, and only humanoid intelligent monsters, such as goblins, used tools. This gave an edge to enlightened creatures when fighting monsters.

It could be said that, with the knife, Tenta's danger factor went up by a notch or two.

"Well, this is a good thing," Billy said. 

"But is it okay to give this knife? It should cost 20 SC with the sheath, right?" Cornelia asked.

"Like I said, it is fine." Billy waved his hand. "I also told the guards about you, so you should have an easier time with them. If they don't know you, mention you know me."

"Thank you, Billy!" The two girls thanked him.

"Okay, now on to business." Billy leaned forward on the desk. "So you want to take on the Sewer Patrol, right?"

"Yes, Billy. All the other tasks were taken, so we chose this one." Mika said.

"Understandable. This task is the least popular one in your guild." Billy nodded. "It is meant to scout brave men and women for the guard. I was also scouted this way."

"Then there is no problem with taking it, right?" Mika asked.

"Of course. It is G-rank for a reason." Billy nodded. "We don't expect much from you and can do it ourselves. However, as the job says, there are work hazards, and it is likely the most dangerous G-rank request. Every year, 3-4 guards die there, and the danger factor is higher for rookies like you. You can think of it as a low-level dungeon but with worthless drops. The question is, are you prepared to lose your lives?" When he asked that, his expression turned serious.

Cornelia and Mika looked at each other and then at Billy.

"We are adventurers. We were already prepared." Cornelia said, and Mika nodded.

As for Tenta...

"Well, I already died once. I am not that afraid of death..." He thought.

Although his past was essentially deleted, deep-seated emotions and feelings remained. To him, a reincarnated 44-year-old man who was a depressive loner, death wasn't a deterrent.

"Good. I won't stop you." Billy nodded. "But a bit of advice. If you hear a lot of tiny tapping noises... It is a Giant Rat swarm, the biggest killer in the sewers. It is almost always a pack of about a dozen, which is manageable. Rarely, a mass of several dozen can form, or several smaller swarms attack you. When that happens, one of the guards usually dies, and they are experienced men with durable armor. If you face such a swarm, stay behind the guards while providing support, and don't run away like cowards, or the swarm will catch and kill you, which is also why the rookie death rates are high. Did I make myself clear?" 

"Yes." Cornelia and Mika nodded.

"Fine," Billy waved. "The guards on patrol duty will leave in half an hour. Go to the barracks and get yourselves acquainted with them. And good luck."

"Thank you, Billy." Cornelia thanked him and unsummoned Tenta, making the dagger he held fall to the ground.

A downside of storing the familiar is that it can't carry non-magically bound equipment. In other words, he couldn't carry their luggage into the space.

She then picked up the dagger and left the office with Mika.

.

.

.

Sometime later...

They and four armored guards, three men and one female, faced a sewer gate entrance.

"Okay, rookies, listen up." The leading guard, a stubbled man in his mid-thirties named Alisander, sternly spoke to the girls. "The two of you are to follow us and do nothing until we tell you to, understand? Especially the mage. I want her to be at full capacity at all times for emergencies and not use even mage light unless I say so. We will let you do some fighting here and there, but this is not a picnic. We can lose our lives there. Understand?"

"Yes, Sir." The two girls replied.

"Good. And if a swarm hits us, don't run off, or you will die faster. Let's move." The man motioned to his fellow guards. One of them took out a keychain and opened the locked sewer entrance, letting them enter inside before locking from behind. 

They then lit a torch and went inside.