Sterling nodded to the man and said, “Greetings. Sorry to inconvenience you but I needed to sign up to become an adventurer.”

“Sure, let me just deal with Lanette and Veronica and then I’ll get you all signed up.”

I pulled out from my satchel the pouch where I kept monster parts and handed it over before saying, “We were in the canyons when we ran into some ogres. There is still a bounty on those isn’t there.”

With those collected we began to head back to Dungeoncity. We were in the canyons, one of the terrain features surrounding Dungeoncity. I felt that the name it was given was highly appropriate. The route from Tortburg to Dungeoncity was through a very narrow pass. On the other side was wild untamed wilderness which had all kinds of strange fantasy terrain dotting it.

With my better weapon disposed of me she began to move closer. She was keeping her distance, trying to size me up while I was doing the same to her.

She was the one to finally break the silence pushing in. She used one of her hands to attack while keeping the other one to defend with. My hands were no where near the lethal weapons that hers were but I was about to parry and make attacks because of my slightly superior speed.

“You could also have done that if you had some kind of status hiding skill.” I said still trying to deny it. That had been pretty hard evidence. But a hero? Impossible..

“Oh, you will see. After all Improved Level Up applies to party members as well. Once you get to your next level you will know for certain that I am telling the truth.”

A hero from another world. That was impossible… wasn’t it? A hero, how could this be the person that I had been waiting for.

Chapter Break — Level 5 Demon

Jack, Level 5 Demon.

I felt like I should question her actions but it was keeping in line with how she had continued to act. She continued to train while I returned to the room and tried to figure out what to spend the money on that would be useful.

While later Veronica returned to the room. She raised her hand in greeting before collapsing on her bed. It looks like she had trained more than just her magic, probably excises of some kind. She had fallen sleep almost immediately after that.

“I have many questions but first let us get out of here. Also” I looked her up and down. “We need to get you cleaned up. The inn had a bath option for a little extra so we will need to use that. Also clothes. Wearing rags is totally unacceptable.”

I turned and began leaving the dark moldy dungeon and Lanette followed me, “Wasting such money on me is pointless.”

Since we had arrived in the early evening I spend the night practicing with the plan to explore the city the next day.

When that day came my first order of business was the Adventurer’s Guild. From what Herbert has said they had a small office in the city. It was for recruitment and to organize with the Merchant’s Guild for supply delivers to Dungeoncity.

With them reaching close range I switched over to using Fireball to attack the goblins. Herbert took the front line fighting off the goblins with his sword while I peppered them with fireballs and keeping him protected using gust. Still it was impossible for him to contain that many goblins by himself and one of them got past him and engaged me in melee.

If I had to describe it then it would be a quintessential fantasy rpg town. A blacksmith hammering away only a few shops down. A large tavern inn, children playing in the streets.

Honestly it felt weird and surreal, like it couldn’t possibly be a real town. Each of them had status information above their head. Most of them were low level like me, between 3 and 6 the only one who wasn’t was somebody who look liked a guard and he was level 10. They also had their name and what must be a profession.

I looked over the statistics trying to get a feel for them. I had 56 max hp, 83 max mana, and I was 17% toward gaining my next level. My general sense was that I wasn’t a very balanced character, that would make soloing rather hard so I would need to get a party. Assuming that things here worked like a video game, maybe I was the only person who worked like that. I would need to find somebody else to find out.