Breakfast was eggs.
Specifically, eggs cooked in a cast iron pan over a wood fire with something green mixed in that Haruki couldn't identify but that smelled like it knew what it was doing, served with thick bread that had been toasted on the same fire and a cup of something hot that was not quite tea but was in the same family - darker, slightly bitter, warming in the way that things are warming when they've been made by someone who knows how to make them.
Haruki ate with the focused sincerity of a person who had been eating dried Ashroot for three weeks.
Lira watched him eat with the expression of someone observing a phenomenon.
Boros watched Lira watch Haruki and had the expression of a man updating his estimates of how long his week was going to be.
"You eat like you haven't had a real meal in a while," Lira said.
"I haven't," Haruki said.
"How long?"
"Three weeks approximately."
"What were you eating?"
"Grey tubers mostly. Some dried mushroom. A braised rabbit once."
"In the Grey," Lira said.
"Yes."
"You were eating foraged food in the Grey for three weeks."
"Yes."
She looked at him with an expression that was assembling itself from several components - impressed, concerned, and something that was trying very hard not to be openly fascinated and not entirely succeeding.
"More eggs," Boros said, and put them on Haruki's plate before he could answer, which Haruki took as the guild master's version of a welcome and ate accordingly.
The conversation happened the way conversations happen when someone is eating and someone else is talking - gradually, with natural pauses, covering ground without feeling like an interrogation.
Boros talked the way a man talks when he has decided someone is worth explaining things to. Not performing, not simplifying - just the direct speech of a practical person transferring practical information.
"The Dominion runs on three things," Boros said, refilling his own cup. "The Church, the nobility, and the guilds. Church handles doctrine and divine authority. Nobility handles land and military. Guilds handle everything else."
"Everything else," Haruki said.
"Trade. Exploration. Monster suppression. Dungeon management. If it needs doing and it doesn't involve praying or governing, a guild does it." He set his cup down. "This guild specifically handles adventurer registration, quest distribution, and dungeon access for the Ashfen region."*
"There's a dungeon," Haruki said.
"Two days east," Lira said, with the tone of someone who had been waiting for this part of the conversation. "The Ashfen Rift. Seventeen floors, active for about sixty years. Beginner floors one through four, intermediate five through ten, advanced eleven through seventeen."
"How does it work," Haruki said, in the way he asked about most things - straightforward, genuinely wanting to know.
Lira leaned forward slightly, which was, Haruki noted peripherally, a thing that happened when she was enthusiastic about explaining something and she was not apparently aware that it happened.
"The dungeon generates monsters naturally - it's a mana phenomenon, they respawn on a cycle. Adventurers go in, clear floors, collect monster drops and dungeon materials, come back out. The drops sell to the guild or to independent merchants. Guild takes a percentage, adventurer keeps the rest."
"Monster drops," Haruki said.
"Materials. Monster cores mostly - condensed mana crystals, valuable for enchanting and alchemy. Some creatures drop useful parts. Beginner floor cores are low value individually but they're consistent."
"And the dungeons level your system," Haruki said.
"Combat experience is the fastest path," Boros said. "The system recognizes monster kills, floor completions, threat response. A dedicated adventurer hitting the beginner floors consistently can progress two or three tiers in a year."
"An undedicated one," Haruki said.
Boros looked at him.
"A person who goes in once a week," Haruki said, "kills some low-floor monsters, comes back out, sells the cores. What does that look like income-wise."
Boros and Lira exchanged a look that was fast and practiced in the way of family communication.
"Beginner floor cores sell for two to five copper each," Lira said, in the tone of someone answering the question as asked while reserving judgment. "A careful solo run of floors one and two, two hours, you might collect thirty to forty cores. Call it one hundred copper on a good day. In a week that's-"
"Enough to eat and rent a room," Haruki said.
"Barely."
"Comfortably enough?"
"...Modestly comfortable, yes."
"And the beginner floors. What are the threats."
"Slimes on floor one," Lira said. "Goblins on floor two. Both are - genuinely low threat to anyone with a functioning combat system."
"And a non-combat system."
"Even then. Floor one slimes have no offensive capability. Floor two goblins have minimal aggression if you don't provoke them."
Haruki ate his last piece of bread.
He was quiet for a moment, which was his particular quality of quiet - not absence of thought but active thought that happened to be internal.
"Haruki," Sol said, in the back of his mind. "I can hear you thinking."
"You can always hear me thinking."
"I can hear you thinking specifically. This is a specific kind of thinking."
"What kind."
"The kind where you're about to decide something."
The thing was - and this was the thing that landed in Haruki's chest with the specific weight of something that mattered - Lira used a word.
She used it naturally, in the middle of explaining something about the dungeon's structure and the adventurer lifestyle, the way people use words that are true without thinking about whether they're significant.
"-and if you're not chasing high-tier advancement or glory missions, it's actually quite a peaceful existence-"
Peaceful.
The word sat in Haruki's mind like a warm stone.
Peaceful.
He looked at his empty plate.
He looked at the guild around him - the notice board, the benches, the morning light coming through the shutters properly now, the smell of the food still in the air. Through the guild's front window he could see the edge of the market square, the town waking up, ordinary human life doing its ordinary thing.
He went somewhere behind his eyes for a moment.
In the picture in his head:
A small room. Rented. Clean. With a window that looked out at something green - the rolling grassland that Lira had mentioned, apparently three hours east of Ashfen, where the terrain changed from the grey border land to actual earth and actual color and actual sky.
He would go to the dungeon on - Tuesdays, maybe. Or Wednesdays. One day a week, first thing in the morning. Floors one and two, methodical, unhurried. Collect the cores, bring them up, sell them at the guild desk, collect his copper.
Not enough to be remarkable. Not enough for anyone to look at him twice.
Enough to eat. Enough to read. Enough to buy more yarn eventually, which was a practical concern he had been actively not thinking about since his current project ran out.
The rest of the week - the grassland. His book. The specific luxury of having nothing that needed doing urgently. He could work on the knitting. He could do the smithing maintenance work that Boros almost certainly needed done at some point given the state of the hinges on the guild door. He could sleep late on the days that didn't have anything in them.
He could just - be somewhere. Without the Grey. Without ash. Without anything chasing him.
Peaceful, Lira had said.
Yeah, Haruki thought.
That.
He came back to the breakfast table.
Lira was watching him.
"You went somewhere," she said.
"Thinking," he said.
"About the dungeon?"
"About the plan after the dungeon."
Boros refilled his cup without being asked. Haruki took this as continued good will and drank it.
"HARUKI," Rax said, with the contained energy of someone who had been listening to the internal monologue and had opinions. "The GRASSLAND. You were thinking about SLEEPING in a GRASSLAND."
"Yes."
"With your ABILITIES-"
"Yes."
"You could be ADVANCING-"
"I know."
"The SSS potential that Sol calculated-"
"Is not something I asked for and not something I'm planning around," Haruki said, internally, in the specific quiet tone that meant the conversation was over.
Rax made a sound. A long, complicated sound that contained several sentences he had decided not to say.
"...The grassland does sound nice," Sol said, after a moment, with the tone of a man who had also done the calculation and arrived somewhere unexpected.
"SOL."
"What. It's a reasonable long-term base."
"YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO BE ON MY SIDE."
"I'm on the host's side."
"WE ARE THE HOST'S SIDES-"
"Rax," Haruki said. "Enough."
Enough.
The notice board was visible from where he sat.
He had been glancing at it since breakfast started, in the way he read things that were available to read - not urgently, just because text existed and he processed it. His language calibration had been working since arrival and was functional enough for basic reading now, though proper nouns were still occasionally adventures.
Most of the notices were quests. Dungeon runs, escort missions, material gathering. Standard guild board content, organized by difficulty rating and reward.
One notice was different.
Larger paper. Neatly written. Posted recently by the look of the lack of weathering.
SEEKING: ONE PORTER / EQUIPMENT CARRIER
For dungeon expedition, Ashfen Rift, floors 1-6.Experienced party. Four members, all Tier 4 and above.Porter duties: carry excess equipment and materials, remain on floors during combat, no fighting expected.Compensation: flat fee upon completion, plus ten percent of material value recovered.Depart: tomorrow morning, early.Inquire within.
Haruki read it twice.
He looked at his cup.
He looked at the notice.
"Sol," he said.
"I see it," Sol said.
"A qualified team."
"Tier 4 and above, four members. Yes. Overqualified for floors one through six, which suggests they're either being cautious, training a newer member, or testing specific floor mechanics."
"They don't need a fighter."
"Explicitly not, per the notice."
"They need someone to carry things."
"Yes."
"While they handle everything."
"That is the definition of a porter, yes."
"And in exchange I get to go into the dungeon alongside an experienced party on my first run, observe how it actually works, collect ten percent of the materials without fighting anything, and come back out with income and dungeon experience."
A pause.
"...That is," Sol said, very carefully, "a remarkably efficient first move for someone who wants to maintain a low profile while learning the environment."
"RAX," Rax said to himself.
"Stop doing that," Sol said.
"I'M PROCESSING."
"The plan is good, Rax."
"I KNOW THE PLAN IS GOOD. THAT'S WHY I'M PROCESSING."
Haruki looked at Boros.
"The notice," he said, nodding toward it. "The porter position. Is it still open?"
Boros followed his gaze to the board.
"Posted last night," Boros said. "Haven't had a taker yet. It's good work but most people in Ashfen who want porter work are already contracted."
"What do you know about the party."
"Tier 4, 5, 5, and 4. Two fighters, a mage, a support. They come through twice a year. Professional. Not the type to mistreat support staff." He looked at Haruki with the measuring look that was becoming familiar. "They'd want to see your guild card."*
"I don't have one."
"No." Boros was quiet for a moment. "Emergency provisional registration exists for border arrivals without documentation. It's designed for traders who lose papers in transit but it covers the legal requirement." Another pause. "I can process it this morning."
"Why would you do that," Haruki said. Genuinely asking.
Boros looked at him.
Then he looked at his daughter, who was looking at Haruki with an expression she was not entirely in control of.
Then he looked back at his cup.
"Because," he said, with the energy of a man making a practical decision and not discussing the reasons for it, "I have needed a porter recommendation for that party since last night and you're sitting in my guild having breakfast."
"That's it."
"That's enough."
Lira made a sound that was trying very hard to be nothing.
"Lira," Boros said.
"I didn't say anything."
"You were about to."
"I was going to say that I could show him where the provisioning store is for porter equipment—"
"You were going to say something else first."
"-and that the party leader is staying at the Hearthstone Inn—"
"Lira."
"-and that the departure is at sixth bell tomorrow which means he needs to be registered and equipped and introduced today." She stood up and collected the plates with the efficiency of someone whose hands were busy so their face didn't have to be. "Which is just practical."*
Boros watched her go to the kitchen.
He looked at Haruki.
Haruki looked back with the expression of a person who was not responsible for other people's conclusions.
"One condition," Boros said.
"Alright."
"You sleep in the actual guest room tonight. Not behind my notice board."
"That's reasonable."
"And you fix the door hinge on the way out. It's been wrong for a month and my usual man is contracted elsewhere."
Haruki looked at the door. Looked at the hinge. Looked at his bag, which contained his grandmother's folding knife and the small toolkit he'd assembled from Grey ruins components over three weeks.
"Done," he said.
Boros nodded once and stood up.
"Welcome to Ashfen," he said, which was the most words he'd put into a welcome and clearly as warm as it was going to get, and walked toward the back of the guild.
Haruki sat at the table with his empty cup.
"Sol," he said.
"Yes."
"The grassland."
"Three hours east, yes. I've been mapping the regional geography. There's a particularly good section where the terrain-"
"Is it quiet?"
"...Extremely," Sol said.
"Good."
He picked up his bag and went to look at the door hinge.
Behind him, from the kitchen, Lira was humming something and trying to do it quietly enough that nobody noticed, and not succeeding.
"Rax," Haruki said.
"Yeah."
"The dungeon tomorrow."
"Yeah."
"You and Sol brief me tonight. Everything you know about dungeon mana structures, floor ecology, monster behavior patterns."
"FINALLY," Rax said, with the explosive relief of someone who had been very patient for a very long time and had reached the end of it. "YES. OKAY. I HAVE SO MUCH-"
"After I fix the hinge," Haruki said.
"AFTER THE HINGE. YES. ABSOLUTELY."
He crouched at the door.
The hinge was straightforward - the mounting screws had stripped slightly from years of use, the kind of problem that looked like a hinge problem but was actually a wood problem, requiring the holes to be packed before the screws could bite again. His grandmother had shown him the trick with a toothpick and wood glue when he was eleven.
He didn't have wood glue.
He had compressed Grey root fiber, which was close enough.
He fixed it in ten minutes.
The door swung clean and quiet.
He looked at it for a moment with the particular satisfaction of a fixed thing.
Peaceful, he thought.
Working on it.
TO BE CONTINEUD..