Chương 25: Chapter 17 : The Hidden Requirement

The pace of the city seemed to slow as late morning gave way to the afternoon. Employees who had spent their lunch break eating gradually returned to their offices, leaving behind quieter café terraces and sidewalks that were easier to navigate. A few residents walked their dogs in the shade of the apartment buildings, while several children played in a small nearby square under the distracted watch of their parents.

The hum of traffic still filled the avenue, but the bustle of the earlier hours had given way to a sense of relative calm. Aldric walked beside Emma without saying a word. Ever since they had left the bank, his gaze had lingered on the buildings around them. He studied the open windows, the flower-filled balconies, and the residents coming and going through the entrance halls carrying grocery bags or folders under their arms. A few days earlier, he would have seen each of those buildings as a potential fortress.

Now, all he could see were the many conditions that still prevented him from establishing his headquarters. Emma noticed his silence. She was beginning to recognize the difference between the moments when Aldric was simply observing and the moments when he was working through a problem. His brows were slightly furrowed, his pace had slowed, and his hand kept drifting back toward the small notebook hidden beneath his breastplate.

"Something doesn't add up," he said at last. Emma turned toward him.

"What is it?" Aldric continued walking for a few more seconds before answering.

"Since arriving here, every quest we have undertaken has proven impossible to complete."

"That's a rather discouraging way to sum up the past few days," Emma replied, "but you're not entirely wrong."

"And yet none of those quests were truly impossible," he continued.

"Each one was simply missing a previous step. We first searched for a place to live. The landlords required a bank account, proof of income, and a recognized identity. Then we tried to open a bank account. The advisor required proof of identity and an address. Every objective seems to depend on another objective that we have not yet completed."

"Go on."

"We've been treating each obstacle as a separate quest. But they all seem to be part of the same progression." He took out his notebook and opened it to the page dedicated to the Five Sacred Relics. Identity, Bank Account, Payslips, Guarantor, and Income were all carefully numbered. Several notes had been added over the past few days.

"May I see it?" Emma asked. Aldric handed it to her without hesitation. She stopped beside a bench at the entrance to the little square. A few fallen leaves had gathered beneath the trees despite the season, swept against the metal legs of the bench by passing pedestrians. Emma sat down and rested the notebook on her knees. Aldric sat beside her. Emma found the page listing the Five Sacred Relics and reread each requirement. Until now, they had treated them as separate objectives to obtain. An ID card.

A bank account. Income. A guarantor. Yet the longer she studied the list, the more she saw the connections between them. She took out her pen.

"Wait..." Aldric turned toward her. Emma wrote a single word in the middle of a blank page. Work. Beneath it, she drew a downward arrow and wrote: Income. She studied the first two entries for a few seconds before drawing another arrow. Bank Account. One final arrow appeared beneath it. Apartment. The progression looked simple when laid out that way. Yet several details still complicated the picture. A bank might accept certain clients without a job, but rarely without proof of identity.

A landlord might sometimes accept a guarantor, but Aldric had no one who could fill that role in this world. The order wasn't absolute, but it still revealed their biggest obstacle. Emma turned the notebook toward him.

"Look. Without a job, you don't earn a salary. Without a salary, you can't prove that you have a steady income. Without income, both banks and landlords will have a hard time trusting you. Even if some of the steps can happen in a different order, almost everything begins here." She rested the tip of her pen on the first word. Work.

"So the fortress isn't what's blocking our progress."

"No."

"It's everything that has to be completed before you can obtain it."

"Exactly." Emma handed the notebook back to him, but Aldric didn't close it. He studied the simple diagram. The longer he looked at it, the more the events of the past few days fell into place. The landlords' refusals were no longer isolated obstacles. The meeting at the bank was no longer a separate quest. The Five Sacred Relics were not treasures scattered at random throughout the city, but the different stages of a single path.

Since arriving in this world, he had been trying to reach the final reward without meeting the necessary requirements. In his old world, certain dungeons remained sealed until adventurers had obtained a key, defeated a guardian, or completed a quest in a neighboring region. Here, the doors still existed, but they took the form of contracts, official documents, and administrative rules. Aldric mentally replayed the three apartment viewings. The first landlord had asked about his profession and his income.

The second had wanted to know the identity of his guarantor. The elderly landlady had simply been looking for someone with a stable situation. None of them had refused to rent him an apartment because he wore armor or claimed to have defeated the Demon King. Even if he had dressed like everyone else in this world, the outcome would have been exactly the same. He then thought back to the bank advisor. No proof of identity. No address. No income.

The application had remained almost entirely blank because he still lacked every piece of evidence required to exist in the eyes of this civilization. △ MAIN QUEST UPDATED △ This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings. Acquire a Home △ PREREQUISITE DETECTED △ Find Employment The window confirmed exactly the conclusion he had just reached. He finally raised a hand and dismissed the interface with a simple gesture. Emma noticed that he had suddenly stopped walking.

As always whenever one of the System's windows appeared, his gaze fixed on a point in empty space that no one else could see.

"What is it?"

"I understand."

"What do you understand?"

"This quest could not yet be completed."

"Not yet."

"Exactly. There was a requirement we didn't know about." Seen that way, their progress really did resemble a video game. Some quests remained impossible until a prerequisite objective had been completed. A player could spend hours exploring an area, meeting important characters, and discovering the dangers waiting ahead, yet no door would open until the required event had taken place.

"When you put it that way... you're right." Aldric took out his pencil and added a few words beneath the diagram Emma had just drawn. Hidden Requirement Discovered. Find Employment. When he finished, he reread the note before gently closing the notebook. In his mind, the quest had changed completely. It was no longer an unreachable objective, but a door for which they finally knew the key.

"You aren't disappointed?"

"Why would I be?"

"Because we just lost several days. We visited apartments you could never have rented. We went to the bank even though you couldn't open an account. If we'd understood all of this from the beginning, we could have saved a lot of time."

"No." Aldric reopened the notebook to the very first page and turned it toward her.

"Look." Emma took the notebook again. The first notes listed the price of the hotel, the currency of this world, and the few French words Aldric had learned after arriving. The following pages contained a clumsy sketch of a pedestrian crossing and several observations about the city's shops. She then found the Five Sacred Relics, the names of the landlords they had met, the requirements requested by the bank, and even the debt for a single cup of coffee that Aldric still refused to forget.

Every discovery was dated. Every problem had an explanation or at least an attempted solution. Even the mistakes had been preserved. Aldric treated them as necessary steps in his progression.

"None of this would have been written down if we had gone looking for work immediately," he explained.

"We didn't know what the landlords required. We didn't understand how banks worked. We didn't even know that money could exist without taking the form of coins."

"You probably would have learned it eventually."

"Perhaps. But now we already know." He placed a finger on the notes about the bank.

"In my world, an adventuring party could reach a region before they possessed the level required to explore it. They would discover the strength of the creatures, the layout of the roads, and the resources available there. Sometimes they had to turn back without completing their objective. Yet no one considered that expedition a failure."

"Because you could come back better prepared."

"Exactly. We simply explored part of the map before reaching the required level." The comparison immediately resonated with Emma. When she was a student, she had spent countless evenings playing video games. How many times had she wandered into an area that was far too difficult simply to see what awaited her farther ahead?

She still remembered enemies capable of defeating her character in seconds, doors that could not yet be opened, and treasure chests guarded by creatures she wouldn't be able to defeat until many hours later. She had never considered those explorations a waste of time. They allowed her to memorize the layout, identify the dangers, and understand exactly why she needed to become stronger. And yet, ever since Aldric's arrival, she had viewed every refusal as a failure. A landlord said no. The bank said no.

Another process came to a halt. Each time, she had felt as though they were falling farther behind. Aldric, on the other hand, turned every one of those answers into information.

"May I borrow your pen?" The knight handed it to her without a word. Emma found the page containing the diagram they had completed together. She reread the words Aldric had added, then circled. Find Employment. Beside it, she drew an arrow and wrote two simple words. Start Here. She studied the page for a few moments. Proof of identity, a bank account, and a home were still necessary, but none of those objectives deserved their attention just yet. At last, they had a real starting point.

Emma capped her pen and handed the notebook back to Aldric. The knight studied the new annotation for a long moment. His gaze moved repeatedly from Start Here to Find Employment, then followed the arrows all the way to Apartment.

"Now that is a strategy worthy of an excellent Guild Master." Emma let out a quiet laugh.

"I'll take that as a compliment."

"It was meant as one." She stood up from the bench and slipped her pen back into her bag. Aldric carefully tucked the notebook beneath his breastplate before rising to his feet as well. △ CURRENT MAIN OBJECTIVE △ Find Employment Progress 0% When he looked up, his gaze settled on the dozens of businesses lining the avenue. A bakery stood on the street corner. Farther down were a café, a pharmacy, a bookstore, and several shops whose purpose he had yet to discover.

Employees came and went through different doorways, carrying boxes, trays, or folders. Only a few minutes earlier, those businesses had been nothing more than part of the scenery. Now, each one represented a possibility. Every storefront might conceal a profession he could learn. Every employer might become an ally willing to entrust him with his first mission in this world. Aldric slowed to a stop in front of the bakery.

Through the window, a man was arranging loaves of bread on a shelf while an employee served customers. The knight carefully watched their every movement. Emma followed his gaze.

"You're already thinking about working here?"

"I'm evaluating the possibilities."

"Do you know how to bake bread?"

"No."

"Then this probably isn't the best place to start."

"Any skill can be learned."

"Some take years to master." Aldric nodded, then turned toward the café next door. A waiter crossed the terrace carrying four cups balanced on a tray.

"That profession requires exceptional balance."

"And a great deal of patience."

"I possess both."

"You also have to remember everyone's orders."

"I can learn them." Emma smiled. She had just realized that, from now on, Aldric was going to see every business in Paris as a dungeon capable of offering him a quest. They resumed walking. The knight slowed down in front of nearly every storefront. He studied the signs, the employees, the customers, and the opening hours posted beside the doors. Emma realized that she, too, was looking at the shops differently. For years, she had walked past them without truly seeing them.

They had simply been part of her daily commute. Now she found herself wondering which of those places might be willing to hire a man with no identity, no modern work experience, and a sword strapped to his back. The challenge was still enormous. And yet, for the first time since they had begun their search, they knew exactly which direction to take.

"There are many dungeons."

"Yes." A smile spread across the knight's face.

"Then the quest truly begins today."