Chương 111: A Reward for His Efforts

The guild loomed directly across from Lloyd, its massive, rune-etched façade dimly gleaming under the streetlamps, the tall, metal-clad shutters on the upper floors sealed shut, as though hiding something important from prying eyes.

Taking one more long, appraising look at the building, cataloguing every detail — from the carved, time-darkened cornices to the massive, moss-covered steps at the entrance — he finally steeled himself and stepped inside, pushing open the heavy, metal-bound door, which gave way with a dull, drawn-out creak, letting him into the warm, noisy interior.

He was greeted by a tavern — a spacious, boisterous room filled with the din of voices, the clink of mugs, and the smell of roasting meat mingled with something distantly resembling hard liquor, all of it hanging in the air like a thick, intoxicating cloud.

At rough, time-darkened wooden tables sat Players of every kind, sipping their drinks and trading stories over one another about the monsters they'd killed, the dungeons they'd cleared, waving their arms as they talked and repeatedly breaking into loud, self-satisfied laughter that echoed beneath the low, soot-blackened ceiling beams.

Someone was showing off fresh scars to their tablemates, sleeve proudly rolled up; someone else was flaunting a trophy that caught the light as they turned it in front of envious glances; and above all this noisy, lively commotion drifted thick, bluish smoke, rising from someone's pipe and slowly settling beneath the ceiling in a dense, translucent haze.

Taking in the whole atmosphere — loud, warm, and yet so utterly foreign to him — Lloyd let out a heavy sigh, feeling the exhaustion of the past few days settle over him again with renewed weight at the sight of all this carefree, almost festive merriment, and headed for the left wing of the building, away from the noise and clatter of dishes, toward where the corridor gradually narrowed and the light grew noticeably dimmer.

There, behind an unassuming wooden counter, he was met by one of the guild's staff members — a young woman in a neat uniform buttoned all the way up, wearing a perfectly even, almost painted-on smile that didn't seem to waver under any circumstances. Lloyd pulled a crumpled, worn flyer from his backpack and handed it to her, and she, still smiling, carefully unfolded it and began reading through the contents, her lips moving silently, her finger tracing the lines with exaggerated, almost theatrical attentiveness.

At last her sweet, cloyingly polite little voice rang out. — Today you were supposed to kill five Shade-rank monsters. You killed two. For that — that is, for two Shades — you're entitled to two copper coins. But since the task wasn't completed, the amount is halved. Which comes to...

She paused for a second, as though calculating something in her head, her brow furrowing with such intense concentration you'd think she were facing some horrendously complex math problem, though there was, in fact, absolutely nothing to calculate — the simplest arithmetic imaginable, stretched out over several long, agonizing seconds — which struck Lloyd as nothing short of mockery. Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

"Seriously? Is she actually pretending to do the math right now?" — You're owed one copper coin. The clerk, with that same unchanging, plastered-on smile, held out a single copper coin, its surface engraved with strange symbols unfamiliar to Lloyd, glinting faintly in the uneven light spilling in from the tavern next door. — Would you like to exchange it for credits?

Lloyd nodded silently, feeling a dull, weary irritation rising inside him, and pulled a bracelet out of his backpack, fastening it around his wrist with a practiced motion, clicking the thin buckle shut in one crisp snap. The clerk, in turn, produced a small, dimly glowing device covered in tiny runes from somewhere beneath the counter and held it out toward him.

The moment the two devices touched, a short, mechanical confirmation tone sounded, a thin strip of green light flashing briefly across the bracelet, and the clerk spoke again in that same sweet, endlessly saccharine voice, smiling broadly. — Payment successful, thank you for your cooperation!

Lloyd nodded silently, barely masking his displeasure, and turned sharply on his heel, heading back into the tavern in search of his long-overdue meal, his stomach continuing to insist, quite loudly, just how hungry he'd gotten over this endless, exhausting day.

He made his way to the bar, exchanged a few brief words with the tired, taciturn bartender, whose face was half-hidden behind a thick, unkempt beard, and ordered the plainest, cheapest soup he could find on the worn, grease-stained menu, then headed toward a far, half-empty table tucked into the corner of the room, well away from the main noise and commotion, from the laughter and the clink of empty mugs being stacked on top of each other.

Sinking onto a rough wooden bench, polished smooth by countless weary Players who'd sat there before him, he gratefully stretched his tired legs out under the table, feeling the tension of the past few hours slowly drain out of his body, spreading through his muscles as a pleasant, heavy relief. When the steaming bowl was finally set down in front of him, a thin wisp of steam rising off it, Lloyd dug in without hesitation, hurriedly scooping up spoonfuls of the cloudy, entirely unremarkable broth.

The soup turned out watery, a little bland, the vegetable pieces floating in it boiled down almost past recognition into a shapeless, grayish-yellow mush — hardly a dish he'd have called refined by the standards of his old life back on Earth, where he probably would have pushed a bowl like this aside without even touching it.

But even this plain, unremarkable soup, after such an exhausting, event-packed day, tasted to him like nearly the best meal he'd ever had — the warmth spreading through his body with every spoonful bringing an almost physical relief unlike anything else.

He ate in silence, mechanically, glancing up now and then at the noisy, liquor-flushed crowd of Players at the neighboring tables, their voices blending into one continuous, indistinct hum, occasionally cut through by a particularly loud burst of laughter or the clatter of a dropped mug. None of them, as far as he could tell, had even noticed he was there — and honestly, Lloyd was glad for it, content to stay in the shadows, at his own out-of-the-way table, far from all the noisy, carefree bustle.