Chương 34: A fine meal

The crafting guilds are a little bit different from the other guilds. It has minimum qualifications to get entry. I can join the armorer's guild, but that's it. I don't qualify for the bowyer guild or the weapon crafting guild. And I don't qualify for the leather working, wood working, cooking, weaving, candle making, glassblowing, or any of the other guilds. But it's good to see that all of those things exist. It's good to see that those kinds of things are able to be learned and we can get more secondary skills.

The armorer guild does have a few quests for making and improving armor. I'll deal with those when we decide to spend some time in town. Right now, I'm planning on leaving the city and going out into the woods to gain some survival and other skills, so I don't pick up any of these quests. The attendant informs me that they put out new quests every morning, so there's no point in me picking up any quests now if I'm not going to do them.

Our last stop is the scout guild, which is right back to the same setup as the adventurer guild and the hunting guild. We get our leather tags and head to find the scouting quests. Scout quest: catalog monsters of level 20 or higher. Progress: 0/5. Reward: 30 renown, 15, 000 experience. Scout quest: travel to the edge of the forest in any direction. Reward: 25 renown, 10, 000 experience. Scout quest: find outposts of bandits. Progress: 0/3. Reward: 60 renown, 25, 000 experience.

Now that we have a large list of quests, we go to El's next demand: a bath. There's a bath house among the roots of the tree, and it's free. Well, there's a suggested donation of five copper pieces, but no money is required. I give ten copper, grateful for the chance to bathe. I'm somewhat surprised at how busy the bath house is. There are maybe fifty baths of various sizes, usually big enough for as many as ten people at a time. There's space for five hundred or more people to bathe at the same time.

It's co ed, and no one seems to have any trouble with being nude. This strikes me as strange. I guess it's because I didn't grow up with it, but I don't feel comfortable getting naked in front of five hundred strangers. But at the same time, I don't want to give up on the chance to be clean. I look at Gigi and El, to see how they feel about taking off their clothes and leaving them in an alcove.

There are towels for people to use when they get out of the baths, but those towels are on the other side of the room, after the point where you've already bathed. Which makes sense; that's when towels are needed. That's when the towels are helpful. Before then, towels will just get in the way. Except when it comes to modesty. I'm not ashamed of my body, especially not now. If you'd asked me to get naked in front of a group of people a week ago, I would have had problems.

But now, thanks to a week of training and an increase in all of my attributes, I'm in great shape. My body is a bit hairy, but even that hair doesn't look bad anymore. It looks manly and strong. I look manly and strong. But I still don't like being naked. I also feel my face getting bright red as I walk next to El and Gigi. I've never seen either of them naked, but I am sorely tempted to look. But at the same time, it feels wrong to look at them. They're both gorgeous, athletic, and in every way my type.

Almost everyone else we see in here has green or brown skin and is an elf. They're equally gorgeous, but I'm able to look at them without feeling overly embarrassed. El and Gigi are a different story. And my embarrassment is showing itself. Despite the amount of blood in my cheeks making me blush, there's somehow enough blood left in my body for an erection stronger than I can remember having in recent memory.

I do my best to cover myself up, but that just involves putting my hands down there, which means touching my penis, which gets it even more exciting. This is absolutely mortifying.

"I wonder if there are any cold baths for you," El asks. She laughs and pats me on my shoulder, then walks ahead of me to the baths. I see the corded muscles in her back as she walks, the curve of a perfect ass and legs that look like they could crush me in the most delightful way. Even her feet are pretty. And when she reaches up and lets her hair down, it cascades to her mid back, somehow framing the muscles of her shoulders rather than just covering them up. It does not help my erection get any smaller.

I frown and follow her into the bath, trying to ignore Gigi laughing behind me. The water is not cold. It's not hot, either. It's just warm enough to be comfortable. There are tubs of soap, and I focus on those, scrubbing my skin down and staring straight ahead, trying not to look at the gorgeous green bodies or at the beautiful forms of my two companions. I know everyone here is kind of consenting, but I still feel wrong taking a glance. I feel like I'm leering, and that's not a good look for me.

That's not who I am. I like women very much. I'm attracted to them. But I don't look unless they invite me to. I need enthusiastic consent, not just a lack of saying no. Yes means yes, because silence means no. I feel myself gradually calm down, the blood returning to the rest of my body as I scrub soap all over, through my hair and over every inch of skin. I then get out of the first tub and step into the second, where I start rinsing off the soap. Seem the tubs are in sets of three here.

First you get in and soap up. Then you get in the next one and rinse off. Then finally you get into the third and rinse again, to make sure that you're nice and clean. The middle tub looks almost dirty. As we watch, one of the other middle tubs is emptied and refilled with clean water. So I guess they're watching them to make sure they don't get too dirty. That's good. At the other end of the tubs, I take a towel and gratefully wrap it around my waist, hiding my fading erection. Gigi smiles at me.

"Not bad, Strong," she says, gesturing down.

"No need to compensate for you, huh?" Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

"You saw?" I ask, somehow getting embarrassed all over again.

"Yeah, we saw what you're working with," El says.

"And you have nothing to be embarrassed by."

"Truly," Gigi says.

"No need to be embarrassed at all."

"You should be proud," El says.

"Got very lucky," Gigi agrees.

"Can we stop talking about this?" I ask, quickly drying myself off with another towel and then heading back around to where our clothes are waiting. I hear the girls laughing behind me as I go, and also notice some lingering looks from the other women and some of the men who are still bathing, or who have dried off and are getting dressed but who saw me beforehand. I don't understand. I mean, I've never thought my penis was exactly small before, but nor did I really think of it as big.

Bigger than average according to the internet, but not like porn sized or anything like that. Nothing to write home about, as they say. I haven't seen many others in my life, at least not fully erect, so I have no idea. I know that I'm a grower and not a shower, meaning it gets quite a bit bigger when I'm excited, but even then it's not like it gets to the size you see in movies. Did I get bigger? Is that what I got from the wolf blood? That wouldn't make any sense. And would be a total waste.

Who cares if my dick is bigger than it used to be? Who cares if it's big at all? I mean, I can't change the size of it, so it is what it is. Either it's big enough for the girl I'm with – and even small ones are usually big enough to still provide the necessary stimulation – or it's not. Who cares? It just doesn't matter. And it's not even a boost to my ego to hear what the girls have said about it. I don't consider that to make me feel better or feel impressive or anything.

It just makes me feel embarrassed, because my friends looked at my penis while I had a public erection. I feel ashamed, not proud. I pull my clothes on as quickly as I can, feeling slightly less clean when I do so. I should get my equipment laundered. Or maybe there's some magic that will help with that. I'll go to the mages guild and see if they sell spells. Wait, no. No point in that. I'd need to get a hundred renown there before I had access to the store. I need to just find a general magic store.

They have those, right? I mean, they have to, don't they? I hope spells aren't that expensive. I spent most of my money with Glacrow. Will I still have enough to buy a spell? We'll deal with that after food. I haven't eaten all day, and it's been almost a week since I had a full meal instead of just beef jerky or trail mix or whatever. Ash used to cook lynxith steak. I guess I've had that. But nothing else. I've been eating for sustenance. Tonight, we eat for pleasure.

We stop at the first inn we find, which is called the Feathered Snake. I briefly wonder if those sorts of thing exist in this world, and then tell myself that they almost certainly do. Why else would an inn be named for them? Just assume that any monster you can think of definitely exists somewhere in this world. The fare at the Feathered Snake is pretty simple. It's a stew made with some kind of meat and vegetables, served with a small loaf of bread.

The bread is perfect for dipping, and the soup tastes better than any stew I've ever eaten. I remember that a big part of taste is actually smell, so that makes sense. My sense of smell is orders of magnitude better than it was before, so it makes sense that things would taste better. I can taste the carrots, the potatoes, and the three different earthy mushrooms in the stew, along with the tomato base and the meat, which I think is a kind of sweet beef.

All the tastes are slightly off from what I expect, though not in a bad way. I'm not sure if that's because I'm tasting better or because the vegetables from this world aren't exactly the same as the ones from my home world. I suppose it doesn't matter. The language is the same, or at least everything is translated into English for me. I don't think that's part of the polyglot talent, though. The signs are in English too.

I'm guessing that we're actually speaking and reading elvish, and our brains have just had elvish translated into English for ease of understanding. That would make far more sense than that these elves are actually speaking and writing in contemporary American English. The stew doesn't last long, but it is extremely filling. My belly feels warm and happy, and I lean back in my chair, taking a sip of the surprisingly cold water that they provided with the meal.

"That was delicious," I say. Gigi looks at me and laughs.

"Finished already?" she asks.

"You must've been really hungry." She's only about halfway through her bowl. So is El. But I don't think I was eating particularly fast. I was just eating at a normal pace, enjoying the food. Savoring it a little bit, but mostly just getting it down. That's what I do with food. I put it in my body so that I can keep operating as normal, so that I'm not hungry anymore. Do I eat really fast? When I was a kid, any time I stopped eating, my mother would take the food away.

She would say that if I was stopping, then that meant I was done. She didn't want me to eat too much just to be polite, and didn't expect me to clean my plate. Leftovers were fine, and made good snacks later on. But she taught me that once you start eating, you keep eating until you're done. It just so happened that I wasn't done until the entire bowl of stew was inside me, until I'd wiped the bowl clean with the last of my bread and eaten that. I didn't know that I eat fast. I don't think I eat fast.

But clearly, I eat faster than Gigi and El. I leave them to finish their meals while I go and settle up with the inn keeper.

"I'd also like to pay for rooms for the night," I say.

"Private rooms are three silver per night," the inn keeper says. He's big for an elf, and very round, but his smile is warm and inviting.

"If funds are short, you can always rent a bed in the common room for one silver each night. The meals are just three copper a piece. Two for you and your friends; first timer's discount." He leans towards me conspiratorially.

"Just don't tell anyone," he says.

"Or they'll all want discounts." He leans back and laughs, rubbing his hands together.

"I think I'm going to splurge," I say. I pull out ten silver.

"That's a room each for me and my companions," I say.

"Plus breakfast in the morning." He takes the silver happily, counting it quickly before secreting it into a pocket.

"Of course," he says.

"Did you want change from that?" I imagine him giving me a huge hand full of copper coins. I shake my head.

"Consider the rest a tip," I say.

"For the good food and the freshly cleaned sheets on the bed."

"Of course," he says.

"I'll take care of that right away. And if you put your clothes outside your rooms, I'll have them cleaned for you during the night. Free of charge, friend. Free of charge." Maybe in the future, we'll share a room at the inn. Maybe they'll get their own and I'll get my own. Maybe we'll sleep in the common room. But tonight, just tonight, we want a little bit of luxury, a little bit of our old world. That said, it's a small room, barely bigger than the bed inside of it.

There's a water basin for washing, a small chest for storage, a window, and nothing else. At the same time, it's all that I need. I lean my weapons against the bed, take off my clothes and put them outside the door of my room, and fall into the deepest sleep I've had all week.