Despite having gone to sleep around 2 AM, I woke up at the crack of dawn. Or rather, the System woke up with an alarm blaring straight into my head.
It didn’t sound like a rooster crowing or a gentle chi. It sounded exactly like the default ring of a smartphone, except cranked up to a volu that bypassed my eardrums and rang directly inside my head.
-Ding!
{Good morning, Host. It is 5:30 AM local ti.}
"You’re a sadist," I groaned, violently shoving my face into the lumpy pillow. "Who the hell sets an alarm for five-thirty after a 2 AM bedti? I need at least eight hours. It’s backed by science."
-Ding!
{Host, you are a Tier-1. You do not strictly ’need’ eight hours of sleep. You rely desire it.}
"Right. Because God forbid I want to be comfortable."
I threw my legs over the side of the bed and forced myself to stand, feeling my body pop in three different places before stumbling over to the small basin in the bathroom.
Pulling out my toothbrush and paste, I went to work, even managed a quick bath while I was at it.
Walking out with a freshly bought towel around my waist, I grabbed the cloth bag that held the new clothes I’d purchased from that overpriced Gear & Potions shop beside the inn.
There was nothing special about them, just a dull black tunic, pants of the sa color, and leather boots, along with a rather long belt of soft leather that hung down to mid-thigh after I buckled it in.
[Maybe I’m missing sothing.] I tilted my head about it for exactly two seconds before shrugging and strapping the kukri along with its harness around my waist.
With the shotgun too securely strapped to my back, I gave myself one last look over in the mirror.
"I truly do look ravishing in whatever I wear."
And with that, I hopped out of the room with a grin and a clear goal: level up at least once by noon.
I descended the creaky wooden stairs, imdiately feeling the weight of a dozen stares locking onto the mont I walked into the lobby.
The said lobby basically doubled as a tavern. It was a wide, room packed with tables, mismatched chairs, and a long wooden counter at the back.
The air slled heavily of porridge and cheap coffee and even ale.
A handful of early-riser adventurers were scattered around the room, nursing warm mugs and picking at their plates.
And every single one of them had stopped chewing to stare at .
[I guess walking in last night caked head-to-toe in dried blood tends to leave a lasting impression.]
Given the absolute lack of subtlety in the room, I decided to skip breakfast and made a beeline straight for the exit, pulling a small pouch from my inventory.
As I passed the counter, I tossed the pouch filled with two hundred silver coins, landing it squarely in front of the wide-eyed innkeeper.
"For the floor damage," I said simply, not breaking my stride.
[I an, my little test root did gouge a hole in the hardwood upstairs. Best to pay the fine now before they call the fantasy cops on .]
Pushing the wooden doors open, I stepped out into the crisp morning air and onto the hard-packed dirt road.
Taking a quick look around, it beca imdiately obvious that this place wasn’t a real town. It was a highly specialized micro-economy carved straight into the forest, built solely to service the mountain looming at the end of the road.
The Knight’s quarters sat just at the beginning of the road, positioned perfectly to monitor the traffic, beside that was the Inn.
And right beside the Inn, there was the gear and potions shop I’d patronized last night, followed by a small, well-kept Shrine of Amaterasu sitting right by the dungeon’s entrance.
It obviously doubled as a frontline infirmary, there to patch up anyone who dragged themselves out of the dungeon with the two goblin diseases.
And on the left side of the road, in front of the shrine, however, was a dedicated industrial zone.
The main path branched off to the right, widening out to accommodate a massive, gray processing plant. The air around it slled worse than a butcher’s market, and in front of the plant sat a long row of open-air counters, and just beside that massive complex was the actual Adventurer’s Guild branch building.
My eyes tracked back up toward the dungeon entrance, snagging on a long wooden shed sitting along the base of the mountain, with a bored-looking guy sitting at a table out front of a massive stack of hand-drawn wooden carts of varying sizes.
I paused as the logistical math suddenly clicked into place.
[Nom-Nom ntioned carts yesterday when she was telling about her first dungeon dive,] I realized.
It made perfect sense. Real life didn’t have an auto-loot chanic. If a party cleared out a hundred goblins, they couldn’t exactly stuff the bodies into their pockets.
That’d make standard procedure for an adventuring party to rent a cart near the entrance, drag it down into the dungeon, and load it up with corpses.
Then they’d haul it out and dump the haul at those open-air counters. The appraisers would count the bodies, hand over a written IOU of sorts, and the party would take that slip right next door into the Guild branch to cash out.
It was a literal loot-processing assembly line.
[Very industrial...] I mused, adjusting the shotgun strap on my shoulder before continuing up the dirt road, heading straight for the 20-ter-wide gaping entrance of the mountain.
No heavy barricades or iron gates were blocking the way, which made sense given the sheer volu of carts that needed to roll in and out of here daily.
Instead, the checkpoint was surprisingly mundane. A couple of knights in ticulously maintained chainmail sat behind wooden tables at the far corners of the cave mouth, while a few more heavily ard guards stood at attention along the opening with eyes sweeping the foot traffic to ensure no one tried to slip inside unregistered.
I veered toward the closest table, and the knight stationed there glanced up from a thick ledger, giving my dark clothes and the Soul Armant strapped to my back a surprised once-over.
"ID and permit, please," the knight said, holding out a gauntleted hand.
Reaching into my pocket, I pulled out my adventurer’s card, and with a quick, subconscious nudge, I poured a trickle of mana into it, and the inscribed runes imdiately flared to life, glowing with a soft, verifiable green light.
Certain he saw it happen, I handed it over, along with my permit.
The knight took the card, and suddenly, his eyes snagged. I watched a genuine flicker of surprise break through his expression while his posture straightened.
[Ah. The stats...]
Having Ice, Nature, and tal affinities listed right next to a solid six mana circuits, and Soul Armant wasn’t exactly common.
On paper, it painted as so sort of golden-boy prodigy with a massively bright future ahead of him, not a stray kid walking into a goblin hole alone.
The knight looked back up from the permit, eyeing with a sudden, noticeable sliver of respect before clearing his throat, "This permit says you had clearance for yesterday, too."
"Ran into so scheduling issues," I replied smoothly, leaning against the table. "Couldn’t make it in ti."
He didn’t pry. The knight simply gave a curt nod before pulling his massive, leather-bound ledger closer and writing down my ti of entry along with a few other details with a quill, then spun the heavy book around to face .
"Your signature," he said, tapping a blank box at the bottom of the page and handing my card back.
I didn’t reach for the quill. Instead, I took my adventurer’s card, flipped it runes-first, and pressed it firmly against the paper before pulsing another quick hit of mana through the card.
When I pulled it away, the sa glowing rune was perfectly stamped into the page where my signature was supposed to be.
The knight nodded before flashing a faint, knowing smirk as he handed my docunts back.
"Alright, kid. Just make sure you co back to my station to have your exit recorded. Otherwise, we’ll simply announce you as missing... and you know what happens after..."
"Right..." I deadpanned, slipping the card and permit back into my pockets.
With a final nod to the guard, I turned to face the massive, moss-lit entrance of the Dungeon, feeling a slow, genuine grin stretching across my face.
I was about to walk into an honest-to-god dungeon, to grind levels on an honest-to-god System. I had a brand new super-cool ’tentacle magic’ practically itching to be tested on so unsuspecting goblins.
And the absolute second I leveled up and broke that 55 MP cap?
I’d finally be able to cast Temporal Step.
And most importantly... For the strength to afford the life I want to lead, I stepped inside.
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