“Master used to pay it for me. I apologize once again for this; you must already spend a lot going out on missions.” He nodded apologetically.

  “Master?” Her puzzled eyes scrunched, but she dismissed it with a shake of her head and refocused on what he said. “It’s not like that. That vain prick and other adventurers get a pass due to their usefulness, or something along the lines. For me, the government takes their fees from what I earn.” She sighed, staring at the oblivious man who was evidently noting everything down.

  Their interactions were extremely human-like. There was actual nuance in the way they spoke; even the asocial Han was able to pick up on their little quirks. Anyhow, since there was nothing more to do, he continued listening while standing at the girl's side.

  “You really need to learn these things if you want to survive.” She added, her hand sliding into her pocket and pulling something out. Han couldn't quite see what it was, but somehow he already knew by the familiar, distinct metallic scent akin to pennies, some bronze coins.

  “I… Thank you once more.” He didn't refuse, since there wasn't much else to do. The line finally moved, and he threw the armor back over his shoulder. It seemed to advance a few people at a time; four stood ahead of them, and they, too, eventually passed through the guard-gated entrance.

  There was some chatter that Han easily overheard but chose to block out, unwilling to fill his head with bbber. In his pn, being caring toward her didn't really matter. The sooner the leash came off, the better. Still, it depended on the girl being active in fighting particurly, or in her case, putting him in fights.

  “Where would you like to go? If you live nearby, I will gdly take it there.” The weight of the armor didn't faze him at all; that was probably why it hadn't occurred to the girl to offer to share the load.

  “It’s better to sell it right away. I know a pce.” She paced forward before even finishing the sentence. As the two of them moved in unison, Pochirin had stayed in pce. It all settled in, the bustling street hustlers, the marketpce crammed with various wares, the smithy he could pinpoint from a mile away. Despite the wide streets, you couldn't help bumping into someone the closer you got to the lower square. None of it was new; he had been here a dozen times or more. Yet he still couldn't believe the least popur beginner city was this lively.

  Before the duo could notice, he picked up his pace and joined them. It didn't help that he was the one having to mind where he walked, not the people around him. From their earlier conversation, he gathered she wanted to sell the armor, though using it wouldn't hurt either. She was too small for it as it stood, but a decent smith could fix that easily enough. As they kept walking, the crowd thinned considerably. He couldn't imagine that out of all the decent weapon shops, smithies, and bck markets in this city, they would end up in front of a dingy café on some random side street.

  “Wait here for a moment.” She spoke without turning back and stepped inside. Han couldn't make out much of the interior, but by all he could sense and gather, it seemed ordinary enough. The mismatched painted wood already hinted at its unprecarious nature. There was no chance an NPC knew this city better than him and besides, during the walk, an idea had come to mind.

  As the door rang shut behind her, he started moving, for the sole reason of testing their distance limit. He didn't really know how to feel about their ethereal link or whatever it was. He chose a direction at random and went on his way.

  While he did that, Derylkin stood there wearing a vague smile he couldn't seem to shake. The truth of it was absurd to him. He was a free man. His Master. That was the only way he had ever been able to refer to him. He had never learned his full name, and of course, that man didn’t seem the type to offer it to a sve he had bought. Still, he was indebted to him; without him, he would never have met Kanade. Beneath the happiness, though, deep in his bones sat cold, icy fear

  That encounter had changed the lives of three people, without the man ever knowing his supposed savior was the awkwardly trotting pooch. After Pochirin turned the corner, the café door swung open.

  “We got a deal. Bring it here.” Kanade stepped out quickly and held the door open for him. Since he couldn't barge in with the armor on his shoulder, he turned the hold into a hug that blocked his vision but gave him safe passage. Even before stepping inside, a strong incense pierced his nostrils.

  His nose scrunched as he tried to avoid coughing, sneezing, or making any noise that might mark him as uncultured. As the initial punch wore off, the scent itself proved somewhat bitter, breathing was still cumbersome with it in the air, but nothing he couldn't push through.

  “Alright, set it down here. You’ll bring it in the back ter.” Kanade added, the heavy armor still nded with a loud thump despite him setting it down carefully. Once he straightened up, it was clear the pce was not a café, which was strange, since everything inside was entirely different from what the front had suggested.

  The pce was simply very dark. It was riddled with bckwood that pyed tricks with the shadows, and the only light source, a cluster of far too many candles set in each corner, did nothing to make it less eerie. Out of the corner of his eye, a figure emerged. The seemingly charred counter kept it from coming any closer.

  “Oh! So mean, so mean!” The man excimed in a fmboyant tone, and before Derylkin could say anything, he extended his hand. Since his fingers were curled as though he was holding something, Derylkin hovered his palm beneath them. A couple of silver coins dropped into it.

  “Spend it well, sweetie. I couldn’t resist your proposal. I do need some strong men to help me around here.” The man's chocote skin glistened in the candlelight, giving Derylkin time to grow even more confused.

  “What? Could you expin?” He turned to Kanade, who had been eyeing the way out.

  “Not only did I give you the money for the armor. I also gave Blunderlynn the idea to employ you. In turn… well, let’s say I’ll hold my end of the deal, no problem.”

  “I…” Derylkin didn't know what to say. She had helped enormously; he had already received the first paycheck, and if he was now employed, that skipped another debacle that would've caused him real problems. But she didn’t ask him.

  At the end of the day, he understood she had done what was best for him. There was no room for resentment to grow toward someone doing a genuine good deed.

  “Dery! Mind taking the armor in the back storage?” Blunderlynn called, tacking one more unnecessary note onto the exchange. Nonetheless, without protest, Derylkin carried the armor away, maneuvering carefully to avoid clipping the doorframe or a badly pced candle.

  Once he had left the room, far enough that their conversation couldn't reach him, the atmosphere shifted. Both Blunderlynn’s and Kanade's expressions fell.

  “You do understand I’m risking everything for this, right, Kana?” He leaned forward, resting both elbows on the counter and interlocking his fingers. Several strands of his long bck hair had slipped free from their bands. Those eerie gray eyes, carrying neither malice nor its opposite, settled on Kanade.

  “He can’t return. The adventurer died, so it doesn’t matter.” She was unflinching, seemingly long used to the way Blunderlynn could be. They both knew that sves, specifically those who had survived an encounter their master didn’t, were to be pced at auction. There was a statutory time limit, however.

  “What happened? Should I alert the channels?” Unlike his unbothered eyes, his ears had visibly perked at hearing that an adventurer had died while both she and the sve returned unharmed. Despite the circumstances, Kanade didn't detect any suspicion from him, though he wasn't exactly an easy man to read.

  “Mm. Not needed; he killed the unusual zombie. It doesn’t seem like I got any stronger…” She shook her head and left it vague.

  “Silly, Rin-Rin’s your strength.” He turned as the floorboard creaked behind them, his hearing on par with Kanade's. “You should go. I’ll take care of him as I did with you. Give Rin-Rin kisses from me.”

  With a nod, they parted ways. She slipped out of the café and into the empty side street. The wooden buildings were packed so close together that the stone walkway was incomparable to the main roads. She took a long, deep breath and tried to settle herself. It turned out that in a thousand miles, she was the one who ended up helping others.

  With that deserved pause, she gnced around. The empty street wasn't unusual, what was unusual was that Pochirin was nowhere to be seen. She didn't come by Lynn's often; he usually just waited for her on the rare occasion she did. Her link wasn't picking up even a rough sense of his location. There were only two expnations for that, and she was hoping it was the first one.

  Either way, it wasn't something she couldn't fix. She closed her eyes and focused. In a single moment, her link strengthened, she drew on her small mana pool to reinforce it, extending its reach at the cost of mana and mobility. As she did, she sensed his precise location instantly, though that didn't mean she knew the street or how to get there. The sense mostly gave her the exact distance between them.

  Han, on his end, was troubled. He couldn't walk any further. If he had had hands instead of paws, he might have rubbed his eyes. The world ahead had gone blurry, and even the scents in the distance had cut off. He didn't risk stepping forward that would most likely mean breaking the link, the hound disappearing, and him being left without a host. On the bright side, the distance he covered without the girl was honestly the farthest he had ever seen from a familiar.

  He had left them at the café in some ghetto corner of Higelsdale and managed to reach the main street they would come from. Roughly half a mile or so. That probably expined why she was a dungeon scout, or whatever the title was. He had never even heard of an NPC doing something that obscure, not that he would ever imagined needing one.

  It must be a low-level thing.

  Despite being at the very edge of their link, it suddenly strengthened. The blurred view didn't clear, but he could sense where the girl was. He immediately guessed she was looking for him.

  Since the signal was clear, he didn't even need her scent. This time, he wanted to test something. His movements had been transting naturally into quadruped actions, walking had come easily enough.

  What about running?

  He had taken over five minutes to wander here at a slow pace. The hound's speed should clear it far faster. He didn't think twice. He sprinted, using the narrow gap between the crowd and the buildings as a ne. In less than a minute, the poputed streets gave way to the bleak, empty ones. Pochirin wasn't even winded.

  Before rounding the corner where she was, he slowed to a walk. She was leaning against the alley wall near the café he had left her at. The armor was nowhere in sight, and neither was the fellow who had profited most from his death.

  “You’re all over the pce today, aren’t you?” She moved toward him and knelt down. Han couldn't help but notice her eyes, teary and green, holding so much. One gnce and he felt a piece of her story, though he wasn't sure whether that came from him or from Pochirin. More immediately, they were holding a dangerous amount of liquid, and it was waiting to burst.

  “Pochirin… “ She bent down fully and pressed a kiss to Pochirin's forehead. "Lynn asked me to pass that along. Listen, okay? Li can't know what happened today, or we'll both get scolded. We don't want that." Her strained smile barely held. It sat heavy with Han, and despite everything, a tennis ball formed in his nonexistent throat.

  I… am not sure what to do.

  She thought of him as her lifelong pet, full of shared history he knew nothing about. On top of that, he already hated being handled like an infant when he was, at least in his own head, a grown man, and now she had stolen his first kiss, which he supposed he had stolen from her in turn. This just couldn't get any worse. For a man who didn't care and simply wanted to become himself again, he was putting up with a lot.

  Fuck…

  “Bark!” Han let out a small bark as though agreeing, coaxing a smile out of Pochirin. That was the least he could do.

  “Thanks!” The smile that had been clinging on by a thread suddenly brightened. A single tear slipped down her cheek, one she didn't bother wiping. By chance, it fell and nded squarely on Pochirin's snout. Han's mind was unsettled in a way he couldn't quite put into words.

  “L-Let’s go home before Li comes back.” She jolted to her feet, and only then did Han process what she said.

  Lee? Li? Huh? That’s a guy’s name?

  If she was in a retionship, this was going to get very annoying. He had at least some integrity and would rather not sit through watching them live their lives. He sighed inwardly and braced himself for life as a pet. The least he could hope for was a rge home, or an apartment up in the upper district where the living prices were still manageable. Even a low-level pyer could get a decent pce for role-pying. Not that he ever understood those people. Without rambling further, he had always just kept a spare sleeping bag he could use to log out in a hurry.

  Since the girl had calmed down a while back, they had already covered some distance, but a different worry crept in. Their destination was unknown to him. And they were heading even deeper into the lower reaches of Higelsdale.

  The area around the café had at least been decent, close to everything an adventurer might need. They were already well past that point. Since Higelsdale had been built against a massive natural mountain, the lower city had never been fully enclosed, and she was leading them straight toward the fringe where walls should have been, right at the city's edge.

  The streets here were lined with one-story wooden shacks. It barely looked like part of a city; the architecture was closer to a small vilge. He even passed someone with a tiny garden growing from their balcony, a rge muddy puddle pooled beneath it. The stone path that marked proper city territory had ended a few alleys back. Now there were children pying in the mud like it was sand, and a ring of rocks in the middle of the street that had clearly once held a campfire.

  She lives here?