Chapter 204: Chapter 203 – Call to adventure.

‘Haven’t been here in a while…’

Roland was wearing the more compact version of his armor without the helmet part. Even then he kept his face somewhat covered with the robe that he draped over his body. After so many years of hiding from pesky family members, it was hard to change his ways. It didn’t feel right if he was not covered head to toe with armor or back at his home.

Before he was the adventurer’s guild that needed to give him the gold ranker test. For it he would need to leave the city and rendezvous with someone from an affiliated guild. That someone would be the judge that after the task was over decided if he was worthy of the gold rank.

Now, this was somewhat a troublesome part of the whole deal. While from the outside it might have looked professional for another higher rank adventurer to tag along to keep a newbie in line, sometimes it went astray. Some of the chaperones were less than stellar in their morals, sometimes the newbie ended up forking up some of their gold just so they could pass the test.

Would he have luck with his test checkers or would he have to bribe them? Roland was someone with a lot of money but that was also known by the guild. If the person grading him was to fail him for not paying up he would be sidelined for half a year. The half-year was not the problem though but losing valuable time on repeating the rank-up tests was.

Elodia did say that she would try to talk Solana into giving him a lighter test. Also, there was the issue with his status screen becoming open to prying eyes which could be avoided with her help. This was not something the union could get involved in either so he should have been feeling more at ease. Yet for one reason or another, he was not looking forward to leaving this city. His home and everything he owned were here.

‘There is always something that doesn’t go according to plan…’

The incident with the ant mine came to his mind. Thus he would like to avoid any tasks that involved entering areas that hadn’t been explored. Ones that involved mysterious disappearances were also similar. Most of the time the reason was some kind of powerful monster that had evolved and left its habitat. Without knowing what he was getting himself into it would be hard to prepare the countermeasures.

‘But I guess that’s the adventure part in the name of this profession.’

After letting out a sigh he descended into the tavern-like adventurer’s guild. On the inside, he was hit by the smell of alcohol and sweat. After the city population had started to settle, so did the adventurer guild become more structured. They had increased the count of their receptionists after a certain overachiever had left them dry to make up for the loss of manpower.

Roland scanned the room with his eyes and homed in on the elven lady that knew him. Elodia apparently had taken some time out of her day to speak about the issue. With her help, he hoped to receive a mission that wouldn’t involve scouting out cemeteries and running into abominations. Without a proper priest, such a task would be difficult even for him.

“Well, if it isn’t our famous runesmith! Haven’t seen you in a while.”

After waiting for fifteen minutes he was finally able to arrive at Solana’s desk. He had arrived in this city some years ago and this elven maiden had already been living here. Even though it had been a while, she didn’t look like she aged a day.

Just like in the books of fiction in his old world, elves tended to live for longer than humans. This didn’t reach the level of thousands of years but at a base, they could live three times as much as a human. This was without accounting for magical ways of prolonging life that could be used by any species.

Even Roland would probably live longer than a regular human thanks to his higher level and vitality stat that kept increasing. If he wanted to boost his longevity even further he could buy various elixirs that had diminishing returns. But for now, he needed to focus on the present, if he made it to thirty was still up to debate as in this world of uncertainty every day could be his last.

“Good day, Solana. I think Elodia has spoken to you about the thing…”

“Straight to the point, you’re no fun what does that girl see in you, well besides that handsome face that is.”

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Solana chuckled while winking towards Roland. In the past perhaps a sensual look from a beauty like this would make him get nervous but at this point in his life, he didn’t really care. His face was devoid of any reaction which caused the elven lady to pout slightly.

“Fine, you are lucky that I owe Elodia a favor, I have prepared the paperwork you just need to sign it.”

While the woman seemed slightly dejected by his emotionless face, he just wanted to get on with it. What he received were three pieces of paper that were very similar. There was a difference though, each one had a different task written down on it.

“This is the form for the gold rank test but why are there three?”

“The girl is looking out for you, she even helped me pick up some commissions from the board.”

“She did?”

“Yes, she narrowed it down to three that shouldn’t take too long, now choose one and that’ll be it. You should appreciate my effort in all of this and give me a present for all that hard work.!”

“...Did all that hard work involved copying Elodia’s handwriting too?”

“Haha, did you notice~”

Roland rolled his eyes as he quickly noticed that this perfectly filled-out paperwork was done by Elodia. Probably she failed to convince this lazy sun elf to just help her out. He could imagine her going through the chaotic notice board, listing down the best commissions, and handing everything over to Solana that just needed to sign off on it.

‘Did she do it after or before working in the shop?’

He could not pinpoint the exact time when she could have done it. While he did not ask her to go to this extent, there was a warm fuzzy feeling in his heart that she cared this much to get this done. After coming back from this small expedition he was already thinking about perhaps buying her a new dress.

‘Let’s see…’

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