I'm eventually woken by a sharp, aching pain. I squint my eyes open, hand immediately going to my stomach. As much as I've gotten used to surviving on minimal food, I think my body is at its limit.

I roll onto my side-

and immediately fall to the floor with a thud.

“Ow.” I grumble. Right, I was sleeping on a cot. Ignoring that, I pull off my pack, only now realizing the shooting muscle pains in my back I got from sleeping on it because I forgot to take it off. Hissing to myself, I hazily dig through my bag, but there's nothing left of my travel rations. That's right, I'd long since been living off of the food Master scavenged while we walked, I don't have anything to eat.

But I'm starving.

And it's not just that I feel like I'm starving because I'm so hungry. Looking down at myself, nothing left but skin and bones underneath my armor and body so thin and gaunt I look sick, I realize that I'm actually starving. A glance at my Health, ever so slowly decreasing, confirms it. If I don't get food sometime soon, I will literally starve to death.

I groan, from the hunger and weakness and the tearing sensation from the muscles in my back after sleeping in a terrible position, forcing myself up to my feet. I don't even know how long I was asleep here. At least there's a little water left in my flask, so I drink that, and it helps a bit.

I shuffle through the back rooms of the guild until I make it back to the front counter. Thankfully, I see the same brunette woman from last time. I swallow, trying to prepare myself for more talking, and approach her.

“Ah, you're awake. You were out for quite a while,” the woman notes.

I just sort of nod, then go to the important thing. “Uh, I'm hungry, do you know where I can get something to eat?”

With a smile, she directs me to a nearby tavern, so I head there immediately. Except, when I search through my pack, I don't have any money. Master didn't give me any... In fact, I doubt she even had any with her to give me at the end...

Thinking as much, I arrive at the tavern. Since I don't have any money, I ask the man behind the bar if I can work there for a while to afford some food.

He takes one look at me and scoffs. “Looking like that? You'll drive away all the customers. Come back when you've gotten yourself cleaned up.”

I grimace a little, still holding my aching stomach. “Where can I get cleaned up?” The altraska have bathhouses, but the humans don't. And they cost money anyway...

“Well, we have some baths here, but...” he eyes me warily. “They're for paying customers, and if you don't even have money for food...” His shrug says it all. Obviously he can't just let me use them for free.

No money for a bath so I can be clean enough to work for money for food.

Fuck.

I head back to the guild. My feet are dragging, and I'm starting to get cold. I think my body is shutting down. When I stagger to the reception counter again, the woman asks me, “Hey, are you alright?”

“No,” I admit. “I'm starving but I don't have any money for food. I don't know what to do.”

“Oh my.” She considers me briefly. “We aren't allowed to give out free provisions, but... here.” With a quiet word, she takes my hand and shakes it between her own. When she pulls away again, there are a couple little copper coins in my hand.

“Th-thank you,” I mumble, eyes wide. I place the coin on the counter. “Food please. Anything.”

“Certainly.” She takes the money and swipes it into a till under the counter. I know it's little more than pocket change to her, but she is literally saving my life here. As she retrieves a single, little roll of hard bread, I start to tear up.

The hands it to me, and I say, “Thank you. Really. Thank you so much,” and bow deeply.

The woman smiles, but looks a bit sad. “You're welcome. And by the way, my name is Arkida.”

“Thank you, Arkida.” I bow again. Then I sort of eye the roll she gave me. “Can I...?”

“Oh!” She chuckles. “Of course, go right ahead.”

I do my best not to tear into the roll that instant. My stomach is all knotted up, so I try to take slow, careful bites, chewing well before I swallow.

Even so, it feels like lead. Like my body has been so long without food, my stomach doesn't even know what to do with it. But sure enough, once the food goes down, things start to come together. I can feel my body responding. It knows it has food again, so some of the dizziness and chills in my hands and feet start to abate.

Slumping onto the counter, it feels like my body gave up on everything else, using all available energy to digest the bread. “Thank you, is there any way I can make it up to you?” I ask.

“It's fine, it sounds like you've had a really hard time.” She smirks a little. “Maybe I'll call in a favor later, if I feel like it.”

“Sure, anything.” She literally just saved my life.

Arkida smiles slightly and asks, “So, do you have any plans now?”

“Plans?” The thought makes me cringe a little. “I don't know, I didn't make the plans...”

“Then if I could offer something, you should probably get yourself cleaned up next.” Her wry grin makes me lower my head, but I nod anyway. I'm supposed to keep myself clean, so I'll do that. But again... I need money.

I feel like everything else will have to stay on hold until I can make some money. And I can't work at a bar or anything to start until I get cleaned up.

Which means... “I guess I have to take a quest.” I look up at her again and ask, “Are there any easy quests going out soon? It doesn't matter how bad the pay is, I just need enough money to get me started.”

“Sure. You're... Rank three?” She sounds a little uncertain when she asks, though she doesn't sound like she expects an answer, so I stay quiet. She looks through some papers, then makes a small, surprised sound. “Oh, you're in luck, the Helia academy is sending a quest out soon. The pay is nothing much, but it should be doable, even for you. Here.”

She has me sign some papers to get signed up, then wait a while, until the quest is about to head out. I don't now what to do with myself, and everyone is still avoiding me, so I end up sitting against a random column to wait.

Once Arkida looks my way and waves me over, I get back up and she leads me over to a gathered group. Like everyone else... all humans...

They all recoil at the sight of me. “This is Yumi, she has some... special circumstances. She'll be joining your quest today,” Arkida says as she gestures to me, before leaving again. The group promptly tries not to pay attention to me, and returns to talking about whatever they were saying before I arrived.

Between their words and their looks, I quickly realize a few weird things about them. First off, they're young. Like, they're all teenagers, and there are twenty of them, except one man in his fifties. Or, I guess thirties since they have shorter life spans?

The sight takes my brain far longer than it should to process, to bring back the obviously relevant memories from my life on Earth. He's their teacher. Combat instructor maybe.

In fact, he's going through the members of the group, instructing them. “Rifil, remember to watch your mana. If the fighting gets intense, make sure to cast as soon as you finish your spell cooldowns, but otherwise, you should focus on conserving mana.”

“Yes, sir.”

He keeps going through them, instructing them on things that seem really basic for adventurers, but I guess they don't know them yet because they're young.

After going through the whole group and talking about fulfilling their roles properly, he suddenly addresses me. “You, she called you Yumi, right? What do you do?”

I immediately cow to his look and tone. He would make a scary master...

“I'm a mage, sir, o-offensive magic.”

“Good, stay near the back and don't bother anyone.”

“Yes, sir...”

Then the man, I think someone called him Krulm, heads up to the counter to get the quest going. Arkida comes over and runs through the usual deal, ticking off everyone's Class and Rank, and when she gets to me, it draws confusion from almost everyone present.

“What's a Synergist?” one kid asks.

“She's only Rank three?” comes from another. Somehow, despite not seeming to know anything about adventuring, the kids range from Rank ten to twelve. The instructor is actually Rank fifty.

Krulm however, turns a glare to Arkida. “You put one of those in our quest?”

Her hands go up placatingly. “Like I said, she has special circumstances. Besides...” Eyeing the kids, she leans in and speaks a little more quietly, though not really enough, I can still hear her. “She's an S.”

The kids who catch her words look confused. Do they not know about Slave Ratings yet? I would have thought they'd learn about that earlier. Krulm looks unconvinced. Then he turns to me and says, “Come.”

Jolting a little at the sudden, direct command, I immediately take a few steps to stand in front of him.

“Hand.” He holds his hand out, palm up, and I immediately know what he wants.

Oh my god this is embarrassing! But between the look he levels down at me and the hardness of his voice, I lower my head and raise my hand, to place it in his waiting palm. My shoulders hunch with shame. I feel like a dog...

It's to the point where I curl my fingers up, like I'm making a paw, without even meaning to.

Shit, why does this make me feel comfortable?

I stand there, face going red with shame, while the teens react with a mixture of confusion and derisive snickering. Then Krulm drops my hand and takes a step away, moving to cover his nose. But he turns back to Arkida anyway. “Fine, whatever. We're all set, right? Kids, we're heading out now.”

Arkida dips into a quick bow as they start to turn away, and I bow back gratefully, making a silent 'thank you' gesture before I move to keep up with them.

The trip out of the city is surprisingly longer than I recall compared to the way in. By the time we pass out of the gates, I realize why.

Miselka is actually a really big city. Just based on the outer city wall, it's even bigger than Montheric, previously the largest city I knew of. Does that mean it's a full nation-state with nobles and everything? I already heard that they have an academy here.

It takes some time to work things through my head, still so sludgy and hazy from hunger and deep-seated exhaustion. But I do eventually put things together. She mentioned the Helia academy that these kids would be students at.

Crossing that with what I learned about academies back in Thanifa, it must be a really big one. After all, there are enough different Classes of students to make up a full party, so Helia must teach a bunch of different ones, meaning it's a big academy in a powerful city-state.

God damn it I feel like I'm thinking in circles...

It's making my head spin.

I keep walking behind the group as we quickly veer off-road and into a forest. We don't even travel that far, only around five hours, before we reach some small ruins, hardly more than a few buildings. Unfortunately, that's long enough that I've already digested the small piece of bread from earlier, and I can feel the claws of starvation slowly setting in again.

Even so, I stay with them. My sense of balance starts to go a little, and a headache blooms in, but I'm used to this now, after that long journey. I hardly notice them.

We head into the small, ruined building, and I find that it actually delves down underground. A cellar? But there wouldn't be anything to do there. It only takes a minute walking down the stairs to realize this is not at all, a cellar. I don't understand why the ruins of a small shack would have such a big staircase leading down under them.

It makes me think of a dungeon, but I've never heard of anything like that on Verilz before. I don't even know how that would work.

With no answers in sight, I follow the group down. They light torches for visibility and I quickly find myself wishing I had some sort of light magic. As the darkness presses close on all sides, I try to stick close to the back of the group and remind myself that they have no idea what they're doing, so this can't be all that dangerous.

But, the darkness....

No, I'm not alone. There are plenty of other people here.

It's dark, but I'm not trapped.

If anything happens, I can fight.

I keep telling myself these things, over and over, to calm my racing heart, but I still feel a cold sweat breaking over my body. It doesn't accomplish much, I'm so grimy that it just soaks into my clothes and the dirt all over me.

Thankfully, my anxious fears of the unknown are finally resolved into tangible, real dangers.

Bats.

There are a number of them, pretty large and squeaking angrily as they swoop out of the dark ahead. There are a few panicked shouts. A few spells go off, some weapons swing. Clangs when they hit the strangely well built stone walls lining the sides of the path.

All the way at the back, I barely even see them through the crowd. It actually helps me calm down a lot. Just some bats. Nothing to be afraid of. Even the slightly panicked teens are quickly able to cut them down without too much trouble. A couple of them get bitten, but there are three healers, Mender Class.

Watching them from the back, they heal the wounded faster than the altraskan healers I'm familiar with. However, a few of them look pretty out of it, and the instructor notes that the bats are somewhat venomous. Can Menders not cure poisons? Or are they just worse at it than I'm used to? Better for physical injuries, worse for poison and other ailments, I guess.

I try to file the information away, but I don't know if it works. Despite my best effort, most of my thoughts are on my stomach and the darkness...

We proceed down through the strange, dungeon-like structure for some time. I keep to myself and try not to bother anyone like Krulm said, but once in a while, I hear things in the dark behind us. Not wanting to cause a commotion or anything, I just fling a few small earth spells back into the dark, aiming for the sounds until they stop.

Then I feel something change. I suddenly get stronger. I Ranked up? Just from killing some little things in a cave?

Is the gap between an adventurer and a slave really that wide? No, no, I shake my head. I haven't leveled up for a long time, I must have been right at the cusp of Rank four. I'm sure the adventurer crest helped, but I just needed the last push over the edge.

Leaving those thoughts, I stay with the group and continue down. Besides bats, there are some other things that appear, like big rats and some creepy bugs. But the kids aren't freaking out like before, they've long since realized that the stuff here is really weak and they can cut their way through without worry.

Krulm keeps a handle on them though, a few harsh words here and a whack there maintains order as we all proceed.

Despite it all, I can't help but wonder, how much further are we going? Bit by bit, my strength is slipping away. Will we really finish and make it back before I can't move any further? If I begged them for food, would they give me some?

I have no idea. But I won't last if this goes on too much longer...