While they were busy with their basic training drills, the guild inside was getting busy too. Pell's voice drifted from the counter inside, arguing with a courier about delivery times. A couple of early villagers poked their heads around the corner, watching the new branch actually do something real after several days of opening. Those who had doubts about the guild's actual start finally got cleared as adventurers, and people started pouring in to either register as an adventurer or post some quest about their troubles.
By the time Vessa finally stopped the session, Lys's arms burned, and his shirt stuck to his back like a second skin with sweat. The others looked more wrecked than he was. Doren bent over, gasping, Lira wiping blood from a split lip she'd earned from her own wild swing, Kord staring at the ground like he wanted to take a nap right here.
Vessa wiped her forehead with the back of her wrist, braid swinging, and looked straight at Lys. "You, come tomorrow. Earlier."
He caught his breath, chest still heaving. "Huh, only me? What time?"
"Before the market opens." She was already turning around to go inside the guild hall, leaving them behind.
Lys almost asked which market, the main market of the village, opened before the new market after all. But he caught himself from asking her this simple question, knowing she might give him an eye if he asked that.
'Of course it's the main market. It's obvious.' He nodded once to himself, feeling the new soreness in his back muscles, which he didn't even know he had. With this pain also came a clearer picture of exactly where he was weak and what to improve next. Now he knows he can't always rely on the aggressive use of his immense stamina or the easily gained skills. He needs to know the basics of his already existing skills, so that he can actually make use of them to their full potential.
Just thinking about the possibility he could achieve with those skills in the future made him excited from his core. These skills he took for granted looked more useful than he thought they would be, the more he thought about them after just this single training under an actual veteran from battle. As this type of training made his talents all the more useful than any system quest had been so far. So he had high hopes for this.
After some more inner realisation, he finally turned toward the big gate of the guild hall, arms heavy, mind already turning over the day ahead after this. Behind him, Vessa's voice cracked out one last time at the group. "And the rest of you, come back tomorrow to take your rank's suitable quests. Try not to embarrass yourselves in my guild."
Lys didn't look back. Although he wanted to ask her why only he had to take another day of training, he didn't ask, seeing for himself how much of a gap he had from those other people he trained with, even with his skills and system stamina giving him advantages he couldn't imagine beating even a single one of them. He had many more gaps to cover than they did before he could actually take on quests.
So he just walked out of the guild, boots crunching on the same dirt road he came from.
As soon as he came out, he saw Sara was waiting at his gate when he rounded the lane, coat buttoned tight, arms crossed. The second he saw her, something in his chest tightened hard. She looked very beautiful standing there in the sunny road, her long coat hugging the curve of her waist before flaring just enough over her hips. Underneath it, he caught the edge of a deep-green wool dress, simple and practical but cut close enough to show the swell of her breasts and the smooth line of her thighs when she shifted her weight. Her dark hair was pinned up loosely, a few strands framing her face, and those sharp eyes softened the moment they locked on his.
She carried this aura that hit him square in the gut: confident as usual, like she already owns whatever room she walks into, but with a warm, steady undercurrent that made the whole village road feel smaller and safer just because she was in it.
Seeing her warm smile melted the last of the drill ache right out of his shoulders.
"Oh, you're back already," she said, voice easy and low.
"Yeah," he said, stepping toward her.
"You don't have anything planned for the day, right?" She stepped aside so he could stand beside her. "I need you to come somewhere with me. I have a meeting this afternoon with a merchant, and I need someone in the room who knows what things are worth."
He looked at her. "Huh, what kind of things?"
"Weapons," she said. "A merchant from the capital arrived this morning. I want to buy what he brought before the others do." She held his look, steady and sure. "You have a hunter background, right? So I guessed you might help me out with this deal."
Lys almost told her the truth right then, that his memory of the original Lys's hunter years was just fuzzy scraps and half-remembered bullshit, nowhere near enough to price blades or haggle like a pro, as she thought he could. But he stopped himself from saying anything about it. Instead, he kept his face neutral and nodded once, knowing that whatever it was, he could just use his appraisal skill as usual to handle any purchase like before.
"Oh, let's go to where he is. I might need ten minutes to change out of these clothes," he said. "I think I'm stinking of sweat."
Sara gave a quick nod, that same warm smile flickering back. "Fine. Let's go to my house then. After that, we can go to the new shop that the merchant is setting up in this village."