Standing atop the hill, the whole village came into view.
This was Garnian. A small village surrounded by stone walls.
Smoke rose from every chimney, and out in the fields, someone was leveling the soil with a hoe.
Children’s laughter spread through the alleys, and from the blacksmith’s forge came the steady ring of hammer blows.
For another world, it was far too familiar a sight.
And yet, my feet would not move easily.
‘...I don’t have any identification.’
In this world, where you came from and whose introduction you carried were proof of trust.
If you were a mercenary, you needed a token issued by the association; if you were a merchant, you carried documents stamped with the seal of a guild or territory.
But right now, I belonged nowhere, and I had no proof of identity. I was just a guy who’d shown up with nothing but himself.
All I had were a handful of spells.
Could I enter the village with just that?
Wouldn’t I look suspicious?
I took a deep breath and told myself,
‘This is an opportunity. Even if I’m anxious, I have to get past this before anything else can happen.’
I had been lucky enough to cross the river, and if I could just get inside the village, I could gather information and hide myself for a while.
For now, one step was everything.
**
At the village entrance stood a wooden gate surrounded by a palisade, with two soldiers standing guard in front of it.
One was leaning on a long spear, while the other leaned against the palisade with his arms crossed, glancing around.
I brushed the dust from my outer clothes and carefully moved forward.
Their gazes fixed on me at once.
“Stop. Affiliation?”
A stiff tone. There was wariness in it, but no open hostility.
I raised both hands and spoke calmly.
“I’m a traveler. I, uh, don’t have an affiliation.”
“Name?”
“...Riv.”
It had been so long since I’d said my name that I hesitated for a moment.
The soldier leaning on the spear glanced at his companion, and the one beside him stepped forward instead.
“There’ve been a lot more mercenaries lately. You here because of the ruins too?”
“...Ruins?”
“A few days ago, an abandoned castle turned up in the nearby forest. It’s a collapsed building, but they say some mana stones were found inside. Ever since that story started going around, quite a few suspicious sorts have come crawling in.”
Ruins. I wondered if it was the place Dardan had mentioned.
He glanced at the empty equipment belt at my waist and spoke with a sigh in his voice.
“Kids with no gear keep coming in droves these days, hoping to strike it big. For us, well, we see it every day.”
I didn’t bother denying it.
I simply lowered my head slightly and said,
“For now, I’m only thinking of staying one night.”
He paused briefly, then tapped the butt of his spear against the ground.
“Fine. It’s troublesome if people who aren’t registered with the association stay too long, but as long as you don’t cause trouble, staying a day or two is all right.”
Then he lowered his voice and added,
“Be careful inside the village too. There’s talk of bandits roaming around nearby.”
“Understood. Thank you.”
Bandits again. At this point, it was a miracle I hadn’t run into any.
I gave a small bow and stepped into the village.
***
Dusty dirt roads and old wooden houses.
Merchants along the roadside were arranging their goods on stalls beside rattling carts.
Foreigners stood out here and there, most of them moving about with long robes draped over leather armor.
‘Looks like the ruins really did draw in a lot of adventurers.’
In truth, it wasn’t easy to tell who was an adventurer and who was a mercenary just by appearance.
They all looked more or less the same, and their armaments weren’t that different either.
If one had to make a distinction, people who mainly went to dungeons or ruins were apparently called adventurers, but...
Honestly, I still wasn’t familiar enough with this world to pick up on such subtle differences.
To me, they all just looked like “people who risked their lives to earn money.”
Mixed in among them, I looked far too ordinary.
No, to be honest, I looked shabby.
Still, I had now taken my first step.
From here on, I had to find a way to survive inside this village.
The first thing I needed to do was find lodging, but...
The problem was that I had no money.
In the end, I had to find work.
But where? How?
For a moment, the mercenary guild crossed my mind.
But I soon shook my head. I was sick of fighting now.
For a while, I wanted to survive some other way, not through bloody matters of killing and being killed.
So I wandered around the village, poking my head into every place that caught my eye, but in the end, I couldn’t find any work.
The reason was simple.
There were no odd jobs worth entrusting to an outsider.
On top of that, most of the work in this village looked simple at first glance but required its own kind of expertise.
‘Now that I think about it, even the kinds of part-time jobs I could’ve done in reality are all the domain of skilled workers here.’
Chopping firewood, moving cargo, driving carts...
They weren’t things you could just do instantly because you had a body.
That made finding work much harder than I’d expected.
What would happen if I just revealed I was a mage?
It was a thought that kept circling in my head.
Of course, it wasn’t as if I wanted to play the part of some hidden master concealing his strength.
Drek’s words from inside the dungeon kept coming back to me.
—It’d be better to hide the fact that you’re a mage for the time being.
His tone had felt less like simple advice and more like a warning.
And in my current situation, ignoring a warning would just be stupid.
But trying to find work while hiding that I was a mage left me at a loss.
There was nothing I could do.
Without that, I was nothing more than an outsider who couldn’t even use his body properly.
‘...In the end, if I hide the fact that I’m a mage, doesn’t that mean I can’t do anything?’
As I wandered the streets, unable to do one thing or the other, I suddenly stopped in front of a building.
A sign with a familiar sword drawn on it. It was the mercenary guild.
Even at a glance, it was fairly large.
Perhaps because the ruins had been discovered, many people were coming and going.
‘...If I get rejected even here, that really will be the end.’
I had no confidence.
My equipment was awful, and it wasn’t as if I had impressive physical ability either.
Even so, I couldn’t think of any clear method besides this place.
I carefully placed my hand on the door.
After hesitating for a moment, I pushed it open and stepped inside.
As the door opened, a heavy creak of hinges rang out, and the clamor within poured over me all at once.
—So what do you think I said to that bastard—!
—That request still isn’t finished? It’s already the fourth day.
—That’s because that guy came back half-dead and—!
Boisterous voices, the sound of metal armor clashing together, even the thud of beer mugs being set down on tables.
The scene before me was like a small tavern.
In one corner, someone was fletching arrows, while on the other side, people were arguing over a request form.
I awkwardly made my way inside.
Everyone was focused on their own business, but a few gazes flicked over and swept across me.
Well, given how I looked right now, I was probably the newbie of all newbies.
On the inner wall, slightly to the right of the front, there was a bulletin board that caught my eye.
Papers of various sizes were densely pinned to the thick wooden board, and in some places, torn remnants showed where others had already been ripped away.
I carefully approached it and looked over them one by one.
There was barely any writing, and instead, simple drawings had been marked in large strokes on each sheet.
A picture of a sickle and blades of grass.
A picture of a strange-looking monster glaring with wide eyes.
Even a picture of a dense forest with a large skull drawn in the middle.
Beneath each drawing was a circle painted in a different color.
Gold, silver, brown... Even at a glance, they seemed to be markers indicating the reward.
The colors were faintly smudged, as if painted over by hand, and even that seemed intentionally done so people could distinguish them.
Since it was a method I’d never seen before, I tilted my head as I stared at it. Then a receptionist nearby quietly approached and explained.
“Not many people can read, you see. If you bring me a request form, I’ll explain it to you.”
Ah, so that was the system.
It was a method fitting for an age with many illiterate people.
Bringing it directly to a person and hearing the explanation—an analog approach in its own way—felt rather decent.
The simple explanations I received from the receptionist went like this.
“Gathering herbs near the swamp. Reward: twenty copper coins. Low danger.”
“Finding a lost dog. Conditional reward: one copper coin. Must be completed before sunset.”
“Night guard duty on the southern forest road. Reward: three silver coins. Experienced workers recommended.”
“Assisting with waterway maintenance. Reward: five copper coins. Food and lodging provided.”
I looked through them one by one, but nothing in particular stood out.
That didn’t mean they all looked easy either.
Most of them were ambiguous, and the requests that seemed decent had the phrase “experienced workers recommended” attached.
They were probably jobs I couldn’t do.
After a moment’s hesitation, my gaze naturally stopped on the waterway maintenance request.
A drawing of a shovel and waves, with a brown circle beneath it.
It wasn’t much money, but the danger was low, and the fact that food and lodging were provided caught my eye.
Food and lodging provided. The moment I read those words, my empty stomach reacted for no reason.
For me right now, was this the most realistic choice?
Besides, it might be simple labor, but if I could apply water magic, it might prove surprisingly helpful.
I reached for the request form.
At that moment, a rough voice came from behind me.
“Hey, you there. I haven’t seen your face before. You planning to take that request?”
When I turned around, a middle-aged woman was standing right behind me.
With her arms crossed, she looked at me as if observing me.
Her dark brown hair was neatly tied back, and sharpness seeped from her eyes.
Another receptionist?
Holding the request form, I awkwardly nodded.
“Ah, yes. Is this still available, by any chance?”
“It is. But where’s your mercenary badge?”
For an instant, my mind went blank.
Ah, right. Mercenary registration. Of course they’d ask about something like that.
“I don’t have one yet. How would I go about registering?”
Before I could even finish speaking, she raised one eyebrow.
“So, you’re a traveler?”
She smiled.
“Or a fugitive?”
It sounded like a light joke, but behind those words lurked a knife-like intuition.
For a moment, I froze as if my breath had caught, but soon I brushed it off with a laugh.
Forcing up the corners of my mouth, I said,
“I’m, uh, a traveler.”
Instead of answering, she gave a slight nod
and naturally took the request form from my hand.
She took out another sheet of paper from her breast pocket and asked me,
“Name?”
“Ah, Riv.”
I heard the pen nib scratch across the paper.
In the brief silence, it felt as if this city was recording my existence for the first time.
“Good. Even if you haven’t formally registered, I can let you take today’s request on a temporary basis. But responsibility is yours. If you cause trouble, you won’t be allowed back.”
“Thank you.”
“The work site is the waterway on the outskirts of the village. Go straight west from here. Finish by sunset.”
“Um, what exactly am I supposed to do?”
“If you take the request form with you, they’ll tell you.”
“Yes, understood.”
At long last, I had obtained one job.
For now, that alone was enough.
I left the reception desk behind and walked out the door.
Now it was time to use my body directly.
Whether I sweated or used magic, somehow or another, I had to make it through today on my own.
After walking for quite a while along the western road, a dusty vacant lot appeared at the edge of the village.
Beyond it was a waterway winding along a low hill.
Rather than a waterway, it was closer to a shabby drainage ditch meant to carry away rainwater.
Broken edges, dirt and piles of stone, filth that had washed in from somewhere.
The dried-up trench looked like land that had long since forgotten water.
“Hey, you there! The new guy?”
A middle-aged man in work clothes waved his hand.
Several people had already gone down into the trench with shovels, and someone was carrying a large stone away.
“You just going to stand there and watch? Get down here!”
I approached while waving the request form, and after roughly looking over my face, he handed me a shovel with a thump.
“Clear this branch from here. Dig out the dirt and open up the blocked parts. We’ll help with the heavy stuff.”
Was he not even going to check the request form?
The shovel felt terribly awkward in my hand.
An unfamiliar weight, an unfamiliar sensation. At first, I couldn’t even shovel properly.
The soil, mixed with pebbles, roots, and insects, seemed to silently mock my inexperience.
‘Shoveling is harder than I thought...’
People say men do shovel work when they go to the military, but I had been in the navy.
Still, watching the others silently sweat beside me, I steeled myself as well.
After some time had passed, I noticed a section inside the collapsed waterway where the flow had been blocked.
A mound of earth was sealing it off, and the deeper part was beyond the reach of a shovel.
At that moment, a thought suddenly crossed my mind.
‘At this level… couldn’t I break through it myself?’
I glanced around.
Everyone was absorbed in their own work.
Now might be all right.
Quietly, I focused my consciousness into my fingertips.
I slowly let mana flow.
The sensation from using Water Bullet, but more precise, more gentle…
A cold energy seeped beneath my palm.
And a thin stream of water brushing through the soil spread outward like a faint vibration.
Srrk—
Something loosened, as if melting away.
The hardened mud soaked through with water and collapsed on its own.
Naturally, as though it were part of the groundwater.
I controlled it deliberately and carefully so that no trace would remain.
At this rate, wouldn’t it be possible to create magic later on?
Swaaaash.
At last, a stream of water began to flow down along the channel. It was a success.
“Huh, it’s flowing over there! Who dug that out?”
“No idea. It suddenly opened up. Good thing, though.”
Feeling proud, I silently gripped the shovel handle again.
When the sun was beginning to set, the supervisor wiped his forehead with a towel and shouted.
“That’s it for today! Clean up and head out!”
I set down the shovel with arms drained of strength.
My palms were peeled, and my shoulders felt heavy, but my mood was strangely refreshed.
“You’re better than I expected. Want to come again next time?”
“…I’ll consider it.”
He laughed and gave my back a light thump, and I slowly set out on the road toward the village.
Somehow, I had endured the day.
***
The road back to the village was not long.
But as I walked through the fields at dusk, the ground was cooling quickly, and dew gathered on the tips of the grass wet the hems of my trousers.
Hunger and fatigue surged over me like waves.
My shoulders had stiffened like stone, and my palms were scraped raw from the shovel handle, swollen red.
The smell of earth and filth reeked from my body.
And yet, for today at least, I did not hate any of those sensations.
The lodging provided with room and board was a stone building near the village square, beside an old well.
The low building, not even two stories tall, was made of blackened timber and roughly hewn gray stone, and its roof was crooked, as though woven together from straw and thin pieces of slate.
The walls were full of cracks steeped in age, and cold wind seeped through them.
When I opened the door, the faint scent of freshly boiled soup drifted out along with the smell of dry smoke.
“You must be the new one.”
A short old woman appeared, holding a ladle.
Her face was full of wrinkles, but her eyes were sharp.
“Your room’s the one at the very end. You’ll be using it alone. Meals are in that pot over there, so serve yourself. The blanket’s under the bed.”
“Yes. Thank you…”
“No need to thank me. I’m getting paid for this.”
The old woman tossed out the words and disappeared back into the kitchen.
The room was small, rough, and even damp, but to me as I was now, it was a space I dared call a luxury.
Silence, and being alone.
That alone seemed enough to loosen something in my heart.
As soon as I set my belongings down in the room, a strong smell of earth and filth rose from my body.
Dust, mud, and rotten water from spending the entire day rummaging through the waterway had dried and clung to me.
I stepped outside and found the well behind the lodging.
Drawing up a few ladles of water and pouring them into a water jar, I filled a wooden basin with cold water.
Then, with my clothes hitched up at the waist, I quietly began washing my hands and face.
The backs of my hands were covered in red, swollen marks, and my ankles and calves were stained black with mud.
The cold water pricked my skin like needles, but the sensation of washing away fatigue, filth, and dust was more refreshing than anything.
I lifted the dipper above my head and carefully poured the water over myself.
Swaa— As the stream flowed down, it felt as though the dried residue of the day was being washed away.
I let out a long breath. The heat and labor of midday, the unfamiliar work and tension, disappeared along with the water.
Ah, I don’t have a towel. What do I do?
In the end, without a towel, I shook off what water I could with my hands and wiped the rest away with the hem of my clothes.
After washing myself with the cold water in the basin, what came over me before fatigue was hunger.
Once I had roughly dried my wet hair, I headed to the kitchen.
The iron cauldron was still warm, and inside it, soup was sending up gentle steam.
I hastily ladled out a bowl of soup.
Potatoes, onions, a few pieces of dried meat.
The ingredients were simple, but warmth spread even to the fingertips curled around the bowl.
When I drank the broth, the heat soaking down my throat soothed my insides.
“Kuh…”
In that moment, this unfamiliar land almost seemed like a place worth living in.
Only after finishing the broth did I lean back as if catching my breath and look around the room.
Rough, crude wooden walls, a low ceiling, a creaking wooden floor.
Even so, to me as I was now, it was a space I dared call a luxury.
Overtaken by the drowsiness that came after eating, I roughly spread out the blanket and threw myself onto the bed.
The moment I closed my eyes, sleep crashed over me.