As the donkey pulled the wooden wagon through the city gate, Aki felt the pang of guilt from leaving those brainwashed women behind start fadind. He really hated that, but it truly was for the better. It'd be easier to smile like that.
He'd chosen a region that didn't discriminate against religion or race to begin with, but he'd not expected to directly fall in love so soon. And still be able to enter the city without any kind of direct law persecution.
He'd never be able to pray for a God he didn't properly respect, and that'd be a greater offense than not praying. Here it could be avoided, but if they told people he was married to an ophidia they'd hunt the both of them down and do some political bullshit, which probably involved torturing both of them for information on where the fuck they came from and what was their master plan.
No, even telling people Xera was a lizard-kin beastman was going to get some unsavory attention, so they had plenty of trouble up ahead.
He'd not want it any other way though.
It'd been easy to find an Inn for them to stay, and while the adventurer's guild was more troublesome, they were not infallible. It'd taken a while, but Aki had cast illusions onto both of them while they registered in remote village's branches and still passed through yet another village to use their job change crystal and create a trail.
Their story was that they'd suffered persecution because of their marriage in their home village, so they hopped around, working as adventurers but trying to avoid attention, living mostly out of society, until they most recently faced the goblin king they'd just hunted, which made them decide to get stronger during a stay in the close by town.
There was no such thing as a list of every request ever completed by low ranked adventurers, it was mostly a branch record really, even if the main one tried to keep tabs on whatever suspicious enough individual appears within their system.
Thus resulting on the situation of Aki explaining that he was not planing on claiming the standart bounty of a goblin king treath, and that he'd rather he and his wife just did the test for becoming a C-rank adventure, kept doing requests as a D-rank team until they fulfilled the quota for raising their ranks and properly create their own reputation so they could garner support instead of just hidding. What he did not expect, however...
"No, if you have truly taken down a goblin king before it could make a truly powerful army then you have done this town and all the vilages around it a great service. Just passing the test will be enough." This surprised Aki, and he showed it on his face. He turned to his wife, who he could tell was also confused since this was completly diferent from all her expectations.
"Would it really be fine? I'm sure people are going to pester us for thinking we're ussing some kind of backdoor or that we cheated. There's nearby dungeons and monsters in the surroundings, it shouldn't take long to reach C-rank, you know how important climbling through the ranks is to adventurers, regular or not." He pointed out, making the representative speaking to them smile awkwardly. Of course i know, it's just my job to convince you.
"I understand. It is a shame, but doing things properly is important after all. I will arange for your tests to take place in a bit, so if you would follow me to the waiting room." The clerk gestured, and they followed.
The room wasn't anything special, and Aki just spent the time drawing shapes in Xera's hand with his thumb. It was quite soothing when you got into a ritm.
The test givers didn't take long to arrive, Aki going with the mage and Xera with the buff warrior dude.
"Lets begin then. Tell me about your abilities." Asked the diminutive mage with a cute face.
"I'd say I have a solid grasp in the four elements, earth being my bread and butter, a good enough amount of intelligence, some mana and definetly not enough regen, though I've been trying hard to train that one. I know a bit of healing and buffing plus dabling in life magic so as to complete my utility build. I mostly act as support for my wife, but I try to hold my own in close quarters when I need to." He explained.
"Wow, thay was easier them I thought, most people don't divulge their stats so easily even if you take them to bed. You should be more careful even if I am an examiner kid, if I was going to tell you to fight me then you'd lose any advantage you might have had." Commented the gnome woman in her cute voice that somehow still passed through as being that of a thirty or so years old woman.
"You really don't look ready to fight though." He pointed out.
"Fair enough." She shrugged "Doesn't make you more right though. Mister support here can show me some control exercises you pass through since the clerk told me you were fine with the survival stuff and they'd leave the field test for when you were really advancing."
"Ok, but just a warning, I tend to use some strange shapes as practice. Some hurt to look at."
"Why would they hurt to look at?" Worriedly asked the woman, this was definitly strange.
"I thought it was what advanced geometry was supposed to do when I was younger. Didn't even know it was part of math at that time."
"Fair enough, I can see that happening." She nodded. She'd met people of similar opinion before, and really, some things were just not ment to be stared at for long.
*****
"Should I worry about why you are so sweaty?" Aki asked his wife with mock concern.
"Shut up, it took a while to get through his defense." She pointed out.
"I see, so you just battled like two animals." There was a a bit of irritation on his voice.
"You can always compensate in bed." He simply didn't have the skill with weapons.
And so they 'bickered' away, while the hurt examiners stumbled out of their respective rooms to make their report.
While one of them nursed a head ache and had a healer constantly casting a pain killing spell, the other basically bled into the floor as a healer tried to close all the various wounds on the moving turtle. None were specially life treathening, but it took a lot of mana to restore someone with so much Vitality, nevermind that he started walking around the moment he was given a blood restoring potion.
Both reports could be summed up to "Great skill, it hurts to try and imitate/fight them. Probably have four specialized jobs and some other miscellaneous ones. Even better potential in the future."
It actually took a while to get their D-rank cards ready, but when it came, the couple was already throwing several requests at the reception desk, most of which were repeatable. This led to some complications with the paperwork speed, but by the time the second clerk offered to help speed things up, it was done. Luckily there wasn't a line behind them.
"Ok, let's get a holding artifact so I can finally figure out storage magic. Gods, it's good to be able to splurge once in a while." Aki nonchalantly announced, getting an elbow to the side, which barely fazed him.
*****
"Wow, there are so many bandit types, I wonder if any of them actually have something good." He wondered, beginning to capture the two mages and shoving stone down their mouths and breaking their hands.
"Aren't you going to let them finish ridiculing themselves?" Asked his wife, already preparing to maim their scared frontliners.
"Nah, it's just a waste of time. We're going to be interrogated by the law officials over what happened, so I'll have to make out a story about what happened that still passes through their lie detection, put their filthy extra members and blood on my new storage spell, so much work that I actually don't... Oh, I got bonus XP from dealing with bandits and for capturing all of them, would you look at that. Maybe this job won't be as hard to level as I thought. Luckily these bonuses are static or I'd never get to one hundred with the XP of defeating these guys." Ranted Aki as his wife quickly dispatched their would be assailants.
They'd been trying to show they relied mostly on skill so as to not let their actual capabilities be discovered yet, so of course they expected some idiots to attack them.
By the time they had reached the dungeon, Aki had already maxed out his apprentice merchant job. When he checked the available jobs though...
"I fucking knew it." He murmured.
[Super Apprentice: Have ten Apprentice tipe jobs.
Stat grownth: Poor.
Special: Fantastical.
Description: Few ever get access to this job, as it's required preparation would include either huge amounts of experience points or long years of grinding at generally unrelated skill. Whoever acquired this job never released it's existence and acquirement conditions to others.]
He imediatly chose it, receiving a multiplicative boost to his stats and most augmentation skills.
"Damn does it feel good to finally do something like a main character." He murmured.
"What? Are you cooking dinner alone tonight?" Asked his wife, who'd gotten ussed to him suddenly saying random things at random volumes.
"I will if you want to, but it will just be various cuts of whatever lives in here." He pointed out, making Xera shrug, she was not very worried about the taste as much as the texture since she remenbered that they were, in fact, entering a dungeon, a very hostile monster nest.
Luckily Aki was capable enough so as to make temporary fortifications inside the dungeon by infusing an area with his presence and mana.
While the death trap would try to reclaim the piece of land, they were generally not smart or powerful enough so as to instantly do so, allowing for someone to maintain the upkeep with ease.
Xera could do so for about six hours, mostly thanks to her attributes, while Aki could do it for a full 24 h thanks to his skills.
There were risks over such endeavors, but neither could really care enough. The ophidian spear woman could solo the whole place if she took her time, nevermind her husband, who was actually expecting the monster rampage so he could level up faster after finally reaching the point where people considered the difficulty of getting levels to exponentially increase.
This phenomenom was mostly caused by the various intricacies of the soul and the job system's use of XP, but even those who knew about said intricacies didn't actually have much to say about it other than that it was better to try and have a solid foundation with various jobs before you reached said point.
Aki would be the one to deliver the materials in the city at first, sure, but when the dungeon started to more aggressively try to get them out, he started staying to protect the place against the droves of enemies while Xera drove the wagon they'd brought with them over and back to the guild so they could sell their bounty and complete some requests, even using the chance to change jobs at the third and sixth day of their extended delve.
He was not able to defeat his wife in one on one, sure, but he was much more powerful in the tactical sense, and it showed on the amount of burned and destroyed monster corpses they had to leave to the dungeon because he'd gone overboard.
Really, the only thing that bothered the newly wed about this trip was that they had to tone down on their more intense practices so they'd not simply be exhausted to the point where the monsters could actually defeat them.
Their resulting hunting, coupled with the dwindling amount of adventurers that dared step into this specific dungeon's first floor thanks to it's now great number of beasts, ended up with several complaints being filled against them.
"So you want us to stop hogging the dungeon, is that it? Well, it's not like either of us is actively trying to stop other adventurers or anything, but if it is a request from the guild them I guess we'll stop. Maybe go to that rank 6 dungeon after we look for some equipment since we're already at C rank and with some funds anyway." Aki shrugg.ed, killing monsters even as he told so to the branch master, who'd taken a ride with Xera as she came back. "We can pack up faster if you hold the fort or help loot the monsters, but is that it?" He asked the taller, more muscular and grumpy looking bald man in front of him
"I honestly thought I'd have to smack some sense onto you two, or maybe even treathen you actually." Akwardly said the guild master and he scratched the side of his head. "But if it will help, than I can pack things up and deal with the horde after you left, just don't do this again, ok?" He asked, more relaxed seeing the cooperative and relaxed attitude he was faced with.