"What..?" Adel's jaw dropped.
Before, he had to undergo the transport, but he didn't get to see how the action actually went by. Now, he witnessed multiple spatial gates forming in the air and people coming out of it and dropping down.
"..There you go, I guess."
It was actually sooner than he expected. The previous resets always had at least two weeks of interval in between the batches.
As much as he wanted to stay here and wait for the new batch, he also didn't want to get involved for now. He wanted to watch over them from afar, whereas Adel would probably jump straight in and get acquainted with them unless the man finally made his mind up and went alone.
While Adel was still shocked, Elgin slipped away from his radars and left the vicinity, looking back at the batch forming up one more time before continuing with his actions.
Elgin shrugged it off and ended the day after eating his long awaited dinner, getting hours worth of peaceful rest.
The next two days were spent on searching for additional information and materials he came across in nearby bookstores to solidify his knowledge, mixed with sessions of grinding to keep his fighting sense sharp.
On the third day, Elgin's order over at the butcher's shop was finally completed. He checked up on them every single day, and saw them working hard as ever each time.
This morning, when he came into the shop, he was greeted with five people's gazes. Emilia stood in the center, a triumphant look present on her face.
"Welcome back, dear customer! We have finished your order!" Emilia's joyful voice rang loud.
"Hahahah! Young man, you best bet that you are blacklisted from this shop from this day onwards! You can't even imagine how hard we worked on this project! You killed our bodies!!" An even louder man, who Elgin knew to be Emilia's father- Emilio, approached Elgin and patted him hard on the back.
It was akin to a smack meant to injure the target, but Emilio clearly held no real hostility towards Elgin.
"Yes, we even had to borrow some spare workers to settle this as quickly as possible.. Ah, please don't worry, though. The extra workers are trustworthy, I can ensure that their work is just as exceptional." Emilia spoke.
"Could I see the products, then?" Elgin chuckled at their rowdiness. Out of the five people, four were Emilia's family. There were her father, mother, older brother, and her childhood friend who worked in the field as well.
They shared great chemistry as they collectively walked to the back and brought the items for Elgin to look at.
Elgin inspected them, and confirmed that they were up to his standards.
"..These are of great quality, I don't have any complaints. Have you decided on which meat you want to take yet? Let us discuss the prices, and the money-material split." Elgin sat down by a table and took out a small pouch of money he prepared beforehand.
"Mom, go fight with him! It's your time to shine!" Emilia pushed her mother, whose name was Thea, forward and made her sit in front of Elgin. The exchange rates were part of Thea's job.
Thea was known to be a big haggler and was always money-oriented in her ways. For such a big project, Thea was prepared to battle for the extra fortune. A businesswoman through and through.
Elgin, who just wanted to get everything done as soon as possible ended up relenting quite a bit to Thea's powerful words, losing a bit of profit that he should've been able to reap over to his side if he went serious.
However, since this was just the starting point, he didn't care much about large profits. He'll get them eventually.
He got out from the butcher's shop packing all of his processed materials inside the inventory box, and headed out of Ulya.
"Alright, I'm probably not going to visit Ulya anytime soon. It'll permanently stay inside my brain though." Elgin stretched his body, standing in front of Ulya's exit gates with a wide smile.
Ulya. The town he was chained to. And now, he was going to break free from it.
'How relieving.'
"Goodbye, Ulya."
He thanked the world for releasing him, and also cursed it for locking him in the first place.
The next stop would be Valda. Right after getting there, he planned to immediately register to be an Adventurer in order to get special permissions for certain locations inaccessible for normal people.
He took a few hours with stops in between to reach Valda by foot. His physical strength had grown to quite a scary point. He still remembered his days as the alchemist. In some days, his back would ache badly from brewing too much potions and having a bad posture, but now he felt like like brewing a thousand potions non stop would be no problem at all.
He had to undergo a bit of testing before entering Valda. The town's security was much tighter than Ulya, and it was only after Elgin slid a few silver coins and passed the crime records check that he was allowed entry.
He went straight towards the Adventurer's Guild, which was the biggest building in town.
"Excuse me.." Elgin opened the door and peeked inside.
There was a young, beautiful woman who stood by the counter who turned her head towards him as soon as his voice entered her ears.
"Ah, welcome to Valda's Adventurer's Guild. You.. are a new face here, one that I haven't seen before. What business did you come here to settle?" The woman's sweet voice spoke, giving a warm welcome to Elgin.
"Good day to you. My name is Elgin, and I want to register as an Adventurer. Which test should I be taking?"
"Oh, dear me. Sheila, who do we have here?" Another voice interjected, followed by the appearance of a bulky woman coming out of the back room. "A clueless wimp who doesn't know his limits and dreams to become an Adventurer, again?"
A long-winded sigh, along with a sharp, scrutinizing glare from the woman ensued.