"No, you can't adopt him." Maria said, shaking her head.
"Awwww... why? But he's so cute, please let me." She made her best pleading face, but the Doctor was unfazed.
"Okay, fine then, you tell me, why should I trust you? How would I know if you are a good hero or one of those sadistic ones put there? How do I know if you'll give him a safe space to live and not just leave him in the wilderness, or worse, give him back as if he is just a toy you are fed up with? Okay, you donated a lot, but that just means that you can afford to, how do I know how much you have saved up in a bank and didn't bring any of it here? What if you only wanted to do it all just to please me, since you somehow already know I'm a Doctor? Tell me." She asked, her voice was as calm as before.
"I- Y-." She choked on her words. She wanted to say something, but words won't come out. Somehow, her calm, plain voice made her feel worse than if she had lashed out at her.
Swara said nothing, she quietly put the kid down, who looked at her face and tried his best to hold her leg.
He didn't understand what was going on, he just knew that Momma looked angry, and the pretty lady was sad, so he started crying.
She took him in her arms again, only to hand him over to Maria.
She said, "Please take care of him." and left the place. She had thought that maybe she would fail, but had never expected that the lady would be so filled of spite towards Heroes, not that her words would sting so much.
Moreover, she didn't even get the quest, yet that wasn't what was on her mind.
She spent a few seconds moving aimlessly until she stopped and decided to pull herself together.
Sure, she was telling the truth, there are people like that out there, and she had no way to prove to her that she was a good Hero, but this was just the effect of her having less affiliation, which was basically fame and stuff with a faction.
She looked around herself and found out that she was standing outside the auction hall. She thought, {Well, might as well check it out since I'm here.} and went inside the hall.
She checked for skills first, since she didn't find any the last time.
There was one skill.
It wasn't much, just a Naruth Nampha, one of the few most basic skills that didn't belong to any one class. It was a common skill that took 40 MP for restoring 10 HP, with a cooldown of about 10 minutes. Hence, whoever found it, either had a better healing spell in their arsenal, or just found it to be too mana consuming.
{Well, it's only one, still better than nothing}, she thought, but she thought that 80 Coirs was too much of a price for it. So she messaged the player 'CyborgDemon' to meet him in person and haggle the price.
He was close by, having just completed a quest, so he quickly reached the auction hall within 8 minutes.
He was neither a cyborg, nor a demon, he was a 5'10" human with short golden yellow hair. She assumed he belonged to the warrior class, because other than the Beginner Clothes he wore, he was wearing a heavy armor type helmet. He looked Korean to her because he had a baby face that she had only seen on old covers of K-pop songs. Swara had no idea if he actually was Korean though, so she didn't speak Korean, to not risk sounding racist.
His weapon was probably in his inventory, which reminded Swara that she had yet to use Sorrow Reaper in both their knife and scythe form.
After some haggling, she finally brought it down to 50 Coirs and bought it, and he sent her a friend request, saying, "Just in case I find another skill that you might wanna buy."
She just ignored the request and let it rest in the Friend Request section on her screen.
Though, it felt good to haggle, which was one of the few reasons she didn't shop online, "There is no room for haggling, it isn't fun." She would always say, it felt refreshing to do that after so many years.
She learnt it instantly, and went on to do a quest that gave one of the materials needed for processing the Guild Ingot.
**********
Author's Note: For all those who didn't get it, skills related to Aeromancy, Erebomancy, Geomancy, Hydromancy, Pyromancy and Photomancy have normal English names.
Whereas, skills related to Sanamancy (the Element of Life) and Thanatomancy (the Element of Death) have cool names that sound out of a biology book.