Once I have passed by all the laboring villagers and gotten out of the valley, I begin to sprint back towards the city, boosting my speed with wind attribute mana particles whenever I have the magical energy to do so; it turns out that quickly propelling my own body with compressed wind is much more energy intensive than melting a slime with uncompressed fire, who could have guessed.
Through forest, and into plains I travel, facing no difficulties along the way. I reach the city with a bit of time to spare, even, so I guess I was a bit unnecessarily forceful in my traveling pace; after all it was only about a half hour sprint.
The sun is still almost to the horizon, its soft orange hue coating the entire world for only a little longer, so I don't tarry before my entrance into the city. The guards are different than those on duty the night before, so no one mentions the guild mission I had just finished.
Actually, it is for the purpose of avoiding discussion on the matter that I was in any rush to return in time for the closing of the city; while my position in the guild allows me access to the city at all hours, I would like to avoid discussion of my time in the village as much as possible. While my actions there were completely just, I cannot help but feel that the authorities of this word, with their twisted outlook on justice, wouldn't look kindly on my handling of the situation. Thus, it is best to minimize any mention of the mission I have just completed, at least to any possible extent.
Still, I will have to mention it at least once, when showing the guild the signed guild request, indicating that I have completed the mission and am eligible to apply for another.
Though I have been led there once before, the process of finding the guild again in this moderately large and very chaotic city is far from easy; more than once, I am forced to ask for directions. Fortunately for the targets of my questioning, none have a disposition like Toril's, there is no need to have a post-interaction duel with any of them.
Eventually I do find my way to the grand building of the guild hall. I make my way inside, finding that the receptionist is the same woman as yesterday. I go to her and ask "Where do I go to display completed guild requests?"
"Well, there is a dedicated room for just that through there," she says, pointing to a door on the wall to my left, placed next to the ever-busy job board. "However, if you leave it with me, I can ensure that it gets there in the near future."
"No, that's fine, I can take it myself, thanks," I say, immediately moving towards the door. The less people who know that I was involved with this mission, the better.
I enter the room to find a short line of adventurers formed before a desk, behind which sits an elderly man with glasses. He stares closely at the piece of paper presumably handed to him. Then, with a nod, he puts a stamp of his own on the sheet and dismisses the adventurer in front of him without returning it.
This process repeats for each of the three additional people separating me from the elder, until it is my turn. I can't help but sweat a bit as he examines the paper signed by the governor himself asserting that I have completed the mission. However, I have no reason to sweat; it would seem that the governor has played no funny business with his signature.
Still, I had quite a start when he began to talk to me, though he only wanted to ask how my first mission for the guild went. I responded, saying that it had gone well, before hastily making my leave. Seriously, can't these people just let that mission remain in the past where it belongs?!
My payment has already come from the governor, and I have no desire to try to compete for a job at the moment, so I leave the guild building with the intent to find somewhere to stay, hopefully somewhere where I won't have to worry about waking up bound in some dungeon again.
Seriously though, I was lucky to come out so far ahead there. If it wasn't for the governor's extreme lack of knowledge regarding magic, I would have lost all my possessions and been his slave! Still, it's not [that] surprising when you think about it; from the prices that I have seen, books are very expensive in this world, to a man that considered a hundred gold to be a very large sum, it would certainly have been hard to accrue a decent amount of knowledge about such a closely guarded topic of national importance.
And it's not as though he could have acquired the information from his noble family, even without him pointing it out, it's rather obvious that a governor of only one small village doesn't hold particularly high standing.
Well, whatever the explanation, I was quite fortunate. If that chain truly did as he claimed, if I was a straight magic mage I would have been truly screwed. Even if that situation worked out extremely well for me in the end, I need to be more careful in the future to make sure such things don't happen again.
Which leads me to a problem. In my asking about, I seem to find that this city only has two types of hotels, those that are dilapidated and dangerous and those that are extravagant and luxurious. The former is well within my price range; the later would see me bankrupt in just a few months even with my current excess of money.
And thus, the question. Do I risk the cheap hotel or pay the exorbitant prices of the fancy ones?
In the end, after weighing the likely degree of impact on my goals, I come to the decision to go with the former. After all, the nicest of the cheap hotels aren't really [that] dangerous, so long as I lock the door and hide my wealth I should be fine… probably.
Well, one of the advantages to these hotels is that they see nothing wrong with checking in late. I end up giving the man in the small lobby, a lobby which also doubles as a tavern, a few silver coins for the night. Far from the cheapest hotel in this area, but you get what you pay for and I really don't feel like staying at a place rumored to have a double digit mortality rate for its customers. I am led to a room and given a key with the insistence that it is the only copy, an assurance that only a fool among the most foolish of fools would believe.
The room is bare, only a bed and a candle on the windowsill of a boarded up window. The window is boarded from the inside, so I figure that it should provide somewhat adequate defense from external threats while I'm here. Now, if only I trusted the other tenants and the hotel staff as much as I trust these boards, then we would be in a truly great state.
I lay down fully clothed, my hands folding in such a way that my ring, which I had taken off while checking in, is not visible. After my journey since acquiring my current clothes, they are appropriate for the current environment, I would not stand out were I to be placed alongside the other current tenants.
As for why I don't keep my dimensional storage ring tucked away as I did when checking in, well, I want easy access to my sword and the handful of dusty potions I collected from the governor, how could I rest at ease if my weapons were not readily accessible?
It is in this way that I fall asleep, fully prepared to awake with my sword drawn at any moment.