Border control, as anyone will tell you, was always a bother.
Peter didn't know why he had to fill out the Formular. It was taking him more than an hour to fill, but he knew, without a doubt, that if he didn't fill in the Formular, he wouldn't be able to pass through the forest legally.
The thing was that the forest was considered a separate nation.
Why, Peter didn't know.
For all he knew, the king of the kingdom actually ruled over the forest as well. This separatist movement was not something he liked.
The humans should take care of the gnomes, Peter thought to himself. And the gnome should...
Peter scratched his head. He honestly didn't know how gnomes could contribute to society. But the normal and dark gnomes were just pure creatures.
Like flowers.
Peter scratched his nose again.
No, even flowers had a use most of the time. And the gnomes were...
"Come on, Peter! If you don't fill in the Formular in the next two hours, the gnomes are going to revolt," Asmodeos said.
He honestly didn't want the gnomes to be left without hot chocolate and cookies for too long.
The mage made a decision. He decided to give the gnomes vegetables and meat.
He hoped that they were going to be fine. After all, the gnomes might have healthy teeth, but that didn't mean that the small creatures were healthy.
Their blood sugar must be over the roof.
"Yes, but I don't know what to fill in here. How am I supposed to know which moon comes after the central moon? I mean, there are at least 10 moons which are near the central moon, revolving around it, or at least that's what I heard."
Asmodeos didn't know which moon came after the central moon either, but he knew one thing: This border control thing was ridiculous!
He walked the orc who was guarding the entrance.
He thought about the orc who was guarding the entrance of the cave. The man did not want to go with them, refusing to bulge.
He couldn't blame him.
The man was probably also a prisoner, and now that he didn't have to look after the gnomes, he was, for the most part, free.
"There has to be a faster way to go through the border control," Peter was an optimist, and as every optimist can tell you, the glass was always half full.
He still worked with the laws of logic from his own world.
Back there, he had had health insurance and paid leaves when he needed them, seek leaves when he absolutely needed them and could not work.
But now, here, as a hero, he didn't have such luxuries.
He had to work 24-7, and not only that, but he actually had to be considered to the gnomes.
Not that it was actually a hard thing, after all, the gnomes are kind of purely normal creatures, and the hellhounds were adorable.
Peter still wanted to just yell in a pillow sometimes.
A 24-7 job was always stressful.
Asmodeos looked at the nearest wall, there was a poster behind a guard. The former necromancer smiled at the guard, winked at him, and then made his way to him.
The guards actually liked people who were smiling, they also liked people who were willing to do certain stuff, but Asmodeos liked his chances of not having to smuggle cigars.
After all, Peter was with him, and they were practically running a daycare for gnomes. Besides, Asmodeos wasn't a necromancer anymore, so he was protected.
"Greetings, sir! We are here to take on a quest," they were not, but quest taking and quest giving was the way of the world. And so, just like any other guard, this one decided to show the quest to someone who was actually willing to do it.
He stepped to the side, letting Asmodeos look at the poster. The former necromancer wished that he hadn't opened his big mouth.
"No backsies," the guard said, as he chuckled.
He always loved it when adventurers tried to go through border control without paying or filling up the Formular. Most of them came back shamed, did what they were trying to avoid anyway, and then received a fine.
The guard loved the fines. Most of his paychecks came from them.
Asmodeos rubbed his chin and decided that if he really needed to steal a dragon's egg, then he could.
After all, there was always hope.
What he didn't understand, however, was why there was a warning about a murder muffin on the poster. Cats and murder muffins were the same thing for the most part.
Murder muffins were, after all, demonic cats.
Unlike normal cats, they could show a sense of ease to their prey. They made it so that people would come to them and actually play with them, after which the murder muffin proceeded to eat the person's soul.
Asmodeos didn't know, for example, if he could survive against a murder muffin, but he knew one thing:
He had golden statues of snakes and they still had their souls.
The former necromancer turned around, going back to Peter.
"We are going on a quest, we are going to get ourselves a murder-loving pet and a dragon egg," Asmodeos said.
Peter smiled. He had always believed that this world had dragons, but he had never met one.
Which was just as well, because if he had met one, he would have gotten eaten.
After all, he was new to this world, and he was yet to even start up his quest, which he should do. Eventually…
Peter decided, maybe Asmodeos would even help him.
That man probably knew more about the world than he did.
"Okay, we are going to take the dragon, we are going to raise the dragon, we are going to feed the dragon the murder muffins," Peter said, smiling.
"No, we are going to sneak inside the dragon's cave, steal the dragon egg, sell it to the crazy dragon lady queen, and then steal the murder muffin," Asmodeos was pretty proud of his plan.
He knew, without a shadow of doubt, that if the dragon queen didn't want the dragon, then the dragon king was going to take the dragon.
And if that didn't happen, then their grandmother was definitely going to take the dragon.
She had lost her dragon in a terrible war a couple of hundred years ago, and since then, she had been trying to get a dragon egg, without success.
The dragon king had gone so far as to murder all the dragons, just so his murder-happy grandmother wouldn't get her grubby hands on one.
But was that even important? Asmodeos did not believe that. That was just a small detail.
And the fact that Asmodeos was willing to risk the lives of an entire continent, nay, an entire world, just proved to the spirits above that he was the same old necromancer.
They felt cheated. They felt wronged.
Asmodeos was going to pay.