“Do you think anyone will understand what these do?” Jeanne asked, squinting at the strange, useless-looking contraptions that were crammed in the cluttered shelves.

  “Beat me,” Viktor said with a shrug. “Not that I care. Alycia has enough coin to keep this place running for decades even if she never manages to sell a damn thing.”

  Jeanne laughed. “Is that what her apprentice is supposed to say?”

  “Well, I’m only here to learn. I couldn’t care less about the shop itself. Even showing up for just one morning to help out is already too good for someone like her.”

  Yes, at long last, the grand opening of his esteemed master’s shop was only a week away. So she needed a few extra hands for the final preparations: arranging displays, dusting off shelves, making sure the shop looked the part for any customers who might wander in, though he highly doubted anyone would ever show up. And that was why they were here, the apprentice and the hapless employee.

  “So,” he asked, “you’ve decided to become a shopkeeper?”

  “Sort of,” Jeanne replied. “Alycia has offered me this job. So I’ll be around until at least the end of winter. But, to be honest, I don’t really want to owe her a favor.”

  Ah yes. The infamous “I don’t fucking owe anyone a damn thing” mantra.

  Viktor chuckled. “You’re not just tending the shop. You also need to keep an eye on her, to make sure that she doesn’t blow up something, or someone.” Especially when that someone could be him. “Trust me, it’s she who owes you a favor, not the other way around.”

  “Well, if you put it that way...” Jeanne conceded.

  “And,” Viktor continued, “you’re going to live here? In the shop?”

  “Yes, I work downstairs during the day, then sleep upstairs at night.”

  In other words, Alycia’s workshop—which doubled as her storage room, lunch room, nap room, and classroom—had just gained another function: Jeanne’s bedroom.

  That means she’ll serve as a night guard as well, huh? That was a win-win, he supposed. She got a roof over her head, while the shop had someone watching over it after hours. Still, he wasn’t quite sure that putting a pyromancer who couldn’t even control her own flame in a room full of explosives would make it any safer.

  “How about food?” Viktor asked.

  “Rhea will cook for all of us, and Alycia will bring it with her when she comes to the shop. I don’t really want to bother the girl, but Alycia said the food is also part of my pay.”

  Ah, that. The struggle of his illustrious master, forced to manage the two stubborn do-gooders locked in mortal combat over who could refuse generosity the hardest. Jeanne, who refused to take charity, and Rhea, who refused to take payment. One couldn’t accept free food; the other wouldn’t accept money for work she was already doing.

  Alycia had been caught in the middle, until Viktor stepped in to offer a practical solution: just call it what it wasn’t. The meals were part of Jeanne’s salary—absolutely nothing free about that—and Alycia was paying Rhea for cooking for her staff. So it was just business, right? Thus, everyone’s precious dignity remained intact.

  “By the way,” he asked, “are you giving up being an adventurer or something? Retire, just like Alycia?”

  “No.” Jeanne shook her head. “As I said, I’m only here through the winter. After that... I’ll figure it out. And even if I stick around to help Alycia, I’ll still take adventuring jobs from time to time.”

  Viktor grinned. “Well, it’s not like you get a lot of work as an adventurer anyway.”

  “Hey!”

  But it was true. Her pyromancy was... unreliable, to say the least. That made finding a party almost impossible for her, and without a party, jobs were few and far between.

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  “Why do you insist on continuing as an adventurer anyway? Why not do something else? Work at the Guild like Claire, or an inn, or... well, a shop, like this?”

  Sure, she wouldn’t get to set stuff on fire if she worked behind a counter, but to be honest, she hardly got the chance to do so as an adventurer, either.

  “Well, I... I’ve always thought adventuring was romantic.”

  Viktor stared at her.

  Jeanne chuckled. “What’s with that look?”

  “Romantic? You’re the last person I’d expect to hear that word from.”

  “Why not? Even I had been a girl once. Not very different from Rhea.”

  “But you’re not a little girl anymore. Do you... regret it?” Viktor asked. After all, most people who had thought that way usually ended up eating disappointment for breakfast sooner or later.

  Jeanne shrugged. “Well, turns out it’s less rosy than I expected. But that’s more on me than the career itself.” She paused. “Besides, being an adventurer has its perks. Flexibility, for example. Any other job would tie me down to one place. What if my circumstances changed and I needed to leave? Or what if something happened and I lost the job through no fault of my own? As an adventurer, on the other hand, I can go anywhere I want. Any town, any city, and I can still keep doing what I like to do.”

  Well, she had a point. Being an adventurer meant freedom, in theory at least. You could do whatever you wanted, wherever you wanted, whenever you wanted. Jeanne could play shopkeeper for a few months, then go back to slaying monsters later without missing a beat.

  Even Alycia, for all her grand declarations of retirement, was still technically a registered adventurer. Once your name was on the Guild’s ledger, it stayed there until you were dead or expelled. There was no such thing as former adventurers, only ones on indefinite hiatus. So maybe twenty years down the line, after this shop had been running for decades without a single customer, and the last coin in the blonde’s pouch had finally evaporated, she might find herself un-retiring just to put food on her table.

  “Now that I think about it,” Viktor asked, “when did you come to Daelin?”

  He knew Jeanne had been around for quite a while. How long exactly, though? Three years? Four?

  “Seven years ago.”

  That was... a lot longer than he had expected.

  “Wait. Was that... during the monster attack?”

  It was seven years ago that Daelin went through the greatest crisis since its founding. For a century, not once had the horrors that lurked beneath the One Thousand Streams ever shown their faces near the town. In fact, the side near the river had faced fewer monster attacks than anywhere else. That was why the town kept expanding east. That was why the farmland hugged the east side. The safe side. The prosperous side.

  Then, it happened.

  One day, without warning, monsters poured from the river. Farms were trampled, people were slaughtered, and the townsfolk scrambled to throw up a massive barricade and hope for the best. They hid behind it, waiting until the beasts left on their own.

  “We came here right after it was over,” Jeanne said.

  Viktor chuckled. “So, while everyone else was fleeing the town, you were walking right in?”

  During the crisis, and for a while after, many people abandoned Daelin. Claire and Quinn’s parents, come to think of it, had also left for the North during that same period. Perhaps the bad state of the town back then was the final nudge that led to their decision to risk their lives in a dungeon.

  “Well,” Jeanne said, eyes drifting toward the window as if the past were smeared across the glass, “my father and I had been moving around a lot. And when we got here—”

  “Father?” Viktor arched a brow. He had always assumed she lived by herself. His memories, including the ones belonging to Quinn, held no trace of a father. Besides, if the old man were still around, why was she living alone in the ruins?

  As if she caught his confusion, Jeanne said quickly. “Oh, he died three years ago. I’ve been on my own since.”

  “I see.”

  “Anyway, when we arrived at Daelin, my father decided it was finally time to settle down. Luckily, we came across an old woman. My father helped her out with a few things, and she offered us a place for very cheap. One of her relatives had been killed during the monster attacks, and she’d inherited his house. She told us if we didn’t take it, it would just sit empty.”

  “You mean the house you got kicked out of recently?”

  “Well, yes.” Jeanne sighed. “The old woman... she died last year. The house belongs to her son now. And with the new dungeon popping up and the growing influx of people pouring into Daelin every day, he figured out there was better coin to be made than letting some stranger live there for next to nothing. So the rent shot up overnight, and I couldn’t afford it.” She shrugged. “Can’t blame him, really. The only reason I ever had that roof was because of the friendship between my father and the old woman. But both of them are gone now, so... time to pack up, I guess.”

  Doesn’t that mean it’s my fault that she got kicked out of her house?

  Of course not. The dungeon had been a boon for the town as a whole. If a few individuals got the short end of the stick, then it was just bad luck. Besides, she got to live in his old castle for a few weeks, didn’t she? So they were even.

  Suddenly, the door to the shop swung open. Viktor and Jeanne turned, half-expecting to see Alycia coming back.

  But no, it was someone else.

  A customer? Really? Someone had actually walked into this place? The blonde must have burned through twenty years of good luck all in one go, and wasted every drop of it. After all, the shop wasn’t even officially open yet.

  Also, interestingly, this particular customer was someone he knew. In fact, he had tried to kill her just the other day.

  There, at the entrance, stood a young woman, her blonde hair tied up in two big buns atop her head, a long wooden staff in her hand, both ends capped with iron.