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I brushed the man off and began looking back towards the city, trying to see if I could spot a sign of where the city’s Association building would be.

While the strange man had provided some interesting insight into dragons ruling the city and a grand quest they had given out to… restore the city? Drive back the cold? Dragons were cold-blooded, right? It would make sense in that case if they wanted to “return” warmth to their city, assuming the city had once been warmer to begin with, that is.

Anyway, the man had provided some interesting information, but I couldn’t actually verify how accurate anything he said was, especially after he had proven himself to be crazy. What kind of sane person would rest so haphazardly on the edge of certain death and just watch strangers all day? Did he not have anything better to do?

“Hello? Hey, I didn’t get your name. Unless you want me to just call you “new guy”, which wouldn’t be the strangest nickname someone has asked me to call them, I’d like to know what to call you by.”

“Don’t.”

I tried to brush him off again as he tried to get in my line of sight and started walking back towards the entrance of the city while keeping an eye out on my surroundings.

I was also bothered by the aura I had felt emanating from both the tattoo and the dragon that had flown overhead briefly. Something about it felt off to me, to the point where I felt as if something was lurking around the corner waiting for me, a sort of creeping feeling.

My somewhat distracted gaze must have lingered on one of the many passersby for a moment too long, as the crazy guy began to explain like he thought I was interested in something I saw.

“Look, you need someone to guide you anyway, right? You don’t want to party with that guy, trust me, he goes by “The Pounder”. Another crazy nickname, right? He’ll refuse to elaborate on it and just get angry when people smirk if you ask. Nasty temper, that one.”

“I don’t care.”

I really didn’t, whatever people wanted to be called was their own business. What’s more, the guy hadn’t even introduced himself to me yet, and he was the one going on about what people wanted to be called.

“Oh…”

The man scratched his head for a moment before hurrying to catch up to me, walking backward to face me.

“You said you were looking for someone here, right? We can help each other out.”

Now he wanted me to help him? At least the truth was finally coming out—he wanted something from me.

“Yeah… hey, do you know where the Association building is by any chance?”

“The Association building? It’s that big blocky-looking building in the entrance square. It kind of blends in at first, but it’s kind of just to the left of the main street…” He paused for a moment as the gears in his mind turned and he reached some sort of conclusion.

“Hey, if you’re going to the Association anyway, we could form our party while you’re there. Looking for your friend, right?”

“I’m not interested in partying up with someone whose name I don’t even know.”

There was a look of brief surprise on the man’s face, as if he hadn’t even realized that he had yet to introduce himself.

“Oh! Sorry about that! I’m Lein!”

I had half-expected him to introduce himself with some cheesy nickname. Then again, despite the disinterest I had shown, I would be hard-pressed to come up with a worse title than “The Pounder…”

I also couldn’t help but notice the sideways glances a few people gave us as we passed them. They hadn’t been giving me those glances before… I had a somewhat bad feeling about Lein. Why couldn’t he party up with one of the other Awakeners that he apparently knew so much about? He had said that he didn’t like the way they flaunted their unearned gear or something, but I suspected that there was more at play than just that.

We soon emerged into the central circle in front of the entrance gates again and Lein pointed towards a rectangular building not far to our right.

“That should be it.”

“Thanks… I should be good now.”

“No problem!”

“…”

“…”

I was looking at him expectantly, but he still wasn’t taking the hint. What was that guy’s deal?

I figured he would get the message if I just ignored him and walked over to the entrance of the Association building. For an Association headquarters, it was surprisingly quiet.

I was used to the constant in-and-out stream of Awakeners returning from quests, collecting rewards, picking up new quests, and so on, but that Association building sort of seemed to just be watching over the city entrance. The doors were a pair of large, wooden constructs, tall and wide enough for two orcs to pass through comfortably side-by-side, and creaked open loudly as I pushed them aside and entered the building.

Just as I had suspected from my initial inspection of the building’s exterior, the traffic inside of the Association building was an almost mirror match. There were a few tables for visitors and small groups of Awakeners huddled together quietly over the tables, but the quest board was free of traffic, and the help desk had a single lonely-looking dwarf who looked to be half-asleep over the other side of the desk.

The place smelled of iron and old wood, flickering gemstones inlaid against the crossbeams holding the roof up cast a dim light over everything. One thing that I had to give the place credit for, however, was that it was surprisingly clean. Then again, it didn’t seem like they had many visitors to clean after to begin with.

Lein trailed after me as I approached the counter and waited for a moment for the dwarf to respond.

“…”

After getting closer, I could see that the dwarf actually was asleep. He had his forehead propped up in his hand with his head pointed downwards. From across the room, it had almost looked like he had been diligently pouring over any number of potentially important documents, but the fact that the “potentially important” documents were crumbling pages of what looked to be newspaper paired with the steady, deep breaths of someone fast asleep gave him away.

“Hey…” I spoke calmly at first, hoping that the dwarf was a light sleeper. Of course, dwarves were infamous for their sleeping abilities, and he remained in whatever dream he had found himself in.

I debated if it would be rude for me to be louder for a moment before Lein made the decision for me.

“Hey! Wake up and do your job, lazy-ass!”

Thump!

Lien stepped up next to me and pounded a fist on the desk, sending a few of the random pages flying to the side.

I almost thought the dwarf had managed to sleep through that, too, until he slowly shifted his hands and tilted his head up to look at us with an angry stare.

“What is it this time, Lein? You claim to have lost your sword in a tree again and need another newbie to climb up and get it for you?”

I wasn’t sure what that was about, but at least it confirmed that the guy wasn’t trustworthy.

“What? No… I’m different now, new day, new me. Anyway… I was showing this guy… uhh…” Lein looked at me, a silent, pleading look for some help. He still didn’t know my name.

“…I was showing the newbie around and he mentioned that he wanted to visit our esteemed Association headquarters. I hadn’t gotten around to telling him that it was fake yet.

“What do you mean by fake?”

“Ah, ah… Give and take. First, you’ve got to tell me your name.” Lein wagged his finger at me.

I wasn’t sure what was up with him and names, but I at least had someone else there I could look to for the answer.

I gave the dwarf a pointed stare.

“Haah… It’s exactly what it sounds like. This is an Association headquarters, but not the Association most think of. Kind of like… an offshoot branch. We only report to the city lords here and nobody else.”

‘…And that explains why most have never heard of this city before.’

Magical tattoos that prevented you from speaking about the City, an offshoot Association that didn’t report to anyone save for the lords… Why were they being so secretive?

“I see… Can you still help me find someone?”

The dwarf scratched his chin.

“I guess I can if I’ve seen them. Don’t really get much traffic here, if you couldn’t tell.” He waved to indicate the few Awakeners that were hanging around the interior.

I leaned forward, aware of Lein giving me a close look from the side.

“Great, I’m looking for a girl named Rhil, might be using the nickname “Skybreaker”. She uses electricity abilities and might have stopped by any time in the past…”

I really wasn’t sure how much time had passed. My bout in that odd dungeon where I had been split up with Velle and Bernard made me think that at least a few days had passed that I wasn’t aware of.

“The past week or two?”

“Hmmm… No, can’t say that sounds familiar to me.”

It could also very well have been that she had stopped by at some point and the dwarf had just been asleep.

‘Maybe he’s at least seen the other two?’

“How about a guy with a big sword on his back accompanied by a red-haired mage, they go by Bernard and Velle and probably stopped by within the past week.”

The dwarf nodded at my words.

“I know the pair. Woke me up from my sleep just to ask about nearby dungeons, completely ignored the grand quest for some reason…”

“Could you tell me what you told them?”

“I told them that there weren’t any dungeons around here worth exploring. They insisted anyway, so I gave them some info about a few dungeons that were cleared long ago, were deemed to not be worth the time, or haven’t really been explored yet. Hey, while you’re here, at least check out the grand quest on the board, that probably has an interesting dungeon or two attached to it… “

I looked over to the quest board where there was a single, lonely paper pinned in the center of the board. Probably the grand quest the dwarf was speaking of.

“Sure… Could you share the details of the dungeons you gave those two information on?”

The dwarf shrugged and shared the dungeon info with me over the System notes function before I left him to his napping and checked out the board.

Sure enough, it was the very same grand quest that Lein had mentioned in our initial encounter.