Time passed. I was packing my things to leave when Liam knocked.
He saw the bags the moment I opened the door.
"Where are you going?"
"I'm leaving," I responded, in that same plain tone.
"Then I'm coming with you!"
"No. Stay here. It's safer than coming with me — even with the crisis, the Lin family probably won't completely fall."
"I don't care. You can't stop me from following you."
"Do as you want."
In the end it wouldn't really change much either way.
Once again I rented an inn near the capital. I went to search the job postings and out of curiosity checked if the alchemist's listing was still there. It wasn't. I didn't think much of it — someone had probably taken it while I was still with the Lin family.
While I searched, Liam kept pestering me with questions.
"What are you going to do now?" "What's your plan?" "Where will you go from here?"
I mostly ignored him and answered the easy ones. He didn't stop. It looked like he was trying to annoy me, or maybe make me angry. It still didn't work. After a while he gave up on the small talk and asked what missions I was thinking of taking. I told him I didn't know yet, that I was still looking. Then he pointed at one of the postings.
"What about this one? You only need to collect some herbs and the pay is decent — thirty copper coins. That's 0.3 silver. Usually they'd barely pay ten copper for something like this."
I thought about it for a moment and agreed.
Unlike what I expected, the location was completely calm.
Seems like it wasn't a trap, I thought to myself. Probably just a scarcity in that herb.
I immediately got to work. There weren't many to collect so it didn't take long. I glanced over at Liam, who was also picking some up.
"You don't have to help me. You just wanted to follow me — go sit somewhere while I finish."
"There's no need to worry about me," he responded. "Even though you might look emotionless, you still care about others, don't you? You just don't know how to show it anymore."
"Yea, whatever. Do as you want."
Time passed. When we finished we went straight back to the guild to deliver the objective. After they checked what we'd collected, thirty copper coins were handed over.
Liam immediately asked, "Why don't we go eat or drink something? I'll pay."
"There's no need. If you want to go, go alone. I'm not hungry. I'd rather spend this time completing more missions."
"Oh come on, live your life. Stop focusing on resources. I know you want to break through to 2nd tier but there's no need to rush — think about it another way, you're still only eighteen. Stop trying to fly past every hurdle. Sometimes doing something relaxing actually helps."
"..."
"Fine," I responded.
We went into town and entered the first restaurant that looked like it had decent prices. We sat, ordered, and waited.
While we waited, someone nearby decided to start a ruckus. Liam was already half out of his seat when I grabbed his arm.
"Don't do anything stupid. Think about it — why is no one else intervening? There's obviously a reason. Even if it's just because they don't want to, it's better not to risk it."
"But Lian—"
"No buts. Sit."
"Fine," he said.
The waiter came with our plates shortly after. Liam, still curious, asked him why no one had stepped in.
"It's not the first time," the waiter said quietly. "That's the young master of the Bai family. You see that guard beside him? Tier 2."
Liam looked over, then back at me. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have tried to intervene. I almost made things difficult for you."
"It's fine," I said plainly. "Nothing happened."
After eating I went back to looking for work, Liam still following behind me. This time I decided to take a slightly harder mission — a tier 1 beast. Alone it might have been risky, but with two of us it shouldn't be a problem.
I brought up the loot split before we accepted.
"Half and half," I said.
"I already told you, don't worry about it. I'm not even thinking about breaking through to the next tier. Keep it — I just want to sincerely help you. Nothing more."
"..."
"Fine. Seems like I really can't change your mind."
The mission objective was farther than last time so we paid for a ride on a caravan heading in that direction. Liam tried to cover it but I didn't let him. I was already keeping all the mission rewards. I couldn't let him pay for this too.
After that we just sat and waited for the ride to end. We didn't talk much. I didn't care to. He didn't really know what to say.
The ride didn't take long. The moment we got close to the mission area we started searching for where the beast might be. The posting had only given a general area — no exact location. Time passed and we found nothing. We were starting to consider giving up when we heard it.
The sound of something crunching. Hard and rhythmic — bone, maybe, or something close to it.
We looked at each other and moved toward it, keeping our steps as quiet as we could.