And considering that the only other car owner I had seen prior to coming to Laxis was Julian Mancis— a slaver, a professional jerkface, and literal scum incarnate— I felt like I was, at the very least, slightly justified in my beliefs.
Regardless, when a wagon drove by me an hour later, I promised myself to give him a nice, big ten bronze coin tip for actually letting me on his cart once I arrived at my destination. Unless the wagon driver was a serial killer who wanted to kill me, of course; then I’d probably just die.
Or I’d kill him.
I wanted to live, after all. I was not going to go down to anyone without a fight. Even if that fake god himself suddenly appeared right now and somehow produced a truck out of thin air to kill me with— this time, I’d blow up the truck if that was what it took for me to survive.
The city of Locke was not the biggest city. In fact, I would rank it closer to one of the smaller cities I had seen— bigger than a town, but far smaller than the likes of Bys or Boleria. The Free Lands generally had larger settlements considering the city-state system of governance they had.
But regardless, unlike the other towns and villages which I have passed through in Laxis, there was something about this city that made me come here. Or rather, it had something which I wanted. And that was a Hunters Guild.
That was not to say that the Hunters Guild only existed in cities. In fact, I came across a handful of branches in some of the bigger towns I found lodging in; the problem with those was that they tended to be smaller and offered fewer services. They were also unprofessional, full of rude and small-minded townsfolk… ok, maybe I was starting to rant a little bit.
But I had every reason to feel that way, considering that they all turned me away!
I’m so mad, I even rhymed that!
It was not necessarily a fault to try and protect a random kid from getting themselves killed doing dangerous jobs. Not only that, but there were regulations in place which prevented such things from happening, since this used to be a problem when the Hunters Guild first began expanding.
Apparently, young boys and girls had an idealized version of what Monster extermination entailed, due to tales of heroism and glory which was rather common in this world. Especially since the Hunters Guild was currently almost ubiquitous in the continent of Vitae, it brought forth a culture of glorifying Monster hunting to a certain extent. There might have been no adventures to seek and no great dungeons filled with traps and treasure to explore, but that was greatness to be found in killing Monsters.
Historians and archaeologists did uncover tombs from ancient civilizations. But their artifacts were merely that— items that came from an age gone by. Useless in this world’s modern era. The Mana Revolution started by the Great Hero Xander had taken the world by storm; nothing from the past could ever compare to the gifts of the Goddess.
Even the inventions from the Gnomes that had once walked this world before being wiped out by the Demons were inferior to the mana tools of today. They had taken gunpowder, innovating it by creating rifles that functioned without mana crystals; they built boats that had no sails, powered by a mysterious white smoke rather than being propelled by mana tech; they had even generated electricity as a source of power, once again without the aid of any mana tools to do so.
It seemed to me that the Gnomes must have achieved technological advancements similar to the Industrial Revolution back on Earth— before they got big headed and thought that was enough to take on nigh-immortal magic users in the Demons. So while it was impressive, it was still rudimentary. The Dwarves, which had momentarily fallen behind the Gnomes’ impressive and rapid growth, have now taken whatever ideas they could take, and were currently mixing whatever knowledge was useful with the field of mana studies.
This all meant that there were no such things as ‘adventurers’, because there were no ‘ruins from an ancient superpowered civilization from the age of legends five gazillion years ago’ (I was not counting the Demons, since they were an anomaly hated by most of the world). The current time period, if anything, would fit those criteria, and being a Hunter was one of the exclusive jobs of now. Which all culminated into me being an unemployed homeless girl who could not even get a job despite having all the qualifications for it!
So I understood the basic sentiment that drove all those small Hunters Guild branches to reject me. I did not like it, but I could understand the reasoning behind it. But I still don’t like it.
And yet, things were going to be different here in Locke; I learned from my mistakes, and I had considered all the advices from those whom I have met in my journey. Because of that, I came to a simple conclusion: wear a mask.
First of all, there was a massive plague outbreak in the Free Lands, which was starting to spread to the neighboring countries because of the massive influx of refugees. I was not sure how effective a mask was at preventing the Noxeus from infecting me, but it was simply better to be safe than sorry— in my personal opinion.
Secondly, wearing a mask would not only hide my identity from all parties interested in my demise— which would make it harder for me to be tracked down— but also allow me to pass off as
