The bard fantasized again.

Chapter 105 Adventurers and Kind People (Please Subscribe!)

Let's decorate our day with joy and friendship!

At dawn, Chuck pushed open the door of the Friendship House, letting the first rays of the morning sun fall on his cheeks, giving them a healthy rosy glow.

He saw the dwarf woman standing at the door, who had been waiting for who knows how long, her face full of sorrow, which was quite incongruous with the beautiful weather. So he kindly offered her some words of comfort:

Good morning, dear Mrs. Green. Don't let sorrow grace your face; leave your troubles for yesterday!

The dwarf woman forced a smile and answered hesitantly:
"Oh, friendly Chuck, I've come to ask you something."

"Of course, we are the most friendly neighbors. Please rest assured that I will answer all your questions to the best of my ability."

Halflings rarely refuse requests for help, and Chuck is no exception.

“That’s wonderful—in fact, I wanted to ask you about my husband, ‘Iron Hammer’.”

"Did something happen to him?"

"He's fine, but... well, I'll tell you in a low voice."

I suspect my husband is cheating on me, but my only evidence is that he's been lacking energy lately—he says he's too tired, but that's clearly an excuse.

"You're always well-informed; I think you might know something?"

Chuck's bright green eyes, like new leaves, blinked immediately afterward.
“How could that be, Mrs. Green? Your husband has absolutely not cheated on you with any of the ladies in Dragontail Pass.”

"really?"

"Of course, I assure you with my reputation."

Chuck patted his chest and said confidently,

"Besides, there are only the two of you dwarves in town right now, and Miss Brina the dwarf never entertains hairy creatures—as for those tall ones, do you think it's possible?"

"No, he can't even climb into those people's beds."

The dwarf woman breathed a sigh of relief.

"Thank you for your answer, kind Chuck. Please come to my house sometime to try my apple pie."

"Of course, I hope you have a wonderful day."

Watching the dwarf lady leave, Chuck finally calmed his nerves, sighed, and said...
"Forgive me, Mrs. Green—sometimes a few lies are necessary to maintain harmony in a family."

He quickly put on a smile and greeted the woman who had stormed in from the city gate:
"Oh, brave Miss Wendy, what has happened that has made you so anxious?"

She was a pretty girl with thick, golden curly hair styled into twin ponytails.

Even though her brows were almost furrowed with resentment, it only added to her beauty.

As the eldest daughter of the Silver Shield family, Wendy received the same education and training as men from a young age, and her every move exudes a heroic air.

This made the bright silver chainmail look perfectly natural.

It is said that her father, the cavalry commander Orion Silver Shield, once considered recruiting her into the 'Dragon Riders'—

"And then, like you, you either attend social balls of various nobles or spend your days in military camps and at your desk, right?"
I don't want my life to be so boring!

This is how she answered.

Perhaps this is what makes them natural adventurers.

So much so that not long ago, having just come of age, she decided to join an adventure team and take on a gathering mission to the Dusk Forest.

The reward for that task was unusually high; they all thought they had struck gold.

But reality is always unexpectedly harsh.

By the time they returned, she was the only one left in the full five-person team.

Chuck still remembers the fear the young lady displayed when he listened to her story:

"【The Daughter of Wealth】 is an experienced adventure team, and even has a senior mage. It almost represents the backbone of the adventurers in DragonGold City."

Therefore, each of us is determined to succeed in this task.

However, during the process of gathering herbs, they inexplicably stumbled upon a horde of corpses wandering in the swamp.

They were really tough to deal with, and they almost exhausted us...

Just when we were struggling to move forward, a hunter rescued us with his wolf cub.

"Luckily, I met some kind people."

Chuck offered a soft word of comfort.

"He said he was a beastman who was ostracized but still loved life, which made him very trustworthy—so we accepted his invitation to rest in a cabin in the woods."

He even made us a cup of hot tea.

Luckily, I don't like that kind of poorly made tea, so I secretly poured it away.

Then, after a short while, I found everyone fast asleep in a daze.

The hunter then revealed his skeletal form, commanding his zombie servants to saw off the ranger's legs—

"what?"

Chuck realized he had said the wrong thing.

Wendy continued to recount her unforgettable memories:
"Although I don't like that woman. She's like—no, she's a bitch. Always flirting with those repressed men, and then watching them fight over her like stud donkeys."

I wore a fully concealed helmet and spoke in a high-pitched voice to make her think I was a man. Perhaps she was annoyed by my indifferent attitude, and even falsely accused me of molesting her.

Please, the only thing about her that's noticeable is her long, shapely legs.

In terms of looks alone, she's not even as cute as my Peppa Pig.

Who is Paige?

"I have a little pink pig. If you want to see her, I can bring her over for you to see next time."

"Okay, please continue your story..."

"I wasn't asleep, and I quietly slipped away when he wasn't looking."

He sent a zombie to hunt me down, but luckily it was a dwarf and couldn't catch up with me.

After the expensive eye drops lost their effectiveness, I ended up getting lost in the forest.

They couldn't even count how many days and nights had passed. But thankfully, thanks to the food in their dimensional bag and a bit of luck, they managed to survive and emerge from the fog...

But looking back now, I realize it was all a scam!

He was clearly using the high salaries to lure adventurers into the forest to satisfy his perverse collecting obsession...

I must report this to the Adventurers' Guild to prevent more people from falling into this trap!

Perhaps this is why she was so anxious, rushing to the city gate every morning—

Unfortunately, the young lady still couldn't get what she wanted today:
"Why hasn't martial law been lifted yet? I've been stuck outside for almost a week!"

Chuck said regretfully:
“You went to bed too early yesterday. If you had asked me last night, I could have given you a definite answer then—the ‘spear tax’ would be collected by tomorrow night, at which point you would be able to move freely through Dragon Gold City.”

Wendy exclaimed in surprise, "How are you so well-informed?" "Maybe it's because I have a keen ear for listening?"

Chuck pointed to his earlobe and replied,
"This is information that a distinguished guest extracted from the captain of the guard yesterday evening."

"Really? That bastard doesn't even listen to me!"

"He had an inexplicable charm. And for a bard, socializing was one of his strengths."

"Poet, socialite?"

Wendy was a little confused.

It's not her fault.

After all, in the stereotypes of the nobility, poets were no different from those sycophantic jesters and clowns.

"I don't recall any bard in Longjincheng possessing such skill. Is he an outsider?"

"It's quite a coincidence that this poet also came from the Dawn Forest."

Wendy was somewhat surprised:

"He's quite lucky."

It wasn't easy to get out of that awful place.

"That's right, and they even led a group of three hundred refugees out unscathed."

"How many!?"

Wendy opened her mouth,

"Isn't this conspicuous enough—and how could he possibly lead three hundred men through the forest fog?"

"Perhaps you can ask him yourself when he comes back."

Undeniably, Chuck's few words had already piqued Wendy's curiosity.

She admires courageous people.

Nothing is more courageous than leading three hundred refugees through the forest of dawn and dusk.

Even though he was blessed by Lady Luck and didn't encounter any trouble along the way.

But making this choice itself proves his fearlessness:

Where did he go?

“I remember you also visited that house by the sea in the southwest.”

"Yes, it's a pity I couldn't see any clues."

"He seems to have figured out some of the reasons. But perhaps he hasn't been able to completely solve it, otherwise he wouldn't have gone to investigate again in the middle of the night..."

Oh, you're really lucky, he's right there.

Chuck pointed to the end of the road, where a group of three wearily made their way back into the sunlight.

Wendy looked at that strange group—

A listless poet carrying a lute.

A knight in full plate armor, with a broken sword at his side.

There's one more...

A kobold!?

She instinctively reached for her sword, but Chuck quickly pressed her arm down.

"Calm down, calm down. He's a very clever kobold."

"Kobold, intelligent?"

Wendy finds it hard to associate the two words together.

'Cunning' is a plausible description, but where does the 'intelligence' come from?

but……

Hmm, why does its gray robe look so familiar?

While the young lady hesitated, Chuck quickly waved and greeted her.

For some reason, he always felt a strange sense of closeness to Tang Qi.

It was as if they were long-lost brothers.

So familiar with something that even using honorifics can sound awkward:

"What did you do?"

Tang Qi felt his eyelids drooping and his fingers aching from playing the piano non-stop.

Right now, all he wanted was a good night's sleep, so he gave a brief explanation:

"I taught Mushroom to sing all night."

"Teach mushrooms to sing?"

Is this... hallucinations caused by eating mushrooms?

Food poisoning!?
Chuck hesitated and said:
"You didn't cook all those mushrooms from last night into cream of mushroom soup and drink it, did you?"
Miss Wendy, let me give you a piece of advice: never eat any white mushrooms you see in the future.

Tang Qi was even too lazy to joke anymore:
"I'm too sleepy, I'll talk to you after I take a nap..."

His fatigue was so obvious that Wendy, out of politeness, forcibly suppressed her curiosity and did not bother him.

But when they entered the Friendship House and were about to go upstairs, she saw the dog-headed man forcibly pulling at the poet's sleeve.

"Books, books!"

When a dog-headed man gets hooked on reading, he won't feel sleepy.

Tang Qi sighed, too lazy to argue with Krudo, took all the spellbooks out of his dimensional bag and threw them to the ecstatic kobold, then went upstairs to rest.

Wendy was initially surprised.

She never imagined that there really were kobolds with such an intense thirst for knowledge.

But then, when she saw the jet-black spellbook that Tang Qi handed her, inlaid with a bone-white skull, she immediately frowned:
"I feel like I've seen this book somewhere before."

Where is it?

Her thoughts wandered rapidly, and the scenes she had experienced over the past few months seemed to flash before her eyes.

Finally, the scene freezes on the moment the mage pulls up the dwarf's corpse—

The upright dwarf could only obscure his belt, allowing her a clear glimpse of the heavy legal code in his hands.

She took a deep breath:
"real or fake!?"

(End of this chapter)