Reborn as an Adventurer: I Gain a Skill From Every Monster I Eat

Chapter 143: Chapter 143 — A Note Left Behind

The idea came to him on his second morning at the Foxglove, coffee still warm in front of him, his mind drifting toward Kess’s parting words back in Greyhaven — find your way to the Depths eventually, I mean that. He’d found his way here. What he hadn’t done yet was find her.

He asked at the guild’s front desk that same afternoon, and the clerk — a different one than Talia, brisk in the same efficient way — explained the system plainly enough.

"Message board’s for public postings," she said. "But if you want something held specifically for a returning party, that goes through personal correspondence instead. We hold it at the desk, flag their file the moment they check back in, hand it over directly."

"How long does a party usually stay out?"

"Depends entirely on the expedition. Could be days. Could be a month or more, if they’ve pushed deep." She slid a small slip of parchment across the counter. "Name the party leader, write what you like, and we’ll see it reaches them the moment they’re back inside the gate."

Arlen considered the blank parchment a while before finally writing, keeping it short and plain, the way Kess herself tended to speak.

Ilyana — made it to Aurenholt. Just transferred properly, still settling in. Staying at the Foxglove Inn, near the eastern gate district. Find me when you’re back. — Arlen

He folded it carefully and handed it over, and the clerk filed it beneath Ilyana Frostweave’s name with the same brisk efficiency she’d shown throughout, promising nothing beyond the note’s safe delivery whenever the team finally resurfaced.

The note simply sat, waiting, folded into the same ordinary stretch of days orientation soon began demanding of him — Corwin’s lectures, Ferrin’s briefing, the cohort, Kellan’s shop, the slow, patient work of the breakthrough. He’d nearly stopped consciously watching for a reply by the evening it finally arrived.

He was midway through a quiet evening at the Foxglove, working through a bowl of Rilla’s recommended stew while Pella argued cheerfully with another table about the fairness of a card game he didn’t recognize, when the common room door swung open with more force than the evening’s easy rhythm generally allowed, and a familiar, sharp-eyed lizardfolk woman strode in like she already owned the place.

"There he is," Kess said, spotting him before he’d even fully registered her arrival, and closed the distance in a few quick strides to pull him half out of his seat in a proper embrace. "Fully transferred, decently kitted, and hiding out in the nicest inn near the gate district instead of finding us first. I ought to be insulted."

"I left a note," Arlen said, laughing despite himself.

"You did. Found it the moment we checked back in — practically ran the whole way here once I read it." She dropped into the seat across from him without waiting for an invitation, already flagging Pella down with an easy, familiar wave that suggested she’d been a regular here longer than Arlen had. "We’d been out six weeks by then, near enough — Crystal Caverns push, planned long before any of us had reason to expect you this soon. Ilyana insisted on a proper wash first once we were back, which is more patience than I’ve got for anything after that long underground."

The rest arrived within the quarter hour, filing into the Foxglove’s warm common room with the same unhurried, settled confidence Arlen remembered from Greyhaven — Ilyana first, her silver hair still damp, greeting Yveth by name at the counter with the easy familiarity of a genuine regular; Rurik close behind her, offering Arlen a brief, respectful nod that carried more warmth than its brevity suggested; Grennig clasping his shoulder with the same firm, dwarven grip; and Osric last, weathered and unhurried, studying Arlen with open, genuine interest the moment he settled into the gathering.

"You made it," Ilyana said, settling into the seat beside Kess. "Properly, this time, rather than just a hope offered over farewells."

"Fifty-nine days, in the end. Slower than the courier road would’ve managed, but I wasn’t in a hurry."

"No, I don’t imagine you were." Her approval carried genuine warmth. "How’s the transfer settled? Orientation treating you fairly?"

"Well enough, so far. Keeping me busier than I expected."

Osric had gone quiet beside her, studying Arlen with a stillness that had nothing to do with the conversation — head tilting slightly, the way a craftsman might study a joint before deciding it was sound.

"Novice," Osric said, cutting cleanly across the small talk. "Recent, too. Still settling."

Arlen felt his own surprise land plainly on his face before he could properly compose it. "You can just tell that?"

"Comes with Elite, eventually. Realm below your own gets easier to read, the higher you climb." Osric looked faintly pleased with himself, settling back into his chair. "Didn’t expect to be right, honestly — figured you’d still be sitting Peak Awakened, this soon after transfer. Congratulations."

"A little over a week ago," Arlen admitted, the words arriving with less careful management than he usually allowed himself, still faintly unsettled by having been read so plainly. "Corwin walked me through the theory. The actual breakthrough happened on my own, in one of the guild’s private rooms."

"Solo breakthrough, this soon after transfer, is genuinely not nothing," Ilyana said, studying him with fresh appreciation now that Osric had confirmed it. "Most transfers spend their whole first month simply adjusting to the city itself, let alone managing a real advancement on top of it."

"I had good instruction," Arlen said, deflecting the credit the same easy way he always had, though the warmth of the table’s collective pride settled into him regardless.

Kess launched into an account of the Crystal Caverns expedition once the meal properly got underway, animated in a way that drew half the table into correcting or embellishing her details as she went.

"Whole chamber sang when we disturbed it," she said, acid-touched claws flexing briefly against the table’s edge as she gestured through the memory. "Resonance phenomenon nobody on record’s properly documented — every crystal formation in the room vibrating in harmony the moment something moved wrong inside it. Cost us the better part of that whole six weeks just working out how to cross without setting the entire thing off."

"Cost us considerably more patience than time," Grennig grumbled, though his weathered face carried genuine fondness rather than real complaint. "I held that collapsing section with my own shield-Aura for the better part of an hour while Osric worked out the proper counter-resonance. Longest hour of my life, and I’ve held worse lines than that one."

"Counter-resonance," Osric said, with the particular satisfaction of a man allowed to explain his own cleverness, "required threading a very precise lightning pulse through the formation’s natural frequency — Mana alone, that part, nothing Aura could manage cleanly enough. Once I found the right pitch, the whole chamber settled like it had simply been waiting for someone to ask it properly instead of forcing the issue."

"And Rurik carried out two full crates of unstable resonance shards on his own back, rather than risk a second party member near them," Ilyana added, her frost-touched composure warming into something genuinely affectionate. "Feral Aura’s good for considerably more than simply hitting things, whatever certain members of this table like to joke about."

Rurik offered only a low, satisfied grunt in response, though something in his expression suggested he’d enjoyed the recognition more than his usual reserve let on.

Arlen listened to all of it with genuine, absorbed attention, filing away the shape of a real deep expedition alongside everything else he’d learned this past month — not just danger, but the layered, cooperative texture of it, five people each bringing something wholly their own to a problem none of them could have solved alone.

"You’ll see it yourself soon enough," Kess said, catching his expression. "Once orientation’s properly finished. I meant what I said back in Greyhaven — I’ll show you the Depths myself, if you’d like company for your first proper dive rather than whatever assigned group the guild tries pairing you with."

"I’d like that," Arlen said, and meant it entirely.

"Settled, then." Kess raised her cup in a small, easy toast, the rest of the table following suit with the same warm, unhurried camaraderie Arlen remembered so fondly from his earliest days building this same kind of found family, half a kingdom away. "To Aurenholt actually delivering on its promise. And to whatever the Depths decide to show you, once you’re finally ready to go looking."

Arlen raised his own cup, the Foxglove’s warm noise settling comfortably around the whole gathered table, and found himself, for the first time since arriving in this overwhelming, layered city, feeling genuinely, thoroughly at home in it.

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