Reminiscing

With that, Leon decided that he would tell the entire story, of course with the part about the guard targeting him instead of Aman omitted from the story.

"Okay, but you can't ask too many questions."

Tomoe and Arwin both gave a gentle nod, while Tecia attempted the same but ended up with her head on the table for attempting to use her motor skills while blackout drunk.

She eventually put up a thumbs up and Leon continued.

"Alright here's what happened, so when I woke up from the dungeon where we fought the. I saw Lucia and Erik….."

Leon continued his story, which should have been only an hour or two, but even with their promise, the three asked a lot of questions. Although a lot of Tecia's speech was incognizable as she was too drunk, so Tomoe translated to the best of her abilities.

By the end of the whole thing, it was already nighttime, however, after talking about himself for so long Leon was curious as to what his friends had been up to?

"So what have you guys been doing?"

Leon came to find out many things, first off even though they wanted to wait for Leon to come back. Apparently, Tecia got too bored and ran out of money for drinks, so she begged for them to either go hunting or do a job together as a team.

After some discussion they decided to do both at the same time, they took on a quest that was done close by so they didn't take too long nor would it be too far away from Verin. The quest was relatively simple, it was paid for by a village closer to the border than Verin was and the quest itself was to eliminate a large family of goblins that had been killing and stealing livestock from the village.

According to Tomoe and Arwin, plus Tecia who had fallen asleep at this point, the mission was quite simple although they underestimated the description of a large family and encountered roughly fifteen goblins. Although it would normally be tough for newly promoted E-Tier adventurers especially with only a group of three, the group did it quite easily as like Leon their actual combat prowess was higher, albeit not as much as Leon, than their actual rank.

Apparently, after the quest and confirming it with the village, all the villagers cheered and held a mini feast for the three of them for solving their problems.

Tomoe continued to speak in her soft and almost alluring voice.

"Then we came back last night and we heard some things from our guild leaders about some parts of your situation and decided to wait here until you came back until Tecia drank too much."

Tomoe pointed to Tecia who was asleep with a dribble of droll coming out of her slightly ajar mouth.

While Tomoe pointed, Arwin grabbed an arrow and held it towards the tip, with that he poked Tecia in the cheek with the butt of the arrow.

Suddenly Tecia woke up and fell back to sleep.

Leon finished the beer he ordered when he was telling the story and got up.

"Alright well I think it's getting a little late, I'm gonna go off. How about we go take on a quest later as a group once again."

Tomoe and Arwin also got up while attempting to lift Tecia up and gave a nod. Tecia grunted out a noise and gave a thumbs up, before falling asleep in the hands of the two adventurers.

By the time Leon stepped out onto the street, the darkness had descended like a heavy blanket that covered the entire world. For the first time in a while, Leon felt an indescribable emotion as within the past couple of weeks he had experienced more adventure than his whole life combined.

With this in mind instead of using his money or trying to crash in a room at the guild, Leon decided he would do something he hadn't done in quite a while.

After walking a couple of minutes, Leon entered the scattered houses in the more rural part of Verin and walked down a seemingly worn-down cobble road that led to a large cottage, that looked nicer than some of the other houses in the far distance.

Suddenly, he stopped in his tracks and a sudden tear slowly dripped down from his watering eyes.

With his voice as soft as a whisper, where only he could hear it himself he spoke.

"I'm…I'm home, Mom, Dad."

Leon slowly sauntered into the house, he put down his stuff in a room that had a bunch of kid's stuff. Ranging from wooden swords to children's books that were sprawled over the ground, Leon took in the room. It was a spacious room for any kid especially in Partha as most families that weren't rich had small rooms with at least two kids stuffed inside.

He looked around the room and stopped at a series of lines that had a bunch of numbers that started around his knees, each carved with a fruit knife and marked with a carver. Each number had a height and an age.

After a few seconds that felt like minutes to Leon, sounds of water splattered onto the dusty wooden floor of the house that looked like it hadn't seen anyone for a while. The tears weren't raining down from Leon's cheeks, but they flowed like a soft stream for quite a while.

Finally, he meandered over to a picture frame that had a pretty realistic depiction, made from specialist magic from a mage, of a young, well-built man with white hair that held a girl with the same color hair as Leon close to his chest. Both were smiling, but the girl smiled the biggest and was similar in beauty to Emilia. However if one had to describe the two and compare, anyone would say Emilia was like a lunar goddess, but the girl in the photo would be a summer fairy radiating kindness and innocence.

With another whisper, Leon softly fell onto his knees with the magic picture, and slowly cleaned the frame of all the dust.

"I miss you, Mom, Dad…I finally went on adventures like you guys"

After staying there for a couple of minutes, Leon finally moved and took a cloth soaked in water to clean the whole house, before he finally got a blanket and pillow out from a closet and slept on the floor.