Chapter LXX - Dinner (part 1)

After Cony arrived, she apologized because she was in the bathroom when I called. 

Apparently she took a nap after coming home, and just bathed. Her hair still looked slightly wet.

Seeing that the three of us had gathered here, Hod excused himself to his mother and sat down with us without his apron on.

"So... Do you want to start telling us the story or are we going to wait for Valey?"

Hod asked as he pulled the chair next to Barett.

"Let's just wait for Valey. In the meantime, maybe you guys can tell me some more stuff that I missed?"

Cony started first. Apparently one of the high ranking adventurers got married. He was a Blue ranked adventurer, and everyone cared. It's no one that I know of, but he was quite the seasoned adventurer. He retired from his adventurer job and became a worker, due to his marriage.

"A wise choice. Being an adventurer while having a family to feed is... Difficult."

I commented on her story.

Barett continued by telling another news. The adventurer's arena has now been upgraded and was able to handle up to Yellow ranked adventurers. Seeing how the arena was devastated when the White ranked adventurer, Jonus, sparred with me, the master decided to upgrade it even further.

After all, his honor stands with the building. If the building can't handle the White ranked adventurers sparring, then what kind of a master is he?

Barett described the walls are now covered with some crazy strong materials, and now it won't be easy to be punched through. The ground however, is the same. A destroyed ground while sparring was normal, and there's people who fix them all the time.

But if the walls got destroyed, then the building would collapse, so they upgraded those.

"I see. Though I don't think I will be sparring there without any good reason. We can always spar outside the kingdom, you know?"

"Yeah, but sparring in the arena is much better! There's people to take care of you if something goes wrong."

Cony countered my argument, and I shook my shoulder.

"Right, but let's recall what happened back when Jonus and I sparred. A lot of people came to the arena."

"That's..."

"We can always put up some barriers around it though, to let the pressures from leaking out from the arena."

Hod added, and everyone nodded. But… I don't even know those things exist.

"Oh yeah, they should have added those."

"But how do we get them to add those barriers?"

Cony and Barett thought for awhile, until Hod gave them the answer.

"We can always ask the receptionist to do that for us."

"Ah! You're right!"

And just like that, they agreed to talk with the receptionist about adding a barrier around the arena so that the pressure from the spars don't leak outside. After all, people were quite suffocating when me and Jonus sparred.

"Sounds like a fix, then."

"Yes! Let's play there sometimes. There's no more bullies coming there now, we can play around as much as we want!"

"Maybe not... playing around, Cony…"

She is a little too confident in beating the other adventurers in a spar, and I chuckled a little.

Hod's turn to tell me the news, one that I cared more than some adventurer stuff. He said the library is closed for a while for-

"What!?"

I said as I slammed the desk.

Looking around, everyone had their gazes at me. Even though their numbers weren't that many, I still felt a little awkward and ashamed.

"I-I was about to visit that place tomorrow..."

I said silently while looking down. Cony laughed aloud again now.

"Listen to me first... It was closed for some revamp, and some more books will be added. It will be open in around two days."

"Oh. That's... I see."

I said as I scratched the back of my head. Apparently the library was closed for two weeks already. I'm glad I was out of the kingdom for that long, and now it will open in only two days.

"Okay. What other news?"

Hod pondered for a while, and finally came up with an answer.

"Well, there is a change of rules in the Office."

He explained now, to take a mission one rank higher than you, there need to be at least three people in your team that are the same as your rank, or at least one person with that higher rank.

"For example, like us. If we want to go for a Yellow rank mission, there needs to be at least three people that are Blue ranked to take on that mission."

"Ohh... Damn, that means I can't solo a Green ranked mission now."

"Well if it's you, I think the Office can give some exceptions."

"That's true…"