The wanderer stepped onto the stairs out of the Borough Hall an hour later. He no longer felt the pursuit by any of the gazing sensations. But the daylight progressed towards the 'evening's horizon'.
It wasn't enough to invite him away. Away from Ashtrim.
But his sleep deprivation was enough. It drove him to ask Ulrina where the closest place was where he could get some time alone.
She was quite flustered, her eyes darting to the gallery above as if the wanderer asked a question she couldn't answer.
With red cheeks and glancing the wanderer too, she guided him with his scroll. Pointing out a select few places on it.
The wanderer jogged to one of them. A hostel for to-be adventurers.
The wanderer's scroll now bore a new imprint on it as proof of that. Along with the imprints Slin made on the scroll.
Several people passed by the wanderer; he still didn't adjust his brown overcoat.
One of those groups of people had a few teenagers. They were all coming from a different road to the one the wanderer was on.
Each wore heavily-padded armour, all made from cloth rather than leather. A peculiarity given there were guards as well in the crowd, all in roughened and tested leather armour.
Two of those teenagers just glanced at the wanderer and then to the direction he was onto.
"Mm, hmm! So eyeing new targets, are we?" struck one of the other teenagers. He was indistinguishable from the group.
"No…obviously not," replied one of the teenagers.
Another sigh from a different teenager, "you do know you could just go to the hostel later, right?"
The teenager, who hadn't spoken yet but did look at that wanderer in brown overcoat, coughed and replied, "well, we could… but it's best to, you know, umm not to also? Just have a bit of faith in us too, Litora!"
Litora sighed. Her cadence changing slightly and she walked away from the group.
Not to the hostel for to-be adventurers. But to Borough Hall, the Borough Hall of Adventuring, the name it's called as by the locals of central Ashtrim borough.
The wide doors of the hall opened. A slim, umber haired, teenager walked in, she looked just a bit older than the wanderer, which in truth she was.
Litora scoured the hall with her eyes. Nodded to Mina and Ulrina's inquisitive looks, and went back out.
She didn't find what she came looking for. The shield-wielder was nowhere to be seen, and Ulrina was rushing out to someplace she deemed urgent.
The wanderer, in the meanwhile, had just reached the to-be adventurers hostel. Its name quite clear and cut, 'To-be Adventurers' Hostel'.
"Huh", the only response to that lackluster name. The wanderer didn't spare much and lodged himself in.
He was in his rented room, happily falling asleep for the second time since the start of his journey.
Litora meanwhile, she headed to the first Borough Hall. The one closer to the gate on the Earthen wall Slin was patrolling at.
The Borough Hall of Receiving was its name. She did not receive the answer to her search there too.
Litora marched on—and on—to the other Borough Halls. Not finding anywhere what she came looking for.
None questioned her. The people in the Borough Halls, every old visitor of the hall knew what her search was of.
At the end she gave up on it and went to where Slin was. To relieve him, maybe herself too.
Slin during all this while had been going through the registry that details of everyone who travelled from the gate he was assigned to.
One name popped up thrice. Cheal.
There were several others but Slin looked at that name the most. Cheal had entered and left the city thrice every day. No irregularity, yet he had seen him trailing one particular traveler with a pack of swimbeasts and a brown overcoat.
He wanted to bring this up with Litora as well. He didn't bring himself to, not when he saw her face.
Another evening approached, and Litora had covered just over six hundred leagues on foot in a single day's light.
This was four times lesser than the perimeter of the Earthen wall. But each league was colossally longer than her own height, somewhere between two hundred to three hundred depending upon which kingdom you were from.
She was ironically not from any of those old kingdoms. She was now a resident of the Kingdom of Riga, meaning the league will soon be demolished and a new measurement will be implemented.
A decree about it's future demolishment was already declared. This was a back-of-the-mind thought for Litora. And an unreached notice for the wanderer currently sleeping in 'To-be Adventurers' Hostel'.
Litora wondered about these decrees that the Monarch of kingdom of Riga had declared. They were in line with previous decrees she had seen, but she couldn't shake off a feeling she had.
Slin was just glad his four guard days of the nine day week were over now. He was now free to be a 'forest adventurer'.
Litora was livid. She didn't find a forest nor a seashore.
Slin wasn't, instead, he offered his canteen for comfort. But Litora was ranting to him, so she just used it for drinking, and continued her rant. Both in the room, made for the guards on the Earthen wall.
Time marched on and night followed its cadence. And another travesty marched ever closer, the wanderer was once again awoke before the light broke through the morning's horizon.
He remembered a fleeting dream. One he wished wouldn't haunt him. But do dreams ask? He had no answer. He only knew that the dream will come back.
The wanderer on this day completed his registration as an adventurer. He received a metal tag. Mina was explaining to him, "you have to get this tag be named with your go-to adventurer name. Yes, not everybody uses their own name as their adventurer name. Also you can get new tags from every 'hall', 'guild', 'frontier', or 'haven'."
She took a sharp deep breath, "These new tags can be issued even if you have the older tags. Nobody ever knows whether if a single tag is enough or not. Also these can work as another way of proof to show you are real."
The wanderer nodded affirmatively in between the rants.
Ulrina answered, "tags also carry a numeric name to make sure the tag could be checked against the registry of the said city it was issued from. Remember, do not trust a 'hall', if the place it is in, doesn't have a dividing wall to distinguish the outlands and the place."
The wanderer over with the large knowledge rants. He locked on few certain notices, keywords they carried had some meaning to his recent choices.
The quest issue notices papers detailed of places within and outside of the Earthen wall. He had an inkling going out of the Earthen wall will not be right. An inkling based on his hunch on Cheal.
He heard the bystanders discussing of a beyond-outskirts journey. The wanderer wished he could take one like that, but no, his dream today had reminded him.
It had reminded him, yet the world spoke to him not to chase that dream. It was futile.
'Why didn't you chase me to go to the willfalls of rumours?' He called out to his own thoughts. His face didn't show the internal battle he was having over the choices.
The world wanted to force its choices on the wanderer, and the wanderer asked back. Asked and he was met with more noise, noise of the allure of willfalls.
He shook himself out of the reverie that was taking hold of him. The wanderer needed his moment to be on the board in front of him.
He read through them again and again. Eliminating the choices. There was a quest of the temple, another of mapping the city outskirts, and one that talked of taking care of the farms for a few days in the outer regions of the outskirts.
None were catching his fancy, he wanted something that can quell and teach him. A by-stander looked at the wanderer and asked, "wondering of which one to take?"
The wanderer nodded without turning, the voice had some genuine feeling behind it. The reception wasn't that away from the board as well, he partially believed that Mina and Ulrina will not let him get swindled. He didn't question this line of thought, it was truly a march of emotions against his normal behavior.
The bystander offered, "look at the ones which have keywords 'beginner'. They are tried and tested ones."
"Thank you," he replied. He was now hunting for the few that had those. The board now looked less cluttered to him, when he started spotting recruitment requests that had beginner as a keyword. His indecisiveness had been cut in half.
But mostly he was interested in the venturing recruitment request that had the keyword "old myths". His curiosity marches in trampling his indecisiveness.