Rivervale Town was an ordinary settlement on the southeastern border of the Kingdom of Servia.
It sat far inland, nowhere near the sea.
The few rivers in the surrounding region were blocked by mountain ranges, making river trade difficult to develop.
There were no famous local products either.
The terrain was rough.
The roads were inconvenient.
Any respectable merchant caravan with other options would simply leave Rivervale Town off its route.
Under normal circumstances, this small human settlement should have remained as forgettable as the countless villages scattered across the kingdom.
Forget earning a place in the kingdom’s history or its heroic epics.
Even if Rivervale Town were completely destroyed by war with a neighboring country or swallowed by a monster invasion, the incident would probably earn little more than a passing mention from some reasonably diligent official at the weekly royal court session.
And yet, Rivervale Town was currently one of the most important towns in southern Cloudreach Province.
The reason was simple.
Misty Forest.
The gray-white mist that hung over the forest year-round was not some strange natural phenomenon.
It was caused by the sheer density of magical energy in the air.
That magic had given birth to plenty of monsters powerful enough to kill humans.
But it had also created countless valuable magical herbs and secret realms.
Naturally, class holders came in wave after wave, hoping to make their fortunes.
And with Misty Forest drawing adventurers from across the region, Rivervale Town had found its purpose.
Surrounded by mountains on three sides, easy to defend, and positioned close enough to the forest to serve as a staging point, it became the obvious place for adventurers to rest, resupply, and prepare for their next expedition.
The Adventurers’ Association branch established here years ago only strengthened that role.
Over time, it became a landmark in its own right, drawing even more adventurers from across the kingdom’s southeastern frontier.
The result reminded Xia Nan of the university towns from his previous life, where entire commercial districts grew around clusters of colleges.
Or the businesses that sprang up around major tourist attractions.
Rivervale Town had developed the same way.
Only here, everything revolved around adventurers.
And the busiest part of town was a whole street built around serving them.
“Bang!”
A middle-aged man, drunk enough to barely stand and still spewing obscenities, was hauled through a doorway by two guards in leather armor and dumped into the street.
A wave of noise rolled out through the half-open wooden doors behind him, mixed with the heavy smell of alcohol.
Farther down the road, a richly dressed, plump woman clutched a zircon necklace and argued furiously with a vendor.
The little boy beside her paid no attention to the dispute.
He was too busy staring at the blacksmith’s shop across the street, where several muscular men hammered away at glowing metal with sweat pouring down their backs.
“Young man, come have some fun with us.”
A soft, sugary voice drifted into Xia Nan’s ear.
He turned his head.
Two shapely women in revealing clothes were leaning against a wall, smiling and beckoning toward him.
Xia Nan did not blush or look away.
He simply smiled, nodded politely, and greeted them.
That was apparently enough for them to mark him as a potential customer.
A chorus of playful calls followed immediately.
Xia Nan kept walking.
He never moved a single step closer.
After a while, the women realized they were wasting their time and shifted their attention to other passersby.
The heavy scent of perfume gradually faded behind him.
Xia Nan adjusted the straps of his pack, his expression calm.
To say he felt absolutely nothing would obviously be a lie.
This body was at the most energetic stage of human life.
If not for the memories of his previous life, memories shaped by modern society and the endless flood of information on the internet, the body’s original owner probably would not have stood a chance.
That innocent country boy had grown up working in fields and had barely even met girls his own age.
If those service-industry professionals had crooked a finger at him…
His soul probably would have gone with them.
But Xia Nan had only recently arrived in this world.
He had not even settled his own life yet.
There was no chance he was going to spend time thinking about that sort of thing.
What actually interested him more was a completely different question.
Did this world have the same kinds of embarrassing diseases as his previous one?
And in a world with supernatural powers, did people use the same kinds of precautions?
[Would a healing potion work?]
Now that he was finally out of immediate danger, everything around him felt new.
Everything was worth wondering about.
Even some random snack stall beside the road could send his thoughts wandering for half a minute.
So Xia Nan continued down the street at an unhurried pace, stopping here and there to look around.
Roughly twenty minutes later, he finally reached his destination.
The building was unusual.
Four stories tall.
Not especially impressive compared with the rest of the street.
And yet somehow, it felt like the center of the entire district.
People constantly streamed in and out.
Adventurers.
Merchants.
Workers.
The place never seemed to stop moving.
Unlike the brick-and-tile buildings Xia Nan had passed on the way here, this one was made almost entirely from some kind of dark wood.
The grain ran across the structure in intricate natural patterns, forming its own decoration.
Clusters of green branches and leaves even grew around the eaves.
From a distance, the whole building looked like an enormous treehouse.
Standing before the entrance, Xia Nan felt a strange flash of familiarity.
For a moment, it almost felt as though he had stepped back into Misty Forest.
There was no signboard.
There did not need to be one.
The endless stream of adventurers moving through its doors already told him exactly what this place was.
The Adventurers’ Association, Rivervale Town Branch.
Xia Nan shook off the stray thought and stepped inside.
The first thing he saw was a vast hall.
The interior carried the same natural style as the exterior, full of dark wood and forest-like decoration.
Adventurers of every description moved through the space.
Drawing on the memories left by the body’s previous owner, Xia Nan scanned the hall until his eyes found the counter on the right.
A short-haired young woman sat behind it in an Association uniform.
She was pretty.
She also looked half-dead from boredom.
Her hands appeared to be working, but her eyelids drooped so low that she seemed one breath away from falling asleep at the desk.
Xia Nan walked over.
He placed a coarse cloth bag on the counter.
Inside were the goblin ears.
And the bugbear’s ear.
“Hello. I’m here to turn in a quest.”
The young woman raised one eyelid.
She did not touch the bag.
“Party badge.”
“Oh. Right.”
Xia Nan immediately reached inside his clothes and pulled out a palm-sized piece of black iron.
Then he handed it over.
This was the identifying badge issued to Maji’s party by the Association.
The party number was recorded on it.
Without that number, the receptionist would have no way to quickly pull up the quests they had accepted.
Fortunately, Xia Nan had remembered to take the thing while cleaning up the battlefield.
Otherwise, he would have lost a painful amount of money.
The young woman glanced down.
“Bow of the Mountains?”
“Uh… yes.”
Xia Nan paused for a beat.
Then he remembered.
Bow of the Mountains was the official registered name of Maji’s party.
He had been calling them the ragtag party in his head for so long that the real name had almost stopped sounding familiar.
The short-haired woman only gave him a brief glance.
She showed no interest whatsoever in asking why none of his teammates had come back with him.
Apparently, that was not unusual enough to deserve a question.
The counter stood just high enough that Xia Nan could not see what her hands were doing behind it.
He was curious.
This world was technologically backward by the standards of his previous life, but it possessed supernatural power.
So how exactly did the Association handle work that should have required mountains of records and endless searching through documents?
Still, Xia Nan said nothing.
He waited.
The young woman’s hands moved a few times outside his line of sight.
She murmured several strange syllables under her breath.
“Thump.”
Less than five seconds later, a pouch of coins landed on the counter in front of Xia Nan.