Chapter 188 : Chapter 188
188 – Absolutely No Overtime
“Too——generous!”
“You’re so generous—this is practically saintly!”
As soon as she heard someone was willing to pay for them, Yi Ning’s expression flipped on the spot.
She crossed her hands beside her cheeks, put on a fawning smile, and quickly walked toward Lester, reaching out her hands in an attempt to express her gratitude.
The moment Lu Zheng saw that sycophantic smile directed at Lester, his brow twitched slightly.
That face… Yi Ning only made that face when she was trying to scam him or wanted something from him. And now she was making it for someone else?
…She was definitely up to something!
“I just—”
Before Yi Ning could finish her sentence, Lu Zheng stepped up quickly, grabbed her wrist just before she could clutch Lester’s hands, and pulled her behind him.
Then he took her place to sincerely thank Lester.
“Thank you.”
“We’ll pay you back as soon as we can.”
“It’s nothing. Not even much money. You can repay me once you’ve earned enough for daily living.”
Hearing the two agree to repay the debt so readily, Yi Ning, standing just half a step behind Lu Zheng, quietly tched.
She had just been planning to use this moment of gratitude to casually gloss over the matter of repayment.
After all, Lu Zheng had already shown off his strength in the Combat Arena. These people definitely wouldn’t mind trading one silver coin for the favor of someone like him.
And favors…
Well, they didn’t plan to stay on this planet long anyway. As long as she was shameless enough, she could simply pretend it never happened.
Hearing the tongue click behind him, Lu Zheng felt helpless.
He knew Yi Ning was planning to weasel out of paying.
Good thing he stepped in first.
He was a hero, after all—it would be far too embarrassing to be someone who borrowed money and never paid it back.
Lu Zheng turned back to the reception desk and asked Annali if there were any commissions available.
The sooner he got to work, the sooner he could repay the debt.
He still had to earn money to support both himself and Yi Ning.
Out of the forest, into poverty.
That feeling of having absolutely no money in his pockets left Lu Zheng too anxious to rest.
Was this what the responsibility of “supporting a household” felt like?
Annali was leaning over the counter, pressing down on a sheet of paper as she carefully wrote something.
“Um… Miss Annali, is there any task I can take on now?”
Lu Zheng leaned against the counter and gestured to Lester behind him—the one who had generously paid their entry fee.
“…We’re in a bit of a tight spot right now.”
But Annali didn’t immediately answer Lu Zheng’s question. Instead, she carefully finished writing on the sheet, elegantly signed her name at the bottom, then pulled a stamp from beneath the counter and pressed it down where she had just signed.
“Here.”
She neatly tore off the sheet and handed it to Lu Zheng.
“?”
Lu Zheng took the sheet and held it up in front of his face.
“Is this… for accepting a quest?”
The page was filled with the same kind of strange characters that had been engraved on the adventurer tags. And with help from Yi Ning’s Translation Konjac, the meaning of those words gradually surfaced in his mind.
It seemed to be a letter… a letter to verify his abilities.
He flipped the paper over and examined it again, then cast a confused glance at Annali behind the counter.
“That’s my recommendation letter.”
“Your strength is exceptional. Being an A-rank adventurer is far from your limit.”
As she spoke, Annali recalled her earlier battle with Lu Zheng.
She had once been a battle-hardened A-rank adventurer.
Though she hadn’t gone all out during their match, the technique Lu Zheng had instinctively used in his counterattack was incredibly forceful. Even though he held back much of its power, it had been enough for her to sense his true strength—Definitely not below her own.
Unfortunately, the highest recommendation she could grant was A-rank.
“If you want to go further and become an S-rank adventurer, you’ll need to take this letter to the Adventurer’s Guild headquarters and apply for an evaluation.”
“The Guild will assign you a suitable evaluation task based on your performance—and the rewards will be substantial.”
As Annali explained, she glanced up at the large wooden announcement board in the center of the Hero Association and the clock-like contraption mounted above it.
“Ah!”
She gasped aloud.
It was already ten minutes past the official end of her shift!
Annali froze for a moment, then felt a wave of relief.
Good thing she had just finished everything.
She hurriedly stuffed everything on her desk into the counter, grabbed her bag, and took off running.
“I’m off!”
“Wait—”
I hadn’t even finished asking about commissions!
Lu Zheng reached out toward her fleeing figure, his expression shifting through several emotions before finally settling into helpless resignation.
He sighed and turned to Lester again.
“Ahaha…”
Lester let out an awkward laugh, as if this wasn’t the first time he’d seen this kind of thing.
He could only take over temporarily for Miss Annali, who had just sprinted off duty.
“To take a quest, you’ll need to go over there.”
He pointed toward the large wooden notice board in the middle of the guild hall.
It was covered with quest papers of uniform size and shape. Strangely, however, most of the quest sheets were either at the very top or the very bottom of the board, with barely any stuck in the middle.
“Quests here are organized from top to bottom based on difficulty. You just need to pick a few that interest you and then go register them at that desk over there.”
Lester pointed to another counter near the announcement board.
There was a different receptionist stationed there—someone Lu Zheng hadn’t seen before. It seemed that, unlike Annali’s post, this desk was manned 24/7 with rotating shifts.
“You’re an A-rank, so you should be allowed to accept any of the quests on the board. But I still recommend reading the quest details carefully—some of them have really weird conditions.”
As he spoke, Lester led Lu Zheng and Yi Ning over to the announcement board. He then went over to the adjacent task desk with his own team to report on their last completed quest.
Since it was already getting late, there weren’t many adventurers gathered around the quest board.
Lu Zheng looked around, then raised his head to check the upper section of the board.
The top-tier missions offered incredibly generous rewards—even the lowest-paying ones started at 100 gold coins.
But what stood out was that almost all of these missions involved collecting rare materials.
Things like dragon’s reverse scale, ancient fruit, foal horns from warhorses, egg of truth…
There didn’t seem to be any classic “slay the dragon” type missions you’d expect in a fantasy world.
“……”
Then again, asking for a dragon’s reverse scale was probably just another form of a slay-the-dragon quest, wasn’t it?