“Daniel Chai. Miner. I’m here to join the Adventurer’s Guild.” Answering the guard’s questions, Daniel looks across the 10-foot wooden wall that separates the dungeon town of Karlak from the wilderness behind him before letting his placid brown gaze rest upon the guard and his pike once more.
The fair-haired guard, clad in a simple leather tunic and wool pants, stares at Daniel, waving his hand to summon Daniel’s status screen to confirm the truth of his words. The guard reads over the information before he gestures for Daniel and his employer to enter. With a flick of the wagon’s reins, Atrieus, who has sat beside Daniel during and undergone the process just moments ago himself, sets the wagon rolling.
“I turn off to the right here, boy. You okay with being paid now?” Atrieus grunts at Daniel, a hand absently coming up to scratch at his matted beard.
For a moment, Daniel is irritated but he quickly dismisses the emotion. At twenty-one, Daniel is well past the age when the term boy is appropriate, but as Atrieus has watched him grow up working the mines since he was an actual child, another thousand protests at the term are unlikely to change the old man’s mind. Instead, Daniel just answers politely, “That’s fine. Thank you.”
“Damn waste, boy. You sure you want to do this?” Atrieus growls out, digging through the bag at his feet to pull out a small coin-laden cloth purse to hand over to Daniel.
In answering, Daniel just shakes his head, accepting his wages and waving goodbye to his temporary employer as he hops down from the ore-laden wagon. Daniel has no desire to retread that conversation either, one that has happened in many forms these past few weeks of travel. Reaching behind before the wagon leaves, he grabs his backpack and his only weapon, a 20-pound sledgehammer. Heavy as it is, Daniel carries it with little effort, muscles from years spent working the mines flexing.
After parting with Atrieus, Daniel starts off to the town center and the Adventurer’s Guild, enjoying the feel of the brisk late autumn air. Home to barely more than a few thousand people, Karlak is a small town with only a single Beginner’s Dungeon of ten floors. Like most dungeon towns, Karlak has grown out of the need to serve the Adventurers who bring in the majority of the town’s income, and so, the entire town splays outwards from the Guild and the Dungeon entrance.
As Daniel walks deeper into town, buildings shift from simple wood to stone, prosperity showcased in architecture and materials. Around him, townsfolk weave through traffic with casual ease, most dressed in plain woolen tunics and dresses. For a town, Karlak is quite uniform in its race profile, only on occasion does Daniel spot a figure that is not human, with Beastkin the most common minority. The growth of the town has stabilized in the last few years, its presence near the contested border between Brad and the Orc nations a significant dampening factor in immigration. On the other hand, the Dungeon that provides the main source of income for the town has been around for over twenty years, and is well-mapped with a well-known and well-balanced mix of monsters, ensuring a constant stream of new hopeful Adventurers.
