Chapter 20: RepentancePov Change

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  "Dudu! Come py with us!" Some child-like figures seem to be calling out to me.

  "Yes, I'm coming!" I reply in a child's voice as well. I run forward. "What are we pying?" I ask.

  "Let's py adventurers!" One of them shouts.

  "Okay. Then I will be the swordsman!" I answer.

  "I will be the Mage," another procims.

  "I want to be the tank," yet another says.

  "Then it seems you will be the dragon," I say to the st one.

  "Okay," they answer timidly.

  We py. In the end, like always, the dragon is defeated. We are proud. We did it once again.

  "I wanna be a real adventurer already," one of them compins.

  "Yeah! I don't understand why the adults aren't letting us," I agree.

  "What do you think?" We turn to the child who is always pying the dragon.

  "Um, I'm not sure," they answer timidly.

  Suddenly, I find myself standing with the other children before the timid child. We seem several years older now. "Speak!" I demand. "Why have you deceived us for so long! Why didn't you tell us you were an adventurer?!"

  "I," the child tries to expin itself.

  "Don't try to make excuses now! You have disappointed us greatly by becoming an adventurer behind our backs. From now on, we are no longer friends." We turn around and walk away. As we do, one of us mutters, "Stupid orphan child! Of course, somebody without parents would never be educated not to deceive their friends. And that's when we told them to wait until we became adventurers too!"

  The scene changes again. Currently, we are registering at the adventurers' guild. The guild receptionist asks for our adventurer names. We decided to use our real names here. "Du Mbass," one of us says. "Dumba Ss", the next says. "Dum Bass", I finally say.

  Suddenly, I wake up. Why am I dreaming of my childhood? It's no use. Those two that always followed me around are already A-Rank and moved onto bigger cities, while I'm here in Bruk, doing what? Killing children! Is this retribution? Could that orphan child back then have been in a simir situation? Haaa, I'm really useless! I killed children! I killed children!!! I KILLED CHILDREN!!! No use thinking about it. I need to earn money. Or do I even deserve to?

  "Good news!" I suddenly hear one of my adventurer buddies speaking to me after rushing to my house.

  "What is it?" I ask listlessly.

  "The city lord is pnning to create a pce for the orphans to live!"

  "What?!"

  "It's true. Apparently, it was the idea of the little girl. You know, the one that absolutely destroyed you in a contest of words."

  "What?!" I feel like I'm turning into a broken record, always repeating the same word. Of course, I remember her. She is the girl who caused my doubts to surface. After some time, I have finally calmed down enough to digest the news. Now I am eted. Somebody is starting to rectify my mistake. At this, I get hope again. I must earn money to contribute to this!

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  Pov Change

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  I am a mighty dragon. I'm 5001 years old. Okay, maybe I just turned into an adult a year ago. As a celebration, I decided to explore the world, as I was allowed to do so, when I became an adult. However, flying was so exhausting that I couldn't help but make my nest a few days after I started travelling. Coincidentally, there were a few wolves there, so I scared them away with my breath. Then I took my nap.

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  Luna Pov

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  Since the city lord's speech, several days had passed. Now Recepti's arm is completely healed. I offered to accelerate it, but she said that it would be unfair to the rest and that she wasn't really inconvenienced by it. In truth, she probably didn't want to owe any more favours to me. After all, to people like them, even healing the injury is already a great miracle. She was probably prepared to live the rest of her life without her arm.

  I didn't expose her intention. After all, a retionship in which I am the only one giving won't work. Or at least, we wouldn't be able to be friends.

  There is more, tho. Recepti has now become the director of one of the new orphanages. They now put a new guild receptionist into the adventurers' guild, and I must really compin about the naming conventions in this world. She's really called Rep, when her st name is, you guessed it, Cement.

  As for me, I have created another Poki ball over the st few days. I've decided to put the eyes at the back of my mind for now and instead wear a blindfold. It clearly worked during the speech, and I don't think I can do any experimentation until I find a more intelligent test subject. I mean, I could measure the fear through a spell, but I decided to have a bit more fun with the experimentation. And I know that whoever I experiment on will be somebody whom I have a grudge against, which means it will be even more fun.

  Now that the Poki ball is done, I'll catch a dragon. I made this one's internal room bigger on purpose this time, so hopefully it will fit. Speaking of the dragon, I must say, I was a bit disappointed when the city lord announced it. This was a mystery I wanted to solve myself, but the guy just told me the solution. Well, I guessed there was a strong monster that, for some reason, came into the forest.

  There were many signs, from the merchant who set the price for the escort quest so high, probably to guard against monsters that ignored the intimidation stones because of the dragon, to the wolves being the only things in the forest and hunting each other. Still, I wanted to find out for myself what this creature was, and yet I was told!

  Well, now it's done. I also let out the leader of the wolf pack a few days ago. I thought that maybe we could communicate, seeing as it was so smart, but it hadn't learned any nguage yet. This is an interesting topic to research in general. How do animals think when they don't have a nguage? I'm assuming that they think in pictures and impressions, but I'd have to research further to be sure.

  And now it's time to catch my Charizard! Let's hope it won't be a Smaug. That would be a boring fight.

  HidingInTheNovels