Norman and Goron awoke late the next day, having slept through and enjoyed the mattresses they hadn't experienced for quite a while.

  When they found Mr.Steinbrauer and asked him for breakfast, he gave them some of the past days cold soup, mentioning how he kept some because he normally wouldn't serve breakfast and they didn't have the money to buy fresh bread.

  Soon after they were done with their soup, the inn keeper sent them on their way, where they spent quite a while searching for the adress they had been given by the hooded stranger.

  Differing from anything they expected, the Schmiede stra?e was in a nicer part of town, just outside the walls that separated the middle class from the nobles.

  "I think we are a bit underdressed."

  Goron mentioned, with Norman grunting in agreement and Frostbite yipping to throw her opinion in.

  Schmiedestra?e 13 was a small pastry shop with many beautiful looking cakes and pastries displayed to everyone walking by the shop.

  A high pitched bell began to ring as they opened the door, the stares they received on the street exchanged for the curious gaze of a young woman behind the counter, an occurance wich Goron noted as a positive change.

  "Hello, mam, we are Goron and Norman, here to conduct pest control and make sure everything is running smoothly."

  They greeted her, the small bow Goron proposed to Norman rejected on behalf of the fact that true Njord should never bow unless it is to prepare an ambush. Something they both were pretty certain was not their plan.

  She giggled at that, nodding as she stood up.

  "My name is Maria Cortain, Please follow me, mr. Leonard is waiting for you."

  And thus they followed her upstairs, an old man greeting them.

  "Hello, thank you for bringing them to me Maria, please go to the counter again, unless you want to accompany us to the cellar."

  He offered, making the woman silently dissapear and close the door behind her.

  "Now, the rat problem is currently situated in the cellar, so you might have a bit of fighting in enclosed spaces to do. If you promise to not tell people about those rats, you get five cnar each and can keep the corpses for whatever purpose you want."

  Norman nodded already, before Goron held a finger up.

  "How about six cnar, we are after all risking whatever foul sickness the rats carry with them."

  The man nodded and smiled.

  "That sounds like a good deal, don't touch anything that doesn't belong to you and get to work."

  They signed a contract and left the room, opening the cellar door and immediately recoiling as the stench of rot wafted up at them.

  "What is it with young women behind counters followed by old guys sending us in their cellars? That is happening to the second time today, and thus one more time than I would think of as a coincidence. I think I even saw the same setup in many shops we passed on our way here."

  Goron asked, curious how that would happen.

  "You see." Norman answered at that, the door falling shut behind them and allowing Goron to concentrate and cast himself in an illuminating second skin, followed immediately by the normal second skin skill, which made the first break in all rainbow colours.

  "The academy for nobles requires them to work one week a year in a job outside the inner walls, which seems to be this week. They do that in every aristocratic nation, even one as Jarl bound as Weistrana."

  He noticed that Goron was only half listening, his concentration focussed much more on his colours.

  "I got RGB, now everything will load much faster. I haven'tseen any male nobles though. " He said, something Norman attributed to his friends first life, and thus ignored as irrelevant ramblings.

  He did use the sudden increase in lighting to search for the rats they were here to slaughter though.

  "You can't know a nobles gender unless you somehow end up in the bed of one, the only ones you can identify as males are the Jarls, as they are traditionally men. Everyone else dresses in fancy clothes like those of the ladies we witnessed today."

  He explained, smiling as he poked his speer at something moving in the shadows, a joy he didn't feel for two days at that point.

  The skewered rat only let out a final squeak as it succumbed, more of the furred creatures leaving their holes and staring at them, beady red eyes reflecting in the darkness before them.

  Now, noone would call Goron a man of weak will, at least not for long. But he never liked darkness, especially given that time he was locked away in his parents cellar for a week, or that his forst proper death was at the hand sof a shadow wielding crow. However one put it, he had ample reasons to hate the darkness. And thus, seeing creatures lurk just out of sight, he made it his personal mission to take that advantage away from them. He took the light mana he needed for a different spell and instead channeled it into ground bound, infusing everything around him with light and grabbing at the blinded rats to make sure they will never again terrorize poor five meter tall Njord.

  It was a momentary lapse in judgement, and maybe not his smartest decision, but he was quite proud of its effects. The rats no longer hid in the shadow, and challenged them like real men. He did not calculate the rats rage as something noteworthy, and was thus surprised when glowing furrballs of agression jumped him and his friends, Frostbite and Norman doing their best to defend themselves against these pests, as Goron quickly send out a normal ground bound, only to use one filled wit frost essence only seconds after, the different techniques flowing to create a new skill.

  "I got a new skill!"

  He proclaimed, something Norman wasn't as happy about.

  "You should really try to find something to cure the two of us, no way we are getting out of here without a few bites."

  Norman complained as Goron filled the aura with frost mana, their resistance to it obvious as the rats grew sluggish.

  They where ready to fight and absolutely shred their enemies.

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