"Nothing respects my having hair! It has physical properties like anything else."

"So what makes a dungeon core not be like hair?"

"Well, hair grows out of my head. What does a dungeon core grow out of?"

"Other dungeon cores.  You, I presume, came out of another Bella-like object."

"I... could try to explain natural selection but I'm not actually aware of any practical importance of this line of inquiry. Can you tell me what I'm going to need to know to walk around Relis without being obviously super weird?"

The carriage trundles on.

Haroun tries to explain Haroun's Guide to Staying Inconspicuous in Elhom IV, as composed by somebody who's never been off Elhom IV and has an extremely loose idea of what might be different between whole worlds as opposed to just countries.

Bella has to ask explicitly about gender roles since Haroun isn't used to thinking of that as something that varies much within a species, as opposed to between them; he gets it once he starts thinking of how to explain elves to humans or vice versa.  In a world where spellcasting forms a large part of combat prowess and lots of professions need to make escorted dungeon runs, there isn't much of a concept of women not being fighters.  Househusbands are not strictly as common as housewives, but they're by no means rare.

Bella asks how many people study 'magic' (that word again) and use it professionally.  Haroun tries to explain that just about every job in existence uses some spellcasting, but much fewer people than that try to climb up past tier-1 spells or learn enough to compose new spells.  Haroun doesn't know exact numbers; his kingdom doesn't have a census.  Haroun's guess for the global ratio of human farmers to human non-farmers is about 2 to 1.  Haroun is amazed at the notion that Bella's world has it down to 1-to-30; this seems to hit him harder than other things Bella has said.

Bella wants to know if she'll run into any elves.  Haroun says that if he's recalling right, the High Elves have professed neutrality in Demon Lord versus Summoned Hero affairs.  He's not sure why, maybe the High Elves used to support the Summoned Hero and then the Demon Lord started killing them over that?  The oldest Elves are much older than the last time the Summoned Hero lost a battle, but they won't tell Bella anything and they say very little to humans in general.  Drow Elves side with the Demon Lord.  Wood Elves stick to a few particular forests.  There's a Machine Elf in Haroun's academy who keeps all the Machine Elf Things in repair, and you have to drink a weird potion before you can see her or talk to her (not recommended).

Haroun describes his family a bit, since Bella has described hers.  He doesn't know his original father and some unknown person blew up his single mother when Haroun was three years old; Haroun used to think of that as a potential plot hook, but after nothing happened for a while he realized it was just one of those random life things rather than a bard's tale.  His adopting maternal cousin and new father are great people, in Haroun's humble opinion, specializing in Plant Magic (alchemical florist) and Life Magic (research healer) respectively.

"Why isn't it recommended to talk to the Machine Elf? - also do you mean 'potential plot hook' literally."

"You know, I asked that same thing, and I was told it also wasn't recommended to learn in too much detail why you shouldn't talk to Machine Elves.  - And I'm not sure what you mean by 'literally'?  You grow up hearing legends and tales, you know, you don't even think to ask which ones are true until you're... 8, or 11, I'm not sure when I really woke up in that way.  If you're 7, and your blood-father is a mystery and some unknown evil killed your mother, you're expecting your father to turn up in the next verse and for the unknown evil to kill him off two verses later.  It took me a while to realize that single mothers are pretty common, and so are random burglars who kill your relatives while you're still too young to remember them."  Haroun's voice is only faintly bitter.

"Yeah. I'm sorry."

More carriage-trundling!  'Trundle' is such a lovely verb, especially when you add the present participle to it.  In Lictic the verb for the thing a moving carriage does is 'kabbabunk' which onomatopoeias the same concept, but lacks some ineffable grace of the English.

Haroun tries to explain why it takes money to move Bella between their next destination of Relis and the academy of Cowcorn, or alternatively his family's home in Pigbridge.  The kingdom is broken up into duchies, counties, and baronies, and each of those has very little incentive not to tax the traffic that crosses their territory for everything it will bear.  If one territory tried to extract less, that would just give their neighbors a chance to extract more.  The Adventurer's Guild, Merchant's Guild, and magical academies like Cowcorn have enough pull to protect adventurers, merchants, and students from the worst of it.  If you're not affiliated with any major power structure, you're the equivalent of an uninsured patient in the American healthcare system; people will gouge you harder just to establish a higher base point for negotiating with the bigger players.

Bella says she was expecting the money to be more for inns and stabling the horses and eating on the road.  Haroun replies that bread isn't that hard to make.  Bella resigns herself to eating a lot of bread.  Haroun replies that stew isn't that much harder to make, if you have a permit to make it and a permit to sell it.

If you do sign up with the Adventurer's Guild, of course, they will soak you for everything they think you have, at least until you get up to A-rank or S-rank and are a power in your own right.  But the graduated fees and structures would allow somebody who already has high combat potential - like Bella, whether she's comfortable with that or not - to sign up for the Adventurer's Guild, pay a minor fee to go on a first-floor dungeon run where she'll be observed to make sure she can handle herself before she gets her E-rank guild tinplate, and then Bella can turn in a few minor bounties on first-floor monsters, without having to rank up past E to the higher fee schedule.  Even after taking into account the city's cut, the baron's cut, the count's cut, the duke's cut, the king's cut, and the fee for all the paperwork somebody needs to fill out before and after the dungeon run, that should get her enough money to make it to Cowcorn given the lower passage fees for adventurers, plus enough to stay at an inn a few days while she talks to Haroun's professors.

...Or possibly Bella would consider signing up to learn at Cowcorn for a while?  Magister Sting could probably manage that, if Bella exhibited her strange knowledge of 『Language』or demonstrated rate-of-change-math.  Magister Sting would certainly manage it if she found out who Bella really was and wasn't otherwise a demonic spy.  Magister Sting might deduce it anyways if Bella shows sufficiently foreign knowledge; she's sharp like that.

After an hour or two, the conversation winds down.  Bella hasn't learned everything she wants to know from Haroun, and the converse is no more true; but Haroun is mentally exhausted and needs a break, and Bella feels the need to write in her notebook.

The carriage reaches the gates of Relis, the sun setting behind them as they do.

Bella has lots to write about but wants to economize on space; they have paper here but whether they have spiral-bound notebooks is another story entirely.

She has a look at Relis once she can see it. What does it look like?

From a distance, it looks like towering city walls, four stories high at least and of gleaming stone, with encampments spread out around the city proper; mobile wheeled stalls with canopies, full of merchants hawking wares.  No visible permanent structures outside the wall.  If Bella was worried about the smell of a medieval city, it doesn't smell that terrible once they're in smelling range; Haroun confirms that Earth-Skill users are quite good at digging sewers, and cleaners with simple Water Skills can wash filth into them on a regular basis.  The merchant encampments smell a lot like strange creatures being fried over charcoal fires, and only a little like unwashed human.  The merchants' and buyers' clothes are worn, though not torn; the more prosperous merchants can afford rents for real shops inside the city (says Haroun).

The carriage reaches the gate.  The guards are... surprisingly not put out by a carriage full of dead bodies!  But Haroun and Bella are directed to go straight to the Adventurer's Guild office before it closes, and not dawdle along the way.

"I'm thinking I'll go ahead and sign up to stab some chickeny monsters? I assume I can earn money lots of ways but that one would attract the least attention."

"I'm... not really sure what-all you can do, exactly," Haroun replies in a low voice.  "Your, uh, special spellcasting skills might be worth something to some merchant who needs a very complicated but very low-mana spell cast for them.  I'm sure there's somebody in this city who'd pay three gold to know what one word of 『Language』 really means, or have some old book translated.  I just haven't figured out any good ideas for inconspicuously finding out who..."

From the inside, Relis looks... not sparkling clean, but cleaner than a rundown American city would be; it's a standout quality by comparison with what Earth's medieval cities were like.  Buildings are tall, narrow, and individually unique in construction and layout.  Most are more than one story high, built with mortar and highly regular stone bricks.  Commercial buildings are decorated with garishly bright colored paints.  The nicer shops have heavily barred glass windows displaying their storefront; the bars are some bright unrusted metal.  Some very nice residential buildings also have shuttered windows with glass panes in the shutters.  Food is sold everywhere.  Other shops tend to segregate by street; clothing-sellers, tool-sellers.  One whole street is lined with shops selling thin books of cloth-bound paper; they seem to all be related to various Skills, none on this particular street being spellbooks.

They go down a street that sells daggers - just daggers, knives, poniards, and so on; no swords.  And then they're at the Adventurer's Guild office, a towering structure of six floors (by layers of shuttered windows) roughly as tall as a four-story building might be in Bella's world.

It's like a cross between a Renaissance faire and Legoland. "Can you do most of the talking?"

Haroun feels a bit nervous, but he can't possibly deny that this is the sensible course of action.  He nods.

A brief conversation between Haroun and somebody standing just outside the building's door/gate produces a few yelled words inside, and then some much sturdier-looking men and women tromp out and unload the five bandits and the two dead Adventurers from the carriage.  The two dead Adventurers being treated with rather more respect, of course.  When they're done, Haroun takes one of the batches of oilcloth-wrapped papers out of the carriage's strongbox, and hands it off to complete the mail delivery that the two dead Adventurers were performing on the side.  After that, a young-looking boy in an official-looking uniform leads away the horses and the carriage, giving in return an ivory token with a glowing rune on it; Haroun doesn't seem alarmed by this.

The interior of the building is nice, almost like an Earthly hotel.  Polished metal, wide gleaming spiral marble stairs with no railings.  Nothing resembling carpet.  They're escorted up to the second floor, first office on the left.

Inside this office, a little old lady in enormous heavy plate armor takes down Haroun's halting report about the incident that claimed the lives of two C-rank adventurers.  The little old lady listens without much expression until Haroun gets to the part about Bella showing up and cutting the hand off one bandit, and the other bandit then offering a truce, which Bella accepted.

"Why did you accept their offer of truce?" says the little old lady in enormous heavy plate armor.  Haroun starts to say something, and she cuts him off with a sharp gesture, looking squarely at Bella.

"I didn't want to kill them. I arrived on the scene late, wasn't sure it was as straightforward as it looked."

The little old lady arches a single eyebrow.  "With the bandits not wearing guildplates, and two Adventurers with guildplates already dead on the scene?"

"I said 'as it looked'. If it had looked very confusing, I would have said something else."

"Hmmm," says the old lady.

Haroun describes more of what happened, including the part where the bandit stripped Marussa and Aralin's pouches.  He doesn't have a choice about including this part; the Adventurer's Guild isn't going to miss the fact that their pouches were lightened.

"Surely the situation would seem more plainly straightforward at that point," the old lady says, looking at Bella again.

"I think he was good at sleight of hand or something, I was watching but didn't see everything. Is there a guild rubric for when to kill people I will need to use if I sign on?"

"You are considering becoming an Adventurer, hoh?"  The old lady raises a single eyebrow again.  "There are rules about when you may kill, yes.  Killing is never mandatory for us; that is one of the differences between being an Adventurer and being a common soldier.  To be sure, there are missions that may require killing to complete.  You cannot accept a merchant's contract to protect a caravan from bandits, and then do less than your best to protect the merchant.  Ought we to mark down that you are in the rare category of Adventurer who is not accepting any missions like that?  If you become an Adventurer, that is.  I should warn you, it would greatly restrain your range of revenue-making activities, if so.  Alternatively, of course, you could tell me that you weren't confident of your ability to win without being hurt if you continued fighting.  After all, you hadn't actually accepted any kind of contract to protect this particular carriage, from theft or otherwise."  The old lady is smiling.  It's not an easy smile to decipher.

"I hadn't, no. Is it hard to change that kind of designation later?"

The eyebrow goes up higher.  "I've known several Adventurers who had that designation and they all made something of a pointed deal about how much they didn't ever foresee it changing.  But no, in theory it wouldn't be hard to change at all."  The old lady taps her gauntleted fingers on her desk.  (She's been taking written notes, apparently without the slightest added writing difficulty from the gauntlets.)  "Young lady, I have seen a great deal of bullshit over the course of my current job.  I know that you and this lad are hiding something from me, and that it has something to do with why you let the bandits go.  And if I wasn't certain before, the way that young boy tried to hide a flinch just now would have confirmed it.  Of course, I also know that people may have many reasons for not telling their whole stories.  But I have two dead Adventurers on my hands and I need to know that this was not in any way your fault, nor to your profit.  Was it?"

"You have Social Skills," Haroun says in a low voice.  In any other circumstance it would be an obvious remark, but the Summoned Hero may not have realized it, he has to -

"Of course I do," she says sharply.  "Now shut up and let her answer."

"Not my fault, not to my profit. They were dead when I arrived, and I haven't taken any money, and I don't know the guys who ran off or anything."