"If we're moving fast enough that we're already past them before they get the words out..."

As for an actually serious suggestion, Ame asks, "Is there a reason we can't just go, y'know, around the outsides?"

"I guess there's enough open land here that not all of it's patrolled. We could just go around. The roads tend to be safer, that's all. Some places are so thick with farmland and villages you can't walk two miles without needing to pay a toll."

"We're probably going to spend more time deciding which tolls to avoid and how than actually covering distance, but let's see how far we get."

Elizabeth mutters something that sounds vaguely like 'horse', but after a bit of packing they can be on the road!

Tolls can be avoided reasonably easily it turns out, when one charges along the roads with Skill-enhanced speed and obvious sorcery. The more reasonable ones, Bys just pays. The unreasonable ones, Elizabeth tries to talk her way out of, and between her and Ame flirting they get most of those, once they simply have to go around with much eyerolling. But they proceed quite a distance without much fuss. They spend the night in a nowhere village sort of like Traver Hollow, but even smaller and sadder. The 'inn' is just an ordinary house that nobody happens to be using. It beats sleeping on the road.

One thing to be said for all the toll-navigation is that it breaks up the hours of sprinting into the wind into manageable chunks. Ame is starting to hit diminishing returns on enhancing her body's mundane physique, but she's sure she's not imagining the other thing now. There's more to her ability to move her body than just her muscles; there's an esoteric energy filling her flesh, smoothing the edges on her physical limits. On the open road, the three of them can do 40 mph at a sustained pace, and by the end of the day Ame is starting to feel like she's holding back, like she could upshift to a whole new echelon of speed if she tried. But it takes a lot of concentration to navigate a dirt trail at even their current speed, and even if she could go faster her party members can't.

The sad little house in this sad little town kind of reminds her of the place where her dad use to leave her while he was working. Feeling nostalgic, she fishes the closure bacon out of her pack. The preservation spell has kept it fresh, and it melts in her mouth like only bacon can. There's enough in the package that she offers to share with Abyssia and Elizabeth both.

It's a nice travel ration! They can cook it up in the tiny house's tiny kitchen, along with some things thrown in from the other two.

Then they can continue on their way the next day, for another hard run. Look, there's no toll to get into Letersoot! Adventurers get free housing if they bring out any loot from the dungeon! Cheap equipment loaners are available too! They should go to the adventurers' guild hall first thing, the border guards encourage them!

Ame cuts the border guard off mid-word as she suddenly and incomprehensibly shouts a word. "LAVERE!"

"And you can even-" Blink. "Er, what?"

Oops.

"Sorry, you were saying?"

"Uh, alright. No big deal. You can go on in as long as you acknowledge the Baron's common laws. They're not hard, here's a pamphlet."

Pamphlet says: No murder! No theft! No fraud! No disrespecting nobility! In slightly expanded form, with a bit more nuance.

Reasonable enough.

Into town they go.

"Do you think we should go for that free housing deal? After we rest up, I mean."

As the approach the wide wooden palisade wall through fields of grain Abyssia says, "It's amazingly generous. The dungeon tax is three in forty, that's great. I can think of a sketchy and a non sketchy explanation for this. Either the Baron's losing lots of money trying to grow his taxes later, or the dungeon is terrible somehow. Dangerous or unpleasant. So I guess, what do you think?"

"If the dungeon is terrible somehow, seems like it'd be impossible to keep that a secret. Is this Adventurer's Guild thing what it sounds like?"

"Yeah, they maintain bounties and run dungeons, making sure nobody ruins them or gets them too mad. But mostly to earn a tidy profit. There's a few different Guild organizations the world over but they mostly recognize each others' qualifications. They give you badges in different materials based on rank. There's a bank and loot liquidation services too. You get worse prices but are you really going to go trying to peddle odds and ends for coppers when you could delve again instead?"

Ame nods. "Sounds legit. I guess that is where we're headed first, then."

As they approach the town proper, Ame pauses to summon a healing slime, now that she won't have to carry it if she doesn't want to leave it in their dust. Though on second thought she'll carry it anyway, and has it perch on her shoulder. If the local dungeon is all about the slimes then someone might mistake it for an escaped mob or something if she leaves it on the ground.

Once they cross the palisade wall, it seems like this town is banking on expanding a lot. There's another stone wall in progress a hundred feet inside the palisade, and a lot of open space within the stone wall, some of it marked out in little plots, with a lot of places under construction. It sort of looks like there's an old core of the town that used to be a tiny village, but there's lots of new construction in fancy styles trying to be shiny and impressive. The Adventurer's Guildhall is a cathedral-sized building evoking elements of gothic architecture but in a sort of cleaner style near the center of the "new" town.

People do look alarmed and draw weapons or point glowy fingers and crossbows in Ame's direction a few times! Nobody actually attacks her, frequently distracted and confused enough by her outfit (lack thereof) to think about it for a moment.

Her mana needs the exercise. She smiles at the ones who get distracted by her outfit. As they walk, she pays attention to all the construction and stuff too, taking in the feel of the place.

Arriving at the Guildhall, Ame looks around for any indication of who they should talk to first.

The feel of this place can be summed up as 'gold rush'. Everyone's excited, most people are young, often single. People are talking about opening stores, building houses, buying better gear and going deeper, with a higher density of exotic, or at least nonhuman, people compared to other towns. Abyssia doesn't stick out nearly as much around here.

The guildhall is set up somewhat like a DMV, with stone floors, velvet-rope lines, and a receptionist who is pointing people towards waiting areas and rows of counters deeper in! There's a fancy tavern with big bulletin boards off to the side, and signs everywhere. BANKING - SIGNUP - APPRAISAL - RENTALS - GROUP MATCHUP, and so on. There's easily a hundred people inside and it's rather loud.

"Lively," Ame remarks.

The SIGNUP line is probably where they want to go? Ame points, shooting her party members an inquisitive look.

"Technically I'm already a member, but you two need to sign up, yeah."

"Oh me too, they have a deal with the college of sorcery. We'll wait for you at the bar?"

Ame blinks mildly at this revelation, then shrugs. "Sure."

Ame heads over to the SIGNUP line and enqueues.

The signup queue is kind of long. The gaggle of boys and one girl who enter the line as a group after her stare at her butt and whisper about it to each other at a volume they think she can't hear.

The attention makes standing in line less boring, so Ame is grateful as well as amused.

Ame doesn't bother to 'accidentally' drop something. That would be kind of implausible anyway for a DEX-focused fighter like her, wouldn't it? She just listens for the most opportune moment in their hushed conversation to... do a quick stretch. One hand on the floor, feet apart, she spends a second or two with her crotch pointed at the ceiling, her vinyl skirt ridden up completely off her butt and her fishnet panties concealing nothing of her perfectly formed vulva. Then she straightens up and stretches in a more normal way, not for plausible deniability but rather to emphasize the lack of plausible deniability to be had about her sudden impromptu S-rank stripper-move. ((Author's Note: Yes, this is a jack-o-pose reference. Ame totally did the jack-o-pose.))

The silence behind her brings a smile to her face as the line moves forward.

And what a silence it is.

The clerk who ends up taking her was definitely glancing at her when she did the stretch! He's an older teen with a serious-but-overwhelmed sort of face, with curly black hair, has that slightly blushing wide-eyed look.

"Um, welcome to the Letersoot branch of the adventurer's guild! You're - here to sign up I assume?" He smiles and makes eye contact. Briefly. "Um, right. Name?"