The first thing he does is glance down to see if he's still wearing jeans and a hoodie. If so, he should maybe do something about that. Perhaps not as his first priority, though. His first priority should probably be figuring out what he is going to eat today and where he is going to sleep tonight. And whether Coventina is going to immediately run off and abandon him—and what exactly her being bound to him entails—

He's just sort of standing there blinking down at his own feet.

Coventina takes a long breath of the fresh air, and starts to mention that she thinks the adventurer's guild is that way...

It hits all at once. Flesh and soul reunited, all the little signals and urges that are zeroed out in the divine realm finish making their way through the brain and suddenly sensory input has affect again. It hits Laurent too, maybe not nearly as hard, but he was still conscious as a disembodied soul and now he is also no longer disembodied.

Coventina is still wearing her divine regalia. Her hands fly up to her exposed tits, and she spends barely half a second mauling herself before she falls to her knees, shuddering through a small orgasm as she drips on the cobbles.

A passing woman in a fancy dress gasps in disgust and turns away.

A pair of passing dudebros stop to stare, one slack-jawed, the other grinning and pointing and giving Laurent an enthusiastic thumbs-up.

...ah. Yes. Right. That... makes perfect sense and he should have thought of it ahead of time and he didn't and now here he is in the bed he made. So to speak.

"Coventina," he says tentatively, "should we... go somewhere that is not the middle of the street...?"

She makes a small, very lewd noise.

Then she takes a breath and pops back up to her feet, once more in control of herself. "Sorry. I'm good."

She looks around. "Pretty sure I recognize this street. The adventurer's guild is this way." She points. "Shall we?"

Oh good that is much better than several other possible ways this situation could have developed.

"Yes, let's."

Coventina's outfit draws a lot of attention, and that attention runs the full spectrum. This dude walks straight into a wall. This gawping teen walks straight into this older dude who's glowering in disapproval. This random girl with a staff winks and tosses Coventina a coin. This dude stops in his tracks and starts walking backwards instead so he can appreciate the view. This dude doesn't stop as he stares and trips into a decorative shrub.

The adventurer's guild sits at the end of a cul-de-sac, large and imposing, white brick and red roof tiles.

Inside, it is full of rowdy men and woman enjoying meals or bragging about their quests. An open floorplan filled with bench-and-table seating, under an exposed-rafters ceiling from which various adventuring trophies hang. There is a bar with drinks, another bar with food, and a long, much fancier counter stretching across the back wall that wouldn't look out of place in a 20th-century bank.

They get some interested looks as they walk in, but Coventina in particular gets less extreme reactions than she got outside, given that maybe two-thirds of the female adventurers are in bikini armor or something even more revealing, and at least half of the male adventurers are likewise in barbarian loincloths or other similarly minimal amounts of coverage. She still gets plenty of appreciative leers but a few of those looks are a little more impressed and curious than lustful.

Oh, good, nobody is paying him the slightest attention because his traveling companion is much more visually interesting. That's just how he likes it.

He's a little nervous that letting Coventina take the lead in interfacing with the adventurer's guild will lead to interesting times, but since he barely has any idea what the hell he's doing, it seems he will end up ceding that role to her by default.

Coventina takes the lead as far as the big fancy bank-counter.

At the counter, she tugs him forward and says to the woman behind the golden bars, "Hi. We'd like to register as adventurers."

"Of course, sir, ma'am," the woman behind the counter says politely. She's blonde, has huge boobs, and her shirt stops at her armpits, and yet something about the cut of her clothing still exudes professionalism, especially in contrast to some of the adventurers behind them. "The fee is five-hundred Lake each."

Coventina very calmly sets the coin she caught earlier on the counter. The only money either of them have. She'd totally forgotten there was a fee. Thank you, random stranger.

"Here you go. Laurent, why don't you go first."

"All right," he says, with a friendly smile for the lady behind the counter. "I've never registered as an adventurer before, so you might have to walk me through the details." It's weirdly freeing to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that your impostor syndrome is absolutely correct.

"Oh, don't worry. All I need is your name, and for you to place your hand in this device here," she says, setting some kind of arcane contraption on the counter-top. "It will scan you to calibrate your stats and then incarnate those stats in the form of a card. The card will show you your status and provide an interface for spending the points you earn when you level up."

"My name is Laurent." Hopefully this won't be the sort of universe where telling people your real name is a bad idea. He should've thought to ask. He tentatively puts his hand in the contraption.

The counter-lady nods. Not everyone has a surname, after all. She writes it down on a slip of paper and feeds it into the device.

The device rattles and whirrs and shines what looks like laser-light over Laurent's hand.

Then it dings and spits out a card.

LAURENT
Level 0

CLASS: ~CHOOSE CLASS~

Stat Points: 0

Fitness - 9
Ardor - 8
Grace - 14
Moxie - 12
Sanity - 16
Allure - 11

Skill Points: 0

-

ELEMENTS: Storm - 12% Affinity

The card is divided into three sections. Stats. Skills. And Elements. The skills section has fields for text, but is currently blank. The elements section is a sort of node-diagram with connected symbols, grayed out. Above that, across the top of the card, is his name and class and level.

"Ah. Thank you." He collects the card. He's going to have to get Coventina to explain so many things to him. Also he's going to end up putting such an unreasonable amount of effort into making sure he is never parted from this card.

"If you lose the card, we can print you a new one at no charge. But try not to lose it! The card will only record your progress while you're carrying it with you, so if you forget to take it with you, you won't level up! Oh! I see your stats are quite good. Four of them are already above ten, which gives you access to quite a few classes!"

"That sounds useful!"

The counter-lady's polite smile turns a little more genuine. "Indeed. If you have any further questions please don't hesitate to ask. Feel free to ask for 'Luna' if you should need to find me later, okay?"

"I'll remember that. Thank you very much, Luna."

There are interested murmurs among those watching Laurent, and casual speculation on what class he'll pick.

Meanwhile, Luna sets the device in front of Coventina. After writing her name down and feeding it in,

("Oh, like the goddess?" "Yes, like the goddess.")

Coventina puts her hand in the device and gets a card of her own.

Coventina snatches the card before Luna can get a good look at her stats, then thanks Luna and turns to Laurent.

"My divine portfolio is suited to healing, so I'm gonna be your healslut unless you've got a better idea."

"Maybe I'll have ideas once I understand the class system better. For now, it seems I'll just have to trust you."

"I mean, if you want to leave everything up to me... but your class is kind of a big decision. A big personal decision, arguably not one that should be made for strategic reasons. Luna probably has a pamphlet back there; you could ask for one."

He turns back to Luna. "I would like a pamphlet on the class system if you've got one handy!"