"Thanks! I'm from a different planet with different magic and classes and stuff."

If he said the name of the country he was born it would probably turn this conversation into a Who's On First bit.

"Oh, cool," she says distractedly, not sounding like she really believes him. 

Anyway, here's the town square again! It continues to have an inn; most of the adventurers head there. 

Also here's Ash! 

"Hi, Elan! How did it go? Did your courage song help?" 

The great thing about low-stakes interactions is that it doesn't really matter if the other person believes him about where he's from.

"Hi Ash! I think it helped a lot. There was a kind of scary moment where a flying eyeball tried to get me, but I managed to get it first, and then when I started playing again the people around me started singing along! It was really cool and now I wanna learn some of the songs that people around here know."

"Awesome! Um, the best place to hear songs is probably the inn? You should get a room there for the night, anyway, it's pretty late." 

(It's now fully dark; the sun finished setting while they were fighting the undead.) 

"That's true! Plus, I overheard some people talking about how the innkeeper sells really good weapons, apparently? There were like two people who got sold Darkness weapons for tonight's fight and they said they cut through the skeletons like they weren't even there."

"Darkness weapons? That's super weird! Maybe I should investigate that..." He yawns. "...but maybe tomorrow." 

Elan laughs.

"You said it!"

Off to the inn! Well, Elan should find Twilly first. But then it can be off to the inn.

Twilly has been chilling in the healers' tent! 

"Hi Elan! How did the fighting go?" 

"It went pretty good! Flying eyeballs are really gross. One was trying to get me, but I managed to skewer it like a nasty eyeball kebab. And then everyone started singing along with my courage song! That was awesome."

"Yay! We's been really bored in the healers' tent, so it must have gone well." 

Twilly has his own place in Falconreach that he shares with some other moglins, so he doesn't need to go to the inn, but he can go in with Elan and introduce him to the innkeeper? 

"That does sound like a good sign."

Elan appreciates this!

"Does the innkeeper also make weapons on the side?" he asks on the way.

"She sells them sometimes but I doesn't think she makes them herself? It's mostly adventurers trading in their old stuff for new stuff, I thinks." 

Inn! The entryway has a hatstand and a big noticeboard labelled "Odd Jobs", which looks to Elan's well-honed adventuring eyes like a source of sidequests. Twilly goes right on through the next door and into the main room. 

"Huh! I guess that pushes the question of the weirdly good weapons back."

Elan takes note of the sidequest board but follows Twilly in. Man, he loves inns. They're so homey! For obvious reasons, of course, but also because they're such an adventuring classic.

The main room is bathed in the warm glow of candles, and filled with the cheery hubbub of adventurers celebrating their victory with one last drink before bed. 

A blonde woman wearing an apron stands behind the counter. "Hi, welcome to the inn! I'm Sabrina. Looking for a bed for the night?" 

See what Elan means?

"Yeah! Hi, I'm Elan."

"Nice to meet you, Elan." 

She will sell him a room and a meal for what Twilly can confirm are reasonable prices! 

Hooray! Elan can listen to the other patrons talk while he eats his meal. Well, sometimes he gets distracted because something someone said reminded him of something else. But either way, he doesn't have to think about his looming responsibilities right now and that's fine by him.

The chatter in the main room is lighthearted, the adventurers in high spirits after their victory. Some of them are swapping stories: none sound very impressive to Elan, it's mostly low-level stuff like fighting sneevils, bandits, and forest animals, but some of them have fought undead before and are comparing stories about that.

Somebody is telling everyone about this really weird metal monster they fought in the woods near here. Someone else is complaining about the time they trekked through a really muddy marsh full of aggressive mushrooms and didn't even get any good loot. One guy is trying (and failing) to convince his drinking companions that he fought a dragon once. 

It's kind of weird, listening in on all these low-level encounter stories. Elan's used to feeling lost and out of his depth, like everyone is more grown-up than him. Well, Belkar doesn't really make him feel like that, he thinks. And Haley doesn't make him feel like that in a bad way. But now he feels kind of the opposite. He wonders how long it will take for his adventures to catch up with him…

The guy talking about the dragon catches his ear and he loses his train of thought.

"—I'm telling you, it was taller than this entire inn! It could've eaten me up in one bite!"

"Yeah, right. Why didn't it, then, huh?" 

"Because...I had very cleverly smeared myself with garlic!" 

"...garlic?"

"They can't stand the stuff!" 

"I thought that was vampires?" 

"Well, uh, it works on vampires too, I guess. But it definitely works on dragons." 

"I think you're making this up. I think if I covered you in garlic and offered you to a dragon it'd say Oh, how nice of you to season the meat—"

"Shut up, I'm telling you, it happened!" 

"Maybe it was a vampire dragon! A drampire!"

"Yeah! That's totally it. It was a vampire dragon." 

"Suuuure." 

"Fine, don't believe me. Just don't come crying to me when a dragon eats you because you didn't listen to my expert dragon-fighting tips." 

Elan giggles. He fought a dragon once! Well, he got pinned under a dragon's foot for a few minutes before it swallowed Haley whole and then spat her out because Lizard Vaarsuvius charmed it. And then disintegrated it when they were no longer a lizard. And also Haley told him she loved ukuleles because she chickened out of telling him she loved him at the last second.

… he should go to bed, probably.

There's a room waiting upstairs for him.

It's not large or fancy, but he has it all to himself. There's a fire in the hearth, a rug on the floor, and a softer bed than the one he slept in at Oaklore Keep last night.