Jacob swallowed the surge of excitement and forced himself to keep his voice level. "Thank you, Old Thom," he said. "That helps more than you know."
Thom's grin thinned into something drier, possibly with a bit of suspicion. "You have a talent for asking questions that lead to trouble, boy. Make sure you live long enough for the answers to matter."
Jacob stepped back out into the cold with those words riding his shoulders. The sky had shifted toward evening, the light tending to the horizon.
By the time he crossed the square again, the wind had worked its way through his clothes and into his bones. His festival outfit had cleaning and comfort patterns, but nothing that held warmth the way he now realized he needed.
'I need to fix that,' he thought, tugging his coat tighter. 'First chance I get, I am etching a proper heat rune into something I can wear.'
He turned toward home, already planning which old jacket could spare a few experiments, when the noise from the tavern spilled into the street. Laughter, shouting, chairs scraping, the unmistakable tone of people who had found coin and drink at the same time.
He hesitated only a moment before drifting closer.
Inside, the air hit him like a wall, thick with smoke, sweat, and spilled ale. Adventurers clustered around tables, boasting over each other. He heard snatches of talk about the new gate, about "first clear" and "boss room claims." One man at a nearby table thumped his mug down and started to brag.
"With my tracking skill and my . . ." He broke off with a strangled sound, grabbing his throat as if someone had jabbed him. Two others at the same table did the same a breath later when they tried to top his statement, eyes watering as they fought for air.
Before Jacob could step farther inside, a hand clamped around his arm.
A woman with a scar across one cheek and a chest that strained the laces of her leather jerkin glared down at him. "No children in taverns," she said. "Out, now, before the owner sees you and has both of us thrown."
She marched him back into the street and let go only when the door shut behind them.
Shouts ran out about "Throw that kid out of here!", and "Who let a child in this place!?", as he was leaving.
Jacob rubbed his arm once, then looked up at her. "I heard you talking about the dungeon," he said. "I want to know what the biomes look like inside. Is it all stone corridors, or are there sections that feel different? What kind of monsters are showing up, and how do they behave?"
She blinked hard at him, taken off guard. "Those are not the questions village brats usually ask," she said slowly. "Most want to know if there are treasures or how many goblins they can stab before bedtime."
"I do not care about bedtime," Jacob said. "I care about terrain and creatures. I am trying to solve a problem, and I need to know what kind of ground waits in there."
She folded her arms under her chest and looked him over again, as if checking whether he was secretly two kids in a coat. "I only know what the scouts reported," she said at last. "Nobody has cleared it yet. They barely tested the first floors."
"That is fine," Jacob said. "What did they see?"
"Grasslands," she answered. "Open ground, knee-high grass in patches, low rises that break line of sight, a few scattered rocks. No trees worth hiding behind, no caves, no swamps, nothing fancy. Just rolling field as far as their light reached."
Jacob frowned. "Only grassland. No wet spots, no fog, no standing water."
"Not on the paths they took," she said. "Monsters are mixed packs. Little dog things with too many teeth, a few boar types that charge if you let them line up, and burrowers that try to drag ankles out from under you. Fast, stupid, and mean, but nothing a proper party cannot handle."
She almost added, 'And that matches an F rank pattern that usually hides something worse deeper in,' but her throat twitched hard before the thought reached her tongue. It felt like a hand closing halfway this time, not the full clamp, a warning rather than a punishment.
Careful, the sensation told her. Close enough.
The System Is Listening
She swallowed and eased her shoulders, 'hearing a warning from the system is never good,' she thought, 'but that was as good as it gets when revealing system dealings to a child under the age of 12 . . .'
"That is all the scouts logged that I can repeat," she said. "If there is anything stranger past the early floors, nobody has come back to talk about it yet."
Jacob studied her face, noticing the brief flinch she tried to hide. "So, for now, open fields and nasty animals," he said. "Nothing that looks like a swamp."
"Not yet," she said. "If that changes, you will hear the stories with everyone else."
"Thank you," Jacob said, giving the woman a small nod. "That helps a bunch."
She snorted. "You kids keep saying that today. Go home before someone decides to blame me for you getting trampled."
He turned away and headed down the street, the warmth and noise of the tavern fading behind him. The cold slid back in at once, wrapping around his fingers until his thumbs went numb. He jammed his hands into his pockets and watched his boots scuff the dirt with every step.
'Why would Old Thom point me at that gate if it is just grassland?' he thought. 'Was it just an old man story. First dungeon appears, so clearly that is where the miracle answer lives, just like the tales.'
The idea seemed wrong. Thom was strange, not simple. Still, Jacob could not shake the feeling that he had chased a hint and ended up with nothing more than a colder nose.
By the time he reached the farm lane, the sun had nearly slipped behind the distant hills. The sky burned low with streaks of orange and red, and the first bite of true evening clung to the air. He saw Arthur closing the barn doors, shoulders dusted with straw.
Arthur spotted him and waited, falling into step as Jacob reached him. "How has the great Trial Year been treating you today?" Arthur asked. "Save the world yet?"
Jacob huffed, breath fogging. "The only F rank gate anyone is talking about is just grassland," he said. "No swamps, no marsh, nothing that would grow the kind of plant I need. If the first gate that shows up is already the wrong kind of place, then I do not know what direction I am supposed to go for the rest of this year. I am just walking in circles and poking dead fields while the real answers grow somewhere else."