Starlight Necromancer

Chapter 106 - Your Choice

"Hold on, seriously? There's another town basically right underneath us?" Foster asked perplexed after swallowing the food in his mouth. Silvia smiled lightly and nodded, "Not just one, actually. Once every ten floors, there's going to be a small settlement. Of course, the one on the tenth floor is the largest right now." 

"Right, but why? That seems sort of... stuffy. And there wouldn't even be proper space in a labyrinth like that, right?" Surprised that anyone would do that to themselves, Foster imagined what it would be like to live in a space like that, but Silvia couldn't help herself but chuckle, "No, no, it's not a labyrinth-type. Well, there are parts of it that are like that. The 'theme' changes every five floors. But yeah, the space in the dungeon is truly surreal, as if it's its own world."

Raising a brow, Foster wondered about what he was just told.. He really couldn't imagine it, but if he was told by someone that worked at the Adventurer's Guild, then it must be true.

"Hahaha, and then what'd he say?!" An uncomfortably loud voice echoed out from another corner of the restaurant. A group of five people were sitting around a table, laughing and talking loudly. To an extent, there was nothing wrong with that, but since they were obviously disturbing the whole restaurant, it did become an issue rather quickly. And they only became louder and louder, especially one of them. A young man, who clearly thought himself to be above others. There were plenty of people like that on earth, and quite a few of Foster's former underlings and colleagues were people like that too. Obviously, he did his best to educate them, but most of the time people wouldn't just change their behaviour over night.

"Let's just ignore them." Silvia said with a deep sigh, "Trust me, there's a lot of those sorts of people coming in and out of the guild every single day. It's easier if we just don't acknowledge them and wait for them to leave." She suggested. Of course, Foster knew that she was right. If someone tried to stop them, the situation would only escalate and become far more annoying. And worst of all... Foster could no longer be completely confident that he could beat others up.

While one's physical appearance did influence things to an extent, one's physical attributes connected to the system could completely overturn everything. Foster learned that not only in the dungeon, but even when looking at others train. The speed of higher-tier adventurers, their strength and endurance, far succeeded Foster's. Even while he was practicing his Silent Step martial skill, sometimes a high-tier adventurer would easily surpass him with just a casual jog, even though Foster was trying to run at full speed.

So, until Foster became better at judging others' abilities, staying out of trouble might be for the better. As such, he continued eating and talking to Silvia. Now that they had both made their intentions behind this date clear, things were a lot more relaxed. They both already knew where things were going after they were done here, after all. They joked around and laughed together. Foster just knew that they would be able to be pretty good friends in the future.

"Huh? Wait, that was you?" Silvia asked confused, and Foster smirked with a light nod. He pushed his hand into his pocket and pulled out the coin that acted as the clear-proof for the necromancy-dungeon. She looked at it curiously, and then raised her head to lock eyes with Foster, "But wait, you just signed up at the guild, right? Were you a mercenary before this?"

"No, no, I worked for a larger organization in my hometown. I was in charge of a few people, and took care of troublesome stuff that would happen in the area." Foster explained. Technically, he didn't lie, but he didn't want to just openly admit that he was part of an incredibly notorious criminal syndicate before this. That wasn't really a topic of conversation for a first date.

"But really... clearing a fail type dungeon, that's pretty impressive. You should be able to get into a big guild if you..." Silvia pointed out, but quickly shut herself up, since she was basically recommending one of the most promising members of the public guild to join a private one.

With a chuckle, Foster shook his head, "I'm not planning on joining a guild right now. Actually, we did get an offer right when we left. We met some guy from a bigger guild, and he asked us if we wanted to join when he found out we cleared the dungeon. But as a group, we decided against it for now."

"Oh? Really, why that?"

"Well, we're just settling in. We haven't been here for long, so we need to figure the situation out first. And I don't even know if it's necessary to join a private guild. Either way, we won't be going anywhere anytime soon." Foster explained, taking another bite of his food, as Silvia curiously looked back at him, "So... which guild was it that inv-" 

Silvia's question was suddenly interrupted by the sound of something crashing and shattering in another corner of the restaurant. One of the waitresses had fallen down, dropping a bottle of wine and some glasses on the floor in the process.

"Urgh, fucking bitch, how incompetent are you?! Look at this, I'm covered in that shit!" The same man from earlier yelled out angrily, since the waitress fell down right next to their table. The waitress clearly hurt herself on the shards of glass, and the yelling of the man was overwhelming her. One of other waiters came over to try and calm the man down, while his friends at the table were simply laughing at the situation, as if they were enjoying some sort of show.

"At least apologize to me, you dumb- this dinner better be free!" The man continued yelling out, while the waitress he was yelling at, a young girl that probably didn't work here for that long yet, had started crying because of the situation. Since it had already come to this, things would only escalate more anyway.

And then, a small copper piece hit the man's forehead, before dropping to the ground. It made a loud 'clang' sound when it hit the shards laying there. Slowly, a thin stream of blood was flowing down the man's face, since the copper piece seemed to have cut his skin when it hit him at such high speed.

"What the- Who was that?!" He yelled out, as he wiped the blood from his face. Slowly standing up, Foster approached him. He was quite happy that he managed to hit his target so perfectly. He had been practicing how to use the 'empowered throw' martial skill properly, and his aim had only gotten better during that time, since the projectile seemed to go exactly where he wanted it to nearly every time.

"You're lucky that was a coin, and not my knife." Foster said bluntly, casually approaching him. Even if he didn't know if he could actually beat him in a fight, Foster still knew that he could easily intimidate a thug like him.

"And who do you think you are?!" 

"A guy that's fed up with your antics."

"Listen to me, you little-" 

"No." Foster interrupted the man immediately, groaning loudly, "Just shut the fuck up, before I kick your teeth in. You and your friends are just going to get up and leave this place, because I know that I'm not the only one that noticed that this girl here tripped over coincidentally right when you fucking groped her. So either you leave voluntarily, or you'll be on the way to your dentist tomorrow." He said bluntly. He somehow thought that he had ruined his date with Silvia with this, but rather, she had followed him and was already in the middle of healing the girl's cuts. She was a healer, after all.

"Really? And why would I do that?" The man asked. Well, shit. Clearly, Foster hadn't been able to intimidate him yet after all. And now, his friends were also standing up, clearly ready to start a fight with him.

Foster sighed out loud. He didn't want to beat someone to a pulp in front of a date, so he did something else instead. Something that was going to help him gauge how exactly people were going to react to him in the future when his abilities became public knowledge. Now that he knew it wasn't illegal, Foster had no intent of particularly hiding it, after all. Him having to pretend he couldn't use this would only cause him headaches.

So, Foster slowly stretched his hand out toward the table, and grabbed one of the flowers acting as table-decoration. He held it between his index finger and thumb, and watched as the flower wilted in front of his eyes, before falling apart into a rotten sludge, that soon dropped right onto the shoe of the man in front of Foster.

It was a rare sort of magic, but there was very little that could cause effects such as this so easily. The face of the man went pale, as he took a step back. But as he did so, Foster took a step forward, stepping right between his feet, and pulling one of them closer to make him trip.

As the man fell backward, Foster grabbed his shirt's collar with the very same hand that he made the flower fall apart and rot. With a gentle smile, Foster locked eyes with him once more.

"It's your choice."