Yunyun x Reader (God's Blessing For This Poor Lonely Girl!)

Chapter 3: The Idiot

It was a dark and cool night.

For another late-shift, YN was slacking while on the job, but that was only because he could get away with it.

Things hadn't gone entirely as he had hoped, to say the least.

"It's another cold one, I wonder if winters in this world are harsh..? Especially here..."

While YN had gone to Axel, he ended up not staying there long.

Zesta had called the town the place where Adventurers usually started off, and it didn't take YN long to meet others who were also trying to begin their Adventuring careers. Yet, it was because this town had so many relatively naive, green, and unskilled people coming to it, the labor surplus was monumental, and as a result, opportunity was scarce to come by.

The Adventurer Guild, knowing this could pose a problem not only for retaining its more senior and experienced members, but also the quality of its new recruits, had drastically increased the joining fee, and had even made joining a requirement before one could even have their Adventurer Card be written.

This posed a particular problem for YN. Without being able to see and read his own Adventurer Card, he had still yet to learn just what abilities or powers Aqua had bestowed upon him and his new body. Without being able to make use of his unique skills, he in turn couldn't take on any 'under the table' Quests.

YN, needing even the most basic of necessities like any other person in this world, of course had to improvise. For a short while, he worked odd jobs. Selling fruit in the marketplace, mopping up floors in the taverns after wild nights spent by established Adventurers, and even working the grueling, physical demands of being a bricklayer for a construction outfit. All of these jobs, of course, paid him barely enough to eat dinner, have a bath, and sleep for a night in a cramped, already over-occupied horse stable.

He had tried getting involved with various Adventurer parties as simply a 'helper' or pack-mule, but without an Adventurer Card, many were unwilling to hire someone who's only ability was purely normal.

What made matters worse still, is that any weapon YN tried to wield to make himself halfway useful, was almost always far too heavy to be used by him. Unsure if the strength to hold these came from having an Adventurer Card, or if his new body was just weak compared to the other established adventurers, YN found even struggling in this aspect was futile.

The three times he had been taken up on the offer join parties as a side-member, twice he had been burned on his pay, as since he wasn't a card carrying Adventurer, he had no legitimate claim to a share of the reward, and had no protections for it either.

The coins Zesta had given to him that Cecily had scrounged up had long ago been spent on his ticket to get to this city in the first place, so it wasn't like he had any way out of it now. He didn't even have the funds to return to Arcanletia.

To say the least, YN had experienced first hand what this city relied on; cheap labor to fulfill its sustainment. There was no getting ahead, no advancement, and no light at the end of the tunnel it seemed. Normally, these things demotivated most into just grinding for scraps in vain effort to try and make something out of this life here in Axel, despite how peaceful it really was. But for YN, this wasn't an option.

It was only through skipping his dinner, his bath, and his lodging for the night, that he afforded a ticket to a new town. It was the cheapest ride available, and the only one he could even afford to begin with. Boarding the carriage that night, YN went to bed, hungry and dirty from a day's worth of bricklaying and woke up in a far away town to the west.

It was here now that he found work, and with it maybe, a semblance of purpose.

At the distance he was now from where his current foreman expected him to be, YN was finally afforded some peace and quiet from the rumbling drone of the coal stoked fireboxes he had to keep going. The fires inside them burned so hotly that the large towers the smoke billowed up from had their flames almost reach the top of their chimneys, the very top of them black with the hot soot they ejected from the flames. Occasionally, when the wind was right, a roar could be heard from the intensity of these flames echoing out into the sky above.