continued - 3/6

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Joe nodded upon hearing it, "I guess that makes sense. Even if we have the capability to interbreed, I guess I could see it being harder to impregnate. But… how is that even possible? Doesn't make any sense. It…" Joe shook his head and turned away from the conversation, knowing that they would likely not have any kind of understanding of genetics, mixed breeding, and fertility. As he moved to dismiss the idea, the breakfast arrived and was set on the table in front of each of them.

But just before he dipped his silverware into the food, he quickly glanced to Zilnek once again, "Wait. How about fertility? Can the children of these marriages have kids?"

Zilnek nodded quickly, after a minute, "Of course."

Joe shook his head, uncertain how to respond to that revelation, but started to seriously reconsider modern humanity's understanding of genetics and how it worked. Well… magic? There's still magic, is that enough?

Joe fell into silence, quite exhausted with the incredibly slow conversation with Zilnek, and the other three quickly began talking amongst themselves, leaving Joe to his thoughts, returning to learning more about each other's past, though most of it today seemed to be of Zilnek and Kilniara in a war trying to one up each other, telling embarrassing stories of each other. Joe found their interactions intriguing, as Garnedell and Kilniara seemed to easily take Zilnek's incredibly slow responses into stride, taking long moments to give Zilnek time to process.

But Joe soon found his thoughts gripped by Zilnek and Kilniara's story "embarrassing stories" war and chuckled along with Garnedell at the two's antics. Breakfast passed quickly and Joe had them all standing to leave the inn to head back out to the dungeon, leading the way.

On the way out, Joe saw Kukurnal rushing to the inn, but then stopped as his shoulders dropped in defeat, before waving and coming up to Joe.

"I am too late!"

"Sorry, Kukurnal. We are already traveling on to our adventures. We'll be back tonight, though."

Kukurnal nodded, and the group offered greetings and goodbyes mixed with a few inane pleasantries for the few moments together before the parted once again, Kukurnal parting with them to head towards the temples.

The waved and moved on, soon finding themselves at the line to enter the beginner dungeon. The line, today, proved to be quite a bit shorter and all found themselves on the first floor which was still relatively empty. Joe breathed a deep sigh of contentment. He looked to the killing field, glanced around quickly before looking back to the safe zone. Hm… probably best time would be now… it's still pretty empty!

Joe turned away from the killing field and led the others to an empty stretch of the wall, "OK. Before we get to fighting. Zilnek, I want to tell you something. Do you remember what happened to your job last night?"

Zilnek sobered quickly, nodding quickly although he did hang his head with some shame.

"Hey! Hey… enough. Relax. I just want to let you know that I've found a new job that might be able to help us out, OK? I didn't mean to, it turned out pretty lucky, to be honest. If not, I would have changed my job this morning for this anyway, but I ended up doing it yesterday before supper. But I have a new job called the Criminal Theorist. It helps me to understand criminal jobs and study it. OK?"

Zilnek looked up, shock readily apparent but also gratefulness shone through his glistening eyes, even as he nodded his head quickly.

"Cool. So… I'll try to level that job today and see if I can't get some skills that will let us know how to help you. But, before we head out there, do you mind showing me your status screen?"

Zilnek nodded, excitement warring with shame although Joe's revelation seemed to have empowered him quite a bit more, and Zilnek opened his status, although Garnedell and Kilniara crowded around him protectively and Zilnek turned to face the corner of the wall. Garnedell even reached out and guided Joe to crowd in close and guard Zilnek.

Joe responded easily enough as he stepped forward to shield him, a bit confused by the other three's actions but the quickly understood it when he saw Zilnek's status pop up; a dead grey black screen that was quite obviously different from their own statuses. Joe stifled his questions and quickly asked him to swap through the various tabs but found nothing unusually different between the colors before he had Zilnek close his screen.

Joe looked to the three then asked quietly, "The status screen changes colors for criminals?"

The other three nodded but Garnedell clarified as well, "Yes, but it changes for all different groups. Mages, priests, fighters, nobles, and commoners all have different colors."

Joe rocked back on his heels a bit as he considered the ramifications before nodding, "Right then. Zilnek, no more. You keep that shut at all times, got it? Is there any kind of… disease or sickness or… well… anything, that makes it so Zilnek can't open his status screen?"

The three looked to each other, but then shook their heads in the negative and Joe grimaced.

"Well… not much we can do. Just… don't open it, got it?"

Zilnek quickly nodded and Joe then turned away, "We'll do it one more time after you reach level one, Zilnek, but never again after this unless we are in private, OK?"

Zilnek nodded again, a nervous smile of relief playing on his lips. Joe glanced back at him, smiling before clapping his hand on Zilnek's shoulder.

"Right. Let's get leveling!"

Joe smiled as they all traveled out into the killing field and Joe found his first goblin, dropping it quickly and easily before excitedly pulling up his new stats for the criminal theorist.