The common room was busy when he returned.
The old man caught Daemon's eye from behind the counter.
"You're back. Did you get everything you needed from the market?"
Daemon's mouth twitched. "More or less."
"I see." The old man had clearly seen straight through that answer but chose not to comment on it. "Find a free table and sit — food will be ready in a few minutes."
"I have a question," said Daemon, before turning to look for a seat.
"Then ask."
"For the moment I'm staying at this inn, and most likely I will continue to do so. It's going to be a bit awkward to keep calling you 'old man' — especially since you've already given me useful information for free. So..."
"Ah. You want a name," said the old man. "Took you long enough to ask."
Daemon stayed quiet, but for the first time in a while some color crept into his face. Embarrassment, most likely.
The old man noticed and felt quietly amused, though his expression didn't move even a millimeter. "You can call me B.O.B."
The way he said it made Daemon pause. Call him Bob. Not — his name is Bob.
"Your name isn't actually Bob, is it?" Daemon asked.
The old man looked at him evenly. "No, it is not. But everyone calls me that."
"Ah, I see."
"Let me ask you the same question then. What's your name?"
"Hh," Daemon opened his mouth and then closed it again. For the first time in recent memory he was left genuinely speechless, and by such a simple question. He couldn't give his real name — that much was obvious. His mind went into overdrive for approximately one second before his mouth made a unilateral decision without consulting the brain.
"Nomead."
The old man looked at him for a moment. "What a strange name."
Of course it's strange, it is my name spelled backwards. That was the only thought in Daemon's head. He wanted to slap himself. It was possibly the stupidest thing he had ever said out loud, and he had said it with complete confidence, and now it was out there and he couldn't take it back.
"Well. I'll go find my seat."
"Go ahead, Nomead."
Daemon's mouth twitched even more, but he could only curse his own stupidity. He found a table, sat down.
As the food arrived he fell into his usual habit of listening to the room.
The conversation had moved on from the previous evening's fixation. Broader subjects tonight — guild movements, monster activity near the eastern bridge, a rumor about something unusual in the deeper labyrinth sections that three different people described in three entirely incompatible ways. Daemon ate and sorted the useful informations.
The eastern bridge activity was worth noting. If monster presence near one of the crossing points was increasing, it affected everyone moving in and out of the city.
Everything was ordinary until a few tables over, someone said something that nearly made him choke on his food.
"Did you hear? The guilds found out one of the classes that Daemon guy has."
"What? I hadn't heard anything like that. Last I knew he'd vanished like a ghost — how did they find him?"
"I don't know why I bother with you people. Did I say they found him?"
"Then how did they find his class without finding him?"
"How would I know? All I know is that word going around is his class is Hunter."
"That's the same class everyone here was guessing yesterday."
"I know. Who would have thought we actually got it right."
Right my ass. Daemon stared at his bowl. How did they got it right?
His first instinct was divination — someone had used a divination skill or talent to identify his class remotely. He discarded that almost immediately. His own talent was essentially a nightmare for diviners, and in this place there were only unranked individuals.
No diviner operating at the same level as him would have the gap needed to pierce through his Talent. After all it was an A-rank talent for all he knew from the public information the highest talent in the world was A-rank, there wasn't a single confirmed S-rank talent in the entire world, so both in terms of quality and quantity Daemon had no fear at the moment.
Then the actual explanation formed in his mind was so ironical he couldn't keep a straight at just the thought of it.
Maybe someone who had been sitting in this very common room yesterday — someone who had heard the whole conversation, heard reasoning about the Hunter class, thought it made sense — had mentioned it to someone else. That person had thought it made sense too. And it had traveled outward from there, person to person, until it had accumulated enough agreement that people were now treating it as confirmed intelligence rather than some random guess at an inn.
And the worst part was that it was actually correct.
Fuck, how did it got to this point. Daemon was annoyed to no end by this ironic turn of events, but he could only curse at the twist of fate.
He finished his meal, went upstairs, and lay down, staring at the ceiling.
Daemon started thinking about which part of the labyrinth he should explore first.
It mattered which part because every part of the labyrinth had a Dungeon corresponding to the Monsters more prevalent in that respecting zone .
"Alright. Which zone?"
He thought it through methodically. There were four.
The western side of the labyrinth was the Great River and the Water Caverns a place difficult for all Awakeners in the Basement if you don't have a talent that boost your battle capabilities or survivability in water is recommended to be avoided, the merflock are said to be a nuisance to fight with."
They have incredible hard scales that makes them the second hardest monsters to kill in the Basement, only coming second to the skeletons in the North.
Spiking off those undead in the north, Daemon didn't really want to deal with those dead things. Just thinking about them gives him the creeps.
That left east and south.
The east held beasts. The south held goblins.
The greatest number of beasts were predominantly wolves — they were fast, strong, but not unbeatable. It was the most popular zone among Awakeners for hunting and leveling, precisely because the monsters were the most straightforward to fight.
"The more people there are the worse for me." The east was out. He had no interest in running into guilds and recruitment teams while he was trying to operate quietly.
That left the south.
Just thinking about the south and the goblins present there put him in a bad mood. Which was somewhat irrational.
"As much as I detest the little bastards," he muttered, "I've started to understand how they operate. I don't know that much about the beasts in the east. Until I get a real read on my own capabilities and build some actual confidence, I should deal with what I know."
He paused.
"What a headache."
Tomorrow he was going back into the labyrinth. Actually he was going in the labyrinth for the first time. His first real venture in, and he was going south, to deal with those green devils.
He closed his eyes. He wanted to sleep early and get as much rest as possible. Once he was in the labyrinth, sleep would become a genuine luxury.