When Alexander finished reading the parts related to goblins and wolves, he stopped reading the glossary and went to return it to the reception, as it was already late and he still needed to go get his meals.

  "If you're going to eat now, I'll have it delivered to your room," said the receptionist. "It would be problematic to have a familiar here, you understand?"

  "That's fine," agreed Alexander. "I don't see a problem eating in the room."

  With that arranged, he returned to his room and it didn't take long for an assistant to deliver the food. The meal was a stew and, as promised by the receptionist, there were three portions for each of them.

  Alexander's portions came with meat and vegetables, while Ocean's came in a deep bowl with much fewer vegetables, but with more meat.

  When he placed a bowl for Ocean, she first smelled it for a while and only then began to eat.

  Ocean wasn't particularly fond of cooked food, but still seemed to like it, and Alexander could understand why. The food was simply delicious, even the meat had a different taste in the mouth.

  As soon as they finished eating, he gave Ocean a few more pieces of meat, used |Invigorate| to clean the dirty dishes, returned the clean dishes to the kitchen, and went to sleep.

  Surprisingly, for the first time since arriving in that new world, Alexander managed to sleep in peace, without forcing himself or passing out from exhaustion. His sleep was so good that he slept about 20 hours without even feeling tired, only waking up the next day when the sun was already high in the sky.

  Realizing he had overslept, Alexander rushed to the kitchen and asked for the morning meals before the afternoon meal time, because it was obvious Ocean must be hungry after so many hours.

  When they finished eating, he took advantage of the low movement in the Guild and borrowed the glossary again. And thus spent the rest of the day petting Ocean, reading, and eating.

  At nightfall, Alexander returned the glossary and took Ocean for a walk through the city. Ocean was well-behaved, but still needed to get out of that confined space and have freedom to move.

  After about half an hour of walking, he began to return. Not because either of them was tired, as that was almost impossible with the amount of energy they had, but because it no longer made sense to walk while inside the city.

  "Next time we'll go out, girl," said Alexander while pointing at the city gate in the distance. "But for now let's go back to our room and eat our food while it's still warm."

  Since both pieces of information pleased Ocean very much, the two returned to the room in good spirits.

  Passing in front of the Guild door, he remembered something important. And upon observing the low activity, concluded there wouldn't be a problem if he entered with Ocean for a brief moment.

  "I still remember what you said yesterday, it's just a quick question," Alexander said to the receptionist upon seeing her annoyed face.

  "Alright. But be quick," she retorted with a grimace.

  "I just want to know what the difference is between the adventurer ranks," he explained. "Yesterday you told me I need a bronze-level feat to be promoted, but I don't know the difference between them."

  "That can be complicated," sighed the receptionist. "There are various ways to be promoted when you're under evaluation, but the most common is strength/power. In other words, you need to demonstrate a level of strength/power corresponding to the rank above yours."

  "Just that?" asked Alexander surprised, as this method was very simple.

  "Yes and no," explained the receptionist. "This method only applies to the lower levels, because when the promotion is to gold rank, or higher, it's also necessary to have credibility corresponding to that rank with the Guild."

  "That must be to hinder problematic adventurers' access to higher levels," pondered Alexander before asking: "And what level of strength/power corresponds to each adventurer level?"

  "It's as follows…" the receptionist began to explain.

  According to her, adventurer ranks are based mainly on the capacity to face the most common creatures of a certain evolution level. The list is as follows:

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  Iron: Beginner adventurers.

  Bronze: Adventurers capable of defeating non-evolved creatures and fighting alone against 1st evolution creatures.

  Silver: Adventurers capable of defeating 1st evolution creatures and fighting alone against 2nd evolution creatures.

  Gold: Adventurers capable of defeating 2nd evolution creatures and fighting against 3rd evolution creatures in a team.

  Platinum: Adventurers capable of defeating newly evolved 3rd evolution creatures alone and fighting against late-stage 3rd evolution creatures with a team.

  Black Diamond and above: She doesn't know.

  "Evolution really is a progressive and geometric increase in power. There's an entire rank focused solely on the 3rd evolution and even then it's not guaranteed they'll be able to defeat the strongest creatures at that evolution level, even in a group," thought Alexander excitedly.

  "Thank you for the explanation. It helped me a lot," he thanked. "But now, if you'll excuse me, I'll request the food and leave your lobby."

  "No problem, that's my job, hehe…" said the receptionist.

  As soon as he returned to his room, Alexander toasted with Ocean until the meals arrived.

  After they finished eating, he thought it would be a good idea to give Ocean a bath with |Invigorate|. Unexpectedly, she liked the water and the bath, perhaps because she was of the {Sea Wolf} race.

  After shaking herself vigorously with all her strength, Ocean left the bathroom and went to lie down next to the small fireplace/heater in the room.

  With the bathroom to himself, Alexander managed to clean the mess Ocean made, wash his clothes with |Invigorate|, and take a good bath. But as soon as he wrung out his clothes and left the bathroom to place them to dry near the fire, a very loud bell sounded, echoing throughout the city.

  As soon as the sound diminished a bit, he began to hear a great commotion outside his room, but since he didn't know what it was, he decided to stay there waiting for his body and clothes to dry with the heat.

  "I have to buy some towels and more clothes when I get some money," thought Alexander while waiting for the water to drip from his body.

  When he was practically dry, someone knocked on his room door with a rhythm that seemed urgent.

  "Come in," authorized Alexander, who only realized his mistake after already authorizing the person to enter his room. He even tried to pull a sheet to cover himself, but the person who entered still caught a glimpse of him.

  "I'm sorry for the disturbance, but you must have heard the be-" said the receptionist, who tried to explain the situation when she ended up seeing "things."

  "It's inconvenient having to deal with social norms when you're not instinctively connected to them," thought Alexander while apologizing just out of obligation, since he basically felt no embarrassment: "Sorry about that. You caught me in a moment of distraction."

  "It's not because I don't mind being seen that the other party won't mind looking," he thought upon seeing the receptionist trying to regain her composure to speak.

  As soon as she recovered a bit, the receptionist resumed speaking, pretending nothing had happened, but her face was still red: "The bell means we are under attack and that the Guild has issued a mandatory emergency mission to adventurers in the city. Since you are new, I came to warn you."

  "Sorry about that. I ended up forgetting I was like this," Alexander apologized once more. "But returning to the alert, who is attacking us?"

  "Don't worry, it's not like I saw anything," lied the receptionist, who obviously had seen something. "But answering the question, we are on the verge of an attack from a Wave formed from the stampede of an advanced dungeon."

  "stampede of a dungeon? Wave?" he asked, confused.

  "Dungeon stampede happens when its BOSS isn't killed for a long period of time, because this makes the dungeon start generating more and more creatures until another BOSS is finally generated. And when that happens, the dungeon expels all other creatures from inside and only keeps the new BOSS," she explained.

  Ding!

  [You have a new mission]

  『 Missions 』

  Defend the city

  Mission Type: Extermination.

  Mission Description: Defend the city from the Monster Wave created by the stampede.

  Reward(s): 200 XP points for each creature slain and reward(s) that vary depending on the mission completion evaluation.

  Extra Task: Personally kill the Wave's leader.

  Rewards for the extra task: Substantial increase in the main mission completion evaluation and 1 random (Elite) item.

  "You must be in the lobby in 5 minutes," instructed the receptionist before turning and leaving.

  Following her instructions, Alexander put on his clothes, although still damp, and went to the lobby with Ocean.

  Arriving there, he saw a large number of people of the most diverse races and species, but with one thing in common, they were all adventurers.

  With so many people gathered there, Alexander opted to stay in a quieter corner of the lobby with Ocean. After a few minutes of waiting, a woman dressed as a receptionist, who wasn't the one Alexander usually interacted with, appeared and began the official announcement about the mission. "You must already know why you're here, so I'll skip that part and just pass on the mission information."

  "The first point is that the Guild will pay a fixed fee for participation and not for the number of kills. Therefore, don't worry about being 'robbed' and just cooperate with each other."

  "The second point is that this stampede must have gathered a large number of creatures along its path, so the creatures in this Wave should vary from the most common to the 3rd evolution one leading them, so be careful."

  "The third point is that fortunately the 3rd evolution creature leading the Wave is a {Berserker Orc} at the beginning of the 3rd evolution. Therefore, the Guild decided to divide the adventurers into two groups, one to defend the city and another to check the stampede situation along the way…"

  "The first group will be formed by adventurers below gold level, led by 2 experienced gold-rank adventurers. The remaining adventurers should form the second group and immediately head to the stampede and try their best to control the situation there."