16 Guild Registration (2/2)

After seating themselves at her table, Lili asked, ”So, any problems on your end?”

Mei smiled in return, ”None. Kalin is now registered as an adventurer. How about on your end? You were much faster than I thought.”

Lili just laughed and stuck out her chest, ”I already found us a permanent residence. It's not far from the guild or gate, cheap, huge, and ready for us to move in today! It even had several bathrooms and a huge kitchen.”

”What's the catch?” Asked Mei with a frown. ”There's no way a property that good is cheap unless there are issues.”

”Well,” Lili said as her chest deflated somewhat, ”it might have used to be an underground gambling hall and massage parlor disguised as an inn.”

Mei just rubbed the bridge of her nose as she sighed, ”So you're saying you want us to live in a whorehouse?”

”It hasn't been one in ages. Since then it's also been a restaurant and a general store. The real reason it was so cheap is because the last owner had the property forcefully seized because of smuggling, leaving the whole building in a mess.” With a pleading look on her face, she begged her friend, ”At least come look at the building. I'm sure you'll love it.”

Mei just sighed and said, ”Fine, I'll go look. I won't make any promises about liking it, though.”

Lili celebrated he momentary victory before the three of them ordered lunch.

******

Mei, Liliana, and Kalin stood in front of a very large stone building. Though never a residence, it was positioned near the very edge of a fairly wealthy district of the city. It was actually quite a beautiful building from the outside. It wasn't too gaudy, and the bricks were cut from a tasteful dark grey stone, with the occasional white every so often.

”So how much are they asking?” Mei asked in a somewhat concerned voice.

”Hehehe!” Lili laughed in her 'villainous' voice, ”They were asking 350,000, but I got them to agree with 263!”

Mei was caught off guard, if that were true, this building really was a steal. ”Even if we had to replace the entire interior, it'd still be worth it. How did you find this place?”

Lili smirked, ”This building was seized by a bank over a year ago, and they've been unable to sell it. Zoning-wise, it's in a terrible place, and it doesn't have a great reputation. Two of the last three owners are still in prison because of things they did here. Their original listing price was 500, but it's gone down several times. We can also keep any items previous owners have left. Even if we have to pay to have it professionally cleaned, it's still an amazing deal!”

Even knowing the history behind the building, Mei couldn't help but feel drawn toward it. ”Have you signed for it yet?”

Lili approached Mei before whispering, ”The contract is ready, but I haven't signed it yet. I wanted to see Kal's feelings about it and see if his luck sensor goes off.”

Mei nodded before turning to their third companion, ”So, what do you think about living here Kal?”

Looking at the building, Kalin couldn't take his eyes off it. Even though he had never seen it before, he couldn't help but feel it calling to him. ”I feel like we need to live here.” He said without a doubt in his voice.

Mei and Lili were somewhat surprised, because when Kalin had a feeling of needing to do something, the result was almost monstrously beneficial. Having two powerful skills having to do with luck and fate, his gut feeling was terrifyingly accurate.

The two girls nodded to each other, as Liliana immediately left to sign the deed to the building. Half an hour after she left, Lili returned with the deed and the keys to the building, having paid for it outright.

The inside was terrible. This room would have been the store-front, reception, or dining area in the past. Right now, it was filled with broken furniture and shards of glass, with all the goods lying on the floor. As the last owner was incarcerated for smuggling, the entirety of his store was flipped upside-down during the search under the direction of the Merchant's Guild. There were even some traces of mold and odd smells coming from the room. Though most things were broken, some of the merchandise survived.

As if she was expecting this much, Lili just sighed, ”We can either clean up ourselves or hire a service to do it for us. Either way, we should try to see if anything valuable survived.” When she talked about valuables, a look of expectation filled her face.

Mei nodded, ”I can only hope the other rooms are better than this one.”

After clearing off the main counter of broken porcelain, Lili turned to Kalin and said, ”If there's anything that catches your eye, or isn't broken, grab it and place it on the table. You can go into any room you want, but yell if something happens or you find anything living in here.”

”Okay!” Kalin said, looking forward to this 'treasure hunt', ”Come on, Alene! Let's see what we can find.”

Jumping down from his neck, Alene transformed into a crow and started to collect shiny objects. Although Alene wasn't able to talk yet, she was able to understand human speech. Knowing that they were looking for treasure, she morphed into the most useful creature in her current arsenal for this situation. As crows have a knack for collecting anything shiny, there wasn't a single glint in the room that escaped her eyes.

Walking through the piles of debris, Kalin didn't find much worth mentioning, so he decided to explore around the building. Making an orb of light follow him, he mage his way up the stairs. There were various rooms that were obviously bedrooms at some point. They varied in shape and size. Now just filled with various broken crates, it seemed that the rooms were more recently used for storage. Beside running into Mei, there was nothing upstairs that interested him, so Kalin looked in the kitchen area, before finding the way to enter the basement where the prostitutes lived, and gambling rooms were.

There were quite a few bottles of liquor intact, and the majority of the furniture was in pretty good condition. Other rooms included what looked like a giant bath and communal bedroom which was crammed with over 20 small bunkbeds and various empty cupboards and chests. After finding nothing good, Kal started to head back upstairs before he bumped on an empty keg of Huntington's Ale. Instead of falling over, however, the barrel wobbled a couple times before once again standing upright.

After checking the inside of the barrel for remaining liquids, Kalin lifted the keg, only to notice the uneven weight distribution. The bottom was extremely heavy. A feeling of excitement filled his chest as he yelled, ”Hey, I think I found something!”