Dead Man's Harem. Since I can't kill myself, I'll find other ways to be happy.

Chapter 36: Adventurer's Card Progress Points to E-rank

The receptionist nodded. "Yes. With every completed request, you will earn progress points to your next rank. But to promote, you will have to undergo a promotion test as well as accrue enough request completions to take the test."

"Please hand me your adventurer's card, so we can adjust your point total."

Devon handed her the card, which she put into that strange machinery device that was responsible for magically laminating cards. The device whirred for a moment, and then popped the card back out almost like a poptart coming out of a toaster.

Devon took a look at his F-rank adventurer card with his face, name, and class on it. He earned two points for the request completion, and needed a total of 50 points to take the test to promote. F-rank requests paid like absolute garbage, so he was looking forward to promoting so that he could take on some slightly more challenging E-rank or D-rank quests.

It's not like he was afraid of combat situations like a normal adventurer who had the possibility to die. With the [Dead man walking] class's passive, he could do whatever he wanted without too many worries.

Devon pulled out his black card and showed it to the receptionist. "You know what this is, right?"

The receptionist's eyebrows went up in surprise. "Oh, yes of course sir."

"Good," Devon replied. "Can you do me a favor and check on the whereabouts of countess Ilyana? I was on an escort job with her when our carriage got attacked by a monster, and we had to flee separately."

The receptionist nodded. "Hang on just one minute," she said, leaving the table to talk to some other employees in the guild to gather information. A moment later, she returned shaking her head. "Our records show that countess Ilyana has not been in Edelton for several weeks now. We can send out messenger birds to nearby towns to ask, but you will have to wait until evening or possibly even tomorrow for responses to come back."

"Can you send the inquiries, please? It's important," Devon added. "If the countess is in trouble, my employer said that there might be diplomatic consequences."

"Of course, sir," the receptionist replied. "Please check back this evening. I'll be sending the messenger birds right away."

"Thank you," Devon replied. "Oh, by the way, is there any work I can find here in the meantime?" He lifted his black card.

"Our backroom is near the door behind the counter over there, I think there will be some job opportunities available. Just show your card to the bodyguard." The receptionist quickly jotted down some notes, multitasking as she spoke to Devon. "And be careful about which backroom requests you take. Some of them are incredibly difficult, especially for an F-rank adventurer. Remember, safety should be your highest priority!"

"Understood. Thank you."

Devon thanked the receptionist for her help and made his way to the backroom, swinging by the guild's quest bulletin board on the way just to peruse its selection of E-rank and D-rank quests.

F-rank requests were mostly simple tasks like item delivery requests or fetch quests, and had very few combat requests besides very simple things like killing chickens or pigs, and this was also more or less true for E-rank with a few exceptions, but at D-rank certain requests for monsters began showing up.

With Devon's current swordsmanship and magic skills, doing a monster clearing quest was probably a waste of time. He needed to get some experience with combat first before he rushed ahead for that kind of work.

Reaching the backroom, Devon flashed his black card to the dog-girl bodyguard with a sword strapped onto her back, who nodded and let Devon through. Devon stepped into a much larger backroom than the one at Malon, where he first met madame Elisa.

The dark, high ceiling room was illuminated by several candle chandeliers, and a row of four slave girls of different beast races were chained by their ankles to the wall. They did not have much of a reaction from Devon entering the room, their faces empty of expression.

In comparison, madame Elisa treated her slave girl Lillia exceptionally well, giving her freedom to roam and even letting her sleep in a comfortable human sized cat bed in her bedroom.

To the side, a fat woman with rather unsightly lipstick was checking her nails in the candlelight. She seemed to be in charge of affairs here.

"Hello?" Devon said to the woman.

"Yes?" She replied, not even looking up from her nails.

"I'd like to find some work, please."

The woman finally looked up, appraising Devon with her eyes. "Card," she demanded.