The next two weeks passed in a blur of sore muscles, cheap bread, and jobs that all started to feel the same.
Most of it was labor. Crate hauling, cart unloading, barrel lifting, street sweeping. If someone needed something heavy moved, the guild handed it to low-ranked adventurers like them. And if no one else wanted to do it, Knight and Toby got it by default.
Sometimes they were paid in coin. Sometimes in dried meat or questionable stew. One job paid in soap—two bars of it, one of which Toby dropped in a gutter before they even made it back to the inn.
Other days were collection quests. Picking mushrooms that grew under bridges. Gathering feathers from molting beasts in the hills. Digging up old bones marked with red twine for an alchemist who never once made eye contact and laughed nervously every five seconds. Knight carried the bones. Toby carried the shovel. They were paid with six copper and a half-eaten sandwich that Toby insisted tasted "fine, actually."
Toby handled the work like it was nothing. Like his body ran on a secret fuel source made of sarcasm and string cheese.
He climbed wagons like they were stairs. Balanced three crates at once. Wiped sweat from his brow dramatically but never really looked tired.
Knight didn't say anything about it.
But he noticed.
He couldn't lift as much. Couldn't move as fast. The old wounds from the wolf fight still flared up on certain days—his leg when he stepped wrong, his arm when he twisted too hard. But he got the jobs done. Quietly. Slowly. One at a time.
He didn't mind being worse. He was used to being worse.
That's just how things worked.
Toby never commented on the difference. Never acted like he was waiting. He just did his part, then turned around and helped with the rest like it was nothing. Never bragged. Never said anything smug.
That somehow made it worse.
One morning, Knight nearly dropped a barrel onto his own foot and muttered something under his breath that sounded vaguely like profanity. Toby leaned over and said, "Careful. You need those toes for standing."
Knight stared at him for a full three seconds, then turned back to the barrel.
They never talked about being a team. It just sort of happened. One day, they picked a quest together. The next day, again. Then again. No one brought it up. It just kept going.
Knight figured Toby would get bored eventually. Get sick of the helmet, the silence, the one-word replies. Most people did.
But Toby kept showing up.
Every morning, without fail, Toby was already waiting outside the inn. Sometimes with a piece of dried fruit. Sometimes with two chunks of bread wrapped in napkins. Always grinning like someone who had nothing better to do.
He tossed one toward Knight every morning. Knight caught it without a word, chewed it without tasting much, and walked without asking where they were going.
Toby never asked for coin. Never explained himself. Just handed over the bread and kept moving.
Knight didn't know what to make of it.
He wasn't sure if this counted as friendship.
But after a while, he stopped thinking about it.
It was easier to go along with it than ask questions.
One afternoon, they delivered three crates of bottled vinegar to a tavern and ended up getting chased out the back when Toby knocked one over and the floorboards started bubbling.
The day after that, they were sent to collect feathers from "domesticated roc-chickens" in a small farm on the hill. The birds were the size of small cows and had the temperament of bar brawlers. Knight got pecked in the ribs twice. Toby laughed so hard he dropped the quest paper in the mud.
They still got paid.
Barely.
By the end of the second week, Knight's legs had stopped aching every morning. His shoulder didn't burn when he lifted more than he should. His fingers were steady again. The bruises on his ribs had finally faded.
He wasn't strong. He wasn't fast. But he wasn't broken anymore.
That morning, they stood in front of the guild quest board, staring up at the usual mess of paper slips—torn edges, crooked stamps, yellowing corners flapping in the breeze. The glue used to stick them to the board was definitely not waterproof.
Knight scanned the ones with animal symbols. He couldn't read the letters, but by now, he knew a few of the common icons—wolf, herb, claw, box.
Toby, for once, didn't reach for the usual ones.
He tapped one that had a goblin's silhouette burned into the top corner. Red stamp. Slightly higher placement on the board.
"Goblin hunt," he said. "Cave system outside the southern cliffs. Mid-difficulty. Not a ton of them, but the kind that messes up solo adventurers if you're not careful."
Knight stared at it.
Toby glanced over. "You up for it?"
Knight rolled his shoulder slowly. The joints held. No burning. No bite. His sword was dull, but it still cut. His legs were steady.
He didn't feel confident.
But he didn't feel broken either.
"…Yeah," he said.
Toby gave a short nod, barely a grin this time. "Good. Been a while since we took a quest that bites back."
They stepped toward the counter.
Knight felt a quiet thought crawl through the back of his mind as they walked.
He never meant to work with anyone.
The plan was to avoid people. Stay quiet. Take quests. Get paid. Go home. Alone.
But Toby never stopped showing up.
Never stopped talking. Never backed off.
And by now, Knight had stopped expecting him to.
So he guessed this was just how it was.