Three weeks after the graduation ceremony Rusty still remained jobless. With only a week left to find a job before being conscripted into the military, one would think he’d be searching for a job to avoid such a fate. But at the current time during the afternoon, Rusty was instead in his room, sleeping, which was suddenly interrupted by a loud knock at his door.

“Rusty!” shouted a familiar voice that he knew all too well. Groaning as he did so Rusty rolled on his bed before continuing to sleep. After a long silence, Rusty believed his sleep to be preserved, until he heard someone outside his window where he saw Youn’s head appear, “Rusty! Get up you idiot!” he yelled at Rusty.

Rusty, who wanted to return to his slumber, groaned louder than before, mumbled something about cheese and began to roll on the bed, but as he did so he rolled off his bed and made a high pitched scream as he hit the ground before realizing what was happening.

“Get up and meet me outside in ten minutes or I’m coming in there,” Yelled Youn.

Rusty, fearing for his lower area, quickly got ready and was out of his house as fast as he could, where he found Youn waiting for him, “Do you have a job yet?” Youn asked impatiently.

“I do not,” Rusty replied as he returned to his sleepy mindset, smacking his lips for no reason in particular.

“Why not?!”

“Because I haven't tried to get on yet, it's not like it’ll be hard though...”

“Rusty, it's been three weeks since the graduation ceremony, I’d be surprised if there were any jobs left in the entire city!”

“Wait, it's been three weeks since the ceremony?!” Rusty exclaimed in surprise, suddenly awake, after which he mumbled to himself, “How long have I been sleeping lately?”

“I would've come to hang out earlier but I figured that you’d got a job or had been searching for one, but it seems that you’re just an idiot,” said Youn as he began to walk away, “Have fun being conscripted!”

Rusty, in disbelief, watched as Youn walked back to his parent's flower shop across the street, but Rusty's disbelief wasn't because Youn wasn’t going to help him, but because was he truly was unsure about how long he had actually been sleeping.

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For the next four days, Rusty ran around both the middle and lower districts of West-Rixon desperately looking for a job, but it was as Youn had said, as Rusty had zero luck in finding a job no matter where he looked, each taken by other graduates ho had been more proactive than him. On the fifth day, Rusty got up from his bed to begin the search for a job once more, but this time he planned to look for work in the upper district of the city, where the overlord of West-Rixon's palace, along with several nobility manors, the cities main military garrison and expensive shops and businesses that had very little interest, if any, in hiring someone of Rusty’s experience, which is why he hadn’t searched for a job there yet.

But as Rusty was getting ready to leave early in the morning for his search, Rusty stubbed his toe on a bookcase in the hallway on his way from the kitchen to the door, and in the process, dropping his uneaten cheese sandwich.

“Dammit!” Rusty exclaimed, but as he bent down to pick up his sandwich, he noticed a paper on the ground, it was the military application that he had obtained from the lady at the tier test, as he picked it up wondering why he still had it as he noticed that in the corner of the paper had in black ink written “Recommendation: Chi Thundeer” and figured he might as well keep it as a recommendation was probably better than forced conscription.

Rusty went to the kitchen and put the paper on his kitchen table, and headed towards the door, but as he was heading towards the door he slipped on the cheese sandwich that he had dropped earlier and fell to the ground. Rusty, after getting to his feet, cleaned up the sandwich, cursing to himself the whole time and made himself a new sandwich, but this time with some more than just cheese, and headed out on his job hunt.

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After only two hours of searching in the upper district, Rusty had given entirely on finding a job as he realized that he didn’t even look the part to be considered for a job there as he was wearing a basic brown outfit that matched his dark brown eyes and shoulder-length hair while everyone else in the upper district wore much fancier attire of vibrant colors, some even laughing as they sneered at Rusty from a distance.

After getting back to his house early into the afternoon, Rusty sat at his kitchen table in defeat, knowing full well what was in store for him. After sitting in despair for a couple minutes he leaned back and sighed at the hopelessness of his future. After he was done his sighing, Rusty noticed the piece of paper that he had put on his table earlier that day, knowing that the paper’s purpose would soon be his life anyways, Rusty thought, “Fuck it,” and grabbed the paper and another cheese sandwich and headed out the door to the nearest military garrison, which was a gruelingly long walk away from his house.

On the way to the garrison, Rusty ran into several strays that if were any other day, he would’ve stopped to pet, but for once in his life he didn't stop to pet even a single stray on his way from location A to B. About ten minutes through the walk Rusty finished his sandwich and was then forced to walk the rest of the way in complete and utter despair.

When Rusty arrived at the front gate of the garrison, which was twice his height, there were two guards standing on either side of it, both wearing full sets of leather armor with the West-Rixon insignia of a four-leaf clover made of thorn vines on the shoulders, chest piece, boots and helmet of their armor. The guard on the left looked to be battle-hardened and in his fifties which was evident in the many scars visible on his exposed skin while the guard on the right appeared to be rather lanky with light gray skin and wore a scarf and goggles to cover their face. When Rusty tried to walk in the guard on his left raised his arm to stop him, which stretched out long enough to block Rusty's entry, forcing him to stop.

“What business do you have in garrison B three?” The guard asked Rusty.

In his current mindset of hopelessness, all Rusty could think to do was put the recommendation paper in the guards still stretched hand. After the guard took a second to realize what Rusty was doing, he grabbed the paper and retracted his arm to its normal length. After taking a second to read the paper the guard said, “Hmm... a recommendation from captain Thundeer…” the guard paused for a moment before looking at the guard at the other side of the gate and saying, “Slim! Come here!”

The guard on the right side of the gate walked past Rusty and over to the other guard, “What is it Chuck?” said the guard is known as Slim to the other guard.

“Take this to captain Thundeer,” Chuck said as he handed the recommendation paper to Slim, “She should be at garrison A, just ask around when you get there.”

“Understood old-timer,” Slim replied, taking off his chest piece to reveal four insect looking wings on his back, “Be back in a flash,” he said as he began to flap his wings faster then Rusty’s eye’s could keep up with. Slim immediately began to float, and then one second he was there, and in the next second he wasn’t.

“I wager that he’ll be back in fifteen minutes entirely on account of the fact that he won’t know exactly where to find her. Hey kid, this is gonna take a while so you might as well go to the bench over there and sit down,” Chuck said, motioning to a bench across the street, to which Rusty went to sit on.

While Rusty was sitting his mood slowly transitioned from hopelessness to boredom, while occasionally looking in the direction of the upper district where garrison A was, just like how all the garrison B’s were in the middle district and all the garrison C’s were in the lower district, but unlike the lower and middle districts, there was only one garrison in the upper district due to it being at the center of the city.

After about twenty-five minutes Slim appeared in front of the gate holding a piece of paper, but as Rusty got up he was immediately thrown to the ground due to a violent gust of wind that had followed behind Slim.

“Here, let me help you,” said Slim from above Rusty, reaching his hand down to help pick him up, to which Rusty took.

“Also take this and head to garrison A,” said Slim handing Rusty the paper he'd been holding, “The captain will be waiting so you better be fast.”

“Okay, thanks...” replied Rusty who began walking towards garrison A. Garrison A was about a forty-five-minute walk from garrison B three to garrison A, so Rusty decided to run until he got to the upper district, to which he would promptly walk again.

After running for ten minutes, Rusty reached the upper district, which was made easy to tell by multiple factors, but the most prominent of which being the change in the material of the road becoming stone instead of the dirt roads that ran throughout the middle and lower district. After walking lost in thought for a bit, Rusty had arrived at the west entrance to garrison A.