Ank

Even if the previous night was more a strain on my strength than an actual rest, and even if I might have not had a full night worth of sleep at all, I was 100% energized, healed, and prepared for the Adventurer’s Guild appointment; hey, even Hunah got a new cool skill: [Weapon Soul], which gave an extra 100 damage points to whatever weapon she was using. We set our [Levels] to hidden (wow, didn't even know this was a thing), and set out.

The main guild “building” in the city was at the very center of the ages-old palace, claiming all the corridors and rooms immediately, in a circle, around the large tree that grew beyond the roof and shaded the city.

For all this space, it displayed training and dueling rooms, desks of exclusive use for adventurers; counters where merchants lined up to make deals with the guild; clerks that dealt with the taxes of the city, the setup quests, and other legal topics; and, of course, the “adventuring” part of the in Adventurer’s Guild, the largest room of the palace-city: what seemed to once have been an exuberant three-floored hall contained innumerable boards with papers detailing objectives and rewards throughout the region. I also discovered that right under the tree, there was a statue of a swordsman, the guild’s founder apparently.

While most of the guild rooms were almost completely filled up, containing hundreds of people at any given moment, the higher floors within the main hall seemed to contain the least amount of quests, and were almost empty; with few exceptions, like a trio of young people, friends adventurers, who played around the second floor.

I didn’t need to be a genius to get that the higher floors within the main hall contained the hardest quests.

“Wait here, I’ll call a friend of mine to take care of the paperwork”, Taffy instructed, as my sister and I reached the end of the room, close to a long counter with dozens of clerks in tidy clothes, and many, many more adventurers waiting in line to be attended by them.

In a line of adventurers close to us, twins, I noticed, the bald and muscular man from the other day’s lunch, and his friends, were waiting. He seemed to have spotted me too, and pointing in our direction and shaking his head in negative, he didn’t mind to keep quiet:

“Hey, mommy’s babies from before are really trying to become adventurers.”

“Hmph!”, a tall and equally muscular woman who accompanied the bald man added: “They won’t last a week.”

“That’s not true, Barbar…”, a third meat-head that made the group; a man with only the right side of his head shaved; joined in, smiling. “They will probably buy a professional adventuring [Party] and be protected by them the entire time.”

“Our they will go back running to their mommy!”, a guy who seemed to be the brother of the third meat-head, if with the wrong side of the head shaved, laughed out loud.

Then, my sister and I had captured the attention of quite a few adventurers around, and none seemed happy in seeing our supposed spoiled rich brats' ass; we received more than just a couple of dirty and angry looks.

Still, we kept our place, if a little embarrassed, simply crossing our arms and waiting. Everything that those people were thinking was probably true, after all, they should have been each and every one of them just as strong as Taffy. However, we wouldn’t just give up on our revenge because of some laughs. Broken bones and torn limbs hurt much more than their lack of respect, after all.

“So, these are your kids, Taffy?”, a tall and old man who seemed to be made entirely of wood and bark, with moss for its long beard, showed up, a pleasant smile on his knotty face; a huge contrast with his rough appearance, I noticed, was the fine white cloak that hid his back and one of his arms only.

And, as soon as the tree-man appeared out of the crowd, following Taffy, the entire hall seemed to freeze, in complete silence, holding its breath.

“That’s right, aren’t they cute?!”, The older woman held her cheeks, blushing. Seeming to realize that she was getting off-topic, she quickly added: “Oh, my! And I’m recommending them to become adventurers: make them 90th rankers already, okay?”

A wave of whispers and confusion spread throughout the mass of adventurers who encircled us, everyone looking straight in the direction of the tree-man, Taffy, Hunah, and I. Having no idea what was happening, I decided it was for the best to just stay quiet and still… Plus a village boy like me wasn’t really used to so many staring eyes.

“You shouldn’t have said this so loudly…” the tree-man complained in a barely audible whisper. Then, coughing once Taffy turned back to him, he replied: “Of course, Taffy, I’ll take care of their guild entrance-”

Before the man who displayed a long moss beard and white cloak could finish, the bald muscular guy from before came out of the crowd, an enraged look on his face, screaming:

“You must be kidding, Guild Master!”

His companions came right after the one who seemed to be their leader, and added to his angered speech:

“That’s right! You can’t just accept them straight into 90th rank!”, said the one woman of the party.

“Just because they are rich…”, the half-bald brothers complained too.

And all the rest of the adventurers joined their side, screaming in anger, cursing, and getting frighteningly agitated. Fists were thrown into the air, some courageous ones stepped forward, and the hundreds of powerhouses surrounding my sister and I seemed to be about to become an angry mob and lynch the four of us in its center.

Until, that is, the old man in the white cloak turned its head towards the crowd, and exhaled a portion of his aura: the angered mob immediately stopped on its track, and retreated, the loudest voices quieted down, the fists hitting the air disappeared within the mass of people. And it wasn’t for no reason, after all, just a fraction of the old man’s power was just as powerful as half of our [Level: 100] + [Titles] aura…

“Lady Taffy is a very important contributor to the guild, and I take her advice seriously. If anyone has a problem with this, I’m more than willing to… dialogue about it.”

The boastful bald man from before, and his [Party], retreated a couple of steps, turning pale, sweat sprouting from his forehead. So, he seemed to decide to change the focus of his rage from the Guild Master to us, twins:

“Y- You two! Do you really think you can just manipulate the guild with your money?! I challenge you mommy’s babies to a duel!”

“Wai-!”, The guild master tried to interfere, but I stepped forward:

“We accept it”, there would be no end to that, unless we did something about it. Even if this thing was to accept the duel and get beaten by Taffy-level adventurers just to prove our determination… Talking about Taffy, I ignored the sparkling happy woman, who was excitedly commenting something about our first challenge. “I believe there was a sparing room nearby?”

As we moved to the next room, to fight, the crowd of adventurers went wild, screaming and jumping, barely able to wait to see the defeat of the “spoiled kids”, and followed us around.