Tanya sauntered into the large, circular chamber, where a gaggle of unusually dressed people were lounging in comfortable armchairs. Some were huddled together, conversing in whispers and low tones. Others opted to remain completely silent, waiting for the main event to start. And then there were those staring deathly daggers at anyone whose gaze lingered for longer than a second.

Her lips quirked into an affable grin. “Greetings. I am here as part of Team Archleone.”

A few turned their heads to regard the newcomer, but none returned her greeting. “I swear these people have no respect for introductions,” she muttered under her breath. Not that she could really complain. Anomaly exploration was a competitive career, certainly not a place to make friends.

Gracefully gliding through the sparse crowd, she quickly spotted a familiar face. He was a hulking figure, with locks of scraggly red hair hanging from his chin and a large broadsword strapped to his back.

“Still alive and kicking I see, Wuodan,” she offered in greeting.

“Tena,” came the bored, uninterested reply.

The blonde bore the unintentional butchering of her name with practiced ease. “Still searching for a home to settle into? I can get you a room if you give me a fair fight.”

Wuodan grunted. “You flowers no match for me.”

Tanya grinned. Wuodan was a jotunn, a species that would have classified as giants had they been a little taller. The six-foot-five, middle-aged, bounty hunter hailed from the Baramunz kingdom. Although his words were limited to monosyllables most of the time, the mammoth of a man made up for his lack of vocal flair with impeccable swordsmanship and sheer strength.

It was Wuodan who had first taught her to wield the pair of daggers she carried on her person at all times. The man had taken her in when she’d been at her worst and forged her into the composed fighter she was now. But even if he was the closest thing she had to a father-figure, she treated him as a casual acquaintance at best in public.

Not that he would want it any other way.

That said, there was no doubt in her mind that should she ever have to face her acquaintance in combat, he would kick her ass.

And gloat about it.

Exactly in that order.

“Now isn’t this quite the pleasant surprise.”

Tanya spun around at the familiar, yet unwelcome voice coming from behind. There, standing by the entrance, was Olfric Bergott, a fellow adventurer hailing from a noble family in Lycanshire— a neighboring kingdom from the west. A Bronze-plate like herself, Olfric was also quite the accomplished spiritist.

“Tanya of the Meewich Gate,” his smug voice rang out. “What brings a lowborn like yourself here today?”

He was also a bigot of the highest degree, the sort of person that didn’t care about anything other than his own family and its position in the Empire’s hierarchy.

In other words, a quintessential Asukan, if there ever was one.

Naturally, she and Olfric got along like oil and water.

“I was invited,” Tanya stiffly replied.

Olfric rubbed his goatee in mock-thought. “Is that so? I seem to remember a probation notice in your name.”

These days it seemed as if all roads led back to that whole mess.

Five months ago, the Blues— widely regarded as the best adventurer team in Haviskali —had fallen short a member, leaving the spot open for recruitment. Both she and Olfric had tried their luck, and the latter took it as a personal insult when she was chosen over him.

Naturally, he had gone out of his way ever since then to try and make her life miserable, and the disastrous end to the Blues’s mission hadn’t helped matters.

Tanya sent a scathing glare in his direction. “The probation stops me from applying for new jobs. It doesn’t stop others from offering me one.”

“So you’re part of a team now, are you?”

“That’s right.”

“I see.” He ruffled through his unruly black hair, his dark eyes shining with something like mirth. “And how long before you leave them for dead?”

She suppressed the immediate urge to just walk over and throttle him.

“Just what are you insinuating?” she spoke, her voice noticeably cooler.

“Nothing at all. It’s just strange how Haviskali’s best adventurer group went missing soon after they adopted a foreigner into their ranks.”

And just like that, the murmurs began.

Tanya silently groaned. Being quick to anger was a vice she’d never managed to wrest control of, and to this day, it constantly managed to get her into trouble. Like now, since Olfric knew perfectly well how to take undue advantage of it.

“Do humor us. What unfortunate soul decided to hire you this time?” the sly Asukan asked, a cheshire grin on his face.

“That would be me.”

Every set of eyes in the room gravitated towards the entrance, behind Olfric, where Zuken stood. He was dressed in his traditional Banksi attire, with a silvery depiction of a wild boar— the Banksi symbol —sewn onto his ash-colored half-jacket. The brown-haired teen casually walked into the room with his hands in his pockets, as if the sudden attention didn’t even faze him.

Behind him, dressed in a tunic with an overcoat worn above, stood Elena. She had fresh flowers braided into her hair and an oblivious expression on her face as she looked around at the antechamber, taking in the sight as if she was a tourist.

Holding a basket full of peaches in one hand.

And a half-eaten peach in another.

Tanya blinked.

Elena didn’t vanish.

Guess I’m not dreaming, then.

Zuken cleared his throat. "I am Zuken of the Banksi. Leader of Team Archleone and representative of the Governor’s office."

That shut everybody up.

Even Olfric looked dumbfounded.

Elena, following Zuken’s lead, daintily stepped into the room, but not before taking another bite of the peach. Almost instantly, half the people in the room shifted around a bit, straightening their dusters and trench coats.

One of them even pulled out a comb and started brushing his hair.

Tanya narrowed her eyes.

Strange.

“Um, hi! I’m Elena. Member of Team Archleone,” she introduced herself, oblivious to the brimming tension in the room. “Please take care of me.”

One of the adventurers stood up, ready to offer her a seat when Olfric interrupted the exchange.

“Banksi?” he scowled. “You are signing up for a mission?”

“I may not look it,” Zuken shrugged with flair as he gestured to his armband, “but I’m actually a spiritist.”

Tanya rolled her eyes. Everyone in the Llaisy kingdom knew of the Banksi and their skill with earth manipulation. Still, Zuken Banksi was an oddity, even among his clan members. The entire clan was filled with people that occupied diplomatic posts across the kingdom, while others expanded out into the continent. They were diplomats, businessmen, bureaucrats— offices with great authority.

The clan was a growth machine, and it thrived on aggressive expansion.

But not Zuken Banksi.

Tanya had conducted a background check on him after his initial proposal. He was an accomplished spiritist, with enough skill to make the average Iron-plate look away in shame. His skill with earth was natural, and his ability to talk his way out of any situation was frightening. Officially, he served as an advisor to the Governor himself, but that was probably the least interesting thing about him. If the rumors were to be believed, he also had a frighteningly efficient information network that penetrated the neighboring kingdoms.

Unwittingly or not, Zuken had just magnified the value of this bounty by virtue of his presence.

“And you brought her as part of your team?” Olfric sneered. “You must be scraping at the bottom of the barrel if you’re allowing just anyone to walk into this place.”

“Well,” Zuken drawled, “seeing as how you’re allowed to walk in here without a leash, I assumed anyone could.”

Tanya suppressed a chuckle.

The other adventurers didn’t.

“What iz the Govanar’s office doin in offisal Guild biznes?” a woman with a Karnegrug accent spoke up.

“This time,” Zuken answered, “it’s the Governor’s office that’s sponsoring this mission.”

“And what mission would that be?” Olfric demanded.

Zuken silently handed a thick file to the scribe sitting at the front of the room, before turning to Olfric. “A dangerous, high priority mission. Something safely protected behind a standard binding spell.”

“And it pays well,” Tanya added, subtly reminding everyone that she was a part of his team.

“That too,” Zuken sent her a knowing smile. “But you only get the details if you’re in. And according to the contract, you can’t listen to the details until you sign it.”

He gestured to the file in the scribe’s hand.

“There’s gotta be something you can tell us?” a redhead from the left pleaded.

“I can tell you it’s a high-level mission. Enough that Bronze-plates are the bar.”

Tanya could almost see the wheels turning in everyone’s heads. She had gone through something similar when he had offered her the same agreement, only under a different set of binding contracts.

“Come on, you can’t be serious Banksi—” Olfric began.

“Alfonse—”

“It’s Olfric.”

Zuken raised an eyebrow at him. “That kinda says it all, don’t you think?”

The Bergott scion looked like he wanted to scream, but he managed to compose himself at the last second. It probably helped that one of the other adventurers, a woman with thin, black braids spoke up at that very moment.

“There’s five groups in heaa! Do ya really need to wait for moar?”

The scribe— a forty-something, white-haired man with stray hairs poking out from his ears —made a fleeting, nervous glance towards Zuken before shaking his head. “No, no. We can begin.”

Best not to make important people wait, Tanya mentally chuckled. The Guild may have been a private organization, but like all private groups, they preferred not to strain relations with the bureaucracy so long as they had the choice.

Not that she’d complain. It was nice to be on the other side of the table for once.

More power to me.

The scribe handed out document copies to everyone in the room. Tanya took hers and realized what it was.

Another binding contract. One that formed an unbreakable magical agreement between the signed party and the payee. According to the terms, the payee would be getting seven hundred gold— Tanya’s eyes widened into saucers —in return for doing whatever the mission entailed. Of course, being a legalized document, the binding would not be upheld should the job turn out to be illegal in any way, but it wasn’t as if a Guild would be distributing such a contract in the first place.

In short, as long as it was legal, the contract could ask you to sell both your kidneys for a single nickel if that’s what the terms stated. And you’d be magically bound to follow it to the letter.

It was the kind that was dangerous, but the most well-paid.

She could live like a queen for two months with that kind of money.

Tanya saw two adventurer groups whisper something to each other, shuffling around a bit before quietly leaving the room. Elena took the opportunity and nabbed one of the now-open seats, as Zuken took the stage.

“Several of you here might be wondering why the Governor’s office is interfering in Guild business. Well, here’s the thing. We aren’t interfering. We are the client.”

It was true. Technically. Tanya had gone through the bylaws regarding the creation of the Adventurer’s Guild in Haviskali. By law, the Guild was bound to uphold their services provided the client was willing to pay money for a legal, private mission.

That it just so happened to involve two cities currently in a cold war was mere happenstance. Zuken’s words, not hers.

“—such,” he went on without pause, “I am here with a mission. A very private mission on behalf of the Governor’s office.”

He took a deep breath.

“Our sensors have traced an unnaturally strong activity in the desert. After successive readings, we assume it's a Class-3 anomaly, some fifty miles from Cyffnar territory.”

The whispers began anew.

“A Class-3? In the Namzuhuu desert?” the redhead from earlier whispered.

“Is the Governor’s office crazy? That place is cursed,” one of the men in the front row questioned aloud.

“Fuck ‘cursed’!” another one cussed. “Didn’t you hear it, shithead? It’s Cyffnar territory. Those guys are fuckin’ savages.”

Tanya was slightly tempted to point out that calling Cyffnarians savages was an insult to savages, but she kept her mouth shut. She was just biased.

“Are you sure it’s a Class-3?” interjected another voice.

Tanya could understand where they were coming from. Anomalies were rated in terms of classes, with the order indicating both size and lethality. A Class-1 was usually a small offshoot, often barely larger than a sizable orchard. Any Level-10 bremetan could annihilate that thing without breaking a sweat. A Class-3, on the other hand, was the largest of its kind, spanning dozens of miles and often enveloping an entire swamp or mountain.

But more importantly, a Class-3 represented a fortune. Entire towns had been built in the past around one, its harvested resources enough to keep it running for decades. But exploring them was also incredibly dangerous— the kind of mission the best adventurers were sent on.

It was hardly something for someone like Zuken Banksi to risk his life on.

So why was he?

Something about this bugs me.

Shaking her head, she tuned into the ongoing discussion once more.

“Yes, we are reliably certain it's a three,” Zuken replied without the slightest hesitation. “We also estimate a sizable metal deposit located inside.”

“So what’s the problem here?” Olfric scoffed. “We go in, we excavate it, Haviskali and Cyffnar form a treaty over resource-sharing, and it's settled.”

“Maybe in a fair and free world, but not the reality we’re living in now,” Zuken chided. “For better or worse, this anomaly is easily six hundred miles from Haviskali, and merely fifty from Cyffnar. Unless you’re willing to guarantee that they’ll honor any treaty we try to set up, we have a problem here.”

That shut Olfric up.

“According to the High Councils’ Treaty Annexure 117, whoever excavates an anomaly has a maximum time period of four days to report it to the Empire. That means that by the second day of us sending the notice, Cyffnar gets the information. What do you think they would do?”

“They would take advantage of its proximity and mine resources without a second thought,” Tanya interjected. “Sorry, the lack of intelligent conversation around here was suffocating.”

Elena took another bite into her peach.

“What do ya waan os to do?” the woman with dark-haired braids asked.

“What we have here is a narrow opportunity to excavate the anomaly first and get as much as we can in a single attempt. As soon as the Guild receives a signal from one of the teams here, they will be sending in transport vehicles to carry metal deposits back to Haviskali. Whatever deposits your team manages to excavate, you get a two percent finder’s fee.”

Simple enough. Get in before Cyffnar sniffed around, and get out with as much metal as they could carry. After that, it was fair game. Both governments would play hardball over who gets how much

And yet…

Tanya looked around. Every single adventurer in the room— discounting Elena— was a skilled adventurer. Each team had at least one Bronze-plate, if not more, so clearly, the kid gloves were off. Someone like Zuken Banksi wouldn’t waste time with this farce, he’d just collect Silver-class adventurers or higher to finish the job.

So why? Why is he doing this?

Something was wrong.

Something she couldn’t put a finger on. Why her of all people? Did Banksi know something about her past? Did he know that she was—

Tanya shut her eyes, clearing her head of errant thoughts. Here inside the Guild Hall, even thoughts weren’t safe.

She glanced at Zuken again, then at a certain changeling who was busy gobbling peaches without a care in the world. What role did someone like her have to play in all this?

What are you planning, Banksi?

“For obvious reasons,” Zuken continued, “we expect nothing short of absolute discretion from each of you.”

“And what’s the guarantee that we won’t face a… oh, I don’t know, a Cyffnar army ready to destroy our little contingent?” Olfric challenged.

“And who would tell them?” Zuken offered, a condescension dripping from his every word. “You?”

“They can’t send an army if they don’t know anything about it,” the scribe answered for a change. His nasal voice did nothing to hide his pronounced sneer. “And this isn’t a contingent. Volunteering teams will be acting as independent units, finishing the mission discreetly before Cyffnar realizes what’s happening in their own backyard.”

That makes sense, Tanya mused. Though not as much as he thinks.

Cyffnar didn’t entertain a private Adventurer’s Guild, preferring to keep such tasks in the hands of their Iron Parliament. But regardless of Cyffnar’s inner politics, they followed the laws of intra-continental trade. The anomaly was in neutral territory, so Haviskali had every right to try and explore it.

But still… Cyffnar? After all this time?

Fate was fickle, and she needed to look no further for evidence.

“So,” the scribe clapped his hands together, looking at the gathering with what he probably assumed was a winning smile. “Any questions?”

Prey Eliminated

Experience +21

Lukas Aguilar, Level-4 human from Earth and current host to an ancient goddess, stared at his schema in silent incomprehension. He was crouched atop a rocky outcropping jutting from the wall, looking down at a group of creatures no more than seven feet below. There, perched below, was a lizard roughly the size of a chicken, its head an intense crimson hue and neon-green slime covering the rest of its body, from the curve of its nose to the tip of its elongated tail.

In the creature’s immediate midst were two more of its kind, now decapitated and deceased. Lukas had silently watched as the lizard viciously brawled with the other two, ending the fight by snapping their heads off and eating them. Then, it spit out a dark, rancid substance— likely some sort of acid —over the remains, causing their flesh to hiss and melt.

Really, what was it with these monsters and their affinity for acid?

But the most important part of the battle— and the most confusing as well —was an entirely different observation. One he’d made plenty of times before.

During the entirety of the scuffle, all Lukas had done was crouch on a nearby wall, observing from nearby without giving away his presence. Yet, despite that, his schema had registered both kills as prey eliminations and proceeded to award him with Experience points.

Clearly, whoever had designed this system had no qualms over stealing others’ credit.

This doesn’t make any sense.

“Not everything does. Not everything has to.”

But I did nothing to gain those points. I don’t deserve them.

“I’m certain the dead are grateful for your honesty.”

Scratching his nose, Lukas drew the rock-dagger sheathed in his belt.

From what he’d just observed, this thing was capable of extremely fast short sprints, and could spit corrosive acid faster than he could blink. As if that wasn’t enough, its tail was lined with some kind of thin metal, sharp enough to tear through flesh.

An azolg, the screen had called it. A speedy combatant capable of killing other monsters of comparable size with its lightning-quick attacks and reflexes.

Now, the question was how to kill this thing.

Maybe I could jump from above and land a blow on its neck, Lukas mused, twirling the rock dagger in his hand. If only this was a little sharper.

“Mortals,” Inanna sniffed. “Your stubborn belief in external aids astounds me. You possess the greatest weapon of all, yet you reject it for a mere tool?”

The greatest weapon?

“Your body. You have lifeforce brimming inside you. Flowing, ebbing, waiting to be used. And in its stead, you rely upon fixed, rudimentary earthen structures. Your species used to have it right.”

As odd as her words sounded, Lukas could tell they were valid. When faced with a problem, he had instinctively tried to gain a tool to help him perform an action and solve it. In this case, it was the rock-dagger, despite knowing that his own strength had far surpassed that of any stone.

It was humbling to realize that despite everything that he had gone through, he was still looking at the world from a human perspective. And yet, he wasn’t exactly human anymore. Certainly, not what humans were supposed to be.

A human couldn’t wreck rocks with a mere fist.

A human couldn’t hack through hide with a slash of his palm.

A human couldn’t use lifeforce.

He, on the other hand, could do all those things now. And more. Yet here he was, blindly sticking to his dagger, as if his life depended upon it.

Lukas closed his eyes, taking a deep breath. For a single moment, he immersed himself in the feel of his own lifeforce. The strange energy flowed through his body, inundating his tissues and organs, pumping in more power than he had any hopes of using, and yet still bending to his will. Even the barest of his thoughts managed to redirect its flow, almost like it could read his mind.

No, he corrected himself. It is a part of my mind. Part of me.

And with that realization, he found his answer.

He opened his eyes once more and gazed down at the ferocious quadruped.

Casting his rock-dagger aside, he drew upon his own lifeforce with a frightening amount of ease. It flowed outwards, coating his right palm, strengthening it, augmenting it. He could feel his arm getting heavier, hardier, stronger, sharper. The energy flickered around the edges of his hand like the buzzing teeth of a chainsaw.

As more and more lifeforce pulsed throughout his body, raw adrenaline shot up his spine. Everything felt so vibrant. He felt powerful.

Confident.

Like he could take on the entire world and come out on top.

What was one measly lizard in front of that?

As soon as I kill this thing, you’ll answer my questions. Right?

“Wrong,” the resident goddess answered without skipping a beat. “If you are somehow able to kill this insect, then I shall answer one of your questions.”

Pretty unfair, don’t you think? Even if it’s just one little lizard, I’m still risking my life here.

“You are free to reject the idea, mortal. It is you who has everything to gain and everything to lose in this bargain.”

Lukas paused at her choice of words. Even after realizing that her initial offer of making him a slave had been a test of fortitude, he still wasn’t completely at ease dealing with the goddess. Despite the thralling power at his fingertips, he had witnessed Inanna use a tiny speck of her infinitely terrifying power, something that made him feel like little more than an amoeba, looking up at an elephant.

He had tried to get over it. Tried to reconcile the being he had seen to the human voice that quipped inside his mind every now and then.

Tried to think of her as just a human being with superpowers.

He had failed.

Dismally.

One… one question, then. And you’ll answer it with complete honesty.

“My word is my bond.”

Fine, Lukas shrugged, cracking his knuckles as he bent his knees and crouched even lower. One question would have to do. If nothing else, it would get him started on the path to more answers. He’d be one step closer to finding out what happened, how he came to be here, and how to get back.

He lifted his left arm and gathered lifeforce in the center of its palm. After all, if one powerful attack was good, then two was even better.

Looking down at his latest prey, Lukas smirked.

And then he jumped.