Severin managed to stifle his laugh just in time as to not draw any unwanted attention to himself but thinking about how he could profit from his finding, an all too pleased smile had appeared on his face, nonetheless. The smile turned especially unsightly once he thought about the agreement according to which the Society would need to do some advertising on his behalf. Only when he became aware of the passed time and finally noticed that the two women had already made their way to the other end of the room did he wipe the grin off his face. Carefully he navigated his way around what looked to him like a big sumo ring in the middle of the room; he didn’t know whether its boundaries were also some kind of enchantment-if Magda had said something to that extend; he had missed it-and he wasn’t too keen on finding out either.

When he finally caught up, Magda was apparently in the midst of answering one of Emily’s questions. Seeing him approach the former didn’t stop, but raised her eyebrows at him.

Severin pretended to have missed the non-verbal, inquiring gesture and simply listened in.

“… about showcasing their individual strength.”

“But isn’t their gear also part of their strength?” Emily asked.

Just these few exchanged words were enough to give Severin a pretty good idea what the girl’s question had been. Though he could guess some of the reasons, he was still somewhat interested in Magda’s answer as well.

“Well, you are not wrong,” Magda admitted. “But what we are interested in is a person’s capabilities, not their gear. And especially not the gear they potentially borrowed or rented from somebody else.”

“But would that really be such a bad thing?” the girl was obviously not yet fully convinced and kept insisting, and the woman tried her best to answer patiently.

“It is so that we can actually guarantee a certain degree of skill and combat strength for each holder of a specific kind of badge. Those things are basically just certificates. But if there is no way to guarantee the correctness of these certificates, they would obviously be useless. Simply put, we need to be sure the bearer of a badge lives up to a certain standard, even at their worst.

Otherwise you might end up with an underpowered tank. Best case, that person dies. Worst case, the whole group dies.”

Magda, by now, was clearly agitated and continued on without giving the other two people a chance to interject. “I give you that the system in place might not be perfect. People who actually have access to powerful pieces of equipment or some kind of buffs might take longer than otherwise necessary to earn their badge.

Adventurers still can experience a loss in strength, with only a minority of them being honest enough to report such a regression.

And even if it wasn’t for those and similar issues, the badge rankings are far from perfect, yes. They can’t account for each and every aspect of combat, especially if it is concerning one of the rarer classes. Or the fact that if you follow our recommendations, you will generally tend to be over-leveled. But we prefer to err on the side of caution; it’s the best we can do.”

Seeing the girl’s wide-open eyes staring at her, Magda realized she might’ve raised her voice a bit too much near the end. She took a deep breath to calm herself and was happy to find that Emily was not too intimidated to continue asking her questions. In fact, she almost appeared stubborn.

“Can’t they just show their stats and gear to each other and be done with it?” The girl didn’t understand why those people had to make such a big deal out of this. Or maybe it was her past experiences and the resulting biases speaking.

“Much of it comes down to safety-concerns and mistrust. Especially when it’s the first time with a new group of people. On the one hand, they have to trust sometimes complete strangers to survive combat. On the other hand, they don’t want to expose their own weak spot.

We try to bridge that gap.”

Sigh

“I know those guys can be… unreasonable at times, but it’s not an easy life either. Even a tainted silver who might appear to be living a cushy life only got to this point by risking their life over and over again, in the first place. And at least up to that point, it’s not like they are swimming in the riches non-adventurers think they are. The majority of their earnings are spent on gear maintenance, enchants, flasks and potions, or skill scrolls. You name it. Sometimes even just for some information.

And for those that aim to push ever higher and further, this cycle never really ends.

It’s hard and stressful enough already, even without having to worry about their teammates dragging them down; whether intentionally or not. Not everyone has the luxury of having a guild they can trust, you know.

But as you said. Some groups handle it exactly like that. To let someone new join, they would require them to reveal both their stats and their gear. It’s not like we try to prohibit this kind of behavior either. Just like we won’t stop anyone from entering a dungeon. As long as they don’t try to deceive or harm others in the process, we don’t really care whether they head for their certain death.”

What followed was a moment of awkward silence. Emily, who felt she had been called out, didn’t quite know how to respond.

After a few moments, Severin felt he should take it up to himself to break the silence.

“What about forgeries?”

Magda either didn’t think it was odd for a crafter not to know these things, or she assumed that the question was only asked for Emily’s benefit, but she didn’t hesitate and dispelled the awkward atmosphere as suddenly an item appeared dangling from her right hand.

“It’s not that easy to forge in the first place. Have you ever seen one of these?” she asked the girl who had reappeared from behind her boss’ back to take a closer look.

“A golden one?!” Severin wasn’t any less surprised.

“Haha. How could I otherwise be qualified to evaluate other people’s strength?” Magda asked while pointing at the ring in the middle of the room. “But the important part isn’t the color or the material. See those delicate patterns? Those are not something you can just easily imitate.”

Already having forgotten her uneasiness just moments ago, Em nodded in response while looking at the golden badge, mesmerized, as if it was a treasure.

Severin, on the other hand, wasn’t nearly as impressed; neither with the explanation nor with the ‘delicate’ work. But he decided to keep silent and wondered whether he should ask Samuel to show off his badge.

“Even if it was more feasible, I doubt many would take the risk. Most of the time, it’s simply not worth the hassle. And as I said earlier, putting others at risk is something we take seriously.

That being said, when it comes to those matters, actually being caught by the Society is oftentimes the easier way out. At least then their deaths will be quick.”

This time it was Severin’s turn to raise his eyebrows as an invitation for her to continue. She shrugged and complied; her smile ever present.

“If they manage to expose someone pretending to be higher-leveled or ranked than they actually are, one of the more popular punishments is to force the offender to enter a dungeon or raid of said rank, all by themselves. Then usually they’ll camp at the entrance for a few days or weeks before looking for the corpse. Well. That or they directly follow behind and force the perpetrator to press onward.”