The corridor we’d stopped in made a turn before eventually spilling out into a room that formed a junction between four hallways. It was much more like the guild I’d had in mind before I’d been so callously disillusioned by my new reality; it was bright and clean and with a far younger and more cheerful lady behind a counter that ran the length of the room, separating out the public space from the employee area.

As we approached it became apparent that she was quite a bit shorter than either of us, but I was coming to understand that’s just how things were going to be. I didn’t mind, and it certainly beat the way things had been before, but I’d have to get used to looking down all the time. I noticed long ears poking out from the tangled brown mop of hair the woman had, and guessed she was an elf like most of the citizens of the town I’d seen so far. Or kirol, as my adopted people called them. I wasn’t sure why the terms differed, and could only attribute that to how long they’d been gone from the world. Not that it really mattered. The sound of our footsteps must have alerted her, because she soon looked up from whatever she was working on and waved us over.

“Rare to have anyone come up from that side, how can I help you two?” I handed over the token I’d been given and nudged Mia to do the same.

“We wanted to register. We were given these and told to find Miss Byulla, and I’m hoping that’s you?” The woman’s slightly rounded face lit up, the classy professional vibe vanishing to make her seem years younger.

“Certainly is! Since you are here, with those tokens, you must be able to read. It is a bit of a secret of the guild, but we do actually require that. Almost all the work an adventurer does requires at least a degree of literacy, and of course far more so if you’re working for the guild itself. Now, were you looking to be a receptionist like me, or were you more interested in one of the behind-the-scenes positions?” She was so bright and cheerful about it I almost just nodded along before catching myself.

“Mm. You misunderstand. We’re here to become adventurers.” I was a little confused as to the mixup, and was just hoping there wouldn’t be any weird problems. Had we bumbled our way into some internal services department or something? There were seats and something like a waiting area in this small room, but in complete opposition to the first area it was entirely empty.

“Oh, goodness! I am so sorry, I just assumed. It is just so unusual to have young ladies apply at all, and you’re both so pretty, too! My apologies.” She bowed her head slightly, short brown hair falling over her eyes before she bounced back up and resettled her wild curls with a shake of her head.

“No worries!” I was way too busy soaking in the flattery to mind.

“Okay, good.” She put a hand to her chest and sighed. Seemed a little dramatic to me, but whatever. “Right, where were we? Yes, so, you do need to be able to read for that too, though we do not mind teaching promising applicants. With the old miss out front sending you back here, I can skip that portion of things and we will move directly to getting you two signed up. Now, which track did you wish to pursue?”

I blinked. Track?

“Mia doesn’t understand. What are tracks?” Kos had pointed it out and I’d been thinking about it since, but moments like that made realize just how glad I was that Mia had such an amazing knack for just diving right in and asking pertinent questions. It could have just been the precociousness of youth, because I certainly wasn’t like that. I would have chosen to just wait and allow context to fill me in than reveal my ignorance, but that was one of the things that made me choose her over anyone else. The lady smiled and huffed a small laugh.

“Would you like the short answer, or the complete answer?” Mia hummed a bit in thought but it didn’t take her long to decide.

“Mia would like the complete answer!” She said proudly, newly adult chest puffed out. “Mia thinks it’s better to understand things and ask questions than pretend to be smart.” Wow. She couldn’t have known of course, but the little princess had managed a direct hit to my ego. It was nice to see her acting out that bit of advice I’d given her when we’d first met, since it proved why she was fit to be a hero and I was not. Still stung though.

“Good!” Miss Byulla cleared her throat and started to recite what sounded like a prepared speech. “Adventuring is a profession founded on freedom. You have the right to take your own life into your hands, to grasp success by your own efforts. By that token, however, you must abide by the consequences those selfsame freedoms bring, the first of which is and shall always be the freedom to starve. Those who do not work, do not eat.” I nodded, impressed. The lady couldn’t be more right, and my impression of her rose a few notches. It was also a really good thing that I wasn’t the only source of wisdom in Mia’s life. She needed more than just my perspective.

“This is why we require a certain minimum from every single person enlisted in our guild. While it may seem unfair, there are certain costs that are involved in maintaining the guild and those cannot be overlooked. The adventuring profession is broad, however, and no single standard could be appropriate for everyone, which is why we have two adventuring tracks with separate but comparable standards for contribution.” She leaned over the counter towards us, eyes gleaming. I wasn’t really caught up in her performance, but Mia seemed to be completely enthralled.

“The Hunter and the Explorer!”

“Oooh!” At Mia’s honest reaction Miss Byulla nodded in satisfaction.

“Hunters, as the name implies, hunt the dangerous creatures that threaten people’s lives and bring back trophies and valuable materials from them. Explorers have tasks such as tracking those creatures, recording their whereabouts, and the collection of valuable natural resources. They also map out uncharted regions, reconnoiter monster habitats, and patrol vulnerable areas for threats.” That was about the time I got bored enough to just check out mentally.

I loved learning new things; conversely, I hated being told things I already knew. This stuff? This I knew. Lleuli and Brin had gone over all of it with us, at least in broad strokes, and frankly I was familiar enough with the basic concepts through historical example and story tropes that even the details weren’t new. But I couldn’t quite tune out. After all, there could be important things buried in the noise.

Fortunately I had a weapon of sorts ready for just this sort of situation. I called it student face, and it was something I’d mastered in my old life. The concept was simple: stare at the person talking and track everything they did and, no matter how far my mind might wander, they’d think I was into it. Combined with my natural ability to remember the things I heard, and the Ability I’d been given to change my perception of the flow of time, and there was no downside for me.

Miss Byulla went on about all kinds of blatantly obvious things at some length, but her focus increasingly turned towards the highly engaged Mia, only sending me looks occasionally. I didn’t like it, but I had to admit it seemed that I was evidently rusty. It had been a long time since I’d been in school, so maybe my student act was out of practice. That put me off enough that my patience for droning boredom ran thin, and with that being the case I decided to move things along.

“I have a question,” I said, cutting into the lecture. She just quirked an eyebrow at me. “Can you take both tracks?” Everything she mentioned sounded like the domain of a proper adventurer to me, which meant there was no chance we were going to pick just one of these track things and miss out on half of our adventure. I was pretty sure Mia would agree with me, since the hero in her favorite book did all of that stuff too.

“You can, but I do not recommend it for beginners.” I just mirrored her quirked-brow expression back at her. “Well, for most just starting out the minimum requirements take everything they have. Learning takes time,” she said, as gently as she could. “How the guild works, forming teams and practicing teamwork, learning about the monsters, herbs, or patrol routes.” She ticked things off on her fingers one by one, trying to impress on us the magnitude of what I was asking. I was mostly impressed by the magnitude of how little that mattered, since we were gonna do it anyway.

I just let her continue for a bit since it was a new enough topic I might learn something, and Mia seemed to want to know more. I was wondered how she could justify spending so much time talking to us, but there really wasn’t anyone else around. It was possible she just wanted some company, but I rather hoped that wasn’t her primary motivation and that maybe she just wanted to help us out. Mia was soaking it all up like a cute sponge, but about the time Miss Byulla started getting a little too into the details of the daily living conditions of a novice adventuring party and I considered forcing a topic change, Mia finally had a question of her own.

“Were you an adventurer?”

“Ah, yes. Why do you ask?” She said, seemingly surprised at the sudden interest. Her response could have been brusque, but came off as strangely wistful instead.

“You like adventure,” she giggled. “Mia can tell! Mia likes it too! But why did you stop?” I almost wanted to intervene and stop her from asking a question like that. It could be considered way over the line, and was at best inappropriate considering we’d only just met — and even that in a purely professional capacity. But I was way too interested in the direction Mia was taking things to bother stopping her.

“For the same reason I became an adventurer in the first place,” she said after a pause to gather her thoughts. “To follow my dreams.”

“Mia doesn’t understand.” I had to swallow my amusement. Evidently my girl’s only dream was to be an adventurer, and she couldn’t yet picture herself moving beyond that. In fairness, maybe she never would. But people by and large had lots of dreams over the course of their lives. I certainly had.

“Well, you see, I like being a mom, too.” I understood what Miss Byulla meant immediately, but it was clear from her face that Mia didn’t, so she continued. “Someone I greatly admire once told me that your feet can only walk one path at a time, and you should follow the one that leads you towards your dream. For a while that was being an adventurer, and you’re right I do still love it.” Mia nodded vigorously. “But I also wanted to get married and start a family, and one day the chance to do that presented itself. When the path that lead to my dreams split into two, I had to choose just one to walk.

“So I work here, able to see and help adventurers like you every day and go home to my family every night. I just cannot be away from home for months at a time stalking goblins any more.” She smiled somewhat mischievously. “Though sometimes I think my children are little different!”

“Was the person who told you that your hero?” Miss Byulla went round eyed for a moment before snorting a soft laugh.

“Yes. I suppose he is. I did marry him after all.” Now that was cute. I looked over at Mia, who looked to be something like star struck. Seemed she felt the same way.

“You were an Explorer?” I asked, having caught that detail about tracking goblins. She nodded. “And your husband... a Hunter?” I guessed. There was no reason for it, just intuition, but it turned out I was right.

“He is, but we often helped each other and—”

“We’ll do it. Both tracks.” I was ready to get going, and I could tell Mia was, too. How could she not be after a sweet little story like that? Miss Byulla was speechless a long moment before shaking her head. She shuffled at some papers and pulled something from a drawer before seeming to put things in order. I couldn’t actually tell from this side of the counter.

“I am afraid we have gotten ahead of ourselves,” she said with a resigned air, wisely recognizing that she couldn’t change our minds. “First!” Miss Byulla exclaimed, injecting herself with fresh enthusiasm. “Please display your status to me so that I might record it. Please rest assured, it will be kept confidential, and is a formality in compliance with the king’s law. Status is the only foolproof means of identification and the guild will not play host to any known unsavory elements!” The way she switched back and forth between genuine and scripted was so amusing I had to bite my tongue to keep it to myself.

“That’s not a problem, right Mia?” I said a moment later once I had myself firmly under control. The status thing shouldn’t be a problem. At least, not after all the trouble we went through to get this far. Our patron and I had worked closely with Lleuli and Brin on these adventuring bodies, and I was proud of them. They were undeniably and unavoidably strange, but irregularities were, Lleuli promised, not actually a problem at all. The world, or rather, the Braid, was full of strangeness and nobody stared too hard at it. Lest it start staring back.

“Mm!”

“[Status: Display]” The system, whatever it was, worked by asking. Not that everything had to be said aloud, but it had to be actively willed. Just thinking about things in a casual or analytical way wouldn’t trigger anything, I had to actually try. Which was good! Prevented me from blowing myself up with magic or whatever. Which was something I was justifiably worried I’d actually do, though I would never admit that to anyone.

A screen, or what seemed to be one, appeared in the air in front of me, conjured from and dyed in the unique colors of mana. I didn’t even bother looking at it, since it was so uninformatively sparse and frankly boring. A set of contextless numbers and a few lines of text without explanation. Beyond that, I just didn’t want to see my name listed on it. Mea Culpa. Even thinking about it was a little painful. It had been a joke just a stupid joke! When I learned that every race had some kind of naming convention, and that the sirol one was three letter names, I thought I’d just go ahead and be clever. Now I was stuck with it. Well, at least no one else was going to understand what it meant.

Miss Byulla took a good long look at my status without any expression on her face, though the darting of her eyes and twitching of her brows gave away her state of mind. Not staring too hard at strangeness and being entirely unfazed by it were, it seemed, not the same. She took her time, seeming to double check herself at every new line until eventually she just stopped and looked up at me.

“I must confess, I am not familiar with some of this. Might I trouble you to display your status in verbose mode? I do apologize for the bother.” Far from bothered, I hadn’t even known there was a verbose mode to begin with! From context I thought it might explain things in a way the normal one didn’t, which I was looking forward to. I just wasn’t sure how to summon a verbose status. Considering that, and having just been inadvertently chastized by Mia about choosing pride over honesty, I decided there was absolutely no way I could bring myself to ask about it. The cool older sister takes a risk!

“[Status: Verbose Display]” The previous window blinked and filled in with a lot more detail, leaving me to revel in my win with, I had to admit, a touch of smugness.

Type:

Automata

Magical or mechanical inorganic life.

Species:

Golem (Sirol)

Crude imitation of a Living being.

Made by God of the Mountan

Name:

Mea Culpa

A self chosen moniker with the meaning “my fault.”

Age: 57 days

Class:

Mage (1)

The most fundamental mana based class.

Fighter (1)

The most fundamental physically based class.

Health:

An approximation of physical robustness.

500/500

Mana:

Capacity to manipulate the unique energy of the Braid.

20/20

Active Skills:

Skills are activated through the MARIA system and have many effects.

[Ethereal]

Become incorporeal and pass through objects at will.

[Manifest]

Channel a Phenomenon.

Currently selected target: God of the Mountan

[Map]

Display: Displays recorded areas.

Ping: Creates a pulse that reveals and records the local area.

Innate Abilities:

Abilities are augmentations powered by the MARIA system.

[Mana Perception]

Can naturally perceive mana.

[High-Speed Comprehension]

Vastly accelerated intellectual and sensory capacity.

Martial Arts:

Arts are effects that utilize internal mana

[Imbue]

Attaches Spells to objects.

Magic Spells:

Spells are effects that utilize ambient mana.

[Blazing Touch]

A touch based attack that increases energy.

[Frigid Touch]

A touch based attack that decreases energy.

The smugness was gone, and I had so many, many things to say about what I was seeing there, but I needed to start with the most pressing. I dialed up my patron.

“Hey. Colossal idiot.”

“What.”

“You seriously answered to that? What is wrong with you? Oh, I know. Let’s start with this. You spelled God of the Mountain wrong. How can you even be that useless? I swear if it wasn’t so funny it would be pathetic. Oh wait, it’s both! But in all seriousness, fix it! It’s embarrassing here! How am I supposed to say ‘Oh yeah, that’s my patron, the God of the Mountan.’ No, no no. Have some self respect!”

“Speaking of respect...”

“No.”

“Come on! I’m trying! Well, whatever, I’ve got things I’m doing here.”

“Don’t you whatever me!”

“Look, I’m kinda busy, okay?”

“Yeah, uh huh. I don’t believe you. Look yourself: fix the spelling. I’m registering at the guild and I don’t want Mia, or myself, or the whole entire sirol species – which let me remind you I am right this very moment representing – be embarrassed by you. Okay? Speaking of embarrassing though, did you know there’s a verbose mode for the status thing?”

“Really? I’ll have to try that out.”

“Yeah, but here’s the trick: it actually spelled out what my name means.”

“Hahaha! Oh wow, that’s amazing. Wish I could see the sour look on your face, I really do. I bet it’s great.”

“So hey, you wanna know what it says about me being a golem?”

“I might have, but I don’t like that tone, so no I don’t.”

“It said I’m a ‘crude imitation of life.’”

“Ahh, wow. Somehow, I just can’t find it in me to argue with that description. But uh, hey, you know I’d love to keep chatting since you’re always so nice to me, but I actually am busy here with Ena and Kos trying to negotiate with an emissary from that kingdom you’re in. Lleuli and Brin can’t even help with this, ‘cause they’re citizens and all. If they show up on our behalf that might get them in serious trouble.”

“Oh. Well dang. Best of luck, I guess?”

“Yeah... thanks... alright. I fixed the spelling. Not sure how I missed that in the first place.”

“You’re not? I sure am. Talk to you later.”

“Haha. So funny. Later.”

After hanging up with my great and powerful patron I looked at my status, hanging in the air, and it really had been fixed. Our conversation had been quick, so hopefully— ah, no. Miss Byulla’s brows were in full furrow. She must have seen it change. I’d just have to play that off.

“T-thank you. Please bear with me as I copy this down.” There it was again. That frustrating bitterness that came of disappointment crept into me as I watched her copy my status down. Yes, there did need to be some way of recording it, I understood that quite well, but for some reason that I couldn’t articulate even to myself I’d expected something magical.

But no, she was doing it manually. Onto paper. With a pen. Not even a feather pen with an inkwell or anything, just the sort of pen I could find anywhere back before. It was a good discovery, since I’d just been thinking about Mia’s journal, but it felt weirdly anachronistic. Maybe it was magical in some way? I rather hoped it was, or the level of mundane I was being subjected to would soon be taking the last of my romantic ideas out back to shoot them.

While I distracted myself with pointless thoughts she quickly finished up, using some kind of hand stamp on a metallic card and then the paper, which seemed to seal the deal because she handed it to me right after. I looked my prize all over, wondering if it had any special properties, but assumed I’d find out soon.

“[Status: Verbose Display]” Mia immediately chimed in while practically vibrating, eyes glued to my shiny card, and clearly not wanting to wait a moment longer than she had to.

Type:

Automata

Magical or mechanical inorganic life.

Species:

Golem (Sirol)

Carefully crafted imitation of a Living being.

Made by the God of the Mountain

Name:

Mia

Name carried over.

Age: 5 days

Class:

Scout (1)

The most fundamental stealth based class.

Health:

An approximation of physical robustness.

500/500

Mana:

Capacity to manipulate the unique energy of the Braid.

20/20

Active Skills:

Skills are activated through the MARIA system and have many effects.

[Ethereal]

Become incorporeal and pass through objects at will.

[Map]

Display: Displays recorded areas.

Ping: Creates a pulse that reveals and records the local area.

Innate Abilities:

Abilities are augmentations powered by the MARIA system.

[Mana Perception]

Can naturally perceive mana.

[Comfort]

Hurts are made more bearable.

Martial Arts:

Arts are effects that utilize internal mana

[Muffle]

Suppresses produced sound.

[Slash]

Empowers, sharpens, and extends the reach of a blade.

Magic Spells:

Spells are effects that utilize ambient mana.

[Darkness]

Mastery of the darkness type.

I was glad that her [Possess] Skill had worked exactly the way we’d hoped, giving her an entirely different status when she took control of that body. Between the horrifying Title, monster-only class, and being a Wraith, Mia’s real status was just too much for anyone to deal with. Poor girl had been through a lot. So much it was a wonder that she didn’t seem affected by it. Just a real cute kid. Or sweet young lady, now.

After the troubles with my status, Miss Byulla was less overwhelmed by Mia’s and the process went a little faster. I took advantage of one of the little presents my oh so benevolent patron had given me and switched my eyes to orichalcum red while neither of them were paying attention, just to see if there was any magic involved in making the cards. There was, but it wasn’t quite like I’d thought, which made a nice change of pace from all the recent disappointments. The stylish white gloves Miss Byulla was wearing turned out to be magic. Anti-magic, really, seeing the way the material blocked the flow of mana. That was a good thing to know about, anti-magic. I’d have to tell that idiot about it later.

The card had some kind of magic on it, too, though I had no way to tell what. I had taken Mage as a Class because, well, magic! But I hadn’t been given any special knowledge to go along with it unfortunately, and Lleuli hadn’t been able to teach me much either. Miss Byulla was taking down Mia’s status on a piece of completely normal paper, which I could only guess was for the guild’s records and wasn’t related to the card’s function. Then she stamped both. Immediately something leapt from the card, to the stamp, and then was printed into the paper. When Mia touched the card a moment later, something flowed from her and into it, and with that I relaxed and let my eyes switch back.

Certainly an interesting system, and I was interested in learning more about it!

“I will admit that, on a personal level, I feel better about the two of you joining after seeing that.” She looked a little pale still, with a tightness around the eyes, but if she said she felt better I wasn’t going to say anything. “You each have more health than this entire building,” she said casually with a lighthearted chuckle. Or she tried to, at least. Her throat seemed to close up a bit so she squeaked getting that out. It was kinda cute. “Or a heavily reinforced fortress, even.” Seemed like our patron went full overkill. I’d had an inkling that five hundred health was a little high when compared to all the other numbers I’d seen, but a fortress huh? Well then.

“I doubt a little bit of danger will be too much trouble for the two of you.” That appeared to be an understatement.

“So, now that the two of you are properly registered I would like to say: Welcome to the adventurer’s guild!” With that Mia practically slammed into me for a hug, making incomprehensible happy noises. I was a lot more cynical than my precious ball of cuteness, but I had to admit that I was pretty happy too. I’d spent a lifetime feeling constrained by everything, escaping into the simplicity of stories where a wanderer could come through and solve problems for a living. I didn’t know if it would be that way for us, but I could feel the involuntarily smile creeping up my face as I patted Mia’s hair.

Miss Byulla seemed to finally relax a little herself, returning my smile with a clearly practiced but nevertheless genuine one of her own. Maybe she felt more comfortable now that she’d returned to familiar ground. It wasn’t nice knowing I’d upset someone who was likely to be a regular point of contact. I needed to keep relationships of that sort positive and intact, so I felt a little less burdened seeing her light up like that. Though I truly was happy with how things were going, I could still tell it hadn’t quite settled in with me yet, either. I’d probably end up giddly rolling around on my bed later on, but Mia was different. Sweet Mia was clearly living life in the moment and had let me go in favor of actually jumping for joy.

I was slightly worried for the floor with all the rattling I could hear.

Miss Byulla quickly began moving things along, which seemed to calm my excitable companion, but it nearly sent me to sleep. Yeah yeah, do jobs, get paid. Have to do so many jobs a month? It was so obvious I had to hold back from rolling my eyes. Doing jobs was the whole entire thing that defined adventurers! On the one hand, I rather liked Miss Byulla and her dedication to being a guild receptionist. After all, how could newbies like us know this stuff? On the other, well, it was boring and obvious and I did know it! Well, whatever.

“I hope I have clarified these matters to your satisfaction?” I blinked myself back to attention and nodded. She went on to outline, in detail, the hierarchy and contribution structure of the guild. I was on the verge of actually begging for it to end, but I hung in there. If I didn’t learn it, how could Mia rely on me? I’d chosen to take on the annoying and burdensome things for her, and so I would! With my favorite golden girl held up in my heart I endured the lecture, which I was able to boil down to just a few brief points.

Shockingly, there were what the guild called ranks, going from A through F and for each one the expectations grew. Since we were starting at E, F being reserved for those newcomers who weren’t yet literate, we were expected to earn at a rate of a “half-gold royal” per month, which was pretty tame. Or so Miss Byulla assured us, at any rate. Neither of us had any experience or understanding of the currency and its associated buying power. It was something I’d completely forgotten to ask Lleuli about.

“Mia doesn’t know what a ‘half-gold royal’ is?” Mia asked, in her adorable Mia way. Before Miss Byulla could open her clearly confused mouth, I stepped in. Time to show off my cool side!

“It’s something called money, which is a type of object, usually coins but sometimes slips of paper, that are earned by doing work and represents the value of that work, and can be traded for goods and services.” I patted the serious-looking girl on the arm as she fell into thought. I did have to keep up the competent big sister image, after all.

The core sirol civilization, those that had lived inside the mountain before they’d been annihilated in the backlash from killing a god, hadn’t needed or used money as a medium of exchange. They simply hadn’t had any reason to, though they certainly engaged in the practice with outsiders. Mia, having lived the short and unhappy life she had, never had reason to encounter the idea before now. Lleuli had handed me a small purse of coins before we left so that Mia and I could get get started, but in the end I wasn’t any more knowledgeable about the local money than Mia was, and now was a good time to find out more. In truth it was a pretty strange thing for someone who looked to be in their late adolescence not to understand money, so I turned to explain things to the slightly bewildered receptionist.

“We’re not from around here and,” I said before lowering my voice conspiratorially, “she’s a little sheltered. I’d appreciate if you could go over the currency denominations for us, please, and maybe a few quick examples of how much common things might cost?” Miss Byulla seemed somewhat bemused by the whole thing, but accommodated what was likely an unusual request without complaint. The ensuing explanation flew entirely over my sweet little hero’s head, but that was alright. I’d long since determined that she shouldn’t have to deal with the petty, seedy, and crass parts of adventuring. That was a job perfectly suited for someone like me.

When that wrapped up Miss Byulla asked for our cards back and stamped them and the paper records with two additional stamps that I assumed indicated the tracks we had taken on. The cards themselves didn’t seem to have any new marks on them, though I noticed that the papers did. I was getting more interested in exactly how the cards and the system functioned, but we’d already been standing around forever asking questions that resulted in long and involved explanations so I moved us on to the next big thing.

Which just so happened to be looking at the contract boards and picking what we wanted to do! To that end we asked Miss Byulla about them, since I didn’t see anything that fit the description anywhere. It turned out that even though they were still called ‘contract boards,’ they’d “evolved with the times.” Our receptionist’s phrasing, not mine. She hefted two thick books onto the counter, each tethered with a heavy chain, and laid them open.

“Hardly anyone comes here between the dawn rush and noon, so I was updating these when you girls came in. The one with the red stripe on the spine is for Hunters,” Mia immediately went to that tome and began leafing through it, “and this one that’s split between yellow and blue is for Explorers.” Our receptionist corrected her posture in a way that I had already learned indicated an oncoming lecture, but I decided to stay and listen since I was curious why the Explorer book had two parts like that. My interest seemed to energize Miss Byulla and she continued without missing a beat, splendidly ignoring my rude companion.

“As you can see, this book is designed so you can flip it over and is divided by task type. The yellow side is for the long term patrols and various monster scouting work, the blue side is full of requests for reagents, herbs, and other gathering and discovery missions.” I nodded at the thoughtful cleverness of such a system. Clearly the guild had been dealing with adventurers and their quirks for a long time. I took a look at the blue side for a moment before realizing just how right Miss Byulla had been.

I knew nothing.

Orscimer, five copper per cap. Lady’s Choke, one silver per flower. Burning Ivy, fifteen coppers per meter. I flipped page after page and was confronted by an incredible variety of things I’d never heard of before. There were no pictures, no location details, just the item, the price per unit, and in some cases the client’s delivery information. I looked up to find Miss Byulla looking at me with a twinkle of amusement in her eyes. Well, time to suck it up and ask a few basic questions.

“Um. Is there a place I can find out more information on all of,” I gestured somewhat helplessly at the book, “this?” She had spoken earlier about needing to learn about monsters, herbs and other things and there was a general literacy requirement, so I assumed there had to be a library or resource room somewhere.

“Yes, of course. Down that hall on the left is the guild library which is now available to you.” I was all set to head down that way when Mia grabbed my arm.

“Mia wants to hunt one of these!” She proclaimed, pointing at where the Hunter book stated Goblin: five silver per intact horn, ten silver per core. Comparing that with my brief look at the Explorer book proved Miss Byulla’s point. Hunting was vastly more profitable. With a glance at Mia’s face I knew there would be no careful study at a library. Not today at least. She wanted to go on an adventure immediately, if not sooner, and had chosen goblins as her target. No doubt because the hero of her favorite book had done the same on her first adventure. I hid my smile and turned back to our patient receptionist.

“It seems the library will have to wait,” I shrugged a shoulder to indicate it simply couldn’t be helped. “Would you be willing to tell us where any goblin camps might be, and any Explorer missions that could be found in that area?” With a shake of her head that sent her curly brown hair flying she laughed and told us that there was a very large camp ‘a few bells walk’ outside town to the west. I wasn’t sure how far that actually was, but I wasn’t likely to get a better grasp of the distance by harassing the woman about it, so I let it go. It seemed that the camp sent out regular patrols of one to three goblins that would be suitable for us. She also volunteered that it was normal for novices to run away without killing any the first time. I had to wonder at that.

“Are goblins really that tough?” I ventured. Perhaps my estimations were tragically flawed and Mia and I were about to head out into a much higher level fight than I was anticipating.

“You girls are sturdy and seem well equipped, but the journey there is tiring and even the most straightforward of fights will wear out the body and mind. Fatigue is an adventurer’s greatest challenge, and you would be doing quite well for yourselves if you managed to take down one apiece. But you seem eager, and I would not be surprised if you managed to hunt two a day each after a week or so of practice, but you should not push yourselves! Underestimating the hardship of combat is perhaps the greatest killer of all,” Miss Byulla sagely said.

I could appreciate that advice but it was inapplicable since so far as I could tell we were fundamentally untiring. Didn’t even have an entry for stamina in our status! That being the case I moved us on to what Explorer missions might pair well with goblin hunting. It turned out that there was a type of mushroom called a Red Cap that grew in the area which was supposed to be easy to spot, even for an absolute beginner.

“I must warn you that several other novice adventurers have recently gone missing in that area. The guild has posted an Explorer contract to find any information about them, so if you should find anything do please tell us. If the goblins have begun capturing people again, you two will need to be careful. We may have to issue a large Hunter contract to thin them out.”

That sounded like an interesting opportunity. I wanted to capitalize on it immediately because it was very possible there would be rewards in the offing that we would want, but when I spun in place to march off towards our glorious adventuring future I promptly banged my estoc against the counter. It was immensely embarrassing that I still wasn’t used to how far it stuck out, but I blinked away my blunder and chose to pretend it never happened.

“Oh, girls, I must ask that you please leave through the main entrance,” she said when we had started off towards that dingy place we’d come from. “You will need your card to get in that way,” she continued, pointing at the hallway opposite the one we’d entered from, “but we would prefer to keep the general candidates separate from those who have been accepted. It is also far more convenient.” I nodded and, head held high, headed that way.

“Thank you!” Mia said with a smile and a wave.

“Come back again soon!” Miss Byulla replied, perhaps still a little worried for us, but I wasn’t paying much attention to her. I didn’t want to admit it, but I was looking forward to our first adventure just as much as Mia was.