I had said before that I hadn’t quite figured out what I wanted to do for a career. But, while that was certainly the truth, it was also true that at that moment, I really did want to try my hand at becoming an adventurer.

Ever since I had first practiced my skill with a sword out in that beautiful grassy meadow, I hadn’t been able to shake the thought of going out searching for treasures, and fighting against powerful foes, while I sought to explore all that this world had to offer.

Of course, I would have been a lot more wary of becoming an adventurer if I had thought that it was an especially dangerous profession. After finally managing to win my freedom and to escape from my jail, the last thing that I wanted to do was to go off and to get myself killed, chasing after some sort of fame or fortune. Wealth and glory both had a certain appeal to them, but I didn’t think that either of them were worth much at all if you had to die just in order to acquire them.

Besides, I was about the furthest thing from a hero that you could imagine, so the thought of sacrificing my life for a noble cause didn’t appeal to me that much at all. The way that I saw it, death was death, and that was something that you wanted to try to avoid as best as you could – and it didn’t matter all that much if that death was a noble one, or an ignoble one, all things considered. So, if I had thought that adventuring was a one-way ticket to the grave, I doubt that I would have even considered it for a second as any sort of career.

But, from what Torver had said, it sounded like adventuring wasn’t all that dangerous. And if it was possible to go out exploring through ancient ruins, and honing my skills, as I dug up all sorts of ancient relics and treasures, without putting my life into any sort of serious danger… well, then, that sounded like a wonderful way to spend my time in this new world, at least for now.

Plus… if I’m being really honest with you, I still hadn’t been able to get the thought of those old, hidden vaults out of my mind.

I knew that they were probably just old, fanciful legends, like the myth of Atlantis or something… and I doubted that I’d ever really be able to find them.

But, the thought of stumbling into those ancient, mysterious halls, and being the first person to find them for hundreds and hundreds of years… it just filled every part of me with excitement, and wonder, and longing. So if I could, I wanted to make a career out of exploring the world, and searching for treasure, and seeing what sort of ancient secrets I could find.

I doubted that I’d be able to discover one of those vaults even then, but that at least seemed like my best chance to do so, and I was eager to give it a try.

Finally, I felt like it would be a good idea to train and to get stronger, in order to continue to increase my chances to survive. Right now, in this peaceful and pleasant town, far removed from any sort of threat or danger, I certainly didn’t feel especially threatened. But if some sort of large war might be coming, like Torver had suggested, or if there were forces that might hunt me down for being an Interloper, then it would be a good idea to prepare myself while I still could, and to learn a little bit more about how to fight.

For all of those reasons, then - and maybe for one or two more that I hadn’t mentioned here - I made my way over towards the large wooden notice board, and looked to see what had been posted.

I’d half-expected to find all sorts of people jostling and fighting over recently posted quests, arguing over who had seen it first, and who got to take on the noble and daring assignments that each promised such great and marvelous rewards. But really, it was all pretty quiet at the moment. The only person there was a cat-eared man with a shield and club, who was looking over a brightly-colored flyer with a painting of a goblin on the top, and the words “Goblin Slayer Wanted!” in big letters at the bottom. Each of the notices on the board seemed to be in about that same style – painting on top, big letters below – with the more particular details of the quest written out in smaller print at the very bottom of the posting.

As I’d expected, these were all postings of quests for adventurers. But unfortunately, every single one of them seemed to be well beyond my league. Each posting had a “suggested level” written at the bottom, and not a single one of them was for adventurers with a level that was lower than nine. Worse than that, most of them seemed to be postings for groups of adventurers, and the notices that were meant for solo adventurers seemed to be quite a bit more challenging. The easiest quest that I could find for a solo adventurer was for a level eighteen, and that seemed to be quite a bit beyond what I could do at the moment.

However, there was one posting on the board that seemed like it might be very promising. In the upper right corner, quite a ways apart from all of the other posted notices, there was a flyer with a picture of a large, black cave opening, and the words “Beginner’s Dungeon!” printed down below. This didn’t seem to be any sort of quest or adventure, and it didn’t have a suggested level or anything like that. But the text did say that this was the perfect place to learn how to get your start, and that if you were especially skilled, that it might even be a source for discovering valuable loot and treasure.

I remembered what Torver had said before, about how no one ever got injured or died in any of the dungeons. I didn’t really understand how that was possible, but he seemed to be pretty confident about that, and I had no reason at all to doubt his word. He had also mentioned that it was possible to find treasure inside of these dungeons, and to earn enough to pay for your own room and board, if you were lucky. Right now, that was all that I really needed, so going out and exploring these dungeons might be enough to pay for my expenses, at least for now. Plus, it seemed as if this dungeon in particular was especially well suited for beginners like myself, which meant that if I had any sort of talent for the occupation at all, then I should be able to make my start there.

Of course, if all that you had to do was just waltz on in and waltz back out with your treasure, then probably there’d already be so much loot flowing through all of the town that nobody would pay you a dime for it. Plus, even if the Interlopers got some sort of “boost” to their power when they first arrived in this world, like Torver had said, it didn’t seem like that made them so powerful that I was going to just magically transform into some sort of great warrior or anything like that, or to be able to go into the deepest and furthest reaches of the dungeons and fish out magical relics. So, probably, it wasn’t going to be the easiest thing in the world to make a living as an adventurer, and I was sure that I was going to run into a lot of difficulties and complications that I wouldn’t be able to see in advance.

But, still. Even knowing all of that, and even taking that into account…

I was really looking forward to it, and I was going to give it absolutely everything that I had, and to just let my fortune play itself out from there.

Later on, if I needed to, I could think up some other plans, and figure out other ways that I might be able to make a living. But for the present, all that was left for me was to focus on the next step of my journey, and to figure out how I could get to the dungeon.

Fortunately, there was a small map engraved into the notice board, and it was simple enough that I was able to commit it to memory on the spot. Basically, on the other side of Westfall, opposite the gate that I’d just come through, there was a lot of farmland. Pass through that, and you’ll come to a forest. Pass through that forest, and you’ll come out right in front of a small mountain. The dungeon was right there, either just in front of the mountain, or contained within. At any rate, I was sure that I could make it out to the mountain on my own, and then I could just figure it out from there.

Of course, I didn’t plan to head out there just yet. I had to get the food back to the kids, and I wanted to get a full night’s worth of rest, too. It had been a pretty long day, and I was looking forward to just sleeping in a warm bed, and letting my mind and body recover.

Afterwards, I could set out towards the dungeon, and begin to make my way in this world as an adventurer.

For now though, there was one last thing to do before I exited the town of Westfall. The guard outside of the gate had said that there were free guided tours of the city, and that the guides were stationed just in front of the large bell tower at the center of the town. That was where the notice board was located, too, which meant that the guides should be right around where I was standing. So, I started to look around a little, before eventually finding a tall female lizard-woman standing right in front of a large wooden sign that said, “free tours available!”

As I walked over towards the lizard-woman, she gave me a kind-hearted but very toothy smile, and asked if I was here for a tour of the town. I was glad to discover that I could make out her language without any sort of difficulty (I’d need to think later about how language really worked in this world), but for now, I just told her that I was interested, and that I’d like to see what the town had to offer. She gave me another toothy grin, and asked me what I’d like to see first – the academies, or the rest of the town.

So, this is some sort of college town, I thought.

And then, I told her that I’d like to start with the academies.

She nodded, and began to walk towards the large, important looking buildings that I’d passed by before.

As the two of us walked together, she explained that young people from all over the world came to Westfall in order to begin their careers. There were academies for all sorts of different kinds of soldiers and adventurers here, but there were also academies for farmers, and for blacksmiths, and for carpenters, and for every single other kind of skilled profession.

When she had said “skilled profession,” she had placed a special emphasis on the word “skilled.” That probably meant that there was a skill for farming and for blacksmithing, just as there had been a skill for swordsmanship. It probably also meant that you became better at your career as you “leveled up” the skill that governed it. I didn’t ask any sort of question to make sure of that hypothesis though, because I assumed that was something that anyone in this world would already be expected to know by now. But from a few things that she said later on, it became clear that my guess had been correct. I made a note of that, and decided that taking up a skilled profession wouldn’t be a bad way to make a living, if adventuring ended up not being quite enough of a source of income.

As we approached a large building with a sign of a pen on the outside, she explained that there were also some academies in Westfall which didn’t have any sort of connection to a skill at all. These sorts of academies were called “general education” academies, and apparently, there were three of them here. One was run by the Guild of the Mind, another by the Guild of the Pen, and a third by the Guild of the Laboratory. From the description that she gave, and her answers to some of my questions, it seemed that each of them taught the same sorts of sciences, like physics, psychology, and ethics. But because each of them had their own particular understanding of both the nature and the history of science, each of the guilds approached those subject matters in very different ways.

For instance, the Guild of the Mind believed that science is a tool for the attainment of absolutely certain knowledge and insight into the eternal natures of things, and that the best way to attain that knowledge is by carefully analyzing and defining each of the different Forms that manifest themselves in our day-to-day experience, such as the Form of the Good, or the Form of Justice, or the Form of Knowledge, or of science, or of definition, or some other sort of class or kind.

By contrast, the Guild of the Laboratory believed that science is just our best guess about the underlying causes of all of the different changes that we observe in the world, and that the only way to find those causes is to design experiments that provide us with new observations and measurements, from which we can then partially validate or invalidate each of our different guesses about the deepest and most underlying causes of the phenomena.

Hence, the Guild of the Mind and the Guild of the Laboratory each differed from one another about what the nature of science was, and what kinds of knowledge are possible. They also seemed to disagree about why knowledge was worth attaining, with the Guild of the Mind believing that knowledge is a beautiful thing that is desirable for its own sake (or else for the sake of the pleasure that accompanies the act of knowing), while the Guild of the Laboratory believed that knowledge was primarily valuable for the power that it gave us over the physical and the material world, and the benefits which that power could then provide.

However, there was one thing that these two quite divergent guilds really did agree on.

They each agreed that there was still much left to discover, and that the most important questions of human life had yet to be answered.

In other words, they each saw the history of science as an unfinished story, and they each believed that the greatest and the most important chapters were yet to be written.

It was this shared premise that the adherents of the third great Guild – the Guild of the Pen – were in disagreement with.

According to the members of this faction, all of the most important questions had already been answered, and these answers had been passed down to us in the books that our ancestors had left behind. For this reason, the Guild of the Pen saw no need to perform any sort of novel experiments, or to go seeking after the truth all on their own. Instead, they spent their time carefully analyzing a number of ancient books, and they sought to use their powers of interpretation to tease out from those writings the basic answers to life’s deepest mysteries, and the profoundest truths of the cosmos.

All of this meant that, for instance, even though each of the three Guilds might offer a class called something like “the rudiments of physics,” each of those guilds would go about teaching that class in a very different way. The Guild of the Mind might spend the whole time talking about the Forms that are present in a moving body, in order to try to give a definition of what motion is, or of what change is, or of what time is, or of what makes a thing a “body” at all, rather than some other sort of being.

By contrast, the Guild of the Laboratory would take it for granted that each of us more or less knows what “motion” and “time” and “bodies” are, and they would not attempt to provide a clear or a precise definition for each of those kinds of things. Instead, they would spend the lecture going through a number of recent experiments that helped to explain the precise causes of the various sorts of motions that we observe in the world around us, such as the motions of the tides, or the motions of bodies falling through the air.

Finally, the Guild of the Pen would not concern itself with either of these sorts of things directly, but would instead do a careful study of a few older texts that discussed the nature and the causes of motion, seeking to unravel the old and cryptic texts in order to tease out the deep secrets and truths that they contained within.

I had never been to any sort of college or university before, and I’d barely even attended high school, so all of these things were pretty new to me. But just from the descriptions, the Guild of the Laboratory sounded very much like science, while the Guild of the Mind sounded a little bit like philosophy. The Guild of the Pen seemed kind of like something from Europe’s Middle Ages, but the fact that it wasn’t necessarily religious – many of the older texts didn’t claim any sort of divine inspiration at all – made the whole thing seem pretty different, too. So I assumed that it didn’t have any sort of strict analogue to our world, or at least not to any part that I knew of.

Finally, there was also a certain degree of political significance to each of the guilds. I didn’t understand how important that fact would be at the time, so I didn’t pay as much attention to that part of the guides’ explanations as I should have. But I did pick up that the Guild of the Pen was especially powerful in this world, and that the Guild of the Mind was seated in the City of the Red Tower, which was the nation that was primarily associated with slavery. The Guild of the Laboratory was newer than the other two, and didn’t seem to have much of a political affiliation yet. But it did have some roots in the Kingdom of the Green Tower, and in the City of the Orange Tower, as well.

I would end up having quite a lot to do with the Guild of the Pen, in particular... but, all of that in due time. For now, let me continue with where I had left off before.

From what the guide had said, it seemed that most students here focused on a single skill or a group of related skills, and then took a couple of extra classes at one of the three Guild academies, or at multiple of the Guild academies if they weren’t too firmly embedded in any one camp in particular. There were also some students who focused entirely on studying at the general education academies, but it seemed like most of them were either hoping to become scholars themselves, or else had come from very wealthy families, and didn’t have any need to work.

Judging by her example of some of the “related skills” that you might study, and a few questions that I asked along the way, it seemed as if most soldiering or adventuring types ended up specializing in a single weapon skill, and then combined it with one of the three “defensive” skills – dodging, blocking, and parrying. Some ended up taking up multiple of those defensive skills, if they had the time – and some even took up all three – but it seemed as if most people had a primary defensive skill that they relied on. I imagined that my own would be dodging, based on my naturally high agility and my inclinations, though I thought that I might also give parrying a try, or blocking, if I ever became strong enough to wield a large sword in a single hand, and a shield in the other.

As we talked, I noticed that she didn’t mention much of anything about magic… and at the time, that seemed a little strange to me. But, I couldn’t think of any way of asking about that without giving away a bit too much about where I was from. So, I just let that drop for the moment, and decided to think about it a little later on, once I’d found some books to read about this world.

Finally, the guide explained that most of the economy of the town was run by students. The farms were kept after by the student farmers, the weapons were made by the student blacksmiths, and the treasures were discovered by the student adventurers. That allowed each person in the town to make a living from their career right away, rather than having to go out and to compete with the many craftsmen or adventurers who were quite a bit beyond their level in the towns that were scattered across the world.

Of course, since it was an almost entirely student-run economy (except for the travelers who stopped by from time to time), that also meant that the town didn’t have any high level gear or equipment, and that many things were done a little slowly, and not at the highest degree of skill. But all in all, it seemed like a nice trade-off to make, and it meant that everyone in the town had a sense that they were working together to keep the town afloat, and helping one another to grow and to thrive in their chosen careers. That gave a certain kind of unity to the whole place, and it helped to explain a lot of the amiability and good cheer that I had seen before when I had been browsing through the marketplace.

From the way that the guide had spoken of the student life here, it seemed that many people ended up missing Westfall once they were gone, and it wasn’t all that uncommon for an especially skilled person to come back here and to teach once they had retired from their chosen profession. That seemed like a very nice way of life, to me at least, and I imagined that I would probably want to do the same someday, if I ever became especially proficient in some sort of skill or career.

Afterwards, the guide showed me past some of the houses, and to a bustling little corner of town quite a bit away from the main street, where you could find most of the best inns, pubs, and restaurants. But by that point, I was already beginning to grow quite tired, and I was ready to make my way back towards the house in the woods, and to check in on how each of the children were doing. Still, I decided that I would go and come back to the residential districts sometime, and to maybe try going to a pub or two, and interacting with some of the local townsfolk.

Having at last made our way back towards the entrance to the town, I thanked the young woman for her time, and tipped her a small coin that I’d received as change before, which was the same amount that I’d seen another person tip their guide earlier on. She gave me a broad, contented smile, and wished me all the best on my time in town. Then, I made my way out through the large, wooden gate, as I carried the food back towards the little wooden home.

Tonight, I thought, I would make up a nice meal, talk to each of the two children a bit, make sure that they had everything that they needed, and then read a little about the world that I had just become a part of.

Then, tomorrow, I would begin to explore the dungeons, and to see whether adventuring was going to be the career that I would choose.

Right then…

… I was looking forward to it all very much.