In a backstreet near the guild, a cloaked figure sat on top of some wooden crates. At regular intervals, different individuals would pass by that alley and trade a few words with that hooded person.

“Reporting to miss, they are still combing through all the available requests and sorting them by region. They’re almost done now and going by their reaction it’s looking like the northwest region is going to be the winner.”

“Finally! That tension was killing me. Quick, tell me about some of the places northwest of here that the guild already has a few tasks for,” said Fang Chu.

“The names that popped up the most were the Kolmio Ridge and Tumma Forest.”

“Tumma Forest sounds great! You know what to do, create a plausible task for escorting someone to the depths of the forest,” said Fang Chu as she tossed a coin purse to the man.

“As you wish, miss.”

-

Inside the guild, Liza, Eliot and Ben were still sitting at one of the tables in the living area, pouring over stacks of parchments.

“Ok, the last one. It’s a mission for culling the numbers of lizardmen on Tulvia Swamp. Ten silver pieces per head. How does it look?” asked Ben.

Liza closed her eyes and concentrated. She was trying to recall where Tulvia Swamp was located on her mental map of the kingdom.

“The swamp is southeast of here. I’ve never fought against a lizardman before, so I can’t say for sure how adequate the reward is.”

“Here, Eliot. Put it together with the others on the southeast pile. How many do we have so far?” asked Ben.

Eliot grabbed the parchment and put it on top of one of the eight piles they’d on the table. He then proceeded to count how many parchments there were on each pile.

“We have a lot. The ones with the most stuff are the west region with ten requests and northwest region with six.”

“Hum, from what I recall the tasks west of here didn’t pay that great. Let me have a look,” said Liza.

They spent another twenty minutes going over all the assorted information and counting the potential gain from each region.

“Northwest is the way to go. Five gold per person for defending the town of Tolus during harvest season, ten gold minimum for clearing a cave in Kolmio Ridge, seventy-five gold for a set of heart and liver from an ogre, and at least three different herbs to collet in Tumma Forest, paid by gram. If we manage to clear them all, and with a bit of luck, we can make another two hundred gold coins in this trip,” said Ben.

“I wish. You forgot to subtract the travel and preparation cost too. If we’re really thinking on taking down an ogre, we’ll need to spend a good amount in the proper gear,” said Liza.

“Still, it’s more than I thought.”

“That’s because I’m now a novice adventurer and we’ve got Eliot and Boro here. By myself it would be impossible to take any of these missions. The most money I made at once was a couple gold from gathering a few herbs in the fringe of the Ancient Aldin Forest… wait!”

Liza looked at Eliot like she suddenly remembered something.

[Since he couldn’t talk before and was just like a lost child it totally slipped my mind! Don’t we have the ultimate guide for the ancient forest right here? How much money could we make by gathering materials from that treasure trove?]

“Eliot, do you think you and Boro could guide and protect us through a trip inside the Ancient Aldin Forest?” asked Liza.

To her surprise, Eliot made a strange face. He looked at her for a bit and then a long time at Ben, before shaking his head.

“No. Our territory was probably taken over by now and that bear, that snake and that panther wouldn’t let us back inside that easily. Boro and I could fight for a new region, but…”

Although Eliot didn’t finish his sentence, Liza and Ben could get the gist of it. The ancient forest had many strong creatures and they were simple too weak to contend. Eliot and Boro could fight them, but she and Ben would most likely die.

“Never mind then, forget I asked. Let’s go talk to the clerk and get things started.”

They collected all the parchments and approached the only clerk in the lobby at that moment, a young black-haired man around twenty years old.

“Thanks for letting us search through all the commissions. We’d would like to take these ones here,” said Liza handing the parchments back in two groups.

“No problem at all. Let me have a look at them.”

He parsed through all the documents and shook his head.

“I can only start the process here, but you’ll need to check in at the Tolus Town branch to officially take on these requests. These tasks are all from that region, after all.”

“That’s fine,” said Liza.

“Your guild badge, please.”

Liza handed her new badge to the clerk. Instead of the old and somewhat cumbersome wooden plaque she’d as a fledgling, the new badge was a small, oval shaped iron piece with her name and rank carved on it. Ben said it reminded him of dog tags, whatever they were.

She was surprised to see that the clerk didn’t smear her badge in ink like usual, but simply wrote her name down on the documents needed after looking at it once. It seemed that novice adventurers were given more respect than fledglings even on the smallest things.

“Here you go, give this document over to our people at the Tolus branch when you arrive. It should speed things up.”

“Thanks. Have a nice day.”

“Wait, miss Liza. Since you’re going on that direction perhaps there’s a task that might interest you.”

“Huh? But we just looked through all the available commissions,” said Liza feeling confused.

“A new one was posted here but a few moments ago. Have a look.”

The clerk handed her a new parchment in which the ink was not even dry yet. The request was to escort someone inside the Tumma Forest for an offering to Eleanor, goddess of life and the woods. The pay was a hundred gold coins for a group of three to five armed escorts.

Liza’s hands trembled. It was the best paying task amongst all they’d seen so far, and it was for doing something they were already planning on doing in the first place! There was no better request than this!

“We’ll take this commission!”

“Okay. It says here the minimum is three people and you have that set already. Please give me your badges too, gentlemen.”

Eliot handed his badge over and Ben looked on awkwardly.

“I’m not registered yet. Would it be possible to do it now?”

The clerk let out an inaudible sigh and grabbed a different document from inside his drawer. Annoyed as he was, he maintained his professional bearings.

“No problem at all, what’s your name sir?”

“Huh… Neb. My name is Neb.”

“Neb? What are you talking about Ben?” asked Eliot.

Ben looked over at Eliot in shock. How could he forget that Eliot would never understand his reasoning and follow along without prior explanation? The clerk looked at Ben and his betrayed reaction with a knowing smile.

“That’s quite common sir, no need to be embarrassed. Most people try to reinvent themselves when signing up to join the guild and change their names to more heroic or cool sounding ones. I’ll register you as Neb and won’t tell a soul about it.”

Liza did her best to not laugh out loud and Eliot made an “Oh” sound. The rest of the process went smoothly, and they agreed to meet their employer in the guild on the following day.

After spending most of the morning in the lobby assorting tasks, they went looking for Lawrence in the Logarth Union. They wanted to probe their merchant acquaintance for any money-making opportunities. On the way, Eliot brought up what happened on the guild again.

“Say, Ben, should we call you Neb now?”

“Hahahahaha,” laughed Liza, unable to contain herself this time around.

“No, just call me Ben like usual. It’s not like I wanted to change my name in the first place, I just did not want to leave records of my real name behind for now. One can never be too careful.”

“Hahaha… haha… true, but your face was priceless!” exclaimed Liza.

“Oh, so that’s why! You were tricking the bad guys!”

“Yes, I wanted to deceive the bad men after us, just in case they searched for all the people named Ben on the guild register.”

“Eliot and my name are already there though…”

“Yeah, I know. It’s not perfect, but at least it makes me feel safer.”

They arrived at the Logarth Union near lunch time. The union building was just as large as the Adventurers’ Guild, but while the guild headquarters was imposing and grandiose, the union edifice focused on practicality.

That wasn’t to say that the construction was shabby, just that the union, being an association of merchants, new better places to invest their money other than looking fancy.

The lobby of the union looked just like a high-end inn. A walkway led from the door to the front desk located at the end of the room, with tables spread on both sides of the hall for people to eat, drink and make business. Just as they were looking around at all the energetic people talking and shouting on the tables, they heard a familiar voice.

“My friends, welcome to the Logarth Union! How come you’re here? Were you perhaps looking for me?” asked Lawrence.

“Oh, Mr. merchant! Hello!”

“Hey, Lawrence. We were looking for you indeed. Is there a place we can talk?” asked Liza.

“Of course! Have you guys eaten yet? Let’s go to this restaurant that I know, you’ll love it for sure!”

The merchant led them to a small restaurant at one of the capital’s many backstreets. The place was noisy and crowded with people. They ordered some dishes and sat on barrels at a corner table.

“Places like this are the best! Sure, you can dine at the finest restaurant in Kalafrana, but how much would you need to pay for that? The food here is great, the atmosphere is cosy and there’s no need to fear having your conversation overheard,” said Lawrence almost shouting.

“I can see that,” said Ben.

“Huh?” asked Lawrence.

“I SAID I CAN SEE THAT!” shouted Ben.

They made some small talk while waiting for their food and only after everything was served did Liza get to the main topic. She leaned closer and made a gesture for Lawrence to do the same. This way they wouldn’t need to shout to be heard.

“We’re in need of some money. The coin we made from the gem wasn’t enough. Then we remembered some of the stories you told us and decided to come looking for you,” said Liza.

“Well, that’s surprising. How much money are we talking about? How much coin do you have on hand to invest?”

“We need around a thousand gold coins. We have nothing on hand right now. We were hoping you’d have a way or maybe we could take part in one of your risky endeavours,” said Liza weakly.

“Ouch! That’s not a light amount! It’s not like I don’t have any ideas… One could make a trip north and buy pelts from Kemoth or go south and acquire pearls from Ruel. Of course, we would have to get creative with our route to avoid getting taxed by every single landed noble on the way…”

“Then,” said Liza hopefully.

“The problem is that I’m no longer able to get credit. Well, not that amount of credit. Even though I managed to pay back what I owed on this last trip, everyone with eyes could see that my undertaking was a failure. This smudged my reputation and now people are being conservative with the amount they’re willing to lend me. They want to play safe.”

“I knew it wouldn’t be that easy…”

“But hey, if you manage to raise half the amount you need, nay, raise one third of the amount and we can talk again. If nothing changes, the pelts could be sold here at four times the cost and Boni would pay six times the cost for the pearls. Even factoring in my cut you’d have more than enough.”

“That’s a pie in the sky right now,” murmured Ben.

“Why would there be a pie in the sky?” asked a confused Lawrence.

“Never mind that. Give us three to four months. We’ll do some commissions for the guild and try to raise the money,” said Liza.

“All right. I’ll be doing one of my old routes soon, so tell you what. Let’s meet again in half a year here in the capital. What do you say?”

“Deal.”

They finished their lunch, talked some more and parted ways. Liza, Ben, Eliot and Boro took the afternoon to go window-shopping. They wanted to see how much coin they’d need to buy all the things required for their future battles.

-

After having a sumptuous lunch, Fang Chu was resting in her room at the inn. When it was confirmed where her targets were going to go, she entrusted one of Albek’s subordinates to create a suitable mission and left that alleyway.

From what she’d gathered so far, there was no way Liza and company would refuse such juicy and well-paid task. Therefore, she patiently waited for the good news while sipping a cup of tea.

Not long after, one of Albek’s men knocked on the door. He said that the targets had accepted the mission and delivered the official note from the guild before departing.

Fang Chu was delighted and opened the note that read: “Your commission has been officially taken by the registered adventurers Liza, Eliot and Neb. Please come to the guild tomorrow morning to discuss the details with them. If you cannot make it at this time, please inform us so we can schedule the meeting at another time.”

Fang Chu smile froze over, her countenance changing to one of rage.

“Neb? Who the hell is Neb? What about Ben? Why is his name not here?!”