And now, here we are in front of the guild. Gino and I will be taking the promotion examination while Iggy and Marc will wait for us. About Rhea, she’s still asleep so we decided to leave her. Skyla, Father and Mom are talking about something in the garden so after telling that we are going to the guild we left them. We once again passed at the bar—I mean the magician guild but really, no matter how I look at it, it looks like a bar (I know I am repeating this over and over again but this is how I really see it).

“So, good luck with your examination and I hope you fail.” (Marc)

“Don’t worry, if ever we fail here, one or two of your secret will spread on this town.” (Gino)

Marc bid us a good luck but he is hoping for us to fail. Isn’t that contradictory? And Gino answered him with a slight threat but I got curious about Marc’s secret but I don’t want to fail this examination.

“Ah right right, Iggy would you kindly tell us what kind of examination we’ll be taking?” (Jasper)

“I can’t tell you since it’s a rule but let me give you a hint… there are 5 examination but it is easy so good luck!!” (Iggy)

I already know that there are 5 of them so what Iggy said isn’t something new or something that you could consider as a hint but I didn’t know that it is against the rule of the guild to tell what is the promotion examination. Well, he said that it was easy so let’s just trust him.

I look at Gino and found that he’s still flirtin—I mean, talking with Marc so I entered first. He’ll just follow me after he realized that he’s alone with Marc so I don’t have to worry about him. The adventurer’s guild here isn’t the same with the one in Pinar. There aren’t any adventurer drinking midday and there are no waiters or waitress serving alcohol and food. All I can see after walking inside are chairs and tables with adventurers sitting on them, a big bulletin board where there are too many paper pinned on it and the receptionist’s table? Or should I say booth since compared to Pinar, the receptionists and adventurers are divided by a glass and there is a divider dividing every receptionists. The adventurers here fall in line properly and the receptionists receive them with a smile unlike Pinar where adventurers rush towards the receptionists without queuing. There are stairs leading to the second floor and a door at the top. The second floor can’t be seen here but there are some adventurers who walk up but there isn’t anyone who walks down. The adventurers who walk up open the door and you can sometimes hear shouts and laughter whenever it was opened. Maybe the second floor is the tavern?

“Woah, this branch is clearly different than Pinar. Pinar was rowdy and here, it feels like you walk inside the bank. Except that the clients have weapons and armors.” (Gino)

Gino, whom I didn’t notice that he already came inside, said. Well, it really feels like I am inside a bank if you disregard the equipment of the adventurers.

“You’re right…”

I said agreeing to what Gino had said. I once again look around the guild and I notice that there are wooden board hanging above each receptionist booth. There are 6 of them and there are also 6 booths. The order is from left to right, [Quest Acceptance], [Quest Rewards], [Quest Registration], [Registration (Adventurer)], [Registration (Group)], and [Other Matters]. The booths for [Quest Acceptance] and [Quest Rewards] have too many adventurers queuing on them while there are 3 persons queuing at [Quest Registration] and 1 person for [Registration (Adventurer)] and the other booths didn’t have anyone queuing on them.

“Now then, where should we go?”

I ask Iggy since he said that he transported here and investigated some things in here and also he’s already an [Iron] ranked adventurer so it means that he took the examination once.

“It’s the [Other Matters] booth. They process the promotion there.” (Iggy)

“I see.” (Jasper)

We, Gino and I, walked towards the booth while Iggy and Marc went to the bulletin board to check out some quest.

Upon arriving at the booth, the receptionist greeted us with a lovely voice.

“Welcome~! How may I help you?”

The receptionist has a voice of a lady but contrary to the receptionist voice, he is a man. A man wearing a woman’s clothing that looks like it will burst out anytime soon due to his big muscles. He shaved his beard that you can see that it started to grow while his face looks like a veteran of wars and on top of it, he is bald with too many scars on his head.

I held my voice from shouting since it would be rude and I look at Gino and found him covering his mouth with his right hand while his eyes wide open.

“Please don’t stare at me that much, I get embarrassed too easy~~”

The man(?) wriggles while holding his cheeks that is dyed red due to embarrassment. If you are a woman with a cute looks then it will suit you and the one who are looking might fall but when you see a giant man doing it, it makes you wanted to puke. I heard someone giggling at our back so I turn back and saw Marc and Iggy doing their best to contain their laughter. Marc is holding his stomach while Iggy covers his mouth and lean on the wall. I see, that’s why they didn’t come with us since they knew about it. I thought that they will be checking the bulletin board but they just distanced themselves so that they can have a good time. I’ll remember this! Marc and Iggy!

“W-w-what are you doing!!”

I suddenly hear someone shouts at the back of the giant receptionist. There stood a woman wearing the same uniform as the other receptionist. Her hair is color purple, the first time I am seeing it, and it is neatly tied like a bun. She’s also wearing glasses and her face puts models to shame and for those who are interested about her breast, it is big but just to make sure okay? It’s not that the first thing I saw was her breast. It is just big so my eyes got attracted to it.

“Weelll, I am entertaining them?”

The man said while trying his best to be cute. He put on of his fingers on his cheeks and titled his head hoping that it will heal our soul but unfortunately, it does to opposite. It feels like our soul was being dragged by Satan to the pits of the hell while laughing “Buwahahahaha”. Honestly speaking, it’s disgusting.

“Entertaining? More like you’re torturing them with your gestures!! And what’s with that get up?!” (Big Bre—I mean receptionist girl)

“A receptionist uniform?”

The giant answered while continuing his supposedly cute pose.

“I know but what I am asking is why you are dressing up like that guild master!”

It seems that the receptionist is on her limit. You can see her trembling with her fist tightly close. It feels like any moment she’ll explode but, that giant is the guild master? If he wears proper clothes then I might believe it but seeing that giant wearing female clothes while trying his best to act cute… Are you kidding me?! The leader represents the subordinate so seeing him doing something this strange made me think that everyone in this guild is weird.

“Well, I always wanted to try wearing female clothes and act cutely but I see… It’s not suited for me…”

The giant drops his shoulder while he is saying this. He looked depressed but the receptionist just stared at him with cold eyes.

“Anyways!! Change your clothes and lock yourself inside your office!!”

The giant obediently follows what the receptionist said and walks towards the back door while looking down. The receptionist looks at the depressed giant while readying her hands to slap the giant if he did anything foolish.

After the giant went out, the receptionist turns towards us with a refreshing smile and said.

“Welcome to the Linabanan branch Adventurer’s Guild! I am Mary your receptionist for today. How can I help you?”

I stare at her silently while bracing myself. After seeing their head doing that act, naturally you’ll brace yourself for its subordinate to do the same as its head.

“You don’t need to be on guard… He might be like that but he’s a good person, it’s just that… he has some loose screw in his head.”

Mary smiled wryly as she explained about the giant. It seems that she assumed that I am putting my guard in case that the giant comes back but she’s wrong. I am putting my guard to brace myself to a sudden weird act.

“No… We are not raising our guard regarding that… It’s just that… Seeing the head of an organization acts like that, it’s normal to assume that the subordinate will be the same…”

Gino corrects Mary’s assumption and Mary’s face become dark for a moment and muttered “That idiot…” then it returned to the her bright smile.

“The head might be like that but I assure you that his subordinate isn’t like that.”

Even if she explains it like that, I can’t let my guard down. After all, that first impression got me and worse of it it’s the guild master who did that.

“Ahem… How can I help you?”

Mary cleared her throat and asks once again.

“We are here to take the promotion examination” (Gino)

“Can I please see you’re adventurer’s card to verify if you are eligible to take the examination?”

We follow what Mary said and gave her our cards. She put it a top of a stone tablet with a magic circle engraved on top of it and it shone with a blue color. This is how they check the adventurer’s card. Blue color represents that the holder is eligible to take the promotion examination, red if the card is fake and yellow if it’s original. I always see it before at Pinar so I am quite familiar about it.

“It seems that both of you are eligible to take the promotion examination. The examination has 5 phases and each phase can only be taken once per examination. The phases are as follows: Phase 1 [Gathering], Phase 2 [Subjugation], and from Phase 3-5 are [Match] with different jobs. If you failed 3 of them then you will be retained to your current rank and some points will be deducted to your adventurer’s points. Each phase have their own time limit which will be explained at the beginning of each phase. Exceeding the time limit given will be counted as a failure. While taking the examination, you can still accept quest from the [Quest Board]. So are you prepared to take the Phase 1?”

Mary explained to us about the promotion examination while giving back our adventurer’s card. At her question, I look at Gino and he nods.

“We are ready to take the first phase.”

“Very well. The first phase is [Gathering]. Gather 10 pieces of [Medical Herb] for each of you. The time limit would be tomorrow at the same time as of now. I wish you good luck.”

After telling us what to gather, Mary sees us off with a smile while Iggy and Marc already found a quest and they are now queuing. The [Medicinal Herb] is a plant used to create [Lesser Health Potion] and as the name implies, it restore a little of the user’s health. I have 5 of those for emergency use. Well anyways, we went outside the city and started to walk towards the forest. Why the forest? It’s because there are many of those herbs there. Well, you can certainly find it near the walls but they are too small to use and the quantity isn’t enough. The bronze ranked adventurers typically take gathering quest because they lack combat experience and not only that, they also don’t have a good equipment to face monsters. As for us, we were given a beginner’s equipment and we are wearing them from the start when we are transported here. Of course I don’t know if that is the case for others but at least for me I have them. Come to think of it, when Kaezar was transported here she’s wearing the clothes of Kaezar (this world) when she was attacked by the orcs. Same goes with Jeziel. Perhaps, the me of this world was an adventurer and he was killed in the middle of a quest? Maybe I should investigate about it later… Ah. The moment someone was transported here was the exact moment the person similar to the transported here died and this world erases their existence? I think that was what Iggy said to me before. It will be difficult to find about the Jasper here.

As we are walking outside the wall, I see some kids ages 8-12 gathering [Medical Herbs] here and there. If we are going to compete with them then it might take a while for us to gather the required amount. I heard from the guard that these kids were orphans and they were taken care of the orphanage inside the town. The orphanage teaches the kids about different works depending on what they wanted to do when they grow up.

We walk past them and headed straight in the forest. The forest is 20 minutes’ walk from the gate and the closer you get to the forest, the fewer the people that you will see. The forest is the dens of different monsters, well, I say different but they are just goblins and wolves in the shallow part of the forest so it is relatively safe for the adventurers. As we go deeper on the forest, we harvest and fought the monsters residing inside. After an hour or so, we already got the required herb so we decided to go back. Both of us have ten herbs, 10 goblin’s ear, 10 wolf’s fang, 10 fur, and 10 pieces of wolf meat. There are also some club, rusty sword and daggers dropped by goblins.

The time limit is tomorrow but we decided to finished it quickly and take the next phase tomorrow. As we walked inside the guild, we saw Iggy, Marc and the strength type Magician chatting with each other. The strength type Magician smiles brightly while talking with them and she looks cute making me wonder if she was the same person who has greater strength than me.

We proceeded on the [Other Matters] and the guild master is there. He’s not wearing the female uniform but the male ones. A butler like clothes. Upon seeing him, we hesitated to come near but the guild master sees us and signed us to come near.

“Welcome to the Linabamanan Adventurer’s guild. How may I help you?”

The voice and tone is manly and adding to his big build, you will feel that you are facing something terrifying… Or if I should say, it feels like we are facing a bear in the wilds, not that I encounter one before. Before it feels like we are talking with a pervert but now it feel like we are facing the final boss.

Seeing us bewildered by his action, he scratches his bald head and said.

“Did my real voice terrify you that much? If you want I can also use this voice~~” (Guild Master)

The first part was said by his ‘real’ voice and the last one was said using the ‘trying-too-hard-to-be-cute’ voice which can easily pull a soul to the depths of the hell.

“N-no, please use your original voice. We preferred it than the latter.” (Gino)

“Is that so? It’s a shame.”

The guild master said this while looking depress. His shoulders are dropping and his head is looking down. Seeing the final boss look-alike acting like this isn’t cute. It looks like the final boss was regretting that his offer of giving the half of the world to the hero was rejected and now he’s going to kill someone with a great potential.

“So how can I help you today?” (Guild Master)

The guild master once again looks straight to us and smiles widely but instead of making him look friendly, he looks like a devil that fooled a human anticipating the taste of his soul after the contract was done.

“Uhhm… We are here to finish the phase one of the promotion examination.” (Gino)

Gino said the whole sentence without stuttering! This is an unbelievable! Especially if you are facing the final boss at low level!

I admired his courage but when I look closely at him, his knees were trembling and it looks like that if you pat him then he would fall. But even if that’s the case, I admired him. His feat isn’t something that any human could do.

“Is that so? So what phase are you in?”

The guild master (final boss mode) asked us while he’s flipping a record book. Maybe he’s looking if we are really taking the examination.

“It’s still phase one and we already gathered the enough herbs needed.”

As I said, I put the pouch containing 10 herbs to the counter and Gino did the same. The guild master (final boss mode) stops flipping the record book and look at the pouches at the desk. He opened one and checks each herb one by one.

“By the look of it, it came from the forest right?”

The final boss (guild master--) wrong, guild master (final boss mode) said while he keeps on checking the herbs presented by Gino.

The guild master (final boss mode) looks at us after checking the herbs. His eyes are sharps and combine it with his big build, he’s very intimidating. He really looks like the final boss of a game. If someone said to me that he’s actually a demon lord I will believe them.

“Congratulations on passing the first phase. Now, would you like to take the second phase?” (Guild master)

He said with a cheerful voice, no not the female kind of voice it sound like he’s having fun.

“I would like to rest for today…”

When I voice out my opinion, Gino nodded. Actually, who wants to be received by this giant man? I hope that the onee-san from before will be here tomorrow. We quickly left the guild leaving Mark, Iggy and Rhea.

I just realized that the first impression is really important. If we didn’t see him like “that” before then I think we won’t survive the final boss vibe of his. Being dragged to hell is still preferable than facing the final boss when you’re still low level.