Ailith had been laid in a healing room a few corridors away from Faye’s own. This one was a little more equipped for serious wounds than the convalescence room Faye had woken in. She could see trays of medical equipment, bandages and gauze, scalpels, and other items she assumed had a medical function.

The energy that buzzed through her almost made her pick them up to see, but she restrained herself.

The large, bandaged Guardian was mostly okay, as far as Faye could tell. Faye had listened to their tale of the ice wolves with her heart in her throat. She would never tell them that, of course, but all she could think about as they were talking was what if the wolves had noticed Faye on her own, instead of some low-level squirrels and a boar?

It didn’t bear thinking about.

Results matter, she repeated to herself to calm her mind. The buzz of energy made her anxiety pop up again a second later.

After the talk had slowed a little, Kyrk, the healer, had told Ailith that she would be fine but would need to rest for at least the day. They left the room, shutting the door carefully behind them. Faye found herself remembering something the Administrator had said.

“Okay, question.”

Everyone turned to look at her. Ailith was propped up in a bed, her legs were bandaged but she was smiling and happy to listen. Arran and Gavan were still in their wet, dirty armour, but neither seemed willing to remove it. Maggie was sitting with her hands on her knees in a chair by the door — she looked the least comfortable of them all.

“The Administrator, when she mentioned my class, said that the attribute growth of the class isn’t known… what did she mean, exactly?”

Arran opened his mouth to reply, but then, remembering that Maggie was sitting quietly in the room smiled and gave her the floor.

The woman smiled and nodded, standing to address them all.

“It’s a good question, Faye. The Guild has access to records from all across the continent, basically anywhere the Guild goes, the records go too. These allow us to best guide people in their paths through life. There are many different ways to get to your destination, but there are some paths that make more sense than others.”

Faye nodded. That made sense. Spreading knowledge around like that is a good way to advance society and civilisation.

Which made her next decision fairly easy to make.

“What would happen if I said that I do know the attribute growth pattern for my class… and was willing to share it?” she asked.

Maggie’s wide eyes and the hushed quiet from the others told her what she needed to know. It was probably quite valuable.

“Your system,” Maggie asked, “it’s visual?”

“Yeah,” Faye said, nodding, she then paced back and forth a few times. “Arran said that isn’t all that common, right?”

“No, it isn’t. Each person interacts with the system in the way that makes most sense for them. Not everyone is literate. A lot of people only use the system in an instinctive way. That’s how we end up with the names of classes without their information recorded.”

Maggie tapped her chin. “To be honest, Faye, the fact that you’re able to see that information is incredibly valuable. The fact that you’re level five…”

“Hold on,” Arran jumped in. He actually got to his feet too, coming to stand closer to Faye. “She said she would be willing to offer that information to the Guild. She didn’t say it would be for free.”

He looked at Faye, and she shook her head, he nodded and carried on.

“Not for free. And let’s make something clear now,” he said, pointing at Maggie. “This goes for the Lóthaven Guild, as well as any Guild no matter how powerful. I will not sit by and let you turn her into some experiment. Her personal growth is as important as the knowledge that you can get from someone like her.”

Maggie went to say something, but Ailith spoke up.

“We’ll stop you. I swear on everything I hold dear. You are not using her like that.”

Maggie held up her hands.

“I wasn’t going to suggest it!”

Faye could tell from the band of whites around her eyes that she had, perhaps, been thinking of doing exactly that and the reactions of the adventurers being the only thing that stopped her from suggesting it at all.

“Maggie,” Faye said. “I don’t blame you for thinking it. And I’m thankful that they’re willing to say what I don’t know,” she said with a gesture at the others. “But honestly, I am willing to help for fair compensation as long as it doesn’t halt my growth.” She swallowed and looked them all in the eye, daring them to naysay her. “I will not be this weak forever. I can’t. I was free to do what I wanted where I came from, and to go from that to… well, this, is harder than you can imagine.”

They didn’t say anything, but Arran was nodding along with her words. That made her feel better, less silly, at least.

“Okay, so, the stats. Where do we begin?”

Ailith had insisted that she be kept in the loop when she realised that Gavan and Arran were going to be present when Faye told the Guild about her attributes. She said something about being bored enough to gnaw her own legs off if they disappeared.

Maggie was gracious enough to accept that the adventurers were going to be part of the process, despite the irregularity of it. She had hurried off to get the necessary details organised.

Whilst they were waiting, Arran and the others asked Faye if she was really going to offer up the information just like that.

“Why wouldn’t I?” she countered. “I don’t see the need to keep it secret. Isn’t the whole point of the Guild to share the knowledge so that everyone gets stronger, better, faster?”

Arran nodded. “In theory.”

“Ah, I see,” she said. And she did. If she was honest with herself, she wasn’t sure if everyone she knew back home would have done the same thing. Some of her game-playing friends would have told her that keeping it secret gave her a benefit to leverage into something else.

She shrugged, “Well, honestly, if they want to pay me for it, I could really use the money.”

“Then you can pay us back, eh?” Ailith said, grinning.

Faye winced. “That’s a good point. How much money have I spent recently?”

“Not nearly enough to break our coffers,” Arran said, “believe me. I would have stopped you well before that point. Sure, we ration out our money because it just makes sense, we need to ensure we can pay for items we need for missions, but there’s no point leaving it locked away doing nothing forever.”

“Aye, and this way you’ll get to commission something for yourself, if you wanted,” Ailith said. “I know you’ve had your eye on the weapon smith.”

Faye nodded. She had been thinking of a sword, or three. The problem was that weapons were probably incredibly expensive. She had no real idea of the value of things here. The basics, like food and water, she had picked up over the time she’d spent doing the food shop.

“How much are they going to be paying me?” she asked. “Is it a lot?”

“Yes,” Gavan said, simply. When she cocked her head at him, he just grinned.

“It’s hard to really tell you how valuable this information is, Faye,” Arran said, instead. He gestured at the three of them. “Out of us three, only Gavan has a system that is even close to giving him access to that information. But he has his class already. You, on the other hand, haven’t chosen your class yet.”

Faye frowned. “But I have my class, I’m not unclassed anymore.”

Ailith chuckled, and Arran held up a finger, “Exactly, unclassed, but you are now what most people call uncrested.”

She nodded, “Okay, I remember. What’s the difference, again?”

“Uncrested is between the fifth and tenth levels. It’s a time of great change for most people. It’s when farmers turn into soldiers, common craftspeople into enchanters, a time when your fate changes.”

Faye would have sworn before a jury that Arran’s eyes shone when he said that. She tried not to giggle. She was sure that he was deadly serious and that for the people here in this world it would actually be true that they could change their fate by achieving a class that propelled them into the rarefied circles of the powerful rather than the downtrodden peasants.

Literal rags to riches stories.

She grinned, a little like herself, she supposed.

But then, reality came crashing back down. There had to be a reason the system gave her the class it had. She was already a sword fighter, had been for years. The system was just recognising the skill she already had and translated it into something the magic of this world recognised.

What did a humble farmer have to do in order to achieve the same thing? Secretly train in their barn for years, exhausting themselves every night and day just to try and get the chance to be something other than what their family were born into?

Back home, it was family and personal wealth that determined everything.

Here, it was a system of magic that controlled the world. Or so it seemed.

Just at that moment, the door opened again, and Maggie came back inside. She had a satchel filled with writing implements. She grinned at Faye.

“I think I have everything! Let’s get started.”

Before anyone could say anything else though, Maggie actually stopped and looked at Faye again, this time with much less enthusiasm.

“Faye, I…” She coughed. “I’m very sorry. I think I reacted badly, last time we were here. I’ve been thinking about what we said… a lot… since then. I was wrong. Will you forgive me for acting like I knew better?”

Faye blinked, then shifted from foot to foot as she thought about it.

For all of a second.

“Sure. Okay, so about the stats…”

Maggie started. “What, that’s it?”

“Yep!” Faye said, nodding. “I don’t think I was exactly acting myself. Honestly, I don’t remember what I said. I hope it wasn’t too bad. I’m willing to forgive and forget, if you are.”

Maggie shook her head incredulously. “Do you know how many times I rehearsed this in my head before today?”

“That’s okay, Mags,” Faye said. “We all do things that we shouldn’t now and again. Now, about those stats?”

Being an Administrator was a prestigious role. She had always felt that reaching the position, even in somewhere as far away from the capital as Lóthaven was a sign of her brilliance. The people here were generally stubborn, set in their ways, and less open to outside influence than most places she’d been.

That made it difficult for a non-local to effectively administrate. She’d earned their respect at least. She had earned most people’s respect, at least.

She shook her head.

Forgetting about even those few families that were hard to deal with, the town was far from an easy assignment, but she had always come at it with everything she had. This was not just a place that reflected on her, badly or otherwise, but it was somewhere she had reluctantly grown to like.

The door to her office opened and Eanraigh slipped in.

“Thyra,” he said, “I understand that there’s been a problem?”

She sighed. Eanraigh only called her by her first name when he was trying to put her on the back foot.

“No, Eanraigh, there’s no problem.”

He paused for a split second, the only indication he gave that he was surprised.

She had never used his first name before.

“She left the town against your direct orders,” he said. He was scowling, though he wasn’t looking directly at her. He was still angry with others more than with her. She could deal with that.

“We must look at the facts.”

“Are you sure?”

“I am certain,” she said. She placed a hand on the table between them, palm down. “This woman will not contain herself in the town. She will not play by the rules the rest of the townspeople abide by easily. She was not raised here.”

“That hardly matters, here or in the desolate wastes, you’ve just told one of my best teams to train a newly classed girl, and you pulled off the newest crested member of the Guild off his own training—”

“First of all,” she interrupted. “She’s clearly a woman, not a girl.”

Eanraigh threw up a hand in acquiescence.

“And second of all, that team is already invested in her. They were close to breaking their orders anyway. Why not let them officially train her, support her? That way, she joins the fold sooner. Face it, Eanraigh, we need all the combat classes we can get our hands on. The townsfolk are still looking to force their children down their family paths.”

It was Eanraigh’s turn to frown. “They have the right to determine their family’s path, Thyra. There is also no guarantee that she joins the Guild. Apparently, she doesn’t even want to be a part of what we have here?”

Thyra twisted her lips. She knew that Eanraigh had his own worries, and the prestige and strength of the Guild was a major part of that. Most of the time, his goals matched her own. In this case, however, she was worried that he would put the best of the Guild ahead of this newcomer’s.

In the short term, that might benefit the Guild.

But in the long term?

She wasn’t convinced. Her own actions had already soured this woman’s thoughts against the Guild — and against herself — because she had not understood the full implications of the woman’s presence.

“No, I think she just does not want to be forced into it. Thirdly,” she went on, before the Guild Leader could interrupt again, “I haven’t even written the orders to Rían. How did you know that I was going to do that?”

He waved a hand.

“You are going to, are you not?”

“It’s in her best interests—”

“Thyra, have you forgotten what happened in the market already?”

“Of course I haven’t!” she said. She stared Eanraigh down. “No matter what that family say, they are still beholden to our rules. Unless they finally want to drop the fiction of their membership? Rían is a full-blooded member of this Guild, and he will abide by our orders until the day he decides to leave.”

Eanraigh crossed his arms across his chest.

“Be that as it may, Thyra, you’re playing a dangerous game, throwing your weight around like this.”

She shrugged.

“The girl doesn’t follow orders,” he grumbled.

Suppressing the smirk she knew would probably cause an argument and for Eanraigh to storm out, she composed herself before replying.

“The girl is a woman, Eanraigh. It was a massive oversight on our part to fail to recognise how much that would be an issue. And does her ability to follow orders really matter when she levelled from third to fifth level in a single night, on her own?”

He huffed out a breath.

“Not when you put it like that. But for the gods’ sake, she has to learn.”

“That’s your problem, Guild Leader,” she said. She picked up a thin stone tablet from one side of her desk. When she touched it, her system lit up with information. “Mine is whether our adventurers, and by extension our citizens and the entire town, are levelling appropriately to the benefit of Lóthaven and the whole land.”

He could scowl at her all he liked, he — technically — wasn’t her boss. She wasn’t his, either, which had meant that over time they’d come to be close allies, if not sometime friends, but situations like this that strained their relationship came up more and more often lately.

Thyra just wished that she had learned earlier what exactly they were dealing with.