Much like from the outside, the interior of this particular adventurers guild branch was also made with a sense of grandeur and toughness, many different monster trophies displayed in cases along the walls, in between enourmous posting boards with countless different requests, with numerous adventurers going over their possible choices, collecting quests and registering them with the receptionints, lining another wall, standing behind a massive counter. It had some wear and tear, no doubt having lasted for decades, but in spite of this, the counter still looked in good condition, all things considered.

Looking at the adventurers, Rex could sense various auras all around him, from measly F ranks, much like himself, to what felt like A ranks, Then again, he had never met one classified as such, thus it was only his own personal asumption, this was one of the main adventurer branches in a capital city after all. Both rugged, barbarian like mountains of muscles and scrawny guys, dressed in robes and holding staffs, could be seen everywhere. Even the types of weapons he could see were diverse. From bows and daggers, to swords, axes, maces or god knows what else, alongside a shield of some kind, or staves of many different makes. It was trully like a festival in here, each person creating their own unique take on the adventurer attire and equipment.

Finding the row of adventurers, standing in front of the receptionist he needed, he waited for ten or so minutes, only a few other guys before him. Once in front of the counter, he was face to face with a lady in her fourties or fifties, notable wrinkles starting to take place on her lightly smiling face. Relatively short, dark brown hair, styled in a girly bobcut reached just slightly past her ears, just barely covering simple yet somewhat elegant stud earings. Hazel colored eyes, behind small and fragile glasses looked at Rex, her attention fully focused on him.

"Hello there adventurer. How can I assist you?" the lady asked, a nametag on her chest with the name Herberta on it.

"Two things. First, I would need something along the lines of rank promotion." Rex spoke as he handed his guild card to the woman continiueing "While I might not have a lot of quests under my name, I have done quite a bit of delving in a dungeon and my actual abilities are far above my current rank. Anything that could be done here?"

Herberta looked at his card, noting the low number of quests he had registered as complete, and the numeric value of most expensive cores he, as part of a party had handed in, The system served as an additional way to track activity of adventurers and their parties. There were numerous such parties that rerely did any quests in particular, spending most of their time delving and then selling most of their gains dirrectly to the guild for a decent profit, while at the same time allowing guild to profit just as much, if not more due to said transactions. The current system became the solution with which they could evaluate the power of parties delving, and with it, the general power of the members of said party, allowing them to be asigned apropriate rank. Sure, from time to time the system failed, but it was in rare and rather special cases, thus proving said system to be more than adequate.

Seeing the value of what Rex could only assume was Variant lizardmans monster core, indicated by the suddenly raised eyebrow and somewhat increduluous look, he asked. "I am guessing an advancement should be in order?"

"Yes, with such scores, it is quite likely that you are notably above the F rank. Would you like to apply for E rank, or try to pass D rank straight away?" Herberta asked, her voice calm and measured, no doubt having done this countless of times.

"Ow, we can skip a rank? Did not know that."

"While possible, it is not something that happens too often, truth be told. Still, the scores imply you should be allowed to do so, thus, as per the rules, I have offered the chance to do so." Herberta explained.

"If it is not too much trouble then, please." Rex replied. Following his confirmation, Herberta reached under the counter, withdrawing a rather large sized book with tough, leather bound cover. She leafed through it, untill, somewhere in the middle, she stopped, a neat bookmark placed between the pages. The first half of a page was half filled, and so, reading from the guild card, she wrote Rex's details, noting down his advancement exam request. A few minutes later, the book was returned under the counter and Rex was a dozen coppers poorer.

"Come back in a week. Apropriate examiner will be found by then. Find any receptioninst and hand them this." Herberta explained, giving him a small token with a number and letter 'V491' on it. "Now, regarding the other matter you wanted to discuss?" she asked further, remembering Rex's innitial words.

"Yes, of course. I need to employ some of guilds special services." Rex spoke, slightly lovering the volume if his voice. While not rare, people did not walk around loudly announcing themselves to use said services due to the fact that they often revolved around rather large sums of money.

"Understood, please follow me." Herberta replied, moving her hand under the counter and pressibg a button there. Just a moment later, another person came from doors behind the counter, taking Herbertas place as she moved to the side, leaving the counter and leading Rex deeper inside the building. A minute or two later, he was led inside a smaller room, two sofas placed around a table. Herberta gestured Rex to sit down on one side, and once she had closed the door, she asked. "What manner of services are you in need of sir?"

"Need to auction an item in the name of a party."

"Understood. Please wait here for a moment. I will bring the apropriate expert soon." she bowed and then exited the room, leaving Rex alone. Shrugging, Rex closed his eyes and patiently waited for said expert to arrive. Ten or so minutes later, a knock resounded at the door, followed by their opening, and entrance of a gray haired old man, followed by Herberta.

"Greetings youngster." the old man spoke up, his tone of voice light and calm, but powerfull none the less, indicating the wealth of experience under the man's belt. "So, I hear you have something to be auctioned off."

"Yes sir." Rex replied, reaching his hand in his supposed inner pocket, withdrawing the Empowerment crystal from his space storage and placing it on the table. "An Empowerment crystal. We were lucky enough to aquire it from the variant we felled. But since we had to part ways, it was decided to auction it off, with the profits being split in six ways, me taking one and the rest deposited in Light's Oak's party account."

As Rex placed the crystal on the table, the old man's eyes locked on it like a hawk, well aware of the nature and value of the item, even before Rex explained. And while his eyes were locked on the item, well aware of its authenticity, no other muscle on his face had tensed. The older man was used to dealing with rare and expensive loot.

"Ho, ho ho." he lightly laughed, clearly pleased with the item before his eyes. "You are indeed wise to act as you did. Quite a few fellows would be more than willing to act dirty to get their hands on such an item, without paying the apropriate price, going so far as to loot it from your corpse. Often going straight for said option. The guild is more than willing to take on the task." As he spoke, he took out a special parchment and filled in the blank spaces, handing it over to Rex once done. A rather smiple contract form was prewritten on it, with the older gentleman filling in the gaps, describing the item and its class that Rex has asked to be auctioned off, as well as the manner in which the remaining earnings are to be split. It had a clear guilds rate written down as well, ensuring perfect transparency regarding the services guild would provide as well as the compensation they would recieve.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

Once Rex signed, the elder man did the same and once done, showed the finished document to Rex once more, and then, placed it in a small, but ornamented box, that glowed for just a moment, before revealing another, identical scroll, that was given to Rex.

"Herberta, if you would be so kind, please take the scroll to the archive and have it booked. I would like to exchange a few more words with this young adventurer."

"Of course sir Riley." she replied, elegantly curtsying to the older man and then leaving the room with their scroll. Once they were alone in the room, and the door was neatly closed, the old man sat back in his own sofa, enjoying its softness for just a moment, before speaking to Rex.

"It is incredible to meet a space mage so young. Especially so, one without a formal training as far as I can decipher, yet capable enough to use space storage himself." and as Rex narrowed his eyes, sir Riley continiued, not wanting to antoagonize his young guest. "Do not be alarmed. I myself am one, quite achieved in my own field as well, if I do say so myself. I have this rather unique technique I have developed over the years. It allows me do differenciate between people who create a fluctuation in space when withdrawing something from their space storage ring, or whatever other accesory they have, and bona fide space mages, reaching inot their own spacial storage. Though that is as much as I can do. As for why I brought the topic up? It is rather simple. Would you be willing to offer your services to the guild? You would be well compensated for your time of course. There is never enough space mages to go around." he smiled bitterly after the last sentence.

Rex looked at him for a moment, deep in thought, before moving his right hand in teh air, as if drawing something, though nothing was happening, not even the slightest disturbance in the mana around them could be felt by the older man present.

"Do you sense anything now?" Rex asked as he then moved his hand and a coin appeared in it, as if conjured from nowhere, earning a furrowed brow from sir Riley.

"No and I dont see any space storage rings on your fingers either. How could that be?" Riley questioned, clearly confused and bewildered, having sensed nothing this second time around, while celarly seeing the younger man using his storage space.

"Do not feel bad sir. This is not something that every other space mage, as rare as they are, could comprehend, let alone use. Though I do have to thank you for letting me know of the rather obvious flaw in my technique. For that, I will share something with you."

"What can you tell me about this item." Rex smiled now, pulling out his blood sword from his space storage and placing it on the table between the two men, watching as Riley leaned forward and started to inspect the sword.

"Fascinating. I have never seen anything like it. Where did you aquire it?" Riley asked, turning the weapon over in his hands, inspecting its edge and balance, making a few test swings away from Rex. "What is it made from? For whatever reason, my senses and artifact" he pointed to a monocle on his left eye "say its made of blood, but that cannot be it. I have never heard or seen blood that could be shaped and solidified like this. Maybee, if a true vampire master smith decided to..... No, there is something missing there." The older man was slowly descending into a rabit hole, placed before a mistery and desiring to understand it.

"It is my creation." Rex stunned the man with his words, He waited for a short while untill Riley looked at him, before continiuing. "But it is just barely more than a shell. It still needs boatloads of blood to reach a state I would be happy with, And no, before you ask, I am not a vampire. Already was tested with holy light by my former party."

"How is that possible?" Riley asked a few more minutes later, now more fascinated with the living specimen before his eys than the weapon still in his hands.

"Living so far away from society and shunned by my village, I had quite a bit of time to learn about myself, I am more proficient with an element called blood, than with space, though I am not bad with the latter either. Still, with blood as my core element, I need to develop it and polish my controll over it. That also demands I frequent dungeons and other dangerous areas, slaughtering monsters I encounter and use their blood to refine my art. It is also the reson I am keeping quiet about my abilities regarding space. One rare and desired attribute can be overlooked, two, where one is unprecedented among humans would cause too much envy and greed. I believe a man as experienced and wise as you can see the possible complications."

"Yes, I can understand your point, but why then focus on blood over space. If you dont mind me saying, it is, as you have already noticed no doubt, something that is attributed to exclusively vampires, high born ones at that too. No doubt there will be zealots of certain factions aiming to dissect and studdy you. Either as a variant vampire, unaffected by holy elemnt, or human abomination, capable of using blood magic." Riley asked, clearly having put quite a bit of thought in his question.

"Given a choice between iron sword or mithryl scythe, enchanted with extremely powerfull combat equipment, which weapon would you choose to train with and develop your skill set around. Sure, the sword is orthodox, and probably you would already have some knowledge, as well as numerous possible teachers around, but master the scythe, and no one could ever hope to match you, since their weapons are the iron sowrds." Rex spoke in metaphor, though his point was easily understood by Riley.

"So, for your purposes, blood magic is just so much more potent than space.?"

"Space is extremely taxing, on both body and mind, making it not a very feasible tool for long and arduous battles or dungeon dives. As you have obviously noticed, I am young, incredibly so, and thus, I still have enourmous potential still untapped" Rex spoke, while inwardly thinking to himself 'limitless really, if one knows everything I do.' "Thus, it only makes sense for me to focus on combat capable and highly sustainable style, thus, blood magic."

Riley took in the information offered, weighting the pros and cons of such a choice, examining his own choice he would make in such a scenario, coming to a rather conflicing result. No matter how much he was trying to reason Rex's choice, he could not do so. Blood magic simply seemed a bit too unordinary, painting a rather large, possible target on his back, making such a choice rather undesirable.

"I suppose the knowledge that there are far more than just the basic elemental magic affinities would play a part in the decision making. I am surely not the only one within this country who can utilize blood magic. The lack of ways to determine said ability, or affinity for any other of the subelements for that matter, being the main reason why there are no other such mages, most likely at least. Blood is quite unique and rare after all. And do not aske me how I know. Just a gut feeling."

After a moment of silence, Rex continiued, believing the older man had digested the information "As such, my decision is rather obvious, besides, it is not like I do not utilize space either., though its place in my hands is more of a utility and support, rather than offensive power."

"It is your life, I suppose." Riley sighed a short while later, slightly tired due to all the new information he had recieved over the last hour or so. "I would advise you to somehow spread the info regarding the non basic elemental affinities. The sooner said knowledge spreads, the less you will be paid attention as an anomaly." he offered advice to Rex, seeing quite a bit of potential in the youngster.

"Already well underway there. The coachman guild should be already spreading the information as we speak, no doubt trying to get their hands on as many promissing misfit spell casters as possible at the same time. Those guys are fast, I have to say."

"Ahhh, so thats why." Riley exclaimed, understanding now why the other guild had gone into something of a frenzy. "Did you, per chance, gave them some way to find said special elements?"

"I did gave them a few ideas regarding that, yes, though no matter which they use. they are quite unreliable, and I said as much to their man in contact with me. Still, they will, no doubt, aquire at least a few of said special elements."

"I suppose thats fine. Not like their organization is inclined to join conflicts, only doing so when attacked or dragged in. As far as organizations growing, becoming possibly more dangerous, it is as good as it could be, though, I would not mind you sharing some of those methods with adventurers guild either."

"Well, why dont we talk business then?" Rex smiled, smelling an opportunity in the air to earn some additional coin.