Since Gabbron had an idea of who Rune was, and probably her situation and reputation, she probably shouldn't have gotten her hopes up. As she'd already noted several times, the best craftsmen in town were hardly going to flock to her.

Still, she hung on Gabbron's response, anticipating something like 'blacksmith', 'alchemist', 'artificer', or any of the other typical craftsmen class types. Instead, Gabbron gave her a smile that was half a wince, as if he knew what he was about to say wasn't going to be well received.

"[Crystal Gardener]."

Rune paused. She tried to place the class name, but came up with nothing. "Crystal gardener?" she repeated tentatively.

"It's not all that common, even in the Snarl. I'm not surprised you haven't heard of it."

Rune hesitated. A gardener of any sort didn't sound like a class a guild would particularly want to hire. What benefits would he provide adventurers?

"What do you do?" she asked, withholding her judgment.

"Well, I garden crystals," he joked. Reaching into a pocket of his jacket, he withdrew a small blue-green gemstone. It was thin, a few inches long, and blocky. "They emit various effects, constantly. Buffs."

"Oh?" Rune asked, perking up. That sounded more promising than she'd feared. "Effects like what?"

Again, Gabbron winced, giving another apologetic smile. Even before he replied, Rune picked up his sentiment: nothing all that amazing.

"Small things," Gabbron said. "But not useless. Faster recovery. Stamina. Strength. Some pleasant bonuses, too, like better sleep—even can make food taste better, if you keep them in the dining hall. And they'll last forever. Or, a long time. They're not consumable, like potions and such. But they don't take up gear slots either."

Rune blinked. "That's…cool." She meant it; it was an interesting class. She hadn't heard of items that gave off persistent buffs, especially with such varied effects. Not that didn't occupy an item slot, at least.

But she was still dubious on how much of a fit he would be for a guild. While boosted stamina, strength, or recovery was obviously great, the boost had to be significant, or at least noticeable. A huge burst of strength via, say, a potion, even short-lived, was worth a lot more during a crucial moment like a boss fight than having a much weaker effect persisting constantly. In fact, his crystals seemed like something that would be more popular among commoners than adventurers. A laborer would adore a persistent strength boost that never expired, no matter how minor.

"What's it take to make them?"

"Time and care, to grow," Gabbron said. "A proper garden. Have to experiment and find new types. And, well, I'm still figuring it out. It's not a common class as I said, even among Gemforged. And I'm only level three."

"Huh," Rune said.

There was a moment of awkward silence. They were both avoiding saying the obvious: Gabbron, because he'd already implied it, and he was trying to represent himself as best as possible for the purpose of finding employment, and Rune, because she had always been bad at being direct. At least when being direct meant being anything less than nice.

"What would it cost to set you up?" Rune asked tentatively. "Also, so you know, the Gryphon Company is still in the process of finding its footing. We got our first members just yesterday."

"I heard," Gabbron said, confirming that suspicion. He had indeed been pointed her way by someone aware of her situation. Probably because of that. "I thought we might be a good fit, since I'm also the process of finding my footing."

Which was fair. It'd been her reasoning for accepting Morgana, Vesper, and Flint. The best adventurers and craftsmen went to the best guilds, just like the…less prepared adventurers and craftsmen…went to the less prepared guilds.

Rune knew what her logical answer should be. At least by what she'd heard, a [Crystal Gardener] was far from the ideal class for a guild to employ. Or more frankly, it wasn't a good fit at all. Even for a guild in as tenuous a position as The Gryphon Company.

"We've only got one more bedroom," Rune said, glancing at the golem girl who still glowered from behind Gabbron's leg. "Planning to have more built, but that takes time." Though less than usual, with how many skilled constructors of various classes were flocking to the burgeoning dungeon-town. "That'd be fine?"

"That'd be fine," Gabbron said. "We'd make it work."

By the quickness of his response, Rune could intuit he was a long distance from home, without great options for earning a living. He'd mentioned that explicitly, prompted by Rune's own mention of being from down south—a fair trek from Quarrygate, which was in the northern parts of the Kingdom of Liren.

Stolen story; please report.

Hence why he was pursuing Rune's guild of all places, she assumed. Any option was a great option, as far as Gabbron was concerned. He needed this, even.

But a Guildmaster couldn't let themselves make decisions purely on emotion. A guild should be a family and take care of its members, yes, but it was also, to some extent, a business. And a mismanaged business couldn't take care of its members.

Sitting there, her hesitance obvious on her face, Gabbron already seemed ready to accept her refusal.

"Ah…" Rune finally said. "You wanna come take a look, I guess?"

She ought to at least finish hearing him out, right?

***

Rune didn't stand a chance. Against her better judgment, she ended up accepting Gabbron into the guild.

There were, at least, some logical reasons she could point to. The primary being that she wasn't drowning in other choices, and that he had relatively low set-up costs. He just needed some basic gardening tools and a plot of land, along with a few other odds and ends.

That meant the chunk of money she had earned for recruiting her first guild members could go toward a new structure. Like throwing up that extra housing they were in desperate need of, with all their rooms officially filled. She couldn't even accept more members until that happened. At least her class had dumped a chest of gold onto her lap to facilitate fixing that problem.

A bit before sunset, the adventuring squad returned. Rune was in the process of cooking dinner for everyone—a definitively non-Guildmaster task, but she was lacking staff of all types at the moment, and had thus taken up that duty herself—when she saw through the window an exhausted trio trudging toward the guild.

Rune sighed in relief, her lingering stress over their well-being disappearing all at once. She didn't know first-hand how dangerous dungeons were, but she'd heard plenty of horror stories. Especially as a group of three, one of them without a class, they'd been risking a lot heading out.

She met them on the porch and greeted them cheerfully. Her enthusiasm dimmed as they got within arm's length of her.

"Oh…" she said. "You three smell… Um…" She searched out for a nice way to phrase it.

"Like monster guts?" Vesper asked, snorting. "Yeah. Our mage is a little too good at blowing things up."

"With a [Magic Missile]?" Rune asked curiously. Earlier chatting had revealed that spell as Morgana's starter ability—standard for most mages—and while it packed a punch, exploding monsters sounded dramatic. Then again, what would Rune know? She wasn't even an adventurer, much less a mage.

Vesper paused for the briefest of moments before she laughed and said, "Aim for the right place, anything will pop. Especially squishy monsters." She shivered. "Besides, that's not even counting when we had to get up close and personal. It's a messier business than I thought."

Rune made a noise of amusement. "Well, food's almost ready, if you're hungry. I figured you'd be back around now, so I made plenty."

Vesper groaned. "I could eat a whole cow. You're an angel."

"Yes, thank you," Morgana added. "I need a shower, as I think all of us do, but we'll be quick."

For his contribution to the conversation, Flint just grunted.

The three of them piled in, leaving their filthy boots at the entryway, which would need to be washed off later. Rune returned to the kitchen to finish meal preparations.

Soon enough, they were having their first guild dinner. In a larger guild, that would likely happen over the course of an hour or two, with different members trickling in and sitting at various tables, inside a much larger hall—more like a tavern environment. Here, of course, with only six of them, they piled around the dining table, something closer to a family dinner.

Introductions with Gabbron went well. He was a friendly fellow. The three adventurers seemed a bit confused on why Rune had picked a [Crystal Gardener] of all professions to hire, but they didn't voice any complaints, which relieved Rune.

Morgana especially seemed curious about the golem's profession. And indeed the two golems in general; Rune caught the woman staring a number of times. Enough so it started to border on rude, like it was not just the first time she'd seen a Gemforged, but even heard of one. But she was otherwise polite, so even Gabbron didn't seem to mind. Though Rune got the feeling he was a hard person to bother. He seemed in especially high spirits simply because he and Cora had a stable place to sleep now, and official employment.

After Gabbron's introduction, the conversation naturally turned to Morgana, Flint, and Vesper's first foray into the dungeon. Vesper seemed the most eager of them to regale the table with stories of that adventure, though Morgana and Flint commented when appropriate. Rune suspected Vesper was embellishing the details, based on how much apparent progress they had made—how many monsters they'd killed and how deep they had gotten. But Rune was guilty of doing the same thing for all sorts of topics, so she hardly called her out on it.

Post-dinner, Morgana approached her.

"Do you have a moment?" the mage asked, in that enunciated, polite way of hers.

Morgana had claimed to be a scribe's daughter of simple origins, but even in their brief conversations so far, Rune got the sense her education was much more thorough than that humble profession would suggest. Something didn't smell right. Not that Rune mentioned her suspicion; people were allowed their secrets. She had several of her own.

"Of course," Rune said. "What's up?"

"I need to hire a blacksmith," Morgana explained. "For a small job. I figured you would know better than I where to look. Maybe have a contact, even?"

"Oh," Rune said. She needed to hire a blacksmith? "What for?"

"There's a plate of metal I need engraved. Like I said, simple. But I don't have the tools or know-how to do it myself."

"A metal plate?"

"It's related to my class."

"Ah." Rune was curious how, but she wasn't going to go pestering someone about class-specific stuff, especially when Morgana had deliberately left it vague. She thought the question over. "Hm. I mean, I haven't had to work with a blacksmith personally, and there's no avoiding outsider commissioning fees," hence why most guilds tried to scoop up one of their own, since those could be killer, "but I know another Guildmaster. Korvus. He runs the Order of the Black Anchor. They have a blacksmith who isn't too high a level, so the cost shouldn't be too bad." She winced. "You know, as far as custom jobs go. It's a place to start. Korvus helped me out a ton with setting up my guild." He was a grizzled older fellow who had seen his fair share of crazy things down in the dungeon. Gruff but friendly. Rune could lose hours listening to him tell stories. "I don't know about cutting you any kind of special deal, but their guild has a good reputation, and I trust Korvus. So you won't get scammed, at least."

"That's good enough for me," Morgana said. "Just needed somewhere to start. Can I get directions?"