Two Adventurers walked near, an early morning yawn escaping from one of them, both catching sight of Banst face down on the cold stone.

“One of ours,” one worried, stepping lively forward to help when the other held them back.

“A commoner,” the other remarked, seeing the rust at the edges of Banst’s armor - clear signs of a lack of proper birth. His words hardened the expression of his companion. “Leave him.” As were most who were a part of the guild, they were nobles. Commoners were unsightly like a pulsing sore or an angry red blister.

They stepped over Banst and entered the building, a building known as the Adventurers Guild where its posters hung about the walls of the city, welcoming to their guild all that loved adventure, but that was hardly the case. Like money, skills in this world passed from generation to generation. From mage to mage, warrior to warrior, talent sailed across the pool of ancestry ready to pick up whoever came next. Nobles begot nobles, bloodlines of pure talent. Commoners could only blame their ancestors for poor, talent-ridden blood they received.

However, there were, of course, exceptions, like Banst’s commoner-born parents who, through strenuous effort, managed to stand among the Wolf-Ranked of the Adventurers Guild. Sadly for Banst, none of what they had achieved flowed downstream to him, except an inheritance - an inheritance spent. Banst always had difficulty paying for food and clothing, let alone the lifestyle of an Adventurer given the repair costs for armor and weapons, healing costs for injury and sickness, not to mention the transport to travel across the kingdom to even partake in a quest.

The dream to be like his parents had begun to fade. Ten years in the guild and what did he have to show for it? To be stepped over and ignored like a dog’s smelly leavings.

Yet, sometimes a dam breaks and unleashes forces the likes of which no one could have foreseen. Deep within Banst’s mind, there were forces at work, prodding and warping, adding and teaching. The mind was a wondrous thing, capable of being invaded by foreign magic to instill effects not agreed to by the owner of said mind.

Such is life.

Banst’s body twitched without end like lightning had struck him. Only when voices of outrage grew from conflict nearby did he begin to rouse. Drowsy and unsteady, Banst left his sleep to mind the world around him, surprise hitting his face like a stone street. He had been on the ground, dried blood from mouth and nose, memory foggy. What happened?

The clashing voices rang like swords colliding - an old man and his radish cart, a well dressed clerk and his store, but there was also a third party. One upset coachman struggling to keep the radish cart’s sensual donkey away from the mare under his care. The donkey refused to be denied, its hooves clopping maddeningly, the mare the only thing in its sights.

Banst shouldn’t stare rudely, but one couldn’t blame him for awakening in a confused state to happen upon a donkey fighting a coachmen while its master grappled with words against a crisply dressed store clerk. Also, he happened to be in the way.

“Step aside, commoner!” a pale Adventurer demanded, nose upturned. Behind Banst stood two Adventurers, their armor, one of metal, the other reinforced leather, their patience thin. They had an appointment, scheduled for revenge.

However, Banst was clueless of their aims and merely bowed and apologized as was custom in the guild - to give way to one’s betters. Above all: don’t ever dare be rude.

“Stop gawking at me, you lowly thing,” scoffed one of the noble Adventurers.

Breaking the most important rule - Banst was being rude. But he couldn’t tear his eyes away from them because he saw something he’d never seen before. Shrouding their visages like a cloak of bright gray was an ethereal light.

“You’re glowing!” Banst sputtered.

Confusion crinkled both brows of Adventurers as they tested his accusation by looking at one another. They were indeed, not glowing. The commoner was obviously messing with them, or so they thought.

What Banst failed to realize was that only he could see their glow and no one else. Deep within the recesses of his mind, right next to the part where his childhood was stored of all places, was a mass of foreign memories that outweighed his own. If the memories could be accessed by him, he would know that what he was using was called “Soul Sight” - the ability to see souls.

Yet, the oblivious young man could only gawk and haw about the light to the increasingly frustrated nobles, who were now compelled to waste their time on a poor nobody. They wouldn't give him a copper wev if he were living on the streets crippled and addled-minded, let alone grant him their time.

“If you’re back here when we come back out,” threatened one Adventurer to Banst, interrupting his ramblings of light only he could see, “We’ll see you flogged and paraded around town with naught but your undergarments.”

“Yea!” agreed the second Adventurer noble with enthusiasm, wishing he had a good enough imagination to come up with decent threats of his own.

Banst was left feeling as if a cold wind was blowing just for him. His confidence was waning, his self-esteem at all-time lows. He needed a friend.

Just at that time, a familiar face rounded a corner—a thin man with a goatee, similar in body shape to his facial hair, whose confidence overflowed so much that Banst had to take a step back as he walked by. The man suddenly halted, and their eyes met, but he quickly withdrew his gaze, clearly not wishing to interact with Banst.

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“Durehn?” Banst said, expression brightening - clearly not fluent in body language, unable to notice the leaned away posture from Durehn and the look of utter disdain upturning Durehn’s thin mustache. “You seem to doing quite well!” Fluttery whites on Durenh’s shirt and unfaded blacks on the thin man’s pants - a man that could afford to look clean was far from being a peasant.

“Please, I need your help,” Banst pleaded, glad to find a friend.

“Uh, Banst, greetings and all that…” Durehn murmured. A mistake had been made on his part. He had meant to pretend not to know Banst, but old habits die hard.

“I can see glowing things everywhere!” Banst whipped around, gesturing with wide arms to the world around them. Every living being he gestured to, his eyes focused on the ethereal gray light that only he could see emanating from each and every beings’ core. “Something’s wrong with me!”

“I’m rather busy…” Durehn grumbled, attempting to rouse the courage to flatly refuse this “old friend” of his. He was a talented smithy who had opened his own shop at the age of twenty-seven. Banst was known as the “Weakest Adventurer” at age twenty-eight. Both commoner born but only one of them made something out of themselves. Clearly, one was too good to interact with the other.

Have some shame, Durehn thought, narrowing his dark eyes at Banst.

“I need to come with you!” Banst begged and made to grab him, only for Durehn to squeal - the noise causing both young men to stare wide eyed.

Still, Durehn remained steadfast. “No!” he cried out. “Don’t touch me, Banst. I am going to my smithy and you will not be following me.” With a “hmph!” Durhen strode away.

At that moment, the doors of the Adventurers Guild burst open, revealing the two noble Adventurers Banst had been perceived to be rude to.

“You’re the Adventurer Banst Vale?” one of the Adventurers asked, his face stricken with bubbling rage. He had nearly missed the reason for visiting the guild.

“…Yes?” Banst responded in query form, unsure of what he did to deserve a noble’s ire. A noble’s hate was not healthy for a commoner like himself.

“Rabbit-Ranked Banst Vale?” questioned the second Adventurer, his eyes scrutinizing as if he expected deception. He was also livid, realizing they had nearly erred in a foolish way, almost losing who they came to confront.

“Yes. May this humble commoner be of any service to you, my lords?”

“I’m Tarek’s brother, you coward,” hissed one of the noble Adventurers, Herek Vondle, younger brother to the late Tarek Vondle who had been a Slayer for Banst’s team.

The second Adventurer, Gerad Windser, bellowed in fury, “You dare hide away while your team was killed, while my sister Hana was brutally murdered?!” Hana had been the mage who was also a Slayer.

“My lords,” Banst pleading his case, feeling indignant, needing to argue against the charges of being a coward. Being considered a coward as an Adventurer, especially one that would abandon their allies, would have one ousted from most teams and seen as a pariah. Without a team, there was no work, and he desperately needed work.

His words fell short as Herek unsheathed his sword, screaming, “On guard, coward!”

Banst spared no time in turning around and running away. He was the Weakest Adventurer. Nobles were trained since birth to be great. There was no world where he beat two noble Adventurers and lived to tell the tale.

“Get back here!” demanded Gerad as if he were speaking to one of his hunting hounds.

Would anyone return to an execution on request from their executioner? The correct answer was Banst tearing away down the cobbled street, iron armor clattering, eyes still bewildered at the sight of the gray lights forming around all red-blooded lifeforms.

“My donkey wouldn’t have stopped if this coachman’s mare wasn’t such a tease!” the old man with radishes argued fervently.

“How dare you!” the coachman said, indignant, “Melanie is a proper mare, not like those mares that go trouncing around at night with any old creature with hooves.”

“I need these radishes away from my store,” the clerk seethed for the sixth time since the cart of radishes appeared in front of his storefront. “You’re driving away my business!”

Radishes flew into the air as the donkey suddenly sped off with the cart.

“Mister Lovesalot!” the old man called out in worry to his donkey, “Come back!” His beast of burden along with his vegetables were in pursuit of the mare pulling away, carriage in tow.

The coachman fell to his knees, screaming, “Melanie! Oh, sweet Melanie has been kidnapped!”

“Finally,” the store clerk sighed with relief seeing the radishes had gone only to be knocked unconscious as two Adventurer nobles crashed into him in their pursuit of donkey and mare. In truth, their aims was the driver of the carriage - Banst, who had stolen the vehicle in order to escape their wrath.

“I have horses in a stable nearby,” said Herek, signaling Gerad to come with him. “We’ll see how far he can run when two thorough bred Weslan Coursers are on his heels.”

The nobleman knew his horses. It in fact did not take them long to catch up to Banst, yet they had underestimated his guile. The carriage was left parked sideways onto the curb, both mare and donkey having eloped, Banst nowhere in sight. Only on foot could they properly continue their search. No matter, Banst couldn’t outrun them without a steed.

In a smithy that had become one of the fastest-growing businesses in the upper districts, fury was flying.

“Get out!” Durehn squealed with his face steaming red. Banst wouldn’t listen to him, no matter how many times he told him leave his smithy. Durehn didn’t care if Banst was hiding from nobles trying to kill him. It had nothing to do with him.

He breathed out deeply. His hand was forced. He would express his true feelings.

“Banst,” he declared, staring at the Weakest Adventurer, “You’re not good enough to be my friend!”

“What…?” Banst sputtered beneath stacks of leather armor, hiding as best he could, but the revelation that one of his friends disliking him was too much for him to bear.

“Take your weakness and incompetence someplace else! I’m a successful armorsmith with talent unheard of by this backwards city and this dreadfully rustic kingdom. I’m going to be the greatest amorsmith to have ever lived. Every major city will be welcoming me with open arms.” Durehn’s expression darkened, his eyes looking down on Banst beneath the piles of leather. “While you’ll be stuck here as the Weakest Adventurer until your hair turns gray and you die. No one will remember you, and on your grave it will read, ‘Here lies a fool who thought himself a proper Adventurer.’”

The thin man then spat on the ground at Banst’s feet. Beside the seething Durehn was a dwarf with red hair, an expression of sympathy on his bearded face. The dwarf was Durehn’s assitant, Marlo Fero. Though a dwarf in human lands was an oddity, Marlo had no place else to go - an outcast to his own kind. However, if Banst’s treatment was considered harsh, then what he went through would be considered hell. Durehn was not a kind master.

“Go get me my whip,” Durehn said to the dwarf. If there was any doubt how he treated those under him, just reference the whip. He didn’t own a horse, yet the whip was here. Marlo’s stumpy legs scurried as he left to the back.

Banst started to come out from under the armor pile. “If that’s how you feel, old friend.” He’d thought a friend from the orphanage he’d grown up in would treat him better.

Herek and Gared suddenly barged into the smithy, their expressions focused, adrenaline spiking, and swords at the ready.

“There he is,” Herek shouted, his eyes fixed solely on Banst. He leapt with practiced, smooth movements, his sword swinging. The speed of the attack was imperceptible to Banst. It was something he couldn’t dodge.