“Let’s get the most important question out of the way first: Do you want anything to eat?” She chuckled to herself, then shook her head.

“Sorry, sorry, I couldn’t help myself. Okay, I’m serious now. Go ahead. Ask your questions.” She was more serious now, so I asked what I thought was an innocuous question to start things off.

“How do you wash your clothes?”

“...In the bathhouse?” she replied questioningly. Then she noticed the disparity between my skin and my clothes. “From now on, you can wash anything in the bathhouses. Clothes and shoes included. Ah, but don’t bring your tamed beasts in there. Sometimes they cause a fuss. In that situation, it’s better to use a private suite.”

“Actually, why is the private suite so expensive? A triangle? Is that even affordable for most people?” I asked, instantly going off-topic.

“Sigh, you haven’t been here long, but a triangle is pretty easy to make if you do consistent work under the Society. One person can earn a triangle in about a week, maybe two, even if they take normal tasks.” She almost shook her head again, but stopped partway.

“So, how does the whole Workman’s Society thing work anyways? With the tasks? Oh, and the tiers. We never got around to that.” I said.

“Haaaa, well. Okay. Tiers are, how do I put this, ways of organizing nearly everything. For example, regions with the lowest known density of essence are classified as tier 8 regions. In a tier 8 region, there simply aren’t enough resources, natural, manpower, or anything else to support large settlements. So any settlement or community built in a tier 8 region is called a village. Like yours. What separates a tier 7 and tier 8 region is again, essence density, population, and the available natural resources. Settlements in a tier 4, 5, or 6, region are known as towns, the one that comes before village. Then settlements in any tier 1, 2, or 3 region are known as cities. I don’t know how the custom started, but eventually, people began to call other people from different settlements different names. Villagers come from villages. Townies come from towns. And citizens come from cities.”

She stopped and ordered a couple juices, both for her. I waited for her drinks to arrive, and for her to slake her thirst, before I continued my questions.

“So, someone told me I had a tier 3 knife. How about that?”

“Well, just like regions and settlements, everything else can be broken down into various tiers. Nearly everything belongs to a tier. Your knife is tier 3, which means it has magical effects attached to it, and it was made from parts filled with essence from at least a tier 3 or 4 region. That system is used for everything. Weapons, armor, beasts, plants and herbs, ores, tools, practically everything.” She stopped again to sip her drink.

“So tier 8 is the lowest tier something can possibly be, and tier 1 is the highest, and therefore the best?” I asked.

She nodded, continuing to sip her drink. I thought about it a bit, and it seemed like a decent enough system for classification. It did remind me of something I just saw. I took out my Workman’s Society ID card and showed her the back.

“So, these are all tier 8. Meaning, the lowest possible. How do I improve them, and what do the symbols mean?” I asked.

Her eyes lit up, then gestured for the card. I passed it to her, and she pointed out each symbol.

“Okay, so first things first. You can’t lose this card. I mean, it is possible for you to leave it somewhere and forget where it is, but if that happens, you just come to the Society building and give us a drop of your blood. Then, thanks to an old blood magic spell, we can tell you exactly where it is,” she said proudly.

My eyes twitched at the mention of blood magic, given my attempt to use blood somewhat magically less than an hour ago, but I tried to keep my expression under control. I just nodded for her to continue, somewhat surprised that there was a magic spell that could track things using blood.

“Now, these symbols,” she said, pointing to the back of the card with the symbols on them.

“Every one represents a different type of task. Tasks are classified by tier, but also by the nature of the work involved. So, if you see a task with this sword symbol on it, it means the task involves hunting or killing something. The sword represents combat ability. The next one down is the basket, representing gathering or collection. A collection task might ask for you to pick up ten plants, or pick two hundred berries. Basically, find something and bring it back. Now, what’s the next one…ah, the quill. These tasks require comprehension of different subjects in education. For example, accounting for a small business requires you to have a decent grasp on mathematics and penmanship. Or doing inventory in a warehouse, where all you need to do is count all the different types of each product, and properly itemize them.”

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Again, she paused to sip her drink, finishing it off and moving to the next one.

“Then the barrel. It represents manual labor. As in tasks that only need you to move your muscles somehow. You might be asked to transport goods from the city gate to a storefront, or move things from one area of a noble’s estate to another. Maybe dig graves for the ashes of the fallen. Carry barrels of wine from a vineyard into storage. The list goes on.”

“And here is the last symbol, Mother’s Breath. Or essence, as the mages deem it. Tasks with this symbol attached to them can involve anything magical. And I do mean anything. A mage might ask you to assist or participate in an experiment. You might be called upon to be a sparring partner for a mage who developed a new type of combat spell. If you’re very lucky, or unlucky, the academies sometimes ask for volunteers for some of the events they hold. Your taming spell on its own isn’t too valuable, but if you were to learn some kind of nature spell, you could likely take up tasks in pharmacies, or some other such place.”

Finally, the perfect segue!

“The academy! Yes! How can I join?!” I asked excitedly, unable to disguise my excitement at my first real lead.

Her eyes widened, and she choked on her drink, coughing and spluttering. She waved me off when I got up to help, and she cleaned herself up without assistance. I must have really shocked her for that kind of reaction to occur.

“You want to join an academy? Why?” she asked me.

“....I was told that if I wanted to learn more, I should join an academy.” I replied to her.

“I mean, you’re not wrong, it’s just that joining the academy is expensive. And somewhat…difficult. I’ve heard commoner students complain about the treatment they receive from noble students. It’s not even like the noble students are all one collective group either. I heard a group of tier 3 nobles mistreated a group of tier 4 nobles, because their families were subordinates.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” I held up both my hands to get her to stop. “What are the tiers for nobles?” I asked.

Ugh, politics. The aspect of life I hated the most, but which could monumentally screw me over if I didn’t handle it properly.

“Um, wait, let me think. I think…. What was it again?.....How did it go…” Then she hummed a song to herself, quietly singing out the lyrics to herself. “Baronet, Baron, Count, Viscount. Earl, Marquis, then, Duke and Archduke. King!” It was a bouncy song, probably taught to children, but I got the ranks from it. However…

“Um, that song has nine tiers. Aren’t there usually only eight?” I asked.

She nodded and said, “Yeah, but the King doesn’t count. The King or Queen is above the tiers, as they say. And then there’s something complicated about how the Archduke title only goes to relatives of the royal family, but I can’t remember it right now,” she said.

“How did you learn all this stuff? I’m guessing you didn’t go to an academy?” I asked her.

“No, my parents hired an etiquette tutor for me. That’s another type of task, you know. If you’re skilled enough in a certain field, you can take tutoring or teaching tasks. Ooh, that reminds me. We didn’t talk about assessments yet, right?” she said.

“No,” I replied.

“Well, I think you asked before how you can raise your tiers? Those eights on the back of your card go up in one of two cases: you either do enough tasks of a certain tier, or you take an assessment, in the Society, that shows your competence in that area. So, let’s say you complete fifty tier eight gathering tasks. You’ve shown the Society that you’re competent in that area, and you’re eligible to take a higher-tier task. Well, I say higher tier, but your tier can only go up by one tier each time. Naturally, it goes the other way too. If you don’t complete tasks well, or fail to complete them, your tier can decrease. Now, let’s say eventually you become a tier 1 combatant and a tier 3 laborer, which are represented by the…?” she asked me leadingly.

“Combatants…the sword, right? And laborer tasks, the barrel?” I responded.

She nodded and continued her explanation. “Let’s say that happens. Even if you retired and never did another task in your life, you would be recognized as a tier 1 combatant and a tier 3 laborer. People might ask you to tutor their kids, like what happened to me, or nobles might offer you a job in their household. The Society ensures that the workers have the requisite skills they need to complete tasks. And we try to make sure that nobody posts any malicious tasks, or refuses to pay after having a posted task completed well. Anyone who acts in bad faith with the Society is blacklisted from using our services and reported to the local authorities. So people generally conduct themselves properly, workers and employers both, when it comes to the Society.”

I felt like I had a good grasp on what the Workman’s Society was now: It was basically a middleman. The company, or Society in this case, crowdsourced the manpower to the public. The workers get a decent wage doing whatever the contractor asks for, the contractor gets their task completed, and the company takes a fee for connecting the two.

“So I can just take tasks from that board and then hand them in when I’m done?” I ask.

“It’s a little bit more complicated than that. You take the task, make sure you’re eligible for it, then you can either go do it, or check with the staffers if there’s any additional information. Once you complete the task, you need to bring back proof to the Society. So, for hunting tasks, you’d bring back the corpse of whatever you killed. For gathering tasks, you’d bring back a hundred berries or whatever. For some tasks, you need a signature from the poster or whoever is overseeing you do the task. Let’s say you do a laborer task, the poster would give their signature proving you did the task properly.”

“Now, if they don’t give their signature? That’s where things get tricky. If you think you did the task properly, the Society can investigate and determine whether the poster was malicious or not by not signing. If the poster was found to be wrong, you can receive a small bonus on top of the posted payment for that task, paid by the poster. If you did, in fact ,not complete the task properly, you don’t get paid, you probably have to pay a fee for wasting Society resources, and your tier might go down. Hold on, let me just,” she licked her lips and finished off the rest of her juice, then ordered a water afterwards.

“I think I understand it all better now. Thanks for telling me everything.” I said.

She nodded and smiled slightly, then said, “You don’t have to thank me. Really, it’s part of my job. So, what do you think you’re gonna do next, Rhaaj?” she asked.

“I’m gonna apply to the academy. It’s literally the only thing I can think of. I don’t think you understand how crippling my lack of knowledge feels to me. Also, magic.” I said, smiling a bit at the end.

She smiled too, just telling me, “Well, be careful, alright? I know you already know this, but the city, not to mention the academy…they’re just too different compared to your village. It’s practically like a different world.”

“That it is. That, it most certainly is.”