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---------------------Jonah's POV--------------------

I opened the door and I instantly breathed the cool air that smelled even worse than the passerby’s earlier. It seemed the air was cooled, at least something in this heat, but it still smelled like shit. Luckily, I was already used to the smell of beer and sweat, so that I didn't mind it anymore. I slowly made my way into the building. On the right side of the room, there were many tables with people laughing and drinking alcohol while wearing armor. You could see many spilled mugs of alcohol on the ground and waiters trying to mop them up while trying not to disturb the conquerors. It was quite sad to watch and the conquerors didn't care about the pitiful waiters and kept being loud and noisy, but those people were the conquerors of our city so no one could stop them from enjoying their alcohol. The aliens, who could stop them, didn't care about it. As long as they were paying the extra conqueror-taxes no one cared about a bit of noise.

On the left side of the building were 5 counters, where the guild employees work and give out quests and information. Right in front of the door was a massive stairway that went up the building, probably to the sleeping quarters. Many people in armor were walking through the building and I had to watch out so I wouldn't walk into them. Yes, conquers never walk into someone, someone walked into them…

I walked up to the ticket machines, that give out a number. With those numbers you didn't have to wait in a line, you just had to wait for the boards, that were hanging above the counters, to show your number and then it was your turn to talk to the employee. I took my ticket from the plain looking metal box and went to one of the free guild terminals that were on the right side of the stairway and behind the tables.

The guild terminals were around 2 meters high and 1 meter wide, the screen started at around a meter from the ground and was implemented into the ground. They basically looked like the ones Mc Donald's started using before the system came. I never liked those Mc Donald’s terminals, it was difficult so check stuff and they were always used anyways. There were 2 rows of them and they were back-to-back, so basically 5 per row, 2 rows, 20 terminals.

I went up to one of the unused terminals, I then put my personal terminal into the prepared slot and started using the terminal. Everyone had their own personal terminal that was basically your personal system, as an object. It was a grey metal stick, with a length of around 10 cm, which you could increase to 20 cm by flipping it open, and it was around 1 cm wide for 10 cm and 0,5 cm wide for 20 cm.

With my own terminal inside the guild terminal, I could now access a wider range of data, most were about monsters and dungeons that were in and outside the city, there was also a whole window just for quests, but also general information of the system and other stuff. I just had to use the touchscreen to navigate though the menus. I could only see the information about the dungeon spots and the monsters until layer 20, I could also see the information about the city, like the taxes and stuff. I already downloaded the stuff I could, but to see and download the more valuable information, I would have to pay for it. Quests were updated every day, so there was no point in downloading it anyways.

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I came to the guild hall because I had to deliver some mana crystals from the outer circle to the guild, but I also came here to do a quest. I needed as much money as possible. I checked out the quest I could do, but there was an awfully low amount of them, and the best paying one was inside a dungeon.

Everyone could do quests, but only people that were above level 10 could do the conqueror quests, that is, because the guild pays the credits the moment you step into the dungeon, until the quest difficulty was above D, so C upwards. The difficulties went from E to D all the way to A and then S to SSS. That was so that even if you die inside the dungeon, your family or your loved ones still got the money you risked your life for. This wasn't the case for C+ missions, because they were pretty well paying, but the risk was even higher, so the guild didn’t pay those, so people won't start suiciding into dungeons to safe their family or something similar. Not that I would have done that anyways…

There were quests about escorting people, mining mana crystals, bringing monster specific items, killing monsters in the outlands and what not. Most conquerors did killing missions on a layer that mirrors their own level. That was because you level up when you kill 100 monsters on your level, so if I killed 100 level 5 monsters I would level up to be level 6 and so on. I have heard that it will get harder after level 100 but those aliens didn't say more about it.

Dungeons were helpful in that, because most dungeons had 100 layers, some had 200 or even 300, but most had 100. Those dungeons had 100 level 1 monsters on layer 1, 100 level 5 monsters on layer 5, 100 level 33 monsters on layer 33. Pretty easy. The boss was included in those 100 monsters. The boss would be around 30% stronger than the usual monster on that level and was always in a separate chamber.

The dungeon quest I could do, was about mining mana crystals inside the dungeon. Mana crystals were what powered the terminals and dungeons. Yes, dungeons. Dungeons respawn monsters in a fixed interval, but what if the layer has its maximum of 100 monsters per layer already? Well, then the monsters will spawn above the ground. Most dungeons in the outlands were like this. To counter this, you had to install a stabilizer next to the dungeon entrance and constantly supply it with mana crystals, so it would stay stable. The stabilizer basically made the dungeon a dungeon. It made it so there wouldn’t spawn more than 100 monsters per layer, the boss of each layer stayed in their chamber and the monsters stayed inside their layer and wouldn't move up or down.

I was quite happy that the aliens bought stuff like that to earth. Without it, we would never be able to safely level and peacefully sleep at night.

When I finished checking the quests, I turned around and went to stand near the walls at the door. I breathed in some smelly but cool air and thought for a moment.

I always wanted to a conqueror myself but my initiate skill wasn't useful in fights. It would be nice if I could just do some easy quests, make money and then be happy with my family. I might even become famous? Not that I really cared about that to be honest. It would be nice to fight together with the friends you trusted and make enough money for keep my family going. Now I had to do deliveries though the city and at most I would gain around 2000 credits a month for it. Pretty damn shit. Even my mother had to do some small odd-jobs every day so she could earn another 500 credits. Just so we could life in a small flat. We didn't even make enough money so that my little sister could go to a dungeon school and have a better future. I just killed monster birds every day with my rusty sword while delivering stuff through the city. After many months of killing monster birds, I finally made it to level 5 yesterday.

But in the end that wasn't enough for a party to take me in. I mean, I could risk my life and go solo, but that would be suicide in itself, there is a reason parties are mostly made out of 5 people.

I then put my chin on my upper body, closed my eyes and took another breath of shit air to calm myself down and hope for a better future. Like my father would have said, if the world seems cold to you, kindle fires to warm it...

When I opened my eyes again and looked up, I had a positive fire in my dark brown eyes. I then saw that my number just showed on the screen and went to the counter.