As I was clutching my head in worry, Masa was pointedly ignoring me and asking the guild employee about how to prove our kills instead. The latter then showed us a screen, well, he called it a crystal slate, but it was clearly something like a magical touch screen. When I placed my hand on it, the screen glowed and showed my status as well as the number of monsters I had killed so far. Now this was useful! I seemed to have killed 53 Lesser Goblins, 37 Great Ants, 25 Blobs, 16 Great Slugs, 32 Goblins, 8 Giant Snails, 4 Giant Leeches and 14 Hobgoblins. Hmm, mostly pests and small fry, I guess. I didn't dare to tackle the more dangerous ones until Masa came along after all.

Masa, on the other hand, had vanquished a larger variety of creatures including Giant Rats, Great Hoppers (which I assumed were huge grasshoppers), Vamquitoes (vampire mosquito, maybe?) and Poison Caterpillars. Come to think of it, most of the monsters were scaled-up insects or creatures we would consider pests. Were adventurers actually professional exterminators instead? I didn't really mind since we got experience out of it and were helping people though. Plus it was great that we didn't need to hunt goblins all over again!

The guild employee seemed impressed with our kills and urged us to register as adventurers right away. It seemed odd to me that he was so eager to pay us, but maybe the guild simply wanted the credit for the kills. I glanced at Masa again and he had his hand on his chin in a contemplative pose. Nice! I was tempted to snap a photo with my phone but it would be difficult to explain away the device to the locals so I desisted. Instead, I just gazed at him until he caught me staring, then coughed and averted my eyes.

"All right, we'll register as adventurers," said Masa at last. "What do we need to do?"

"Excellent," said the guild employee with a smile. "Please follow me back to the counter and I will need you two to fill in some forms."

We filled in the required forms, which were once again in English for some reason. It was my first time writing on parchment with a dip pen! The pen was made of a beautiful dark blue feather that fascinated Masa. He asked the guild employee what bird it was from, but unfortunately, the young man didn't know. The parchment was thicker and rougher than the smooth paper we were used to, and a sort of beige rather than white.

As for the details of the form, we were only asked to write our names, age, gender, magic affinities and main weapon. There was no registration fee and the ranking system seemed to be based on the number of requests fulfilled. The ranks were based on alphabets, from F to A. I was beginning to suspect that there was some automatic translation system at work here. That reminds me, I hadn't questioned the fact that Feyril spoke to me in English as well. The statuses we saw via Inspect were also in English weren't they? Was this really another world or was it some elaborate hoax? But what about the magic?

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I pondered this matter for a while, but finally decided not to care and just enjoy the "game" as it was. The fact that everything was in English just made things simpler. Fine, let's just go with that. Masa didn't look like he was thinking about all that stuff anyway.

After we registered, we were given our guild cards, which were thin sheets of metal slightly smaller and narrower than a credit card. There was a hole in the corner for a chain to be attached since some people wore them like dog tags. Our names were etched onto it and they had a magic card reader that could display the rank and the requests that the owner of the card had completed. The card even had a stored value that could be spent at guild-affiliated shops and taverns. So it really was a credit card in the end!

It turned out that the stored value were the rewards from the regular guild requests that we had already fulfilled. I glanced at the list displayed on the screen and there were "Vanquished 30 Goblins" and "Vanquished 30 Great Ants" on mine. That gave me a total reward of twenty-five silver. Masa had earned quite a bit more from killing the Giant Rats and Poison Caterpillars too. Unfortunately, the rewards from these regular requests could only be received once. Maybe it was a kind of bonus to lure in new adventurers like us. The guild employee did inform us that we could still get rewards from regular requests when we completed them multiple times, like five, ten and twenty times. Twenty times would mean killing six hundred goblins?! That sounded crazy...

More importantly, we now had money! This might be the first time I had earned so much money on my own! Masa also looked pleased, but not that surprised at the amount. Maybe he had worked part-time before, so this much didn't impress him. "Let's go find somewhere to spend it!" I told him eagerly. "Getting proper armour and other equipment would be nice!"

"Before that, we need to find a shop that sells potions," he said thoughtfully. "We don't have that much time, remember?"

I deflated instantly. He was right. In my excitement I had forgotten that I had to go back to see my grandma. Seeing my mood plummet, Masa patted me on the head and said, "Don't worry, if we can find the teleports they advertised, we can come back here as often as we like, right?"

"That's true. I just hope they're not too expensive for a couple of rookie adventurers," I replied, looking back up at him. "By the way, did you just pat me on the head?"

"Uh...sorry, I didn't mean to--"

"No, it's fine. In fact, it felt rather nice," I said with a grin. "Do it again!"

He turned red and gave a resounding "No!"