This wasn't the first time Cecil and Lucia went to Forest Hill Town. The two of them had already gone to the town a few times in the past because they had to accompany some of the villagers to buy and sell things since not every week the caravan merchants would visit their town that was all the way out in the sticks, so the journey to the town was rather uneventful.

'I've been to Forest Hill Town once or twice already since I've been staying in Fauxe Village. Only this time it's just me, Silver and Lucia.'

Cecil planned on registering the group at the adventurer's guild in town and take up requests to help around the town. Hopefully, monster subjugation quests or escort quests. He wasn't sure how the system here works, so he would have to see it for himself. He didn't think about checking things out before on their previous trips to the town simply because he didn't even know about the adventurer's guild.

Mr. Zaqi only bothered to inform him about the place when he finally made the decision to leave the village. The marketplace that he would go to with the villagers in the past was located directly opposite of the direction where the adventurer's guild was, so there was simply no way for him to even make any contact with the guild at all.

'Although I've been to Forest Hill Town already, it was always with the village entourage and the guild's location was in the opposite direction of the marketplace. Quite unfortunate.'

Cecil hoped that the adventurer guilds in Alterna didn't operate too much like those guilds he's read in the fantasy novels back on Earth. If they did, then he and Lucia may have to spend 1 or 2 months at the town just to raise their adventurer ranks before they could take on escort and subjugation quests. He wanted to emphasize more on escort quests since with those types of quests, the group would be able to travel around Urrugdrasil while earning money at the same time.

They could go traveling around solo, but with the dangers of the continent being so high, it was better to take the safer way out, since they were still just a pair of 14-year-olds. Although it would decrease their traveling speed, it's not like they were doing anything urgent.

'Finding my family is the priority, but I won't rush things since I can't actually confirm if they were even transported to this world like me.'

Cecil was in deep thought until Lucia snapped him out of his reverie.

"...el...Cel!"

"Huh? What is it, Lulu?"

"I called you a couple of times, but you were just spacing out. Anyway, after registering as adventurers, what's our next plan?"

"We'll take on simple quests for 3 days or so. Get a feel for how being an adventurer is like. If there's a ranking system, raise our ranks for a bit, then go take on higher-level quests."

"Okay, but how long are we planning on staying at Forest Hill?"

"Not long, if we could quickly take on an escort quest, then we might only be there for 2 weeks or so. Anyways, it depends on how quickly our rank rises until we can take on those quests."

"Okay."

"What's up Silv?"

Silver raised his snout and barked at Cecil, asking if he should start sprinting faster towards Forest Hill Town. As if he got the message, Cecil nodded and this prompted him to hold onto Lucia even tighter.

"Lulu, Silv wants to go faster, hold on tight!"

"M'Kay."

Lucia responded by wrapping her tails around Cecil and grabbing ahold of Silver's fur. Seeing them ready, Silver increased his speed and the wolf shot forward like a bullet. With the scenery quickly changing around them, Cecil felt like they were riding on a car instead of on a wolf. The last time Cecil went with the villagers to Forest Hill, it took the group about 3 hours or so on foot, but with the speed that Silver was sprinting at, they could make it in less than an hour.

Sure enough, in no less than an hour, the group already saw the walls and gates to Forest Hill Town in the distance. There was a line outside the gates with people queuing up to get in after an inspection. The inspections didn't really entail too much, just a brief show of one's identification and such. This was another reason why Cecil wanted to register as adventurers. It was for the ID.

Normally, when you wanted to enter or exit a town or city, you would have to provide a valid ID. If you were a citizen of said city or town, then you could easily apply for an ID at the City's administration center as long as you had a house in, or in the vicinity of the town or city, but since Cecil and Lucia would be traveling the land, they would be under the category of wanderers and for wanderers like them, the next best thing would be having the identity of an adventurer, mercenary, or a merchant.

Cecil and Lucia obviously didn't have an ID of either one of those occupations, but they did have a recommendation letter from Fauxe Village's chief. This letter would let the group into the city without the need of an ID, but of course, the recommendation letter could only be used once and the next time they wanted to enter the city they would no longer be able to use it. So, applying for an ID at one of the guilds was something Cecil and his group had to do.

As for why he chose the Adventurer's guild and not any other guild, it was because it was the easiest place to register yourself for an ID. The Mercenary guild had an age limit of 21 years and older, so he couldn't register there since he was 7 years below the limit while at the merchant's guild, one would need a recommendation letter from a merchant, city mayor, or town leader while having 1,000 credits on you.

A village chieftain's recommendation letter wouldn't cut it, so Cecil wouldn't be able to use the one he had on him and as for having 1,000 credits, that was pretty hard since it was a rather hefty sum of money. Speaking of credits, this was another thing Cecil found intriguing after arriving at Alterna.

From the novels he's read back on Earth, normally you would think that because the setting on Alterna is so fantasy-like and such; copper, silver, and gold would be the mainstream currency. Not here though. On Alterna, the currency used internationally, that's right, internationally, is actually called credits. It was an invention from a magus that was experimenting on imbuing magic properties onto objects. Just like with the light stones from before. But, instead of something that was only activated once or twice and being a consumable, what this magus wanted was something that was perpetually sustainable.

'And that's where this little card that I have on me came from.'

The card that Cecil was holding was the size of an ID or bank card from back on earth and ironically this card, which was made out of some metal here on Alterna actually acted as, well, a bank card. The metal that was used to make this card was actually a common magic metal that had a high affinity with magic. After being enchanted with the spell that the previous magus invented, the card could forever hold mana inside.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Then by enchanting a specific calculation spell on the card, it was possible to calculate how much mana was stored inside. Well, you then wonder, wouldn't that make mages the richest people on Alterna since they can imbue magic infinitely into the card? Well, that's the genius of the design. Not just any type of mana could be imbued into the card. A mage from the last era was actually able to convert gold into mana with the use of alchemy.

Through the ages, this alchemy technique was further perfected and now the mana signature from gold, silver, or copper would then be imbued into this magic bank card. Since then, this is what this world's currency became. The concept of credits was very convenient. It was so convenient in fact, that Cecil thought, 'You wouldn't even have a need to go to a bank or ATM machine just to withdraw money. Since the money would be with you all the time!'

Of course, there were still banks out there. It's just that these banks had very different functions than a bank on Earth. You could go to the bank to swap metal currency to credits and vice-versa, track the flow of currency to determine any economic trends, which would then be relayed to the merchant's guild and used according to their needs, and lastly, the banks were there to keep a record of bank card ownerships.

The technique to swap metal currency and credits was given to all the banks of the world, but there was only one particular bank that was actually the source of this technique. It was the bank that the mage who perfected the currency exchange spell created and this bank's name is the Bank of Alterna.

The Bank of Alterna had the authority and power to actually have influence on every single continent on Alterna. This was because every kingdom and empire on every continent, with the exception of the Non Continent, had come to an agreement after this 'bank card' was created. The agreement was called the Alterna Currency Accords. There weren't really any specifics about these accords from Lucia's family library, but there was one obvious agreement from these accords, and that was to acknowledge 'credits' as the universal currency.

You could still use metal currency in small towns and villages, but most upper-scale towns and cities would use credits as their currency. You could still bring metal currency with you, but it would be better to exchange it into credits at a local bank, if there was no branch of the Bank of Alterna in a town or village. There were many different banks in upper-scale villages, towns and cities, but the one thing all these banks had in common, was that they'd have some sort of affiliation with the Bank of Alterna.

Without the Bank of Alterna's permission, you wouldn't be able to open up a bank. This was because without a license from the Bank of Alterna, you wouldn't be able to use the currency exchange spell. Even if you wanted to find a backdoor, the problem was that the spell was so complicated that even trying to replicate it was almost impossible to do. Of course, there were some who succeeded in stealing or replicating the technique, but they had to face the consequences of their actions.

Anyone without a license that used the currency exchange spell would have breached an amendment from the Alterna Currency Accords and would be hunted down and jailed. The Accords gave the Bank of Alterna permission to execute perpetrators on site if they were to resist arrest.

Well, the bank cards were a neat feature of Alterna, and Cecil honestly thought that it's way more convenient than back on Earth. Since the banks of the world kept a record of your bank card, you wouldn't have any worry of being robbed of your wealth.

Also the only way anyone could access a bank card was by using mana and every living being on Alterna had their own unique mana signature. This bank card had a bio-metric encryption on it, and it wasn't even an intentional one. The functions of the bank card weren't only applied on the currency of the world, but it was also applied on ID cards as well.

While Cecil was left thinking back on the information that he studied in the past two months, the group finally arrived at the line where everyone was queuing up. Cecil and Lucia felt very much conspicuous while staying on top of Silver, so the two immediately dismounted.

"Cel, catch me!"

"Huh?"

Hearing what Lucia said, Cecil, who just got his feet on the ground, quickly turned around and saw her jumping right off Silver.

"Woah!"

Cecil quickly caught Lucia and placed her down on the ground.

"Hey! That's dangerous!"

"Hehehe~"

Cecil shook his head at her antics. He patted her on the head before looking forward and saw that they were lined up behind a wagon whose people seemed a little bit on edge. The people ahead of them were really surprised to see a huge, silver monster wolf running towards them at top speed from the distance, so the wagon's people were all tensed up and ready to jump into battle. Even the town guards were rushing over from afar, but after seeing two teenagers dismount from the wolf and seeing the wolf lie down soon after, only 2 of them went over to inspect the situation while the others returned to their station in front of the gate.

"Hey! You two!" one of the guards called out.

Seeing that their arrival startled many in the line, Cecil replied hesitantly, "Uhh, is anything wrong, sir?"

"Just asking, but is this... wolf, your pet?" the guard asked while stealing glances over at Silver.

"Uhh, yes, he's Silver and he's our mount as well as our companion."

"O-okay." Hearing the reply, the guard looked a bit relieved and somewhat dropped his guard.

Silver barked at the guards before turning away. Seeing Silver act so docile, the guard continued, "What's your business in town?"

"We're here to register as adventurers. We have a recommendation letter from Fauxe Village."

"Okay, but just a heads up. You won't be able to take your pet inside of the town. You can only drop him off by the stable just outside the town's gate. Another guard will show you the way when your credentials have been inspected later at the gate."

"Alright, thank you sir."

The two guards quickly went back after taking another glance at the huge silver wolf. Cecil got out of line to look ahead and saw that the line was pretty long.

'This may take a while.'