The Guild Master concedes and says, “Fine, I don’t intend to make you spill your secrets, but we’ll still need to register you in paperwork and give you some sort of identification badge that could work.”

He starts thinking with a hand on his chin, then stands up and gets something out of a glass cabinet in his office. He pulls out a bowling-ball-sized stone that looks like a portal to space, thousands of tiny stars can be seen when looking into it.

He sets it down on the table and begins to explain, “All right, hold your hands onto this sphere and if I’m correct in my assumption it should read your soul for your mana wavelength and then replicate it, we’ll then hold a guild card up to it and it should attune itself to the stone. Then, when you hold it, the guild should be able to recognize if it is in your hands.”

“All right? But this isn’t dangerous, is it?” I ask cautiously. The GM gives a light laugh to my comment, “Ho-ho! Don’t worry, as long as you don’t reach too deep inside, the sphere shouldn’t harm you.” “O-Ok…” I begin to lay my hand onto the sphere, when they finally make contact though, they simply don’t.

My hands simply sit inside the sphere, the GM picks up one of the guild cards and holds it up to the sphere, holding the corner for registration inside the sphere, with his hands cautiously far away from the sphere. I-Is this thing kind of dangerous or something? The GM handles it with such care.

The corner of the guild card lights up and glows blue for a second, before lighting up red. The GM lays the card down and says, “All right, you can remove your hands now. Must’ve been freezing cold right?”

Freezing Cold?! Was the inside of that sphere actually space or something? I remove my hands and the GM puts the sphere back into the display cases, “That thing is one of the rare artifacts the guild bought from adventurers in the past, most locations have some artifacts, but I was drawn in by the beauty of this one in particular.” Huh, even a musclehead like him has a soft side for artistic things it seems.

The Guild Master sits back down again and hands me a piece of paper, “All right, now we just need some information about you which will be processed and archived by us and written on your guild card. Can you read and write?”

Wait, can I read and write? I mean I can talk, but wait, why is everyone speaking English here? A bit disturbed that I never thought of it, I look at the sheet of paper. These are just scribbles, or are they wait… When I take a glance at the paper all the text on it, which previously was a foreign language I didn’t understand transforms before my eyes. Automatic Translation, huh...So, is this some godly power, a system thing, or is my robot brain doing the work?

When I look over the sheet, some things don’t look right to me, so I ask the GM, “Erm, I don’t think I’ll be able to fill this out, I don’t have a class, a gender, or an age.” The GM doesn’t even look shocked anymore, he nods with his eyes closed and takes out a new kind of registration form, “This form is simpler, it’s normally used for familiars and tamed monsters which some adventurers might register.”

This one I’m able to fill it out easily, but there isn’t much to fill out anyway, it asked for my Name, Race, and other simple things. I hand the form back to the GM and he gives me 2 pieces of paper in exchange, “Congratulations, you are now officially an adventurer, please read these 2 handouts, they explain how the adventurer’s guild works to newcomers. When you’ve read them, we’ll switch over to your Rank Evaluation, which I will do personally.”

The leaflets are pretty simple they explain the Ranking System and what to know and how to behave when accepting and during quests. When I’m done reading the GM urges me out of the room and we head down to an open area behind the guild with lots of free space. Various adventurers train themselves and do mock battles in improvised circles on the ground. The Guild Master smacks me on my back and says, “Find us a circle Andy, I’ll go change into some more fitting clothes for your Rank Evaluation.” I’m going to have to fight the GM now, aren’t I?

I take a larger circle that wasn’t being used and wait in the middle, after some time the GM returns with a large battle-axe and a full suit of heavy armor. All the adventurers who had been fighting, stop to look at the GM in awe, and whispers of admiration can be heard from all around me. Am I going to finally meet my end today?! How the hell am I supposed to fight a guy who looks more akin to a tank than a human?!

The GM stands at the opposite side of the circle, “So, the rules of the Rank Evaluation are simple, you try to either beat your opponent into submission or get them outside of the ring, you have 5 minutes. In the end, I’ll evaluate your Rank based on my experiences.”

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I’ll have to go all out right from the start… The GM puts a small hourglass outside of the ring and asks one of the spectators to turn it around, he then turns to me and asks, “Are you ready?” I reply, “Ready as I’ll ever be!” The spectator adventurer flips the hourglass and yells, “Begin!”

Let’s use that one new Skill! I immediately start to run up to the GM, and only on the way do I realize something important. Wait, how do I even use [Skills]?! By the time my train of thought ended I’m already in front of the GM and simply punch him in the stomach.

The GM staggers back half a step due to my punch, “Wow, you’ve got some strength behind those spindly arms of yours,” he begins to reel back his battle-axe, “but I’ve got more! [Axe Slash]!” The GMs Axe gets enveloped in a pale light. Oh crap, gotta get away!

I hop back to the other side of the arena, making the GM whiff his swing. I start to think up a way to use [Skills]. Maybe I need to yell out the name? But that seems so annoying! For now, I ball up my hand into a fist and think of the name of the Skill in my mind, when I do my entire arm begins being enveloped in pale strings of light.

Ohh, that looks awesome! While I’m admiring my now glowing hand, I fail to notice the gigantic man wielding a battle-axe bearing down on me. “You should really take a closer look at your surroundings, now let’s end this! [Axe Smash]!” Lex’s axe swings down on me, instinctually I punch up to throw it off its course.

When my fist meets the cheek of Lex’s battle-axe all the light on my arm collects onto my fist, and Lex’s axe gets catapulted out of his grip. The head of the axe attempts to bend to the side but is stopped by the handle, which promptly warps to the side until it gets torn off. The head of the axe, now free from the handle flies above the crowd that has gathered around the ring, to God knows where.

When the GM finishes his swing and looks down at me, only to realize that where his axe once was, there now is nothing but a mangled handle. “What?! What the hell did you do to my axe?” the GM looks at me angrily. “I, uhm, destroyed it?” I answer, matter-of-factly. The GM looks at me and his sneer warps into a happy smile, he laughs and tells me, “Hahaha! What amazing strength Andy! You will definitely make an amazing Adventurer!” He comes close and hits me on the back a few times. “I concede! You’ve won this battle!”

Huh…That was quick! The GM raises my arm in victory and the crowd around us explodes into cheers, even I thought this would be harder. I wonder what Rank I’m gonna get…probably…A….Rank…right? Just as I talk to myself in my thoughts again, I start to feel very sleepy and my vision turns black.

_______Lex Halo’s Side_______

I hold Andy’s arm up into the air, but when I look down again to see his reaction, I see that his face disappeared and he’s gone completely limp. “W-What?! Andy, are you ok?!” I prop Andy up and ask him if he is all right, but I get no response. He doesn’t look ok. Should I take him to one of the Healers, or should I take him back to his master since he’s a golem?

Before I can make a proper choice, Andy’s chest begins to give off a blue light. I begin carrying Andy and prepare to set off to Seline’s place. A low hum can be heard coming from Andy’s chest and he is beginning to heat up. Does he have a fever or something? Wait, can golems get sick?

When I finally arrive at Seline’s place I knock on her door, “Lex Halo, Guild Master of Lunach here. Andy suddenly lost consciousness and I don’t know why. Please take a look at him, Seline!” Seline opens the door and I hurry into her living room; Seline comes out of one of the rooms as I present the lifeless Andy to her.

I give her a short explanation about the Rank Evaluation and what we were doing before Andy fell unconscious. Seline looks at me a bit uncomfortably and simply tells me, “All right, let me check him out real quick, put him into the bed in that room over there. I’ll look him over and get him back into shape in no time! You simply go back to your guild duties.”

I place Andy into one of the beds, leave his belongings by his side, and leave for today. I just hope nothing serious happened to him…

_______Andy’s Side_______

When I wake back up, I am in a completely white space. I try and look around, but again, I am unable to. A beautiful woman with long wavy blonde hair in something akin to a nightgown or maybe a toga stands in front of me.

“Why thank you for the compliment, but it’s supposed to look like a toga.”

Huh?! She can read my thoughts?! Who are you and where am I? Did I die again?!

“Oh, don’t worry! You didn’t die again, you simply ran out of juice. You’re recharging right now using your fusion engine.”

Oh, that’s good…But why did I run out anyway! I wasn’t even on that long! Shouldn’t a Motus Intrepid hold about 6 months on a charge? I didn’t even hold a week! And you still didn’t tell me who you are!

“Maybe it’s because of that cool punch move you used? You know [Skills] are supposed to exhaust creatures who use them by using the energy out of them. Else people would just use them willy-nilly!”

Hmm, that sounds logical. The only energy in a robot is in its battery, but still, more than 5 months of energy on that one use?! That’s insane! And your name, please?

“You barely knew how to activate it, you might not have known how much energy to give your new punch move and simply gave it all your energy, you know?”

Yeah…Now that you mention it, fair…That was kind of my fault, maybe I should’ve tested my new [Skills] before using them in combat. C’mon, just tell me your name now lady, from being in a pit of nothingness I can guess that you’re some kind of God, aren’t you? I’m a bit surprised that I’m not freaking out right now.

“Oh, what kind of God would want a crying and screaming hysteric person in front of them? I certainly don’t! But yes, you are right…”

The beautiful goddess takes a step back and presents herself.

“…I am the goddess that rules over this world, the Goddess of Creation, Atera.”