I wasn’t sure what awaited me at the Monster Hunter’s Guild, but I certainly didn’t expect it to appear as a random storefront, just like every other shop on the street. The only thing that set it apart was the Monster Hunter’s Guild logo etched into the glass windows. The logo was in the shape of a sword, with the letters MHG underneath.

Once inside, it reminded me a little bit of the bank. The only difference was that instead of booths, there were a couple of tables set up around the place, small tables with leather chairs on the side. The whole place was completely deserted. There was a counter towards the back of the building, with an old school chalkboard sign in front of it that said if unattended, ring bell.

I went over and tapped the bell in a rhythmic pattern. A gruff voice called out from somewhere deeper within the building.

“Hold your horses. I’ll be right there.”

I held my horses, and then a grizzled old warrior came limping out of the back of the Guild. He had a long white beard, and I need to be very clear here. It wasn’t gray. It was white, like the color had fled it decades ago. He had a scar running from his forehead, over his eye, and down onto his cheek. This guy had definitely seen his share of combat over the years. His eyes were piercing. Even at his advanced age, he was still guarding himself against threats that might come from any direction. Those eyes immediately locked onto the sword that hung from my hip.

“So you’re Joseph’s grandson, are you?” he asked. The gruffness in his voice had mostly disappeared now.

I said that I was, and quietly relieved that I didn’t have to go through the whole story.

“You must be Ben ironside. Carl and Jimmy said I should probably stop by and see if you’ve got any monster hunting work. I’m in a tight spot and need to get some coin flowing in while I’m waiting for my first harvest to mature.”

Ben grunted a snort of laughter. “Just because your grandpa’s sword is hanging from your hip doesn’t mean that you’re ready to go and hunt monsters, kid. What makes you think you have what it takes?”

I shrugged. “To be honest, I don’t know that I do. But I’ll never figure that out if I don’t give it a shot, will I? I’ve grown up in the city my whole life, so there’s not much call for monster hunting. But I want to learn everything I need to know if this town will be my new home. If monsters wander in the wild, at some stage they’ll wander onto my farm. I need to know how to defend myself.”

Ben grunted. “I suppose you’re right. It’s just odd seeing someone else wear your grandfather’s sword. Did he tell you that it has a name?”

I shook my head. “No, he never told me. It was packed away in his shed behind all of his farming tools. I barely even noticed it there, but something told me I should take it and put it on. Just in case.”

“Well, at least you've got some self-preservation instincts, so that’s something, I guess. But I’m not going to send you to your death just like that, kid. You’ll need training before you qualify for a monster hunting licence, and you’ll need to pass a test that I’m going to set for you. Only after that will you be able to accept contracts from the guild.”

“How many monster hunters do you have here in the valley?”

“Not as many as we need, so I’m more than happy to arrange some instruction to start. Maybe in a week, once you've learned the basics of how to keep yourself alive and unchewed on, we can talk about contracts.”

I nodded.

“Lance isn’t here now, but he's due back by this afternoon. If you truly mean to go ahead with your training, can you come back tomorrow morning, say around 10 o’clock? I’ll make sure Lance is ready for you. I assume you’d like to keep training with your grandfather’s sword?”

“I would. But I’m not averse to learning whatever techniques you think would be best for me to become a successful monster hunter. What’s the sword’s name?”

“It’s called Sunstrike.”

“Sunstrike? That’s a strange name for a sword.”

“Your grandfather only used that sword to defend his farm, and he meant to pay homage to the reason for his farm’s success. The sun is what causes your plants to grow, of course.”

I nodded. “Sunstrike, huh? I guess that’s as good a name as any.”

“Good. A true monster hunter knows that the best weapon for the job will depend on the kind of monster you're trying to hunt. Axes, spears, swords, shields, and bows are best suited for different classes of monsters. Oh my stars, look at me already starting a lesson. Come back tomorrow, kid. Lance will figure out where you're at skill-wise, and then we can work up from there.”

“Do you have any tips for me if I should be beset by monsters before our instruction begins?”

“Stick them with the pointy end. If you can’t, run.”

A chill tingled up my spine at those words. I wondered just how probable it was that I would be attacked by a monster in the coming day. I wanted to get my cucumbers and onions planted today, so they had enough time to mature properly. I wasn’t sure whether a single day would make all that much of a difference, but Grandpa Joe had said to plant it as early as possible to ensure a decent harvest.

Ben must have been able to sense my apprehension. “Don’t worry, kid. The worst you’ll probably see on your farm at this time of year are some small slimes looking for food outside the forest and some hungry birds. That’s about it. Most animals, especially the predators, are either pregnant or tending to the new young. There are plenty of prey animals in the forest for the predators the feast upon, so there’s no real reason for them to leave just yet. That being said, I’d always recommend vigilance.”

I grabbed the handle of my sword and padded it reassuringly. “I’ll keep wearing Sunstrike. I’d rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it.”

Ben grinned. “Aye, now that’s wisdom.”

I left the guild happy that Ben Ironside would arrange my training to begin the next day, but now I had to start attending my errands.

I walked around the town's main street trying to get an idea of exactly what kind of shops were here, the kinds of services I might need to access and get an idea of where everything was. Two streets that intersected made up the central business district of Yucaborough. Bazaar Street contained all the shops, and Walker Street crossed it.

There was a place called a service hub on Walker Street that had many different names of government departments listed on a sign outside. It looked like a multi-purpose customer service center for dealing with the government. The Department of Transport had a presence here, and I would need to go there to get the truck transferred into my name once I got the safety certificate.

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There was also a presence from the education, rural industry, natural resources, extranatural threats, and communities departments here. Some of those department names rang a bell from my previous life, but I had absolutely no idea what an extranatural threat was. Could that be government terminology for monsters? I had no idea. But suppose the Department of Rural Industry was anything like the rural support departments in the world from which I came, there might be some different grants and services that I could access through them that I wouldn’t be able to get anywhere else.

Just further down Walker Street was another more laidback coffee shop that looked like it catered to an older crowd than Morning Ritual. It all seemed very restrained and cozy. Don't get me wrong, Morning Ritual was cozy and inviting too, but this was cozy in a completely different way. It was like a coffee shop run by your grandma, who likes crochet and doilies. There was no place for live music here, but they did advertise that they had the best scones in Yucaborough.

I did find one other store of particular personal interest. It was simply called The Hoard, and beneath the logo – a dragon sleeping on a pile of books – it said for proud bookwyrms. The world beyond the windows was a wondrously packed bookstore with shelves that ran from floor to ceiling, completely overflowing with both newish and well-loved books.

Back in my old life, reading was a passion of mine that stretched all the way back to my childhood. I was born at the same time that video games were really taking off, but that’s not where my love of stories began. My family was so poor that we could not afford our own video game system or games. I always loved playing them, but they only ever happened when I was at my more well-to-do friends’ houses. I’m not proud to admit this, but sometimes my friends had to tell me when it was time to leave. I would be too engrossed in the games that they could play whenever they wanted. I lived in a small town with limited funds, and my meagre allowance of pocket money was saved and spent on books.

There was a little secondhand bookstore near my house called The Book Exchange, and you could bring your old books in to sell and purchase other secondhand books at a much lower price than buying them brand new. By the time I was in high school, I had read through many middle-grade chapter book series like Goosebumps, Animorphs, and a bunch of Star Wars books and had graduated into reading more adult fiction.

I wasn’t the fastest or strongest reader, but I would still go through a novel every two to three weeks. It was then that I discovered my love for epic fantasy, and I churned through as many old 70s and 80s Sword & Sorcery novels as I could. These were only fifty cents to a dollar at The Book Exchange, so I could spend a week’s pocket money and have a few months’ worth of entertainment.

The only problem was that the availability at the store was pretty limited. Sometimes if I really liked the series, I would just skip a book if I couldn’t find it, and I would make up the stories of how the characters left off from one point and arrived at the next. When I finally went back to fill in those gaps, I was usually wrong, but that was half the fun.

I gazed through the bookstore's window in this new world in Yuca Valley and saw a section marked as Fantasy. My heart rate quickened when I realized there was an entirely new universe of fantasy novels to read. I headed inside the bookstore, unable to contain my excitement.

An older middle-aged woman sat behind an old school desk scribbling in an. She looked up at me as I walked into the store and smiled with kind eyes.

“Hello dearie, can I help you find something in particular?” She wasn’t wearing a name tag and didn’t offer her name.

I almost giggled with giddiness. “I’m not looking for anything in particular at the moment, but I am a massive fan of fantasy novels. Sword & Sorcery is a particular favorite of mine you know, like-” I was almost about to say Conan the Barbarian, but I realized that she would probably have no idea what I was talking about.

This world didn’t even have the same countries as the one I came from, so there was very little chance that any of the authors I knew would be authors in this world. Even if they were, then they might have written something completely different. I decided to test this theory by name-dropping the most famous fantasy series on the planet.

“You don’t happen to have any copies of the Lord of the Rings in stock, do you?”

A strange, confused look came over the woman’s face when I mentioned the name of the most famous fantasy series in the history of humanity.

“I’m sorry, I’ve never heard of it. Who was it written by?”

“Someone by the name of JRR Tolkien.”

“I’m sorry love, never heard of him. Is he a new up and coming author? We don’t generally get the new releases here unless you order them in, and those usually come in a month or so after they get them in the big city.”

I could hardly contain my amusement. This world didn’t know what the Lord of the Rings was! I tried to imagine what a fantasy genre without the lynchpin of the Lord of the Rings would even look like. Would there still be elves and dwarves, orcs, and evil overlords in black armor? That one series had done so much to define an entire genre in my world that it was almost impossible to imagine what fantasy would look like if it was absent.

“Are there any fantasy series you recommend? You know some classic stuff that everyone should read?” I asked.

“Well, there's always The Insight of the Gods. That’s a series that every fantasy fan worth their salt must read at some point in their life. You know, the one by Ronald Falkhurst?”

I shook my head. “I’m sorry, I’ve never heard of that one.”

This time it was her turn for the wide-eyed disbelieving stare.

“If it’s a classic that I need to read, then I guess I have to read it. Do you have the first volume?”

“Oh yes, that trilogy has been reprinted and repackaged so often that we always get secondhand copies in. Just go and look under the F section under Fantasy, and you'll be looking for the first volume, The Emperor’s Chosen. Just be warned that it’s a little bit dry by modern standards. The author was a historian and linguist, and many say that he’s more interested in the world he’s built than the events that happen within it. But it's a cornerstone of the genre, and almost everything pays homage to it. I think I’ve even got a book on how to speak Eldar, the language he invented for that series. But you might want to hold off on that one until you decide whether you like it.”

I chuckled to myself again. Maybe it was a constant that there was always a historian and linguist who invented their own worlds and their language in every world across the multiverse, and it changed a genre.

I wandered off into the stacks of books and was completely overwhelmed by how lost I felt. One of life’s greatest pleasures is walking into a secondhand bookstore and seeing what treasures lay hidden in the stacks, but you only got to know the difference between the diamonds and the dross over the course of many years. Here I was flying completely blind. I had no touchstone for which authors were considered prominent or influential, and the titles of the novels meant nothing to me outside of their literal meanings.

Despite feeling overwhelmed, the revelation that I was completely free of any external influence about who I should be reading and what was considered good and what was not was life-changing. All I had to go on was the titles, the covers, and the blurbs. Books in this world followed a similar layout to the ones from my world, with a captivating blurb on the back, an illustrated high fantasy cover, and a black and white photograph of the author somewhere in the back of the book.

The Insight of the Gods was a trilogy by Ronald Falkhurst, and each book was roughly the same size as each volume of The Lord of the Rings. I wondered if that was maybe a critical aspect of the story gaining popularity as well? An easily digestible series of three books and an epic quest? Was that really all there was to it?

I idly wondered what it would be like to live in a world without hobbits. These kindly little creatures invented by JRR Tolkien completely changed our understanding of fantasy. So, what would the genre look like without hobbits?

I was excited to see. I didn’t want to spend too much money on books just now, but the old compulsion of delving into worlds unknown was too strong to resist. I bought three books to begin with, each worth a dollar each.

I bought the first volume of The Insight of the Gods, another called Dragon’s Fury, and another called Kvaldir the Conqueror. Kvaldir had serious Conan the Barbarian vibes, and I was super interested to see what dragons looked like in this world. The fact that dragons even existed as mythical creatures said that there was some commonality in the history between my world and this world that perhaps explained why things were so similar.

The lady at the counter took my three dollars, handed me a brown paper bag filled with my chosen novels, and I headed back out into the town.