The food is not all that tasty, mostly tastes of salt and the broth is quite thin. I quickly finish it and then begin to wait for Yirgil to have a break, or the line to let up or something. But before that happens, I spot Bosir entering the guild. Larn and an unknown man with a solid build and light blue hair is with him. I walk to up to them.

"Good morning old man Bosir"

"Oh, why are you here? Nevermind, Bern, this is Yos or promising new recruit, Yos, this is Bern, easily the second most pathetic man in our clan" He starts laughing at his own "joke".

"Good morning young man" Bern answers, completely ignoring the insult. "I am Bern, spear-user and emergency cook for the clan"

Emergency? Is that just meant to sound funny or do they have a more permanent cook among the ones still out on a job?

"We are looking for something simple we could do with you to get an impression of your abilities" Bosir explains. "I can show you how the notices work at the same time."

"See how the notice board is split in four? From the left it is emergency, in-town, out-of-town and then finally escort requests." He says while guiding me to the "in-town" section. "Can you read?" He asks, to which I shake my head, "Well, they can mostly understood well enough to decided to take it. The clerk on duty will explain the rest then. See those lines at the top? If there are two of them, it's second rank and if there is only one, it's first rank."

"What are the requirements for becoming a first-ranker?" I ask. "It is something the guild gives out semi-randomly. It is merely showing that they trust in your ability to judge what you can do and that you possess a certain level of strength."

"Then, top left corner designates the recommend amount of people for the request. a vertical line is 1, a circle is 5. You just add those together. Same for the reward in the bottom-left corner. The three coins are shown by these differently sized circles, where the largest one is yellow, then blue then red." They don't have a size difference, but I guess it works to separate them through.

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"Oh, there you see a cross, that means 20. And bottom right, for the out-of-town ones, the number by adding all the symbols together is estimated days of travel, for the in-town ones, what floor of the dungeon the request is regarding" Since they have all this going on, reading might not be the most common skill around. I wonder if I will have the opportunity to learn it?

"Generally the out-of-town ones are somewhat easier than those in-town. If it is out-of-town you will only usually have to deal with the top few layers of the dungeon, while in-town can have you going much further down, sometimes even spending days in there, oh this one looks nice" Bosir points to a specific piece of the weird, yellow wrinkly paper.

"Let's see if you listened, what can you tell me about this one"

"Out-of-town, second rank, 3 people recommended, 10 blue as a reward, 1 day of travel?"

"Ha, at least we have eliminated the possibility of you being completely stupid." He seems to pick on other people quite a lot, doesn't he? He takes down the paper and we line up. "It's a request to clear the top few layers of an unused dungeon, so that it doesn't gush monster out into the open. It is one of the more common type of requests." He tells me.

Bern has just been standing quietly behind us the entire time. Does he not speak much? Oh well, it's not like I love conversing anyways. We line up for Yirgil, and when we arrive at the counter, Yirgil just quickly confirms that Bosir knows the location and jots down something behind the counter, presumably to keep a record on who has taken the request.

As we exit the building, Bosir asks "Oh yeah, did Mynie give you a warm welcome last night?" Then laughs again.

"I mean, I don't think we did it, but I can't remember anything past her constantly topping up my drink"

"Haha, shame! Many don't regard you as a man until the deed has been done, though that usually comes a few years later and right after marriage!" He then laughs it up again. "I thought you had been taken, since Bern here found a full set of armor, sword and shield lying in the middle of the hallway!"

I feel a little ashamed of having done something like that. But thank god it didn't happen, this man would probably bring it up constantly and make fun of me. Desperate to change the subject to something else, I fish out a line from last night.

"Bern went to some club yesterday, right? What place is that?"

Bosir laughs heavily again and seems to want to egg Bern on "Yeah, Bern, explain what kind of place is that?"

Burn turns his head away from us. Is he also ashamed?

"It is a man's paradise" He answers curtly.

"A MAN'S PARADISE! AHAHA" Bosir cracks down with laughter. "Ahhh, listen kid. It is a place where you pay women to fawn over you. Only those that lack the qualities to have them do so in the first place would ever pay for it, haha".

"Shut it" Bern says. "It's nice to feel wanted".