The journey was supposed to take at least a week by horse. Tess completed it in two days, only because she had wanted to spend a day camping to test some of her obscure skills that she had not used in some time. Being able to transform into a bird was useful like that, but it was a little lonely, so she probably would not use it too much unless alone.

Langison was a modestly sized town, and served as the hub of activity in the region for the small villages like Kelt. It was the local source of anything important, like that particular foundation that Tess was currently in search of.

“Ah. There it is. Not what I expected, even out here.”

The structure had seen better days. The walls were patched with boards that had been haphazardly slapped over holes. The roof looked ready to cave in because of the sloping bend. The sign was just gone, leaving only a horrible spelling of ‘Adventurers Guild’ painted on the front door. As Tess pulled on one of those doors, it stuck a little before her Strength ripped the whole thing out.

“Oops,” she said, peering in.

There were only a handful of adventurers inside and a couple of receptionists. Everyone was staring at Tess, since the door had made a lot of noise during its unintentionally violent end.

“Just leave it,” one of the receptionists sighed.

Tess shifted the door slightly and set it leaning against the doorframe. She laughed a little nervously as she stepped in. According to many of her numerous apprentices, the Adventurers Guild was always where one went upon finding themselves in need of work and, more importantly, money.

“You must be new. Welcome to the Adventurers Guild,” said the free, tired looking receptionist.

She was a middle aged woman whose brown hair was starting to show its incoming gray. The lines on her face almost seem to have been etched in, as they barely moved with her own movements. Her eyes seemed almost dead inside, as though she were only here because she had to, not because she enjoyed it. Tess wondered if in thirty or so years she might look exactly like this woman.

“Is this your first time?” asked the receptionist.

“Oh, yes!” Tess replied as she stepped up.

“Great. You want the explanation?”

“Of course.”

The receptionist sighed as she reached down, pulling a large book from beneath the countertop. She set it down and brushed the thin layer of dust off with a hand. She flipped open the cover and turned it towards Tess, revealing the pictures within instead of words.

“There are six ranks. Red to Purple. Red is lowest, Purple highest. Everybody starts at Red, but you can advance via rank tests. You aren't limited on what jobs you can select, so you can take a Purple job as a Red rank, but you'll fail. When you fail, you get penalized and you'll owe the compensation as a penalty.”

The receptionist flipped through the pages as she spoke, pointing at the pictures as she gave her examples. Tess realized that literacy must not be very high, which she thought strange given that people should be able to check their status menus. Unless the menus somehow were able to visualize the information in a manner that the user could understand, which would be a fascinating piece of engineering by the System.

“Hey. Listen. You wanted the explanation,” snapped the receptionist.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

“Oh, sorry. Was just thinking about the lack of words in your book here.”

“So you can read?”

“Yes Ma'am.”

“Parties are going to want you. You probably didn't even think about that, did you?”

“Honestly, no,” Tess replied, “But since I do better alone, I'm thinking I'll just do that for now.”

The receptionist rolled her eyes, muttering something about being dead in a week which Tess pretended not to hear. She handed a form to Tess with a quill.

“Fill this out. You can write too, right?”

Tess did not bother to answer as she grabbed the quill and started filling the form in. It asked for a few basic pieces of information like name, age, and race. She wrote down 20 and human respectively. The next blank left her confused.

“What does this mean by ‘Role’?”

“You missed that part of my explanation. The role is what you do in a party.”

“Oh.”

Tess wrote down ‘All-Rounder.’ Then slid the form back to the receptionist.

“What kind of role is that?”

“I can do everything,” Tess replied with a smirk.

“Yeah right!” interrupted one of the handful of adventurers at the guild.

Tess turned to get a good look at them. Four young men glared back at her. Even the shortest of them had a good fifty centimeters on her.

“Bruiser. Mage. Healer. Flex,” Tess rebutted, pointing at each and stating their role, “I could take all of you individually, or all at once if you want to soften the blow to your egos.”

“How dare you? Do you know who we are?” demanded the Flex guy.

“A bunch of rowdy kids.”

This pissed off the Bruiser enough that he moved. Tess launched the silent binding spell she had been holding since the interruption at the Mage, catching him before he could move at all. She then caught the Bruiser's haymaker punch, spun around and threw him over her shoulder into the wall. The whole building shook with his impact. She delivered a kick to the Healer's groin as she yanked the Flex's own sword out of its sheath and held it to his throat. The whole encounter was over in three seconds, according to Timekeeper.

“Defeat the guild bullies, check,” Tess said.

Tess glanced over at the receptionists, both staring in shock.

“Do I get a free promotion for beating these chumps?” Tess asked.

“What is going on down there?” thundered a voice from above.

Tess glanced up and saw a man standing on a rickety looking balcony at the top of some equally rickety stairs. An ominous creak was heard as he leaned over to see the floor.

The man had patchy hair that stuck out in every direction. A number of obvious scars criss-crossed his face and mixed with his aging wrinkles to give him both a grizzled and wise look. The flush of red was probably from the bottle he held in one hand, which seemed to be missing a couple of fingers.

“Hi! I just registered and these guys picked a fight. Just showing them how wrong they were to do so,” Tess answered.

“Well keep it down. Got a damn headache,” he shouted back before disappearing through a door which he slammed.

“Guild masters,” Tess said with a laugh.

The receptionist who had been helping Tess held out a red colored tag on a piece of leather cord.

“Here.”

Tess took it gratefully and slipped it on over her head.

“By the way, are there any dungeons nearby?”

----------------------------------------

Elsewhere over Iriea

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Oena sat down. She was slightly exhausted after dumping a bit more of her power into the blessing than she had originally intended for the hero. But she felt it was justified for the chaos that an imposter had brought to her feet. She barely had time to think when she cast the imposter out too.

“That imposter did die, right?” she asked, though nobody was there to answer.

In a panic, Oena pulled up the master list of all the users on Iriea of the System, organized by start date. She navigated through the new additions, seeing a strange discrepancy about Olivia's user start date, but no other users that she did not recognize, so things were surely fine. However, there was a sense of unease, as though something was nagging at the back of her mind causing her to second guess herself. Why were there two, even if one was not supposed to be here?

Oena pulled up her messaging and began to write a letter to MSI.