Mason came to feeling sticky. As he opened his eyes he saw a dark shape which resolved itself into a hooded man, he seemed crazed holding shut a door. The rest of the room was dark, lit only by a single candle. As he stood up he realized the ground he was standing on as well as himself was covered in blood. For a second he was horrified, believing himself to be possessing a dead body, before realizing this was his own body. The blood seemed to be coming from a dead goat lying next to him. The blood on the floor seemed to be covering a ritualistic looking circle made from coal or something like it. The door was shaking as if it were being bashed in. The man shouted at Mason “What are you doing here, you aren’t an imp!”

At this the door crashed open revealing a group of three people who looked like they straight out of a fairy tale came racing into the room, led by a man in metal armor bearing a large shield. He shouted “Matthew, you don’t have to do this” as the other two filed in after him trapping the man in a corner as. One woman stopped and pointed a bow at Mason asking him who he was. He trembled in shock at their forceful entry. The group subdued the man in the hood and tied his hands together more faces came around to look at him and he appraised them more. They were two women and a man. The man from earlier in addition to his shield seemed to be carrying a small ax. One woman bore a bow while the other did not appear to be armed.

The man muttered “Looks like Mrs. Donahew isn’t getting her goat back.” He turned to look at mason and asked loudly but not harshly “Who are you?”

Mason seemed to finally get his bearing before muttering “Oh me? I’m Mason. I don’t know where I am.”

The bow wielding woman asked “Were you kidnapped? If so we didn’t hear about this guy kidnapping any people.”

“No, I'm not from around here. I … um well i remember dying and then i was speaking with death and then this imp thing knocked me into a portal and now i'm here”

The group began to converse among themselves before the woman with the bow stepped forward and asked him to come with them so they could sort this all out. He agreed and they got the hooded man on his feet before shuffling him out. Mason realized they were in a cellar as they trekked through a very medieval style house before exiting onto the street. The street seemed to be in a residential area of a medieval city, large enough to have a wall, which he could see from here. They walked towards the center of town where they went towards the only stone building around which appeared to be closer to a fortress than a shop like most of the ones around it. When asked what that building was, they said it was the guard quarters2. They brought the man over there where the unarmed woman explained what happened before handing off the hooded man to a guard. After that they left and went to the building next door which had a swinging sign depicting a mountain range with a sword horizontally through it.

They walked inside and it fit the idea of a tavern to a t. While it was not packed there were a fair few people sitting at tables. They sat down at one of the tables and people barely glanced at the fact that mason was covered in blood. Once they sat down they introduced themselves.

“Hi I’m Anne. I’m an archer for the group. I grew up in the forest doing hunting and foraging and the like.”

“I’m Dally, a self taught summoner. I picked the basics up from my uncles library, he’s the local lord”

“And I am Rowan, I’m a shield and axe warrior as you may have noticed, I only started learning how to use them once we joined the group”

Once they gave the short descriptions of themselves they looked at him expectantly. Mason decided to just tell them the truth and so he did. He explained the whole situation from waking up and dying, to waking up as a summoned demon. At the end Rowan laughed, saying “Well sorry to hear it but it seems for now you're stuck in this world. We are an adventuring party, are you familiar with the concept?”

Mason, while not an avid gamer or D&D player knew enough about the concept to understand. “ Uhm … Yeah so have you guys been doing this for long?”

“No, we've only been doing this for about a month or so now, and even what we were doing was always low level stuff. Dally and Anne are bronze rank, I'm tin rank. We’ve been gathering herbs in the forest, slaying rats in barns that type of stuff. The situation we were just in would have been our biggest one even if it was just what was on the report. We thought we were looking for a goat thief but it turns out Matthew was a [Diabolist]. Lucky he wasn’t actually able to summon an imp, that would have most likely been above our paygrade.

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

Dally shivered and then asked “So you are new to the area and the world. Do you have any plans on what to do?”

Mason thought as he was unprepared for the question and realized he didn’t really have any marketable skills from his world so he decided to ask “Does becoming an adventurer require much knowledge or training at the beginning?”

“No, especially at our level. We are all tin rank adventurers, that rank is almost exclusively for newbies. We’re also pretty small. Most adventuring teams are 5-7 people large. Some of the more powerful ones can be only 3 and some even go in pairs or solo but for most people you need a group. Our group is actually lacking a bit of attack up front.” They leaned in to speak to each other and conferred for a bit. “If you want to join us we’d be happy to have you”

Mason thought for a bit before realizing he had nothing else to do and these people seemed nice. “Sure, Why not! However I don't really have anything like a sword or gear in any way”

Dally laughed. “Oh don’t worry about that I'll just grab one from the armory. My uncle won’t mind. As long as it's not enchanted he won’t care. However he doesn’t have general gear so we should buy some from the stores around here. You’ll probably need some level of armor even if it is just leather, as well as a backpack, rope and a potion belt. I suppose we could supply you with those and you can just pay us back in the future.”

Rowan seemed to think of something “Oh right we should go register you as an adventurer and tell them what happened with matthew.”

With that they all got up and headed to the bar in the back of the room, one side of which held shelves of what looked like vials of glowing liquid and the other was a desk behind which a man slightly older than mason sat. Anne confidently went up to him and relayed what happened at Matthew's house, leaving out the fact that Mason was summoned.

The young man whom Anne had referred to as Julian seemed shocked before saying “Well I trust you but I'll have to verify that with the guard. If it’s true you can come collect your earnings tomorrow. Also i suppose we’ll have to give you more because we misestimated the threat level of that. Anything else?”

Rowan pushed Mason forward who faltered a bit before saying “Hi I was wondering if I could register for an adventurer?”

“Sure, what’s your name and do you plan on grouping up with them?”

“My name is Mason Stevenson, and yes I do.”

Julian opened up a drawer and drew out a small crystal. He asked Mason to extend his hand and then placed the crystal against it. “Do you have any criminal record in the united cities that you know of?”

“Not that I am aware of” The crystal glowed a forest green before fading again.

“Alright I’ll get you registered and you can pick up your tag in a couple days. That will be 7 bronze 4 tin”

Rowan took a pack off his shoulders and withdrew a string with several metal squares strung along it. He took off the required number and mason realized these must be the money of the world. One side appeared to be made of tin and the other bronze. Once he took off the amount needed he retied the ends in fairly bulky knots and put it in his pack.

With that the group took off heading to a store directly across the street from the adventurers guild. When they walked in he saw it was much more sparsely stocked than any store from his world with only shelves on the outside and some tables with stuff which might be useful to adventurers. As they walked in, Rowan went directly to a shelf with a backpack and grabbed one in addition to some other supplies which looked like they would probably be useful. They headed up to a counter, behind which sat a burly old man. He began to tally up how much they owed and as Rowan paid it they talked.

“Oh are you kids getting a new member? Hi I’m Aldrek. I run this store. Make sure you are careful out there.”

With that they headed out and over to the guard house where dally quickly popped in seeming to talk to some people in there before coming out with a sword in a sheathe. Rowan showed Mason how to attach it to his new belt. They headed to an area behind the adventurers guild where there was a small courtyard. Mason received an explanation of some apparently basic things.

“So I guess you wouldn’t know about levels. This world has a system in which you get a class and every two levels you get a skill. You level up by doing whatever it is your class does. You can only get skills which make sense for your class. For example anne here wouldn’t get [Power Strike] because she's a ranger, ya know?”

“Anyway we were thinking you could become a sort of a frontline [Warrior] So we thought if you practiced that here then when you go to bed tonight you could get the class and make it easier to level up. So why don’t you take that sword and go ham on that tree trunk.”