We entered the city of Zeah, and the streets were full of life. From humans to beastmen everyone was busy. Looking closer we realised the atmosphere was too cheerful. Was something going on?
“First things first we need a place to stay, and for that we need to find a place to sell the panther materials” I say to Angelica.
Angelica nods her head and walks to the closest person to ask for directions. The person she was asking was a woman carrying a wooden staff, she was also wearing white robes and clearly gave the magician vibe.
The woman was flustered by us suddenly stopping her. I let Angelica ask the questions while I stood behind Angelica and just smiled. The woman told us the location of the adventurer’s guild and even offered to guide us there as she was going there herself. We took her up on her offer. After walking for a while we came upon a massive building. The front of the building had a huge logo of two longswords crossing over.
Opening the huge doors like it was nothing I entered the building with two ladies behind me. Inside the building was split in half. One side was the restaurant/bar and the other side was the reception. The reception section was filled with many tills side by side. The female mage went her separate way as she joined up with her friends. Angelica and I went said our goodbyes and went to the line for the reception. The line wasn’t long as there were many receptionists working efficiently.
After waiting around 10 minutes it was finally our turn. We approach the free receptionist. The female receptionist was a female beastman of the cat race. She was tall around 6 ft. If I had to guess she looked around 50 years old and gave out a motherly aura.
“Welcome to the adventurer’s guild. How can I help you today?” She said with a business smile.
“Hi there, we would like to sell some monster parts and we were told this was the place to go.” (Skyler)
“I haven’t seen you two around, do you need to register with the guild.” (Receptionist)
Angelica replied with nod, and the receptionist handed us a form. Angelica and I know every single language as divine beings, so answering the form wasn’t hard. The form asked for our name and what we specialise in along with other things. I put myself down as a magician and a craftsman. Angelica wrote down swordsman.
After filling in the form which only took a few minutes we went back to the receptionist. She took in our forms and then asked told us the fee for joining the guild.
“The fee for joining the guild is 5 silver coins.” (Receptionist)
“Could you deduct the fee from the monster materials we are going to sell?” (Angelica)
“Yes that’s fine, may I ask which type of monster materials you have?” (Receptionist)
“Sure, we killed a monster in the forest near the city.” (Angelica)
The receptionist and the surrounding quietened down. All eyes were on the new rookies who just signed up as adventurers.
“M-may I ask which monster you two killed?” (Receptionist)
“Umm… Yh it was a black panther.” (Angelica)
“Uwah the rookies are claiming to have killed the party killer.” Someone shouted out in the background.
The receptionist had her eyes wide open.
“C-can I see the b-body?” (Receptionist)
“The panther is too large to show you right here, do you have a room for this?” (Skyler)
“A-ah you’re right please follow me” (Receptionist)
We followed the receptionist into the back. The room was large with a large table in the middle. As we entered the room a few other people also walked into the room.
“These are the dismantlers that work for the guild.” (Receptionist)
“But I have dismantled the corpse already.” Angelica said scratching her cheek with her finger.
The atmosphere of the room dropped instantly. The dismantlers were disappointed thinking the rookies had not only took their job but probably messed it up too. Angelica used her ring of storage to pull out the materials of the panther. The panthers fur coat, meat, bones and teeth/claws were all organised on the table. The dismantlers and the receptionist were so shocked they didn’t even question where the monster parts came from. The dismantling of the panther however was perfect. Normally adventurers don’t dismantle corpses as they lose money if the job is done badly. Of course adventurers would take the easy materials like teeth and occasionally bones leaving the rest behind to rot.
The dismantlers left the room with the disappointment of not earning anything, but they were also excited as they saw such a clean job done on the panther also known as party killer.
Hearing the name party killer caught both of our attentions. Seeing our expressions change the receptionist started to fill us in on the panther.
“The reason why this panther is called the party killer is because of its stealth. The beast picks off members of a party one by one. Truly an apex predator with its silent and deadly kills. A party not accustomed to working together will be wiped out easily by this monster” (Receptionist)
The receptionist then took us back to her desk. She started to explain the rules and ranking of the guild. The adventurers and monsters start off with rank F. Rank F is the rank of an average human with no combat experience. The ranks then go up all the way to SSS. No one on Eremel is rank SSS. The guild also had a couple of rules. Adventurers would have to obey the laws and any criminals would automatically lose their adventurer status. Adventurers would also have to help a city or town if they were in its vicinity. This would only be done in emergency situations, like a monster invasion.
Angelica and I agreed to these terms. As we claimed to kill the party killer the guild would have to test us in order to determine our ranks. The guild could check our mana level with crystal ball similar to the ones used at the city gates. The crystal ball this time would change colour with the amount of mana fed into it. The colours represented the ranks and went from a faint white (F), white (E), green (D), blue ©, purple (B), orange (A) to a bright gold (S). Anything above golden would break the crystal ball and this was very rare. They also gave the option of a combat trial for those with low mana levels.
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“Angelica I’ll be taking the crystal ball trial, what about you?” (Skyler)
“I’ll be taking the combat trial my lo.” Realising that she went back to her old habits of calling Skyler her lord Angelica quickly closed her mouth and started to blush. The receptionist and those listening in however saw this in a different light. They assumed Angelica would finish the sentence with ‘my love’ which gave them all huge grins.
The trial of combat would be held in the training room under the main building of the guild. Heading downstairs the receptionist told Angelica what to expect. She was to fight a training instructor and see how well she would do against him.
I started to smirk and felt sorry for this training instructor that was about to fight Angelica. Not that it would be a fight, more like a one sided beating.
We arrived at the training room. The room itself was huge and split into two sections. The first section was a gym and the second was a space for people to fight each other for practise. In the second section there was a big burly man with a scar across his face. Compared to everyone else in the room anyone could tell he was the most experienced adventurer.
Seeing to rookies the man smiled.
“So which one of these pretty flowers will be fighting me HA HA HA.” He said with an annoying laugh.
“Let’s get this over with” Angelica said stepping forward whilst brimming with confidence.
The man noticed the change in atmosphere and got serious. He looked towards the receptionist and she stepped forward to be the judge of the fight.
The receptionist spoke in a loud and clear voice which also attracted the attention of all the other adventurers in the room.
“The winner will be determined by surrender or the loss of consciousness. Killing is not allowed as you will be disqualified immediately. Weapons and magic are allowed”. (Receptionist)
The receptionist then glanced at both fighters. Seeing both were ready she shouted.
“BEGIN!”
Angelica immediately took off and rushed towards the instructor. She was fast, insanely fast. In less than a second she was already next to the instructor. As a reflex the instructor automatically jumped backwards to evade Angelicas attack. Unfortunately he was too slow. Angelica gave the man an upper cut to the guts instantly winding him. Finding it hard to breath he went into full defence mode. After the punch to the guts Angelica continued her barrage of punches. The instructor had his arms crossed in front of his chest trying to block all attacks, but this backfired on him. He never thought the barrage of punches would break his arms instead. Fully panicking and out of options the instructor immediately surrendered and fell to the floor losing consciousness.
Everyone except for Skyler had their mouths and eyes gaping wide open. The instructor was an A rank adventurer. Sure he never used his sword but that was because he never got a chance to. Everyone could see that Angelica held back. Her barrage of punches had less power than her initial punch and this was clearly seen by all. The A rank adventurer was defeated in less than 10 seconds and his opponent didn’t even go all out!
The receptionist so dazed and shocked at the events that had occurred she never even announced the end of the match.
“Victory is mine.” Angelica said calmly walking towards Skyler.
The initial shock had now turned into speculation. The adventurers who had watched the fight were now trying to figure out who this red haired beauty was. Seeing that Skyler was the shot caller of the two, other adventurers were trying to figure how strong he was.
The receptionist snapped out of the shock but now she didn’t know how to continue. After the fight the instructor would allocate a rank to the adventurer. There were times when the instructor lost but this loss was nothing like those times. Clearly Angelica was above rank A, but could she be rank S or maybe even above that? Not knowing how to proceed she decided to leave the decision to the guild master. She led Angelica and Skyler back upstairs and went ahead of them to the guild masters office calling him out.
The instructor who had broken arms and broken ribs was immediately healed and also taken to the guild master. The guild masters room was like a luxury office. He had an expensive desk with many monster trophies around the room. The room was full of his achievements.
In the guild masters room the receptionist and instructor sat on both of his sides. They briefly described what a monster Angelica was and show she overpowered the instructor like it was a joke. Seeing this the guild master became interested in the pair and made the decision of measuring Angelica’s mana level. If her level was orange then she would be given rank S. This was because her combat abilities where clearly higher than rank A and if her mana level was at rank A she would be definitely be stronger than rank A. The trio thought the pair could become a valuable asset to the guild. Having powerful members protecting the cities they travel to was really important.
Agreeing to the ranking decision, the trio went ahead to the room holding the crystal ball. The receptionist then left to go and get Angelica and Skyler.
When the two arrived at a room that was empty. The room only had a pedestal in the middle which held a crystal ball. Also inside the room was an old man and the instructor. The old man had a white beard reaching his upper chest. His face had aged but you could see he was full of wisdom. He wore fancy robes with intricate stitching, giving a noble aura. He stood up straight and welcomed both Angelica and I with a calm but powerful voice.
“Welcome to the adventurer’s guild, my name is Dreyfus and I’m the guild master.”
“My name is Skyler and this is Angelica” (Skyler)
Angelica and Skyler realised they didn’t know the receptionists name yet and both of them looked at her. Taking it as her cue to introduce herself the receptionist spoke with a nervous laugh.
“Haha my name is Samantha. Sorry for not introducing myself earlier I was so shocked by the panther you guys brought I forgot.”
At this point the training instructor also introduced himself.
“I’m Jin the training instructor.”
“How much mana do I give it?” Asked Angelica suddenly grabbing everyone’s attention.
Grabbing the crystal ball Angelica started pouring her mana. All eyes were on the crystal ball which was rapidly changing colours.
*crack*
“Oops.” Angelica said innocently with a nervous smile.
Skyler started to chuckle while the guild members where frozen in shock and awe. What kind of monster is she?
Unable to hold it in the training instructor asked Skyler.
“You look like you call the shots are you stronger than h-her?”
Skyler just laughed and brushed of his question with a vague answer.
“My mana would also break the ball.”
Dreyfus gave Samantha a nod which was a signal. Seeing this Samantha left the room.
Samantha brought in a second crystal ball and handed it over to Skyler. Skyler poured in his mana and the ball shattered instantly. The trio of guild members thought they couldn’t be shocked any harder. If Angelica was a monster then Skyler was devil.
Getting over the shock which took a couple of minutes Dreyfus began to speak. Samantha once again left the room.
“Congratulations both of you. Taking both trials into account I give you the rank of S as adventurers. As you have such a high rank and you have just joined the guild we will be keeping an eye on your guild related activities. I wish you luck on your adventure.”
As he finished his mini speech Samantha came back into the room with two golden badges. She then explained what the badges were and what they could do. The badges served as identification and told others of your rank. The badges could also be used to by the guild to contact you if the city you’re in needs help. This feature activates in all badges within a certain range of the city in trouble.
“Almost forgot, the reason why you both came here in the first place.” (Samantha)
Samantha reached out to Angelica and handed over 4 gold coins along with 95 silver coins.
“Samantha could you tell me about the currency used in this region?” (Angelica)
Samantha put on her business smile and explained that 100 copper coins made 1 silver coin. 100 Silver coins made 1 gold coin, and finally 100 gold coins made 1 platinum coin.
Finishing our business at the guild we decided to find a place to eat and sleep for the night.