“Elena tells me you boys had some horns from horned wolves you wanted to sell?”

The receptionist? She talked about us after all, then. Who is this guy anyway?

“That’s right,” I said. “Who are you?”

With his eyes slit and brows furrowed, he looked me dead in the eye. “I’m the guildmaster. Erik Von Schwartz. Retired Rank A adventurer. Tell me, how did you get your hands on those horns?”

I gulped. We were just trying to sell some merchandise.

Why does he look like he wants to kill us?

“D-do you treat all adventurers this way?” I scoffed. “We killed them the wolves ourselves and processed the corpses at our village.”

“Cut the crap,” he hissed. “Horned wolves are Rank C monsters and always appear in great numbers. I’ve revoked many issued quests ‘cause I deemed a group unfit to go after them. And they looked way stronger than you. So what else can I assume you are but thieves?”

I didn’t know that they were that big a deal. But we fought the baby version, apparently.

“We fought pups. And it wasn’t because we wanted to. We ran into ‘em as we were looking for animals to hunt. Our village is trying to get into hunting, so we spent a few weeks preparing a group of about fifty. We got spears and everything. This is the chief of our village. He can vouch for me.”

Elfindor introduced himself and confirmed my story. After mentioning we’d butchered the corpses in the village and brought the horns by cart to sell, he also showed a special badge that shows he’s chief of Little Rock. The guildmaster’s face softened.

Scratching the back of his head remorsefully, he said, “Ah. Alright. Sorry for accusing ‘ya. We get a lot of people bringing in another adventurer’s quarry. So every time someone who doesn’t have a quest brings things to sell, it makes me suspicious, y’know. Why don’t you come into my office?”

Was it a trap? Was he saying a bunch of shit to get us somewhere alone and beat the stuffing out of us? This guy looked like he could choke Elfindor with one hand, who in turn could choke me with one hand.

So all he needs is three fingers for me?

I didn’t like my odds of surviving a confrontation with this guy without my cards, but we followed him into the guildmaster’s office. If worse came to worst, I’d tell Elfindor to fight and then slip out while no one was looking.

The room we went into was a complete mess. There were sheets of paper all over the floor and a ceiling fan that blew those papers around lightly. A tall oak desk covered in towers of more paper stood at the edge of the room. Behind it was a large chair befitting a huge man. A large glass window allowed sunlight into the room from just the perfect angle to avoid hitting the—

Wait just a darn minute.

A ceiling fan?! How?! I found my eyes glued to a dusty six-blade fan attached to the ceiling, rotating gently.

I thought the technology of this world was in the middle ages!

“Hey, uh. Guild master. Is that a ceiling fan? Do you guys have electricity?”

Looking up, he grabbed a trail of metal links and turned it off. “Ele—what?”

“How do you power that thing? It’s moving on its own.”

He looked up. “Ah. This fan runs on card fuel technology.”

“What’s that?”

“Y’know. Taking the magic out of a card produces a special liquid. Some clever people figured out how to use it as a source of fuel. Ain’t nothin’ magical about this fan, though.”

“What kind of fool would waste a card for that?” I blurted out without thinking.

“Eh. You’d be surprised. Just one basic card, like a normal tier, could produce enough power to run half the city for months. But like you said, not a lot of fools out there! Heh! The margrave sends us some liquid as thanks for all the work the guild does.”

So cards can be converted to a fuel source.

That means things that require electricity can run. This guy already had a rotating fan. What else was out there? Maybe the nobles had better stuff? Maybe I could have something like my old life in this world? That also begged the question Are cards banned so only powerful people can have them and the rest are mandatory fuel sources? As the possibilities churned in my head, the guildmaster cleared his throat.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“Anyway, let’s get down to business. I have a proposition for able guys like you.”

* * *

I couldn’t believe my ears. The guildmaster said we could enter an exclusive contract to sell them pup horns for 25 copper pieces and adult horns for 40 copper, a whopping 25% above market rate. The guild was a popular first stop to source ingredients among noblemen, and those horns were a key ingredient for producing medicine against diseases plagueing the northern territories of the empire, like the white death.

But in order to qualify, we had to become adventurers.

He led us down to an underground level of the building. Unlike the two-story brick building, this place seemed endless, like an underground labyrinth. The heavy and thick steel doors of the rooms completely insulated one room from another and functioned with a special card and the locks on the doors worked like digital locks on Earth. Another byproduct of card-fueled technology.

When he wanted to go to another room, the door snapped upwards. We went through several rooms until the guildmaster stopped and turned on some lights. There were machines that could be winded to pull people apart, all kinds of drills and knives. There was even a guillotine. In other words, we were inside a torture chamber.

“Welcome to the first test.”

The first test was a pain endurance test.

Elfindor went first. First, the guild master asked him to do a split on the ground to test his mobility. Elfindor was able to do it, so he was allowed to take the test that pulled his limbs further and further apart.

“What the hell is the point of this test?!” I screamed.

“You ever fought goblins?” he said with a cold, straight face.

I shook my head.

“If those things catch you by surprise, they won’t kill ‘ya. Well not right away. They’ll torture you to death. So we want to make sure you’re able to withstand it long enough for help to arrive.”

Elfindor was placed on a table and his wrists and ankles were tied to rope and the guildmaster started winding a long crank. A whirring sound on a coal-colored machine let us know something was happening. The ropes instantly became taut and started pulling Elfindor apart. His body slowly formed a starfish.

He had a surprisingly high pain tolerance for being pulled apart. It wasn’t until his arms and legs were almost completely horizontal that he yelled for it to stop. The guildmaster flicked the kill switch on the machine and Elfindor dropped to the floor.

After that, he cut Elfindor with dull knives, then sharper knives. Finally, he placed Elfindor’s palm flat against a table and hammered a small metal nail into his palms, then used a nail pulling tool to take it out and quickly bandaged the hand. That one made Elfindor curse out loud, but he took it like a man.

“Your turn, kid.”

My heart jumped out of my chest. “You can’t be serious, old man!”

“I ain’t forcing you to take it. You’ll just fail this test.”

“How many tests are there?”

“Three. And you can only fail one.”

I nodded. I couldn’t afford to fail the other two.

We proceeded to a different area three rooms south. This one was a combat arena. There was a rack for wooden weapons and another one for real ones. In the center was a wide rectangular stone platform fenced in with steel wire. It looked like a boxing ring, only worse.

“In this test, you survive one minute in a fight against an instructor. This time, you’ll be facing me.”

The last sentence echoed in my head. This had to be a joke. Fighting this mountain of a man had to be a sick joke!

The guildmaster laughed. “Don’t be so nervous. We’ll be using wooden swords. But I ain’t going easy on ‘ya.”

He walked towards a rack and pulled out two wooden swords, throwing me one. I guess I’d caught his eye, so I was going first. Or maybe he knew Elfindor would pass.

I caught his throw and gripped it tightly. I asked him if he minded if I warmed up first.

“Go ahead.”

I waved the sword around and struck the air, pretending I was fighting one of the wolves. During the fight, I’d never been close to an injury. Anytime they got close they got a ball-sized bullet of water thrown at them. I was afraid. I’d gotten cocky when the Olsted kid stole my canteen on Arthur’s farm and I socked him in the face. But when he beat me up, I realized this body was almost useless in a real fight. Then again, Olsted had caught me off guard, but still. My endurance was pathetically bad.

The guildmaster whistled and beckoned me with a hand to join him in the ring.

I put up my sword and he charged at me.

The next thing I knew, my hands were on the ground. I’d fallen over and had thrown my sword to stop and catch my body before I face planted. Everything hurt even though I’d only been smacked on the shoulder.

The guildmaster sighed. “You wussed out again. You know this means I have to fail ‘ya, right? You can’t be an adventurer.”

I gritted my teeth, getting up slowly. “Whatever. I’m useful in other ways. My aim is elite.”

“Oh?” he said, with a raised brow. “You did catch that sword. Most guys fumble it. Maybe there is a test you can pass. I’m willing to make an exception for ‘ya if you do.”

Curiosity led all three of us to a different room. This room had soft, plastic-looking balls and hoops hanging from the ceiling. There were stacks of arrows bundled up on tables and bows dangling on wooden finger racks. Bullseye targets standing on two wooden legs were propped up against one of the walls. This was probably the largest room we’d been in. Any two walls were nearly thirty feet apart. The ceiling was almost twenty feet tall, as well. At some point when walking here, we’d descended further underground.

The guildmaster said I’d pass if I could prove my skill with projectiles. First, I grabbed a bow and stood from the edge of the closest wall and aimed for the largest bullseye target. My arrow landed dead-center.

“Do it again.”

I did it again and again. It was like only my aim from being Joey made it through the interdimensional rift and I’d lost everything else. I threw balls through several hoops eighteen feet high from all kinds of weird angles, once again proving my aim wasn’t a fluke.

“You have good aim if given enough time. You’ll need to work on your reflexes, though. You can’t expect monsters to stay still, or to wait for ‘ya to get ready.”

“Whatever. I’ll work on that. Does this mean I pass?”

He nodded.

“Yep. I only tested Mr. Callum here on one test ‘cause I knew he more or less how he’d fare in a fight with me. He’s got flexibility, speed, and strength. You, on the other hand, will struggle. Stick to a bow or throwing weapon and get your allies to cover you as much as you can. Congratulations. You’re both E+ adventurers.”