The next day, we decided to visit the one Gino’s talking about. The one whom he’s not good talking at and also, Tala-Jasper hasn’t come back maybe he died after raising that death flag. Because of that I feel that we should not become an adventurer instead, we should just stay here and live being protected by adventurers and guards. Gino can compound medicine while I work somewhere here but apparently it was rejected by Gino. He said that if you’re transported to a fantasy world you should become an adventurer because it’s a rule but there’s other MC that didn’t became an adventurer right? Like a guy who’s house is a magic spot, the blind child MC which silently makes a harem within her family, or the magic crafter that introduces modern innovation… Right? There’s no need to be an adventurer and aren’t you a shut-in back in Earth? How come you’re very motivated on going outside in an unfamiliar world?
Feeling hesitant we walk towards the building where the adventurers gather, the [Adventurer’s Guild]. The building is big and among other building, it’s the only one with two floors. Apparently, the second floor serves as an inn for the adventurers of course there are other inns here but they all have one floor consuming a big plot of land. Why they didn’t make it as something with multiple floor just like this [Adventure’s Guild]? I wonder why?
There’s a sign board with something written on it, the letters used aren’t that unfamiliar to me but it’s not something that’s being used in modern times. It’s [Alibata], a letter system used by ancient Filipinos. The reason I’m familiar with it because it was taught to us when I’m in my first year of college but I’m not really good at it and the things taught to us, I already forgot about them.
“Hey Gino, do you know how to read that?”
I said while pointing my finger at the sign board. And also, there’s the symbol of the adventurer’s guild atop of the sign board. It’s two sword crossing each other with a shield on its back.
“Oh right, I forgot to mention that last night… Yes I can read them but I’m not proficient enough to read a book in this world. Apparently, the writing system here is the same with the writing system of the ancient Filipinos. It’s [Alibata].”
“Speaking of last night, how’s the storm?”
“Storm? You call that a storm? For me it’s already hell… That’s the first time I saw Kaezar like that… She’s normally gentle and smiles sweetly even if it’s a stranger who’s she’s talking to but I never expected that she’s like a demon when angry. Chairs came at me flying and thankfully, the plates were made up of wood so they didn’t break but the room looks like a storm passed right through it… Remembering it makes my spine shivers…”
“Good job surviving that…”
“Surviving… There are times that I almost black out. One of the plates hit me flat on the face… I don’t want to experience that again… Maybe I should keep my teasing on check…”
“It’s amazing that you’re still thinking about teasing her after experiencing that…”
Well, Gino’s sturdy enough to accept a blow or two. Back on Earth, we were drunk and tried to imitate UFC, he received our friend punches as if it’s nothing he proudly said that “My fat is my armor!” while laughing and counter attacking at the same time.
“So are we just going to stand here or are we going inside?”
“Let’s go inside, I just hope that she’s there.”
We went inside the guild. The door of the guild is the same on what you’re going to see on a movie about cowboys. Inside, there’s many table where you can see someone drinking in the broad daylight. Some are already drunk and some are eating. There’s also some who’s descending the stairs while yawning. There are too many people inside but it still doesn’t feel crowded. There’s also a big board where there’s a paper attached on it and there’s a reasonable amount of adventurers staring at it, some pulled the paper and went into a table where there’s some girl standing behind them. I guess that’s the receptionist desk. Of course, all of the people here are armed and there’s some wearing some armor with spikes on their shoulder pad. Some are wearing an insect shell like armor while most of them wear leather armor. I guess leather armor is common here. But what’s with some of them? Wearing insect shell armor with spikes here and there? Are they trying to intimidate other adventurers? Oh right, there’s this setting on web novels about newbie adventurer getting picked up by the senior adventurers... I hope that won’t happen on us. Opss. I hope I didn’t trigger a flag there.
“As usual, there are too many people…”
Gino cringed while looking around inside the guild. Well, as a shut-in with low human interaction this is truly something that he will hate. The building is enormous so it doesn’t feel cramped even though there are too many people inside.
“So where’s this person who’s going to teach us on how to become an adventurer?”
“Wait… Oh there she is! Jeziel!”
Gino called a girl’s name while he waves his hand up high. The girl in question looked at us and smiled when she recognized Gino. The girl is just a little smaller than Gino wearing leather armor with a sword dangling on her waist. She has black hair tied in a ponytail which suits her. Her face looks like a doll and she’s cute when she smiles but sadly, her chest is as flat as a chopping board but other than that she’s quite a beauty and oddly enough, she looks familiar. Hmmm… If I remember correctly, she looks like Gino’s crush back on Earth… Don’t tell me he switches his interest to this girl since he can’t properly talk in front of his crush at Earth!
“Sorry to disappoint you but it’s not like that, we’re friends and I don’t want to enter a relationship nor be interested on any girl in this planet since I’ll make sure that I’ll go back home.” (Gino)
“I’m not thinking about anything though.” (Jasper)
Are you a psychic? Do you know how to read the mind of others?
“Lies! I know you since we were in elementary and I properly knows how your mind works! Specially that grinning face before, you’re planning something!”
I didn’t noticed that I am grinning… Better control my facial expression more and also just to be clear I don’t have a plan right now
“Oh really? Speaking of which, the reason you’re not good at talking to her because she exactly look like your crush?”
“Well, kind of…”
“Hoooo…”
This guy is someone who’s awkward when dealing with someone special with him. He’s more likely to push that someone around than pulling them closer though it might sound like he’s a “tsundere” but rest assured he’s not. It’s something a Filipino would call “torpe”. I mean those “tsundere” are the one who shows aggressive behavior to someone they like but in case of “torpe” they are the one, how should I say it, push someone special to them but not in aggressive way… More like, they push them because they can’t act normally on them most likely because they have a small confidence on themselves, mostly they think that ‘She’s better with other man than me’ or ‘I’m not the worthy enough for her’ something like that while both of them are troublesome to deal with at least the torpe, when they got confidence on their selves they are the most sweet and devoted partner you will ever find.
If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
‘Well, maybe I should help this friend of mine to gain some self-confidence.’
Thinking along that line, I put my hand on Gino’s shoulder, look straight to his eyes and say.
“Don’t worry bro, I’ll back you up.”
Different from my enthusiasm, my friend here look confused but after a moment he realized something and glared at me.
“What are you planning?”
“Let’s cure that torpe attitude of yours so that you can freely express your feelings.”
“I don’t what you’re planning Mr. Jasper but let me tell this clearly, I’m not torpe so I don’t need your help.”
Well well, he’s denying it but no matter how you look he’s someone you can call torpe.
“Yes yes you’re not.”
No matter what you say, I’ll make sure that I’ll fix that torpe attitude of yours.
“Hi Gino!”
The girl named Jeziel already arrived in front of us and called Gino but instead of responding, stiffened and did not reply. If he is a computer program there will be a notification that will say “Gino.exe stopped working. Would you like to stop it?”
“Hi I’m Jasper, Gino’s friend.”
“Hello there I’m Jeziel nice meeting you. Is Gino okay?”
“He’s okay just give him some time and he’ll reboot in no time.”
“Reboot?”
“Ah.. He’ll respond I mean.”
As if what I said is a queue for him, he rebooted and greet Jeziel.
“Hi… U-uhmm.. How are you?”
“Good. What brings you here?”
Jeziel responded with a smile. Seeing her smile, my friend here blushed and covers his mouth with his hand. Most likely he’s hiding his embarrassment by doing that.
“N-n-nothing… Just walking around and ended up here. That’s it… Goodbye.”
Oy, oy! Didn’t we went here to learn about how to become an adventurer and you said that you’ll ask her to teach us? Now what are you doing leaving like that? This is why torpes are troublesome.
Holding his shoulder so that he can’t leave, I bring my face closer to his and whispered.
“What the hell are you doing? Aren’t we here to ask about adventuring?”
“Let me go… I… I need to help Fernando with his compounding!”
Ignoring the pleas of Gino, I faced Jeziel while still holding Gino’s shoulder. To be exact, I am holding his shirt not his shoulder it’s just that it’s on the shoulder part.
“Sorry for the ruckus, we’re here to ask you if you can teach us on how to become an adventurer.”
“You’re uninterested at being one before…”
Gino muttered quietly while Jeziel keeps changing her glances from and Gino.
“Don’t worry about him. It’s normal for him.”
“O-kay? Ahem… Of course I will teach you. After all I’m glad that Gino finally made up his mind to be an adventurer. I tried to ask him so many times before but it’s either he ran away or froze up in the place. I thought that he hated talking with me so I stop my invitation to him.”
“He’s just bad at dealing with strangers… But let me ask something, you invited him to be an adventurer back then?”
Hmmm… If this is the case then I can understand the enthusiasm he shown about being an adventurer.
“Yes!”
“Why?”
I don’t get it. Why would you invite other people to have a dangerous job? Isn’t it normal for them to decide what they want to do?
“You see…” Jeziel scratches her cheeks “He saved me and my party back then when were attack by [Pigman]. He took command and gave us an order to attack while he blocks the enemy and surprisingly, we won. It’s not just me who wanted him to become an adventurer, my whole party tried to invite him but in the end he didn’t gave us a reply. I’m just glad that he finally decided to be one of us (adventurers).”
Okay? I can’t follow what she said. Basically, she and her party were saved by this guy and gave command to her party and won. Up to that part, I can still comprehend it but how the hell did it end up of them inviting this guy?
“You saved them?”
“Yeah, I saved them coincidentally…”
“How?”
“Back then, I’m gathering herbs used for making medicine when I heard a scream. Of course I’m carrying a wooden shield and a short sword since it’s dangerous once you went out. I just fulfill the role of a tank then after the battle they invited me…”
Maybe she noticed that we’re whispering with ourselves she added some explanation to Gino.
“It’s because he seems to have a talent on becoming a leader of a [Party].”
[Party]? If I we’re on Earth the first thing I’ll think when she said the word [Party] is a place to drink and have fun granted that she’s a normie but if she’s a gamer then that word will have the meaning of a group. In this case, I think the latter is what she’s saying. But it’s impossible for him to be a leader. Well, if he knows each and everyone in the party then he can but if it’s total strangers then I can only see disaster.
Plus, what he ordered was the basic of party gaming. The tank takes the attention of the enemy while the other member attacks it.
“He maybe has that kind of talent…”
Well whatever, let’s just agree to her. Let’s help this torpe guy here to gain some points on her.
“Right!”
“Rest assured, he’ll be an adventurer and I’ll make sure of it.”
“Thanks~!”
Seeing her delighted by what I said, I can’t help to think that this girl might have some feeling on Gino but let’s not jump onto conclusion since maybe she’s just happy to know that the talent (don’t know if you can really call him that) she found decided to use his talent.
“Uhmm.. I have a question, what is this [Pigman]?”
I asked the question which bothered me before. It’s just that the impact of Gino’s talent (lol) covered this.
“Oh yes, you said that you want me to teach you about being adventurer right? Then I’ll teach you what you need to know!”
Hello? Earth—I mean Tala to Jeziel! Tala to Jeziel! Are you listening?
“So here’s a few thing you should remember about being an adventurer—“
She’s the type of girl who doesn’t listen when she got excited huh…
“—First is about who are these adventurers? Adventurers are the one who exterminate the creature known as monsters! Why do we need to exterminate them? Simply because they cause harm to us, humans and other races! Adventurers also handle different odd-jobs like delivering an item, escorting jobs, hunting bandits or gathering of herbs.—“
So basically, they’re like a mercenary whose specialty is hunting monsters? I thought that being an adventurer means that you will venture to an unknown land to discover the unknowns.
“—Secondly, what’s the difference between a mercenaries and adventurers? Mercenaries can be hired during war but adventurers aren’t. Though they can’t be hired during war, they serve as a vanguard when monsters invade. In the end, adventurers are similar to mercenary just that adventurers specialized in hunting monsters.”
“Third, there are different ranks when you become an adventurer. The lowest would be F-rank, followed by E-rank, D-rank, C-rank, B-rank, A-rank and S-rank. The task you can take differs in every rank. F-rank can only take the odd-jobs type of task, cleaning a toilet, delivering some goods within the city, etc.. E-rank was almost the same as F-rank but they can at least venture outside the village. D-rank above deals with monster extermination and the higher the rank, the more difficult the assign monsters are. I heard that S-rank deals with Basilisks, Hydras and the like.”
“Of course as your rank goes up it’s the same as the payment you received in each task. Also the adventurer’s tag which you can see hanging on my neck differs in every rank. Wood is for F-rank, Iron for E-rank, Silver for D-rank, Gold for C-rank, Platinum for B-rank, Orihalcum for A-rank and lastly Mithril for S-rank. Currently, there are three S-rank parties in this Kingdom, the [Akatsuki], the [Freedom] and last but not the least the [Odyssey]. Oh right now as you can see, I’m D-rank.”
“And lastly, about registration and promotion. Registering as an adventurer is quite easy. first you’ll need to pay 5 silver coins as a registration fee. This fee will be used for the creation of your adventurer’s tag. Of course when you rank up it’s free of charge but when you loss it then you’ll need to pay 1 gold coin for re-issuing.”
“After paying the fee, you’ll be guided in a room where the guild will conduct a simple test to know what rank you are going to start. Mostly they end up at E-rank while others fail to F-rank. There are some who started as D-rank while there are rumors about starting as C-rank. Back then I’m just a weak girl so I started as F-rank and crawl my way to D-rank, takes me a few years though.”
“About promotion, you’ll be eligible to take the promotion examination when you managed to gather 100 points in your rank. About these points, you will be given points depending on the task you completed and failing a task means instead of gaining points, you’re points will decrease according to the points assigned to the task. That’s the end of my explanation, thank you for listening.”
Somehow, I managed to hear and understand everything she said with her machine gun way of talking. Also what piqued my interest were the names of the S-rank parties. [Akatsuki] smells like a group made by Japanese people or other otaku with different nationality and that [Odyssey] somehow it gives a feeling of a transported people from Earth who yearn to go back home. As a joke, [Freedom] reminds of America. What pops up in my mind when I heard that party name was a white blond fat guy firing a gun at the sky while shouting “FREEEEEEEEDOM!!!”.
And also the rank system it’s really familiar to me since the last game I played before ending up here was the game that contains too much salt.
Jeziel is currently panting for talking non-stop.
“Are you okay?”
“Y-yeah.. Haa.. Haa.. J-just give me a minute…”
That’s what you get for talking that fast without stopping at punctuation.
“What is it?”
“I would like to ask what are these [Pigman]?”
Let’s ask the question that bothering me before. I just can’t imagine this monster in my head, though its name suggests that at least it’s half human and half pig but I can’t picture it clearly. Is it like a centaur but instead of having a lower part of a horse, it was replaced by a pig instead? Or is it a pig that walks on two feet with the head of a man… Wait.. That looks like orcs in game.
“[Pigman] are monsters who resembles a pig walking on it two feet with a face and hands that looks like a man.”
“So it’s [Orcs] right?”
“No no… [Orcs] are a race of demi-human who’s much stronger than [Humans]. They are 2 to 3 meters tall with their body covered with muscles and have green skins. Their ears are pointed but not as pointy as the [Elves] and two of their teeth protruding from their mouth. It’s said that [Humans] and [Orcs] don’t get along with each other and wages war of races countless of time now. By the way, the last one was 90 years ago ending in a draw because of the sudden intervention of a dragon.”
Wow… This world really resembles the entertainment of Earth. From web novels to games… I guess the God of this world was a fan of Earth’s entertainment…
I mean, [Orcs], [Elves], and [Human] are races which you can pick on a certain games. I won’t be surprised if [Trolls], [Undead], [Tauren], [Dwarfs], [Gnomes], and [Draenais] exist. Seriously, what’s up with this world?