“Hello there!”

  She walks up to the reception and once she is close enough, she greets the receptionist with quite the enthusiastic greeting. Yeah, she looks cute with all of her happiness and all, but no need for that much, right?

  Receptionist: Good afternoon, Miss. How can I help you? Do you want to post a quest? Do you need information about such?

  Kiana- Ah no, I’m looking for the Adventurer Guild itself.

  Receptionist: You are in the right place. We take care of both the “client” and the adventurers at the same place, no need to go elsewhere for one or another. But what is it that you need Miss? Do you want to join? I actually haven’t seen your face here, are you new here?

  Kiana- Erm, yes, this is my first time in the city, actually, I just arrived here Thursday at night.

  Receptionist: Is that so? How have you been faring these two days? What do you think about our lovely city?

  Kiana- Until now, no complaints really, the people seem lovely. I think. I'm not so sure about that… Uh, I think the city is big! Ye-Yeah! Everything is so clean and organized! And, and, everything seems so new and futuristic! Like, from those books that someone read for me when I was a child! I remembered something like this…

  “Man made buildings, ones that are made of steel and yet they are flexible enough so that they can withstand an earthquake. They are so tall that it seems they can reach the realm of gods themselves.”

  Receptionist: Ye-yes, the city actually has some buildings like that. We call them skyscrapers, though they cannot reach “the realm of gods”, not even close. However, I’m happy to hear all of that! You know, the guild has quite the impact on keeping everything clean and organized. Although I would wish for more adventurers to be willing to do these types of jobs… Sigh… anyway, Miss, what brings you here? I don’t believe you came here just to talk about the city.

  Kiana- Oh yeah, I almost forgot, I’m attending the Golden Eden Academy, I got invited there actually, otherwise I wouldn't have had money for it... Not even close.

  Receptionist: Congrats! That’s actually quite the feat! However, with that alone I can somewhat guess why you are here. Are you in need of some money, right? You can join the guild if you have the skills of course. Being an adventurer is not an easy job, quite dangerous in fact and the pay at the beginning is not that good to be honest. I believe you could have better luck somewhere else… There are many available jobs in this area, I trust you can find one rather quickly.

  She looks up and down at Kiana as she says this, as she checks Kiana to be precise. Her small stature, her petite arms, her tender hands, her fragile looking body and of course, her doll-like face. Nothing about Kiana's physical features screams “I am strong!”, and her lack of magic energy makes it a reality. This “lack” of magic energy comes from something else, something that makes her far stronger than your run of the mill adventurer, in fact, that alone makes her easily A rank. To have this much control of your magic energy, so much so that you can basically eliminate the natural magic energy that your body emits to the world is something that even a Sage has troubles doing so. It’s a feat that even I, the Hero, have troubles to be as efficient as her. Seriously, I can reduce my natural magic output to around 99.5% while Kiana is at 99.9%. This less than one percent in this case, it is a massive difference, mind blowing even, but to someone like this receptionist, it tells her the complete and utterly story.

  That Kiana is weak.

  Kiana- I know that, in fact, I actually was an adventurer in my hometown. Here, have a look at this.

  From her magnificent, astonishing, completely not weird purse, she takes out a small card, an adventurer card actually. It has her name on it as you can expect, the name of the guild where this card is from and the place where the guild is situated. Ah, the rank is also there and I was right. She gently shows the receptionist the card and what happens next is something that you could easily expect.

  “You are A rank!?”

  That reaction was more than expected as I said before, but still funny nonetheless. Her eyes are wide open, her mouth doing the same thing, her jaw is touching the ground, the cold smooth marble tile. She looks down at Kiana, and then up, and down, and up, and down and for last, up again, staring at Kiana's casual face. She simply can’t believe what she’s seeing. “She’s an A rank? Someone that looks this fragile!?”, this thought crosses her mind as she checks Kiana's physical features. “Impossible! Maybe that card is fake?”, her next thought questions Kiana credibility, she sure is having a hard time believing in it. However, thanks to this brilliant thought, her surprised face quickly changes into a suspicious one.

  This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.

  Kiana- I have worked as an adventurer before; I’m actually registered in a guild near my home town. Though, what I wanted to know is if I can accept jobs with this card. I don’t know if I can use this card for guilds outside of my hometown.

  Receptionist: You do know that, if it’s a fake card you will get in trouble, right?

  Right to the question, eh? Oh well, she will eat her words soon enough as Kiana gives her the card, but before that, Kiana slightly tilts her head sideways in confusion as she didn’t understand her remark. Either way, the receptionist takes the card and goes to the back to fully inspect its validity. A few minutes goes by and she’s back, and oh boy, I was right, she has quite the look on her face.

  Receptionist: It seems my suspicions were misplaced, I’m sorry about it. However, miss Eris, it seems I have bad news for you. While the card itself is real, unfortunately, it’s invalid. The guild that you are registered with has been officially discontinued because of some legal reasons. Can’t tell you much else even if I wanted to, the information is confidential. This means that you have to register once again to continue doing quests, or in other words, for you to be able to do your job.

  Kiana- Erm, is that so? Do I just need to register? If that is the case, I don’t have any problem with that, however… Do I keep my rank? My stats? My accomplishments? My life? Anything?

  Receptionist: That is the bad news that I have. Unfortunately, you will start from the beginning and this card will be destroyed at the same time. It’s an order from the higher ups, I cannot deny it and I do hope you can understand it, Miss Eris.

  “Eh? But, but… my accomplishments…”

  Are you kidding me!? From the beginning!? From A to D!? Well, in this case it might actually be D-! At least that was the rank when I first started. Yes, even though I’m the Hero I still had to do adventurer work to get stronger and for other reasons. Does she even fathom what she’s saying? Does she even understand the massive, the gigantic, the monumental difference between those two? It’s like comparing an ant to the damn earth! Just imagine how hard Kiana must have worked to reach such a rank and yet, not only she lost everything in mere moments, she didn’t even know it could happen. How come, some bureaucracies can do this much damage to someone who has done so much to society? Unbelievable, and now our precious Kiana has a sad look on her face. Thank you, Miss receptionist! Seeing Kiana with a sad look on her face sure was on my “to see” list today!

  Kiana- Does that mean that I can only accept D rank quests then? I will be starting from D- rank, right? What a shame…

  God dammit, I want to hug her… As you can expect, she says all of this with a lower tone of voice and while looking somewhat down, literally. It seems she’s avoiding eye contact with the receptionist by pure instinct as I don’t believe she even noticed herself doing that. Seriously, A rank is no joke at all and to achieve it is the same way. An A rank monster is capable of destroying a small town by itself, that alone can tell you how dangerous they are and how strong Kiana is at the same time. Not only will she be wasting her time by doing D rank quests, if the case that some high rank quest appears, she won’t be able to help out thanks to these restrictions. The receptionist might have an idea of her real strength but the same cannot be said about everyone else, I more than doubt they would let a mere D rank into battle with E rank monsters, let alone A rank.

  Receptionist: Unfortunately, yes, but I will see what I can do to help you out! Don’t get depressed! I know I can’t increase your rank just like that… And even the guild itself cannot do it, but I will report this to my higher ups! Maybe, just maybe, they can help you out somehow! Maybe!

  Well, it seems she’s also somewhat bothered by what just happened as she tries to cheer up Kiana. She better be though, by herself, she did more damage to our Kiana than she can even think of.

  Kiana- Welp… Not much we can do, right? I’m just a little sad that I lost all my progress. It took me a long time to reach it, you know? A lot of hard battles, strong monsters…

  Receptionist: I believe in that Miss Eris, and I’m so, so sorry about this. It’s just that, I have to follow what they told me to do. Something happened to that guild your card is from, although I can’t tell you much as I said before, I actually don’t know it either. I’m sorry…

  “Ah, don’t worry too much about it. If I got there a first time, then my second will be even faster! I want to register again if you may.”

  She smiles at the receptionist as she says this, with a bitter smile but she’s doing her best to keep her emotions in check and positive. With this, Kiana once again registers into a guild. I do hope this time, it will be the last one and that nothing like this will happen again. A few minutes later and she’s done writing everything she needs to, getting the card in the next minute. That sure was fast, wow, really fast. Seriously, the card not only already has a picture of her, it has her full name, current rank and that’s it really. It seems this card no longer has the name of the guild where the user registered from. I hope this is a better way of doing things, at least if something happens to this guild, Kiana won’t be affected as there won’t be a way of seeing where she first registered from. Nah, who am I trying to fool? Of course, they have everything on their files, it was for my case and it will be for her to.

  Receptionist: Alright Miss Eris, here’s your card. This time you don’t need to worry about any of this, not only it’s much more modern than the one you had before, it’s also recognized worldwide! Once you go through the ranks, you will be able to use this card for several day to day uses to. But I will explain it more once you reach C rank, and speaking about that, here’s the jobs available for you.

  She sure changed her mood quickly. Moving on, as fast as she was speaking, she puts several quests in front of Kiana. As anyone can expect, these jobs are nothing special at all. “I lost X item!”, “Gather Y plants for healing potions!”, “I lost my cat! My Heribo is lost! Please help me find him!”, and you get the damn idea. A massive step down, but this is her current reality so she has to choose from one of these.