Halfway through the doorway, Alex realised that his target was back inside the guild.

  He slowed without stopping, then pivoted smoothly on his heel, letting the motion carry him back into the hall as if he’d simply forgotten something. The heavy doors swung shut behind him, sealing in the noise and heat of the crowded space.

  The guild was still busy, though the energy had shifted. Most of the people inside looked finished rather than eager—armour loosened, weapons unstrapped. The fact that most of them were sat down drinking was also a pretty big hint.

  He threaded his way through the crowd and stopped in front of the bounty board, eyes scanning the parchment slips.

  Wood-rank postings filled a large chunk of the space. The same familiar spread of low-risk, low-pay work. He read them anyway, just to be sure he wasn’t missing something. The parchment slips were neatly categorized, but the content was almost insultingly mundane.

  Herb gathering, courier jobs, pest control.

  Even the combat-tagged jobs were barely worth the label. Drive off pests. Kill aggressive animals. Investigate noises near farmland. This was stuff he could have done even back on earth, so it’s not like it was difficult. And the boring nature of the jobs wasn’t the problem either.

  The problem was that none of them paid well, and none of them had what he needed: Strong monsters with potent blood.

  Recent events had stuck with Alex more than he let on. First the goblin variant and then Darcy; he had nearly died two times in just as many days. Although he’d known this in the back of his mind, this had really driven it home—he needed to get stronger, fast.

  And to do that he needed to take on higher ranked missions.

  Alex turned to the bronze section of the board.

  Immediately, the difference was apparent. Extermination requests that named actual monster species. Escort missions that extended beyond the city’s immediate surroundings. Subjugation notices, some of them accompanied by brief annotations about expected resistance or environmental hazards.

  This was the next step up.

  Alex’s eyes moved from one to the next, his mind automatically sorting them by risk, reward, and convenience. The postings paid noticeably better than Wood jobs, though not by an absurd margin. A few times the reward, at most.

  Although he would have liked to jump straight into silver or even gold missions, Polly had explained the system clearly enough. Adventurers could only do missions at most one rank higher than their own. To advance a rank, Alex needed Twenty Wood missions or ten Bronze missions. The choice had been obvious even before he saw the board.

  Ten Bronze missions was the faster path. The only problem was the rule attached to it.

  Alex glanced back at the small badge tucked into his pocket. Wood rank. Lowest of the low.

  To take a mission one rank above his own, he needed a party of four, which meant teaming up.

  He grimaced faintly.

  It wasn’t that he hated the idea. Although Alex wasn’t the most social person, he still enjoyed spending time with others. There wasn’t much point to living life if you had to do it alone. However, right now he really was not in a state to be making new friends.

  He’d gotten lucky with Grenil, but Alex suspected that the average person’s reaction to finding out his secrets would be more in line with Elara’s: horror and fear.

  Normally, he would ignore this and simply hide better. ‘But we’ve seen that it’s pretty damn hard to hide this shit when I’m fighting.’

  Alex looked around the hall, watching the flow of adventurers move between tables and counters. Groups clustered together, some still celebrating completed work, others packing up for the night. Most of the Bronze-ranked adventurers he could see looked tired. Bruised. Ready for food, drink, or sleep.

  The sun had already set outside.

  ‘Yeah, maybe not now.’ He scratched his face and suddenly realised how tired he himself was. ‘People are less open to random strangers approaching them when they’re tired and drunk. I’ll come back in the morning.’

  Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

  Turning around once again, he left the building for real.

  The next morning, Alex stood just inside the doorway of the inn, one hand resting on the handle.

  He hesitated.

  The hazard armour was already sealed around him, the leather plates snug and sealed tight around his body. The helmet was fitted on his head, eyepieces dimming his vision slightly but protecting his eyes from the sun’s burn. He’d checked the seals twice before coming downstairs. Then a third time, just to be sure.

  This was stupid.

  He knew it worked. He’d already tested it this morning in the room with the curtains drawn back, and the armour worked exactly as expected. Still, standing here, with the door between him and open sunlight, his instincts were screaming at him to wait. To be cautious. To find shade, or clouds, or any excuse at all.

  Alex exhaled slowly.

  Then he pulled the door open and stepped outside.

  Sunlight washed over him immediately.

  He braced for pain that didn’t come.

  The light was bright, muted only slightly by the angle of the buildings and the early hour, but there was no burning sensation crawling across his skin. No agony melting his flesh. No pain. Just warmth. Normal warmth.

  A laugh burst out of him before he could stop it, sharp and surprised. He lifted one arm, turning it slowly, watching the sun glint faintly off the treated leather. Still nothing.

  “It really works,” he said again, a grin spreading across his face.

  People passed him on the street, giving him curious glances that he barely noticed. For the first time since arriving in this world, the sun wasn’t an enemy he had to plan around. It was just… there.

  By the time he reached the guild hall, his excitement had somewhat settled, but he still practically skipped into the building.

  Inside, he immediately began scanning the room.

  The morning crowd was very different from the night before. Instead of drinking and relaxing, groups clustered around tables with notices and maps laid out before them. Sure, there were still a few people who were already drinking—or maybe still drinking from last night—but most seemed to be preparing to work.

  Alex started moving.

  He didn’t head for the bounty board this time. Before he could pick out any mission, he first had to find a team to join, preferably a group of three. His eyes flicked over people’s gear rather than their faces. Armour quality. Weapon condition. The presence or absence of enchanted components.

  He was looking for Woods.

  From his understanding, the least well-equipped adventurers would probably be the lowest ranked as well. With the pay and experience gap between low and high ranks, while not all the Woods would be ill-equipped, all the ill-equipped would be Woods.

  Alex made a few wrong calls.

  One group he approached turned out to be a pair of Bronzes and a Silver slumming it for an easy payout. They dismissed him politely but firmly the moment he opened his mouth. Another group turned him away despite being the same rank, explaining that they already had enough people.

  Eventually, he spotted a trio near the outer edge of the hall. Two men and a woman, all seated close together, their gear laid out on the table in front of them. Nothing flashy. No enchantment carvings he could see at a glance. Their badges were displayed proudly on their chests, as if the excited expressions on all three of their faces weren’t a dead giveaway.

  This looked promising.

  Alex approached and stopped a few steps away. “Hey. Sorry to interrupt. Are you looking for one more?”

  The three of them looked up.

  The man closest to him shook his head apologetically. “Sorry, we’re trying to rank up,” he said. “We can’t take anyone higher-ranked than us.”

  Alex blinked, then looked around. “But… I’m not?”

  “You’re not?” The woman squinted at him, then her expression turned slightly colder. “Oh, so you just had daddy buy you things for your little adventurer play-act.”

  Alex stared at her for a second, then turned back to the first man. “What the hell is her problem?”

  “Oh, sorry about her. She just has a bit of a temper.” The man shot the woman a glare, then turned back to Alex with an even more apologetic expression. “But are you really a wood rank? Could you show us your badge?”

  “…Sure.” Alex slowly lowered his hand into his pocket and fished out the badge.

  The man took it and inspected it, then gave it back with a smile. “Great! In that case, we’d love to have you. Since you chose to approach us, I’m guessing you also intend to do a bronze mission, right?”

  The woman opened her mouth to say something, but a muffled thump beneath the table made her wince and close it. Alex chose not to comment.

  Introductions followed. The apologetic man introduced himself first, a spearman named Rhen who seemed to default to apologies in all situations. The woman gave her name as Mira—surprisingly a mace user—with folded arms and only the bare minimum of eye contact. Finally, the last man, a quiet archer, murmured his name, Joras, and returned to checking the fletching on one of his arrows.

  Once names were exchanged and roles clarified, the initial tension eased, if only a little. They packed up their gear and moved together toward the bounty board, the three of them taking the lead while Alex followed a half-step behind, listening as they talked through options.

  They lingered over several postings. An escort job was dismissed as too long. A ruin-clearing request earned a brief discussion before being set aside due to unclear details. Eventually, Mira reached up and tapped a parchment pinned near the lower edge of the Bronze section.

  “Kobold extermination,” she said with an unsettling smile. “Straightforward. And it’s only a day’s ride by cart.”

  Alex leaned in to read it himself.

  While he didn’t really know much about kobolds in this world, if they followed the template of… literally everything else, they would be weak, stupid, furry creatures. Kind of like goblins, but hopefully without the apocalyptic potential.

  “Sounds good to me,” he said.

  “Then let’s go.”