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I left the Lycoris manor and sprinted through the town’s western quarter with the three goddesses alongside me. Before long, I arrived at the adventurer’s guild, which was lively and bustling.
As I pushed the wooden double doors open, the smell of alcohol wafted from within. It wasn’t as pungent as it had been the last time I visited, but I was still surprised at how many people were already drinking even though the sun was still high in the sky.
All eyes locked onto me. That made sense—I was the youngest person here by far, and the color of my hair stood out quite a bit. Aside from me, the youngest people in the crowd were in their twenties, and there weren’t too many of them anyway—at this time of the morning, most of the adventurers I could see were grizzled veterans.
Ignoring their stares, I scooted between the people milling about as I headed to the reception. A friendly smile greeted me when I got there.
“Oh, if it isn’t Hisui! You’re here awfully early today.” Arisa waved.
I greeted her in return. “Good morning, Arisa. I wanted to take a job request so badly that I headed here as soon as I could.”
“Of course.” She laughed airily. “But you know... Even though you’re strong, you’ve still got a childish side to you. It’s cute.”
“C-Cute...” I trailed off. Her teasing had wounded my masculine pride. But while I’ve heard being considered “cute” by girls can mean a lot of different things, it’s almost always positive. That’s what my friends had always said in my past life, anyway. In my case, it was complicated—I appeared to be a child on the outside, but on the inside, I was very much a grown man.
“By the way, where do I go to check job postings?” I said. “I forgot to ask the last time I was here.”
“That bulletin board over there.” Arisa pointed to my right. Following the direction she indicated—which would’ve been to the reception’s left—I saw a large board. Its entire surface was covered with postings.
“This town’s thriving, so there are a ton of requests. But before you go looking through them, I have to remind you that even though you’ve received special permission to be here, you’re still a beginner like anyone else. Adventurer ranks start at E,” Arisa cautioned.
“Adventurer ranks? What are those?” Now that she mentioned it, I’m pretty sure I saw a letter inscribed on my Adventurer Card.
“It’s a rank that indicates an adventurer’s ability and the success they’ve had doing jobs. It goes from E up through A, and then the very highest rank is S. So right now, you’re on the lowest rung. Permission to take certain jobs is determined by rank—some of them require a rating of C or higher to undertake.”
I nodded. “Okay, gotcha. I guess that rule’s in place so that people don’t take jobs they’re not suited for—like to prevent a hotheaded newbie from jumping into something they can’t handle, for example.”
“That’s right. You’re so clever, Hisui! And to think, some people complain about that rule.” Pat, pat, pat. Arisa leaned forward over the reception desk and gently patted me on the head. I wished she’d stop looking at me so tenderly; people around us were really staring. This was so embarrassing.
“Rules are made to protect everyone, after all,” I remarked in an effort to change the subject. “I say it’s best to put safety first, so it’s important to be responsible and follow the rules.”
It worked. “Wow, Hisui! Our work here would be so much easier if all the adventurers thought the same way you do,” she said, following it with a deep sigh. I could tell exactly how much she’d suffered from the way she’d said that. “Oh, we kinda got off track. Anyway, Hisui, just to be clear, you can only take simple jobs right now. You might be a tough little dragon-slaying cookie, but that doesn’t mean you can bypass rank requirements.”
“That’s fine. I was planning on taking things one step at a time anyway.”
“Good, good! That’s the best way to do things, no matter what. But still, make sure you’re careful, okay? It doesn’t matter how strong you are—one mistake could cost you your life in this line of work,” she said emphatically, then calmed down a little. “Well, you won’t be hunting monsters for a while, though, so that’s kind of irrelevant.”
I chuckled, smoothing out the awkward air. “It’s okay—I understand.” I couldn’t tell her that I’d already fought so many monsters I was almost sick of it.
Nodding to Arisa, I waved farewell and left the reception to head toward the job posting board. Near it, I noticed there were quite a few adventurers peering at the board as well. A brawny muscle-bound man, a gorgeous woman dressed like an elegant witch, a man with a ragged black cowl pulled over his face who almost looked like a bandit... All sorts of unique people were assembled there. Were all of them trying to decide which requests they wanted to take? I sidled up beside them to look at the jobs.
“Let’s see here... A request to find a lost cat? Walking dogs? Cleaning the town’s drain ditches?!”
Wow, what was with these jobs? All of them were regular stuff that could’ve been easily completed in town. Wasn’t there anything that involved stuff like leaving town to collect medicinal herbs or battling goblins or something?!
The difference between reality and fantasy hit me like a ton of bricks. But when I looked more closely, I noticed that there were a lot of requests like that posted to the board—I just wasn’t able to undertake any of them. The request for gathering herbs I saw did allow even the lowest rank to take the job, but written in fine print was an important condition: The adventurer had to be familiar with botany.
That made perfect sense. It’d be impossible to pick the correct herbs without some knowledge of plants to begin with. And since the plants were going to be used for medicine—someone was probably selling them, in other words—quality was of the utmost importance. Looks like I had some homework to do. As for the goblin extermination request, it required a rank that was one higher than mine, which basically meant that the lowest adventurer rank probably didn’t permit monster hunting at all. Did that mean I couldn’t call myself a real adventurer without doing simple, boring tasks to raise my rank first?
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I groaned. “I can’t believe they’re a stickler for rules all the way down to odd jobs.” The adventurer’s guild I imagined was all about meritocracy and the rule of skill—something with the vibe of “Go out and show us what you’re made of by conquering some tough challenges!” But now that I’d thought about it, in my previous life, all the decent companies were always about safety first. The rules were in place to avoid any unnecessary sacrifices.
“Aw, would you look at that... Even though you can kill monsters super easily, there aren’t many jobs you’re actually allowed to do,” sighed Fouré.