Arriving in Right Foot, already familiar with its streets and the schemes that swindlers used to take money from innocent people, I walked straight to the local headquarters of the adventurers' guild.

  — Good morning. I would like to enlist as an adventurer — I introduced myself to the guild clerk, who examined me from head to toe. Naturally, I was wearing all my war gear, which I brought with me from my days in the army.

  The man sighed.

  — Veteran, huh? We have a surplus of you at the moment, so the pay is bad and the registration fee is high.

  — I have the money. — I placed a heavy bag of small silver circles on the counter, sculptures of the sun whose number of rays represented their value. I might not have enough to buy land or a house, but it was more than enough to submit to a guild.

  The clerk quickly counted the coins.

  — Name, Level, and Attributes, please. And if you have any rare Skills or Spells, mention them as well.

  — Haicard of Wrong Way. Level: 9, Strength: 8, Perception: 8, Occult: 4. Nothing rare.

  As the clerk wrote down my information on a sheet of paper, I looked around at the group of swashbucklers standing in the building's lobby, reading the assignments written in chalk on the boards hanging on the wall.

  Adventurers: Mercenaries who specialized in monster extermination and worked through a series of regional guilds, organized by more or less well-structured hierarchies. Sometimes, the forces of the Holy League joined forces with those of the various adventurer guilds, but they were not really known for their teamwork, so they limited themselves to isolated operations composed of small teams or sets of small teams, usually such professionals opting for less significant and private work.

  — Do you want to take out life insurance? Leave a nest egg for your family in case you die on the job?

  — What is the fee for this?

  — 10%.

  — Is this fee deducted from the guild's profits?

  — Haha! Of course not!

  — Then I won't want it — they would understand.

  Since it was costly to maintain a standing army, and nobles, except for the especially impoverished, were unlikely to “stoop” to dealing with the “negligible” torments of the common folk, adventurers filled a necessary niche in society. Shadow King or no Shadow King, after all, monsters continued to be spawned throughout the world, with no end to their numbers.

  — Done. Here is your identification; don't lose it, as there is a fee to redo it.

  — Of course there is — I took a fragile piece of paper that served as a letter of introduction and kept it inside a bamboo cylinder that I had prepared beforehand, already knowing well how it worked. — Novice-minor adventurer? — I expected any rank other than the lowest possible.

  — You must have at least one year of experience as an adventurer to be promoted. Due to your level, you will be able to skip a rank and go straight to the rank of “skilled adventurer,” but of course, the fee for this is higher than if you followed the normal order of promotions. Now, feel free to take any job available to novices. The guild fee is 30%.

  With everything sorted, I headed to the blackboards that displayed the available missions.

  Not surprisingly, most of them were not available to me due to my low position within the organization's hierarchy. Although the guilds of each region and country were independent of each other, thanks to the efforts of the Holy Church, which needed to know the average levels of adventurers in order to fit them into strategies against the forces of shadow, they all followed more or less the same pattern of classification of their members, the hierarchy being, from lowest position to highest: novice-minor, novice, skilled, expert and special.

  — Protecting an Alchemist apprentice while gathering ingredients seems good enough, I guess— I mentally noted the quest number and lined up to take it on.

  Of course, I didn't really expect to ever reach the position of Special Adventurer.

  Adventurers who achieved the status of Special within their guilds were incredibly famous and especially talented. Only two individuals held such positions, and they were probably some of those who came closest to the Hero and the Heroic, aside from the headmaster of the Royal Magic Academy of the Sacred Kingdom of Fanon, who was once a Heroic himself, and they were: Borges Heavy Hand, a boxer capable of crushing an amphisbaena's skull with a single punch, and Cornélio Turbar?o, supposedly an elite Rogue responsible for dismantling multiple criminal organizations. Despite the practically legendary status of this duo, at no point was the Sara League able to convince them (let alone force them) to join the sacred war, which led me to assume that they had probably used some of their power in order to make important contacts among the high-ranking members of the most influential organizations in álfheim.

  — Confirmed. We will contact the Alchemist's apprentice tomorrow, so be in front of the city gate at dawn — the clerk said as a new system window notified me that I had accepted a Mission. — On your way out, please erase the activity you chose from the blackboard.

  ?

  — Rael? — I asked the young man carrying a large basket on his back, who was approaching, puffing on his own hands.

  — Hey, that's right. Are you the adventurer who's going to escort me today?

  — That's right. Please point the way.

  If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

  — This way — we left the road immediately, taking the quickest route to the nearby forest. — Aren't you cold?

  — Ah, well, it is a little cold, yes — four years ago I would have been rubbing my arms, all curled up like that apprentice, but Strength increased your overall resistance, including to changes in temperature. — I didn't know that masters hired escorts for their apprentices when gathering ingredients now.

  — Oh, they don't. I had to take the money to pay you out of my own pocket.

  — And you earn well like that, do you?

  — Haha! Not at all. I had to use the reserves I had been building up with so much effort for this.

  — But why?

  — Because the last three apprentices who were sent to collect those fucking mushrooms for my master were all torn to pieces! — Rael clicked his tongue. — And the asshole refused to listen to me no matter what I suggested, wouldn’t buy the mushrooms instead of collecting them, or help me out a bit with money for the escort.

  This wasn't good. Not at all. For a moment, I thought it would be an easy and unremarkable Mission...

  — He's poor, you know? An Alchemist who sells to common people and small shops, not one of those famous ones who produce healing potions for nobles and such, so I understand not being able to buy the mushrooms. But my life is at risk here, damn it! — Rael scratched the top of his head, frustrated. — Damn, I can't even believe he's my uncle... If my father hadn't disappeared when he tried to present his discovery to the Historians...

  — You said the last apprentices were “torn apart.” Do you know what happened to them?

  — The guards think a monster has spawned in the forest. But they refuse to assemble an extermination team because almost no one visits the forest, since the game and firewood in it belong to the local nobles, and they have better places to hunt. In short, no one but us little Alchemists enters it, and that's because of that decree... Oh yeah, you must not know the decree. Basically, nobles are forced to allow the gathering of medicinal items in their reserves. The Hero Cruz, from the last generation, was a commoner until he drew the sacred sword from the stone, so he knew the hardships of the people well. A good man.

  — I see... And you wouldn't know what kind of monster was generated, would you?

  — Something with claws and teeth, judging by the state the bodies were found in — that could point to practically any monster.

  — Look, stay close to me during this collection.

  — Haha, no need to say, that's exactly why I hired you!

  We continued heading towards the forest, but then I remained silent and paid attention to my surroundings.

  ?

  I had my sword in hand, already unsheathed, and completed a 360-degree turn every time I counted to 100, looking in all directions around the fallen log on which the mushrooms Rael collected grew.

  — ...So, what's your Level again? — Rael asked, plucking a fungus from the rotting wood.

  — Nine.

  — Nine?! Isn't that, like, super high?!

  — Meh, it's average for army veterans. I've even met a few people who've reached Level: 12, so in a way, I'm among the weakest among my peers.

  — Wow. I can't even imagine that strength. It must be awesome.

  — Yeah, I can't say it isn't. It's been years since I've been bitten by a mosquito, they can't pierce my skin anymore.

  — What?! That's amazing! It even makes me want to go out there, kill some monsters and level up just because of that — we laughed. — So, what's your story?

  — It's not very interesting, unfortunately.

  — Come on. No one who gets this strong has an uninteresting story.

  — Well... — thinking about it, I couldn't really contradict the statement. — I'm not really that strong. There are a good few thousand guys out there in the same league who are just as boring as I am — I wasn't lying, but I wasn't telling the whole truth either, after all, for every one of us lucky ones, there were about three of those people who seemed destined for some kind of greatness.

  Maybe I could talk about how Julia put my broken body inside a food elevator and lowered me away from the danger of an explosion caused by goblins when they tried to use several fire tomes at once despite having no aptitude for magic, my girlfriend at the time paying the price for that with her own life when I was still inexperienced, but that was her story, not mine.

  — I know. Well, my story is-

  — Shh! — I pressed my index finger against my lips, silencing the Alchemist apprentice.

  There was something in the woods.

  — Press your back against that tree! Quick! — I shouted, pointing.

  Rael obeyed me hurriedly and without complaint, and I stood in front of the mushroom picker.

  — W-Where is the thing?

  — In that direction — I couldn't see anything behind the dense forest, since, as much as my vision had been enhanced, it's not like I could see through solid objects. I could, however, smell the creature's sour breath.

  And this revealed itself soon after, understanding that he had lost the chance for a surprise attack: it was a lizard-jaguar, a quadrupedal monster that lived up to its self-explanatory name.

  — I-I didn't hear anything...! — Rael stammered through chattering teeth.

  That wasn’t surprising. Even those with high Attributes would have a hard time detecting the movements of a creature like that in its natural habitat. I myself had only been able to notice it because, while that monster had a bite capable of piercing through any leather or wool armor, it had a hard time opening its jaws, so it walked around with its mouth wide open as it circled its prey, exuding the stench of death.

  — Y-You can kill that thing, right?

  — ...

  — RIGHT?!

  — WAARGH! — the lizard-jaguar charged towards us, but I kept my feet planted on the ground and the monster soon stopped, out of reach of my blade. It was testing me.

  There was no doubt that if I removed even one hand from my sword in order to grab one of my auxiliary equipment, the creature would advance and overwhelm my sword arm.

  — You're not going to attack, are you? — The damn monster was smart enough to surround us without jumping on me carelessly.

  — We can't stay here all day! G-Go on, the monster is right there! You're Level 9, cut off its limbs and chop that thing into pieces! Honor your position, man!

  I sighed.

  I had already been that naive about the mere fraction of power I had obtained, but that didn't mean it was any less bothersome to have to deal with such assumptions.

  But the young Alchemist's apprentice was right about one thing: we couldn't stay there all day, because once the shadows of night fell, the lizard-jaguar would have an overwhelming advantage over us with its night vision.

  So I leapt forward, delivering a diagonal blow to my enemy.

  — Wargh! — the lizard-jaguar dodged my blade, agile.

  But not in the next sequence, because when the metal touched the ground, I immediately pushed it towards the creature, throwing dirt, rocks and dead leaves against its face and blinding it.

  The lizard-jaguar retreated as it clawed at the air in front of it with its fearsome claws. But from experience, I knew well how much Perception was necessary for survival: with a single movement, I severed four toes from the monster's right paw, which cowered, screaming, away from the source of pain, crying the dirt out of its eyes.

  But it was too late, and I was coming from the opposite side from which I cut him earlier.

  “Swush!” my sword whistled just before falling silent, and I slashed at the screaming monster, severing its spine.

  — Damn... Couldn't you have ended this faster? Cast a spell from your sword or something? I'm not going to pay you more just because that thing scared me, huh.

  — The lizard-jaguar’s corpse belongs to the Adventurers’ Guild — I ignored the clueless apprentice, claiming the creature’s body. Unfortunately, I was only entitled to 20% of the profits on the carcass. — Finish collecting your mushrooms and let’s head back soon. There may be more monsters around.

  While Rael went back to work, I set about cleaning the monster's body to make it easier to transport.

  And so my first day as an adventurer ended.

  From then on, the years blended into one another, with hundreds of not-so-dissimilar Missions.