The guildhall bustles with activity and is much larger on the inside than the outside. There’s practically an entire mall in here. A number of people in traveling garb (including more non-humans than I’ve seen in one place before) crowd the bar area and peruse the bulletin boards, completely undeterred by it being winter. No one bats an eye at a nine-year-old carrying a healer’s staff.

  A sign on a wall reads ‘NO FLOJ!’ with a red circle and diagonal line over an outline of a blue bottle.

  Dark auras surround two reincarnators in the room. Judging by the furry feet, one of them is an actual halfling. He notices my look and nods to me before returning his attention to his bowl of stew. The other is a tall, blond human decked out in striped fur pelts who is too busy sampling the local beverages to care about anything else.

  Every reincarnator shares a common knowledge of a world unlike this. We understand things these young souls have no concept of.

  A big sign over one of the boards reads ‘Looking For Group’ while the others have postings for Basic, Elite, and Heroic quests. A sign notes that while membership is not required for Basic-rank quests, you need to join for quests of Elite rank and higher. In the opposite corner from the bar and inn area, a giant spider in a suit ‘mans’ the help desk.

  “Duuude,” Basalt utters in awe. “This place is beautiful.”

  Meadow goes over to inspect the group board, and Basalt sidles over to the Basic quest list. I follow him, and Rowan and Anise follow me. Fortunately, the room is large and is built with the expectation that people will be trying to move around in groups of three to six people.

  I watch the flow of aether and vis through the area and realize that the Adventurers’ Guild building is a dungeon separate from the Hearth to the west. There’s definitely a source of aether a short way to the east as well.

  Basalt says, “Can we run this standing quest for killing rats in the basement?”

  “Sure, that’s a good baby quest to cut your teeth on,” Anise says. “And there’s fewer legs than the spiders.” She notices the aranea at the help desk next to her. “No offense. I mean the monster giant spiders in the Spooky Grove. You have the perfect number of legs.”

  The aranea makes an implausibly human-sounding giggle. “None taken. Those are just puppets made of protean plasm, not real spiders.”

  Rowan steps up to the help desk and asks, “What sort of things can you help with? I have a quest on my log that has been incomplete for years and I’ve never run across a lead for.”

  “Stalled quests are always a bother,” the friendly giant spider says. “I suggest you ask the guy behind the smoothie counter if he has heard anything. Buy an expensive drink if he hesitates and thinks he’s being coy.”

  Rowan goes over to the counter and asks the smoothie guy if he has heard anything about a Talgarth family sword. He’s an obese human at Heroic rank who looks to be in his thirties, and he bears a nametag that reads, ‘Hello, my name is BIRCH’.

  Birch says, “I might know something. If we were friends. And friends help one another level up their skills. I have exotic beverages from distant domains here. Have you tasted the oranges of Zenith? The melons of Crux?”

  “Drake,” Basalt says quietly. “You said Milo’s a businessman, right? I think I know what to do with some of those grapes…”

  “I did not expect there to be a counter in the Adventurers’ Guild selling smoothies with exotic fruits,” I say.

  Rowan winds up buying a strawberry-kiwi-lime-goat yogurt smoothie, which he admits he actually really likes.

  “Go to the east dock at violet,” the smoothie guy whispers dramatically. “The password is ‘mahimahi’. Bring only Basics.”

  “Those are incredibly suspicious instructions,” Rowan says.

  Birch laughs, playfulness rippling through his aura. “Just messing with you, kid.”

  Rowan isn’t amused.

  “It’s not like I keep track of every piece of contraband that passes through town,” Birch says. “Check the junk shop by the east dock and ask Wren. She keeps track of every piece of contraband that passes through town.”

  “Noted, thank you,” Rowan says.

  We get something to eat before we go anywhere. As we’re eating a bowl of the guild’s most generic stew ever, I listen in on the conversations going on around me and learn a few interesting things.

  

  

  “I caught my cousin doing floj,” someone says. “We can’t afford treatment. Hopefully I can make enough money from this quest to pay someone to remove the curse. I don’t want to have to borrow coin from the Halkyns again.”

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

  Meadow returns to interrupt my eavesdropping. “Well, that was kind of a bust. I found a party looking for a local to hook up with, but their leader is a Heroic whose class does everything mine does better. I did see a note about a Basic-rank girl named Wren looking for a group. It said to meet her at the junk shop by the east dock at red.”

  “Wren?” Rowan says. “The guy at the smoothie counter told me to ask me about my family’s sword, too. And he made me buy an expensive delicious drink, too! Oh well.”

  Once I finish eating, I head out to explore town a little in the meantime, although it seems like the inside of the Adventurers’ Guild is bigger than the entire rest of the town. The Hearth and guildhall are maybe a kilometer apart, situated on opposite sides of a cluster of ramshackle buildings. Corwen only has one shop, while Amroth has several specializing in different goods with imports from across Tiganna.

  The town has a bookstore with a discount rack. Overstock of last year’s bestsellers. I know a friendly ghost who wouldn’t mind some fresh reading material, so I grab a few books with novels with covers of half-naked men, roses, and flowery fonts proclaiming titles like Eternal Love, Forbidden Temptation, and Sensual Redemption. I also grab a pulp adventure novel for myself.

  The cashier gives an odd look at the nine-year-old boy buying romance novels.

  “… they’re for a quest,” I mutter.

  The man chuckles and says, “I didn’t say a word. That’ll be 4 silver.”

  I pass over the coins and tuck the books into my pack.

  Before the day ends, since we need to wait to make contact anyway, I want to get some enhancement training done. We rent a suite in the guildhall’s underground inn and I leave my pack there. I borrow a pillow from my room and find a balcony overlooking the edge to take a seat on. I rest my staff across my legs, glad that [Labor of Love] at least made the snake carving on the top recognizable this time. (Anise follows along, not letting her son out of her sight in an unfamiliar place.)

  The aether core of Tiganna has faded from yellow to orange since we arrived, but there’s still time to get some work done and put [Celestial Inspiration] to good use.

  Skills are based on concepts, and I’m pretty sure I can absorb any concept and shape it into any skill I can conceive of. Knowing that doesn’t make it easier to actually do so. It’s like having to understand how gravity works before you can build a bridge. Actually designing it and building it is the hard part.

  I think about myself and who I am as I draw the concepts around me into my soul.

  The four mental stats counterbalance the four physical stats. Intelligence is mental Dexterity. Willpower is mental Endurance. Charisma is mental Strength. Which makes Soul mental Perception. Clairvoyance is essentially just Search with non-physical eyes.

  What does that mean for Enhanced Soul? That I should be able to carry over anything that might have gone into Enhanced Senses, just with my third eye instead? Hmm. I do believe I know where to start, too. [Fantastic Inspiration] is nice, but limited. [Celestial Inspiration] is wonderful, but again, limited. Useless if I can’t see the sky or read a book, and I hate getting Inspiration by imagining social media arguments about science fiction stories that make no sense in the setting I’ve found myself in.

  Magic itself is beautiful and inspirational. The flows of aether, the heartbeats of vis, the formations of essence, the bursts of experience. I could watch it forever, and I grasp that feeling and draw it into my soul.

  

  

  There… that’s the skill I’ve been looking for. One that’s been waiting on the edge of my perception for me to make the necessary connections. The concepts have to align, and I have to understand. Today, I feel like I could do anything.

  As the core’s light fades from orange to red, I remember that we have a clandestine meeting with a smoothie guy to get to. Grabbing my pilfered pillow, I return to the Adventurers’ Guild and meet up with Rowan in our suite.

  “Is it red already?” Rowan yawns. “I got a nap in. I was afraid we’d wind up spending all night doing skulduggery or whatever.”

  “Who knows?” Anise says brightly. “Where’s Basalt?”

  Rowan shakes his head and shrugs, so we head out to the common area. One of the rooms in the guildhall is used for adventurers playing games. One table has a few people playing Leaves. Two are playing chess. And one corner has a jigsaw puzzle set up that a couple of others are staring at. Basalt is here watching along with a few other spectators. He spots us and rejoins the group.

  A squat building stands off the side of the road leading up to the eastern dock. The placard outside is illegible, and the door jingles a bell as we step inside.

  An impressive array of miscellany fills every spare centimeter of shelf space in this building. From old lamps to boots to magitech devices I can’t begin to guess the function of, this might be a good place to find some random knickknack you never knew you needed.

  A bookish young man wearing glasses greets us as we come in. “Welcome to The Dragon’s Hoard, where you will find treasures fit for a dragon’s hoard!”

  “Yeah, if the dragon is a hoarder,” a girl’s voice pipes in.

  “Wren, you know Fern Amroth hates when employees say negative things about her shop,” the man admonishes.

  “Pff, I’m off shift now, so I can say what I want. Have fun dealing with the weirdos that come out at night.”

  A wiry 15 year old girl clad in well-worn leather emerges from the back room.

  

  

  “Are you Wren Farlow Rust?” Meadow asks.

  “That’s me,” Wren says. “Are you adventurers here about my LFG post? Man, I would like nothing better than to be able to sign on with an adventuring party and quit this dump.”

  “It’s not a dump,” the spectacled man protests. “It is a stunning collection of priceless treasures.”

  Basalt holds up a fancy mug. “This one has a tag that says ‘10 silver’ on it.”

  “Ah, yes, that’s the Sacred Chalice of the Dwarf-Fathers. It is said to have been drunk from for generations of— Stop laughing, Wren!”

  “Oh, Cliff, you are so full of it,” Wren says between giggles. “Do you really think anyone is going to be fooled into thinking that is a sacred chalice?”

  Cliff sighs. “You are off-shift, so why don’t you just leave before you ruin any further chances I have at selling anything?”

  “And if these nice adventurers sign me on, I’m not coming back here except to get my last week’s pay,” Wren says. “And then you won’t have to deal with my attitude ever again.”

  “Until they get tired of your attitude and send you crawling back here,” Cliff says.

  “I like her,” Anise says. “She’s funny.”