After our small conversation with the old man, we went towards the guild. Thanks to the information the old man gave us, we know that all we had to do was get a temporary registration at the guild and complete the trial and get my official guild card without it displaying my status. Which would be a problem.

We arrived at the guild, it looked like a three to four-storey building. In my perspective it looked modern or at the very least decent.

Athena and I entered the building. The moment we entered it, we were greeted with loud noises every where or rather people talking all over the guild.

Inside the guild there were adventurers everywhere the eye could see and at the desk in the far distance you could see the receptionists writing down quests and attending adventurers.

The adventurers were telling tales about their adventures, some of them were discussing about what to do on their next quest, however most of their attention was drawn to us.

The adventurers gaze was drawn towards us like a moths to a flame. After all, they did not recognize our faces and I looked like I was dead. And, it’s mostly because we are newcomers.

Athena started getting a little nervous, while I was playing it cool… I’d wish.

‘Why the hell are they all looking at us? This is way too much attention!’, I though as I was sweating bullets over here.

I walked towards the receptionist while ignoring the gazes of the other adventurers, some of them were smirking at my weak body, and others had lustful gazes toward Athena and I?! Since I looked gender neutral you could say, some of them mistook me for a girl.

As I finally reached the counter, the reception put up a professional smile. “Welcome to the guild, what brings you here today?”, the receptionist asked. “We are here to make a temporary registration.”, I shortly answered.

The receptionist went under her desk, searching for something and then came back up with two sheets of paper.

In those two sheets of paper it asked name, age, sex, and race. “If you are looking for a temporary registration, then all you have to do is fill out this paper.”, the receptionist explained, while still holding her professional smile.

Athena and I started filling out the papers and then gave them over to the receptionist. “Alright… Shinon and Anathena, is it? I’ll be giving you two the temporary registration card.”, she then went into the back door in the back of the counter.

We put in wrong names, because people might recognize Athenas name because she is a noble and I did it because of the possibility that Ralph might start hearing about an adventurer named ‘Shiro’.

The adventurers were no longer fleeting at us though some of them were but not as many a before.

After a little while, the receptionist came back with two cards in her hands. “I apologize for the wait. Here are your registration cards, with these you can take up quests from rank F to E. However, if you wish to take up higher ranks you must officially register at the guild. Unfortunately, the moment you officially register at the guild your class will be put on F class.”, the receptionist explained.

There are nine ranks in the guild, it goes from F rank up to SSS, these are the mission ranks. Adventurers have classes that also go up from F to SSS class. F ranked missions are known for being easy difficulty, like gathering herbs or fighting against slime monsters or goblins. However, if for example there is like a quest called ‘Exterminate ten goblins near a village.’, it does not mean this quest will be recommended to F class but maybe to D classed adventurers instead, because of the sheer number.

“Also, I recommend you two to wear some armor or at the very least adventurer like equipment.”, the receptionist said looking at my clothes who were just made out of silk, and going adventuring like this would be suicide.

“Yes, uhm…. Do you have any recommendations for a weapons shop?”, I asked since I didn’t know how the city was mapped. “Most certainly.”, the receptionist said.

“Would you mind if we used the job changing room?”, I asked after the receptionist showed us some weapon shops. “Oh, yes it’s right over there.”, the receptionist said pointing to a door with a sign.

“…also, one more question.  I heard there was a ‘special’ quest recently.”, I came up with a topic to start a conversation. I needed to gather information about the attack on the village and the first step would be finding out whether the guild was involved and who my true enemies were.

“Yes, there was a ‘special’ quest recently. I guess news spread fast, or rather it would be inevitable to not notice. The king had put up a quest to burn down the ‘Spirit Forest’.”, the receptionist explained.

“Isn’t it weird? Why would the king himself request adventurers and not people who were meant for that job specifically?”, I’m pretty sure there are people like lumberjacks or people who clear out land for resources and land.

“You are right on that part, the thing is, the ‘Spirit Forest’ is a place known for its many varieties of spirits and the dense fog that you could easily lose yourself in. He requested adventurers for the possibility of evil spirits or monsters leaving the forest and reaching the capital.”, the receptionist explained.

‘That explains why they burned the forest, by the way she spoke they probably weren’t involved in the deaths of the elves. That means there must be some sort of third party here. But the question is who are they?’, I deducted from everything she just told me. ‘If I had to guess, then it would be the king.’

“What were the orders of the quest exactly?”, I tried asking her. “It would be to help on burning down the forest and keeping the monsters that might leave the forest away from the capital.”

‘This clears some of my doubts.’, I thought. “Alright, I’ll be using the job changing room.”, I said my goodbyes to the receptionist. At the very least, now I know the guild isn’t completely to blame on their deaths, now I need to find out more about Ralph and the king.

I left the receptionist and headed towards the job changing room. Now, I will be able to change my job, even though I am not human.

I entered the room and was greeted by an almost empty room, the walls and floor were decorated with weird magic circles and in the middle of the room was a crystal ball.

Athena stayed behind because she was not able to change her job yet. “So how does this work?”, I quickly asked Athena. “All you have I do is place your hand over the ball and then it’ll automatically show you.”, Athena shortly explained.

I went toward the crystal ball. I had no idea what was awaiting me, I have never had any jobs as in jobs from this world, so I was sort of excited.

I touched the ball and a status plate appeared in front of me.

 

<< Jobs that can be selected: ‘Swordsman’, ‘Archer’, ‘No-Attribute Mage’, ‘Dark Attribute Mage’, ‘Astral Swordsman’, ‘Astral Archer’, ‘Survivor’ and ‘Wrath User’. >>

 

Wow, how many jobs I can select. If I had to guess, the ‘Astral’ jobs are here because I am a ghost and the rest should be kind of obvious.

Now, the question is what should I chose? I was thinking about choosing the mage one since I wanted to become better at ‘Dark Attribute Magic’ or at the very least a swordsman job. The ‘Wraith User’ job sounded ominous and I was not sure what the Skill ‘Wrath’ could do yet.

I chose ‘Dark Attribute Mage’ since it might give me a bonus to the skill.

 

<< You have chosen the Job ‘Dark Attribute Mage’ >>

<< You have acquired the Skills ‘Automatic Mana Recovery’ and ‘Alchemy’ >>

<< The levels of ‘Spirit Form’, ‘Enhanced Mana’, ’Materialization’, ‘Fast Thought Processing’, ‘Mana Control’, ‘Dark Attribute Magic’ and ‘Dark Aura’ have increased. >>

 

All my magic related skills have increased and my status as well, I was expecting it and not as well. I was at the very least hoping that the Skill ‘Dark Attribute Magic’ would increase. My intelligence stat and mana stats increased considerably.

I left the job changing room, my head was dizzy because of the barrage of announcements in my head.

 

 

 

 

The receptionist showed us some weapon shops in the capital, there were eight in total. Since the capital was… well, the ‘capital’, it had many shops trying to make themselves famous and get money. So, why not choose the capital to do business?

We went to the cheapest one the receptionist showed us, since we didn’t have much money, I had to make sure the money we had would suffice.

“I’m really sorry master, for you to have to spend money on me like this even though you don’t have to.”, Athena lamented. “Nah, it’s no problem. One way or another, I would have spent the money anyways.”

We arrived at the shop, it looked like a medieval building made out of wood, at the top you could see smoke rising up from a chimney. It was probably a smith doing his job.

We entered the weapons shop and then found a tremendous amount of heat thrusting out the door. It was hot, to the point that if you stayed there for just a couple of seconds, you would start sweating bullets.

In the heated shop, you could find a dwarf smithing a sword made from steel. It was glowing red because of the intense heat. He had a small body and a huge belly, pretty much your typical dwarf.

The dwarf stopped working on his sword and put it in a bucket of water. The sound of water bubbling could be heard as the dwarf turned around.

“Ya here to order somethin’ or what?”, the dwarf asked, he was sweating from head to toe and that shows you how much effort he was putting into his work.

“Yes, we would like the cheapest armor you have.”, I asked the dwarf smith. “Ya probably came here cause’ of the cheap stuff I got. Ain’t it?”, the dwarf said with a sigh of dissatisfaction.

“Yes, the receptionist of the guild told us.”, I responded honestly.

The dwarf looked at me for a second, as if he were inspecting me. “Uh… fine, this is the cheapest stuff I got.”, the dwarf said as he went towards some cheap looking armors and swords as well as other.

The dwarf picked up a set of swords and armors, there were ten in total to pick from, they were probably the cheapest in the store since there were more shiny armors and magic looking swords hanging from the walls.

He probably noticed that we did not have any equipment at all, so he picked up all the weapons that were as cheap as possible in the store.

You could pick up from steel to leather armor and from iron to steel weapons. There were scythes, maces, swords, bows, knives and greatswords.

“The prices of the armors are from fifty bronze up to two silver. And the weapons are from eighty bronze up to seven silver.”, the dwarf smith said. “Help yourselves out.”, the dwarf turned around and returned to his work.

The weapons and armor were considerately cheap, since I had to pay one silver for just a bowl of spaghetti.

I looked through the sets of armors and swords, I wanted something cheap, but protective as well. Since spirit form isn’t exactly physical, magic spells will still hurt me and if my body is materialized, physical attack are effective however not as much as it would be on a human.

Athena immediately picked up an overused leather armor, I knew why she did that. “Athena, pick up a proper armor. I know you do not want to hold me back, but you wouldn’t want to die on our first quest. Right?”, I warned.

Athena pouted a little and then she put down the leather armor and searched for a new one.

I was already set on what to bring with me, I picked up a chain mail and a set of leather armor with some metal covers. Together with the armor I picked up a steel sword.

The dwarf smith looked at me with curious eyes. “What is it?”, I noticed him looking at me. “Nothin’, it’s just the way yer lookin’ at that sword.” the dwarf said.

‘What do you mean?’, I got confused by what he meant. “Yer lookin’ at it as if ya were lookin’ at a drawing.”, he cleared it out a bit.

Back on earth, I watched a lot of anime not just because of the sole reason of entertainment, I also watched and read manga’s for the art. I always thought of anime and manga as the highest form of beauty, that was also why I wanted to become a digital artist, but my dream died with me in my case.

I always wanted to be able to recreate the art I’ve seen in anime, but I only knew how to copy something to perfection, but never make to something original.

Right now, I was looking at this sword because of its design. It was simply made yet it looked beautiful in my eyes.

“You could say… I’m sort of jealous by how well made this was.”, I told him.

I was jealous by how pretty these things are because I know that I myself would never be able to make them. Do not mistake me like I think I want to make this my job, but I really would just like to make my own design of my own swords.

“I… I wish I could know how to make them as well…”, I muttered in a small voice, but the dwarf heard it loud and clear. “You would like to learn how to make them?”, the dwarf spoke out the words I muttered out loud and started laughing.

“Pffftttt, Hahahaha!!!”, the dwarf started to laugh, as if it were the funniest thing he heard in a long time. “What bout’ this, I’ll teach ya how to make ‘em. My name’s Willow, nice to meet ya.”, the dwarf introduced himself with a huge smile on his face.