“Man, I really need to get casual clothes that have temperature regulation magic on them, I look so out of place compared to you two.” Ellie said, rubbing the sleeves of her heavy winter coat. “Maven, do you know how much it would cost to enchant some of my clothes with that?”

“I believe you could find an artisan who would do it for ten or fifteen gold per article of clothing.” Maven said.

Ellie winced. “Well, I suppose it’ll have to wait for when we have our own place and have a bit more disposable income.”

“You could just wear your armor if you’re cold.” Tess suggested. “That has temperature regulation, right?”

“Yeah, but full plate armor isn’t exactly comfortable, no matter how lightweight it is.” Ellie said. “And it still doesn’t change the fact that I’d look weird compared to you two. So, I’d rather just wear a coat, the walk to the guild’s building isn’t that long.”

“Suit yourself.” Tess said. “Let’s pick up the pace, then, just so we’re out of the cold as soon as possible.”

“Fine by me.” Ellie said, speeding up.

Tess and Maven sped up to match, and soon they found themselves in front of the town’s guild hall. Tess had to admit that she had been expecting a little more, but she also had to admit that it was an unfair expectation; she had only really seen the guild hall in the City and the temporary one set up for the expedition, which barely counted, so it made sense that this one was underwhelming in comparison.

The building itself was modest, no larger than Gramps’s house on Mael, and it was built out some sort of dark brown wood. With the snow piled around it, it gave off a sort of pleasantly rustic vibe, like it was the type of place you could stop by after a long day of travel for a hot meal.

Ellie opened the door and stepped inside, Tess and Maven close behind. As they entered, a bored-looking woman at the receptionist desk and gave them a disinterested look. “Welcome to the guild hall,” she said, “are you here to put in a request or to accept requests?”

“Accept requests, please.” Ellie said, walking over to the counter. “What do you have available?”

“Rank?” The receptionist asked.

Ellie gave a glance at Tess and Maven. “Technically one, but that’s only because we haven’t taken the exam yet.”

The receptionist sighed. “In that case, I’m afraid I won’t be able to assign you any requests that require leaving town or entering the dungeon.” She said. “This area is simply too dangerous for people of your rank.”

“I believe we should have records of clearing dungeons higher level than the average for this area, if you check our identification.” Maven said. “Under guild rules, that should suffice as proof that we are capable of taking non-exceptional requests in this area, correct?”

“Provided you had no assistance, it would.” The receptionist said, raising an eyebrow. “May I see your IDs?”

Tess’s party stepped forward and presented their bands. The receptionist scanned them with a device, then turned to her computer and began typing away. As she did, a shocked expression crossed her face, replaced quickly by barely-repressed nervousness. “T-this does indeed seem to check out.” She said. “May I suggest taking a dungeon clear request first? It would make clients feel more comfortable with your skills.”

“That sounds fine to me.” Ellie said. “We’ll take it.”

“V-very good.” The receptionist said. “I’ll get that entered for you, please return once you have cleared the dungeon.”

“Thanks a bunch!” Tess said. “We’ll be back in a bit!”

As they left, Tess couldn’t resist turning on her hearing enhancements, and she was able to hear the receptionist breathe a sigh of relief as they left the building. “Seems she wasn’t expecting a party like ours.” Tess said.

“I would imagine not,” Maven said, “meeting the guildmaster’s grandchildren is by no means an everyday occurrence. Most people would become nervous in that situation.”

“Still, I was kind of hoping we could jump right into other requests once they saw that our capabilities were above our rank.” Ellie said. “Still, I suppose that it makes sense that people would like some sort of proof of our competency in this region, since we are technically rank one.”

“Well, we were planning to do the dungeon anyway, so it’s not like it’s a waste of time or anything.” Tess said. “How fast do we want to clear this? I imagine that having a fast turnaround time on the dungeon clear would look good for us.”

“Not too fast.” Maven said. “If we are too quick, I believe it would instead be suspicious. We should just proceed at our normal pace and let what happens happen.”

And that’s exactly what they ended up doing. The dungeon itself wasn’t anything particularly notable, being a rather standard dungeon that focused on wearing its raiders down via extreme cold, but with the advanced protections on their gear, the environmental effects were a non-issue for Tess’s party.

Likewise, the boss didn’t have anything worth noting in terms of its strength or the abilities Tess took from it, just…more cold stuff. The Skill Tess obtained from the Rewards Crystal, however, was a different story.

The whole trip took about five hours, and they soon found themselves back in the guild office, staring down a different receptionist than the one who had seen them before. As the group entered, she gave them a carefully neutral look. “Would you three be willing to come meet with the branch head?” She asked. “It is by no means required, but she does wish to have a short chat with you.”

“I do not believe that would be a problem, unless my teammates have objections.” Maven said.

The woman waited for a moment to give time for Tess and Ellie to speak, then gave a nod when they didn’t. “Follow me, then.” She said, opening a small gate on the side of the receptionist’s desk. She led the group down a short hallway, then knocked at a door on the end.

“Please see them in!” A woman’s voice called out from the back. The woman who had guided them opened the door, and Tess’s party stepped through. The room beyond was a small office dominated by a large desk, behind which a foxkin woman was sitting.

“Thank you for coming and talking with me.” She said, giving them a smile. “I’m Lucille and I’m the branch head around here.”

“I am Maven, and these are my party members, Tess and Ellie.” Maven said, moving over to the desk but not sitting in the three chairs that were provided.

“Ah, pardon my manners, please sit.” Lucille said. “I just wanted to have a quick talk about the requests you’re wishing to take.”

The girls sat themselves down, and Lucille looked gave them another smile. “Thank you for taking time out of your day to come meet with me. I understand you’re likely busy, so I’ll cut the small talk and get straight to it. I’m afraid that you may have chosen a poor place to do work.

“While, personally, I have no doubts about your capabilities, the people who submit requests to us are, by and large, merchants. As such, many requests are somewhat time-sensitive, and the requesters don’t wish to have parties without a suitable rank or an equivalent résumé waste time on something they might not be able to complete. This leaves you in a bit of a sticky situation. While I don’t know your exact business here, I imagine you’re here to pad out your resume before the upcoming rank exams, correct?”

“Close enough.” Tess said. “We were planning to operate here for the month, but if you think it’s not viable, we can try somewhere else.”

“Normally it wouldn’t be viable.” Lucille said. “However, given you are who you are and your rather excellent record of dungeon clears, I would be willing to be your guarantor for your activities here. In essence, should you fail to complete a request satisfactorily, I will personally go and complete it myself.

“As you might imagine, I would rather not complete these requests, so I would like to propose a series of tests. Since your time is valuable, these tests would take the form of completing some requests we have around that haven’t been taken for quite some time. These are less desirable requests, either due to their reward or the nature of the work, but they would still be just as valuable as any others for the purpose of the rank exams.

“Should that not be to your liking, there is also the option of simply revealing your backgrounds to potential clients. This would open many doors for you, but it would also potentially cause inconvenience, as your clients may try to use your standing to their benefit in whatever ways they can, and perhaps even attempt contact outside of their requests. Still, it is an option that I felt you could consider. So, what are your thoughts?”

“I’m fine with taking these tests.” Ellie said. “If we were in it for the rewards, we wouldn’t be doing this anyway.”

“Likewise, I am fine with this.” Maven added. “I see little disadvantage for us.”

“Yeah, I’m cool with it too.” Tess finished. “When can we start?”

Lucille gave them a relieved smile. “Right now, if you would like. I have three requests picked out, and I’ve given the details to Amy, the receptionist who led you here. Just go ask her and she’ll show you the requests and you can pick which to start on. Any other questions?”

“I don’t think so.” Tess said, glancing at her party members. When they didn’t object, she turned back to Lucille. “If that’s all, we’ll go get started.”

“The only other thing I have to say is that my guarantor status will go into effect the moment you complete the last request, so you can feel free to pick a normal request the moment you have. That is all, though, thank you for taking time out of your schedules to meet with me.”

Tess’s party said their goodbyes, then headed back to the lobby, where Amy the receptionist was waiting. “We’d like to look at those requests.” Tess said. “Would you mind pulling them up for us?”

“Certainly.” Amy said. “Please head to the front of the counter, and I’ll be able to use our display to show you.”

They obliged, and once they were in front of Amy a screen to her left lit up. “These are the requests.” She said. “Please peruse them at your leisure, we do not anticipate the other freelancers in the area being back within the next half an hour.”

“Thank you.” Tess said, turning her attention over to the list of jobs displayed on the screen. She and her party read them over, then left the counter to sit in some chairs that were placed at the back of the room whilst they discussed their options.

The first request was a fairly cut and dry one, find a nest of creatures that had been annoying travelers and destroy it. While none of the three had heard of these monsters before, the guild’s app had a handy database of known monsters, and they were able to look up information on them there.

The creatures, which the app said were known formally as “Irettis”, and informally as “those stupid goat things”, were little more than pests that happened to be around level forty. They were “manavores”, creatures that used Mana as their primary food source, and such creatures were near-universally despised in the freelancing world.

As most freelancers used enchanted equipment, they appeared as buffets to these manavores, who would drain the enchantments from their opponents’ equipment before draining the Mana of the opponent. Most manavores wouldn’t kill a person outright, but they’d damage their gear and leave them vulnerable to attacks from other monsters. These ones in particular were cowardly, preferring hit and run attacks and fleeing from direct combat, making them a pain to hunt down and kill.

Fortunately for Tess and her party, their gear was made by some of the best in the business, and it wouldn’t crumble to simple manavore attacks. At worst, it would need to be “recharged” with some cores, which were, of course, no issue for Tess’s party. So, the mission would be more about locating the monsters than it would be about difficult combat.

The second mission was much more…pedestrian. Literally pedestrian, in this case; the guild needed someone to go along and fill in potholes and smooth out the roads within five kilometers of the city. The guild had special tools for the job, they just needed people to go and do the legwork before things got too bad.

The issue with that was, of course, that the tools for that job weren’t exactly subtle. The noise and emitted Mana often drew the attention of local wildlife, and those operating the tools would often find themselves attacked by enterprising monsters.

And, finally, the guild needed someone to go around to each of the town’s permanent residents, and collect detailed notes on how they were holding up and any complaints they may have about the traders who had passed through since the last time the survey had been taken. That one was, in a sense, the odd one out; it wasn’t typical guild work, but the reward was passable and it didn’t seem too difficult, so it seemed strange that it hadn’t been taken yet.

After a short discussion, Tess’s party returned to Amy. “Um, we do have one question.” Tess said, giving Amy a nervous glance. “Why is it that the last request part of our test? It seems to be an entirely different beast than the other three.”

“Good question.” Amy said. “While Lucille didn’t tell me the details, I can hazard a guess; this request is something we generally only give to people that we can trust to be honest with us and, though we don’t know you personally, your pedigree is enough to qualify you for it. Furthermore, it’s about time we take the survey anyway, so your arrival is simply convenient timing. Otherwise, we’d have to actively scout out freelancers who fit our criteria.”

Tess nodded. “I see. In that case, is it alright if we take the first two requests at the same time? It seems to us that we repairing the roads might attract the beasts, and we could follow them back to their nest if they come. If not, we’ll be out of town anyway, so if we have time we can search for them.”

Amy mulled that over for a moment. “I’m afraid you can only officially take one or the other,” she said, “even though we know no one else will take it, there are other freelancers active in the area, so we need to follow guild policy and only allow you to take one request at a time. That being said, we can provisionally update your bands to track the subjugation request.

“Essentially, if you complete the subjugation request whilst working on the road maintenance, we’ll consider the request completed, but if someone else wishes to take the request then your bands will stop tracking it and it will be considered theirs.”

“That works fine for us.” Ellie said. “If it’s alright with you, can we receive the road repair kit now and we’ll be on our way?”

“Of course. First, however, I’ll need to tell you how to use it…”

Fighterman481

So, the unfortunate thing is that, regardless of how capable you actually are, people like some sort of assurance that their jobs will be done satisfactorily. We know Tess's party is capable, the guild knows Tess's party is capable, but they just don't have the credentials to match.

And, like Lucille said, using connections comes with its own downsides. It'd taint their results, and they'd get pestered about unrelated things because of it. I mean, it's possible they might get "found out" anyway, but it's much less likely this way. Anonymity is just more convenient for their part of things.

Oh, and I couldn't quite fit an explicit explanation in without sounding awkward, but for those that may not have picked up on it: in most instances, the guild only allows one "commissioned" request to be taken at a time. Standing requests, such as dungeon clears, don't count towards this limit, but for others you can only have one. This is to prevent freelancers from hoarding up a bunch of requests and leaving others without work.

There are, of course, exceptions. Much of the time, this is left to the discretion of the guild staff, but generally speaking these exceptions are only for requests that would take people more than a day of travel to get to the area of the request, there being no guild presence in that location, and the requests being suitably unpopular.

You're not going to see many exceptions made in the main branch of the guild, because so many freelancers work there, but in places like this if there were a bunch of requests that had to deal with, say, getting stuff from a hidden valley a long distance from town, then those would be candidates. These requests aren't because the travel time between their location and that of the guild branch office is trivial, like 10 minutes tops. So, Amy erred on the side of caution, even though she's 99.9% sure that the subjugation request won't be taken.

Anyway, next time we're gonna go fix a road, so look forward to it!

And, as always, thanks for reading!