” Hey, Fio... We have a problem with... the... Huh? ”
As I was about to ask her what should we do in this situation, my eyes landed on her half-finished paper.
’Holy Tree, what the heck...’
” Hmm... What is it, Lizza? ”
” Do you know how to write, Fio? Where did you learn it? ”
” What do you mean... Is there something wrong with it? ” she said with a very confused expression.
” Huh? Oh, no, no... It's nothing... ”
” Are you sure? ”
” Yeah, don't worry about it... Let's finish these papers first. ”
” Mm. ”
There was definitely something strange about it. There's no way for a slave to have the opportunity to learn how to write.
But the most strange thing was her attitude. She was looking at me as if I asked her something obvious like how was she able to breathe or something...
’There's no way in hell to... Hold on... Hold on for a second... How the heck was I able to even read all these in the first place?’
Looking again at my paper, I was able to read the unfamiliar symbols like it was the most normal thing to do. If I didn't pay close attention to them I wouldn't even realize the anomaly.
’Don't tell me...’ as the shocking realization came to me, I took my quill and write my name on my paper without any problem.
”...”
Yup, better to give up. If I were to ask another question like this one...
Yeah, I didn't want to look like an even bigger retard in front of Fiona. I didn't want to lose the little pride that was still there.
As we both finished with the writing and were about to leave, a sudden realization came to my mind. Even though I didn't want to ask about something embarrassing again, that didn't mean I wasn't curious.
Since the day I came to this world, I was able to speak with the people due to that skill, [Amissi Common Language]. Or at least that was my assumption.
’If that was the case, maybe the reading and writing skills are included in it as well...’
As to prove my hypothesis, I put the tip of the quill in the ink again and write my name on my hand. The sole difference was that for this time, I deliberately chose to think about my second skill related to language and the result was stunning.
While I was able to read it like the most normal thing to do, at a closer look, the symbols were different from the previous ones.
’How strange...’ I wonder what would happen if I were to deliberately think about speaking in elvish.
If that skill was working in this way, then I subconsciously chose to speak in the common language since I want to be understood. I had to at least try to speak some words in elvish to Fiona and see if she would understand me or not.
*tap* *tap*
My shoulder was gently touched by Fiona which startled me since I didn't even know when she came this close to me. It seemed that I was lost again in my thoughts...
” Lizza, the receptionist is free right now. We should go before she’ll be busy again. ”
” Oh, is that so... Let's go then. ”
” Mm. ”
I took the ink and stepped carefully toward the reception as to not spill it. Fiona took the rest and followed after me.
” You finished already? ” the receptionist said and took them from us.
” Yes. ”
” Good. Let me briefly check them to see if all is good. ” she said and started to read the first paper.
” Hmm, Fiona... Let's see, let's see... This is good, this is good too... No problem there either... Okay, yours seem to be alright. ”
” Mm. ”
” Then, the next one is... Elizabeth, right? ”
” Yes. ”
” This is good... this is good too... Huh? Wait a little bit... huh? Are you sure you didn't make a mistake here? ” she said and pointed a particular line while looking at me from top to bottom with a curious look.
” What mistake... ohh... That one. Yeah, it's not a mistake actually. ” I said after I took a glance at what she was talking about. It seemed that even at the guild it was rare to see an elf.
She didn't say anything after she saw Fiona and while I was looking around there was a person with a tail too at one of the tables. Maybe I should prove to her or something.
” Umm, miss receptionist... Look here... ” I said and approached her as I lifted the hat just enough for her to see my ear.
” Oh... Oh my, oh my... Ehem, there's no mistake. Sorry, but I had to confirm when cases like yours appear. ”
” No problem. ”
” Good. The rest seem to be fine. That's all for now. The registration should be finished by tomorrow. Take this and come back then to retrieve your tags. You'll start from the lowest rank F as anyone else. ” she said and gave me a piece of paper with our names and some kind of stamp.
” Thank you. Umm... can I ask another thing before to leave? ”
” Oh, yes. Since there's no one waiting right now you can ask. Normally, I'll give you a brief explanation too if you want but as how busy these days had been we couldn't do it anymore. ”
” That's exactly what I wanted to ask. I heard about this emergency quest but I don't know what exactly had happened. Can you tell me, please? ”
Since her attitude changed quite a bit after she confirmed my race, I think that asking at least that much wouldn't be a problem. Despite my early complains it seemed that my race gave me a lot of advantages. I could be considered pretty lucky.
” The emergency quest, huh? Then, let me explain. A week ago we received reports about abnormalities in the forest east of this city. After our team investigated and returned it was confirmed that we have to deal with a giant wasps nest. ”
” Oh, a wasps nest? ”
” Yes, if we don't exterminate the queen fast enough and the nest manages to expand too much the situation will turn very ugly. Some of the near villages have been attacked already. ”
” The situation is that severe? ”
” Yes. That is the reason we put the emergency quest in the first place. Before the queen extermination team is assembled, we have to focus on decreasing their numbers as much as we can. Are you perhaps interested in it? Your kind is famous for their archery skills. ”
’Wha... What happens with the previous warning and stuff... Though, as my actual age was written there, she knows that I'm older than my looks suggest.’
” I'll think about it. But isn't that quest restricted in any way? I mean, we just registered. We are just rank F after all. ”
” Not really. The queen is another story but the normal ones are classified around D rank. It's not above C rank so it's still alright. Since you probably are proficient with the bow I just assumed that you might be interested in it. Troublesome as it may be, the profit from hunting them is quite good compared with other monsters at the same rank. ”
She had a point there. To hunt these things you need a ranged weapon. You couldn't expect a swordsman to throw his sword after them or something. That would be hilarious.
Still, something was bugging me...
” Not above rank C... Does that mean that I can't take quests more than two ranks above mine? ”
” Ah, no. You seem to misunderstand something. Even if you were a D rank you wouldn't be able to take a C rank quest unless there is a special situation. C rank adventurers take C rank quests or lower, B rank adventurers take B rank quests or lower and so on. Taking higher-ranked quests will defeat the ranks purpose after all... ”
*sigh*
” You see, the ranks F, E, D were a little special. The adventurers at these ranks were considered more like local adventurers rather than true adventurers. The quests weren't too complicated like you saw already. For example, the emergency quest which should be classified as D rank. You just have to kill how many wasps you can. The repercussions for failing the quest weren't that severe either and the advancement at these ranks is easier too. After completing several quests and prove yourself competent, you will be promoted. ”
So basically the lower rank adventures were more like amateurs. Since their job was to hunt lower level monsters and regulate their number, failing a quest wouldn't amount too much. Someone else would do the job eventually. The ranks were just to distinguish between them a little.
If some individuals were to fail at killing these wasps, that wouldn't amount much since the quest wasn't exclusive for them and there would be others who should succeed.
On the other hand, failing a high-level quest like killing the queen would be another story. Since the danger-level and the consequences of failing were much more severe they couldn't entrust quests like these to anybody.
” Anyway, since you just started, there's no reason to think about the higher ranks... If you were to decide on participating in the emergency quest, I’ll tell you about the details then. ”
” Ahh, yes... Thank you. Then, I'll be going for now. Goodbye! ”
” Goodbye! ”
Now we can see an Elf with bow in action ?.A new female Legolas is coming?Cheer up.
I hope so too... Muhuhuhu
@FDSIO "adventurers" are basicaly nobody, armed to the teeth. Mercenaries ! Dangerous people, who can does anything, from become bandit, to killing the trader they have to escort and use a lie to covert it, or many other like that. If you want a logical and proper setting, don't use rank for their power-lvl ... but for if you can trust them or not ! And so "rank" can not stop you to chose to take this, or that quest, but just said if the giver of the quest will take you in, or not.
Or use both in the same time. But trust is far, far more important than "rank of power" in this trade.
Trust, reputation, and seniority is indeed an important factor for ranking above C rank. Outside of the required skill...
@Ombre37 You have some "odd" opinions ... anyway, adventurers are nothing like that in almost every work I've encountered them in, and for good reason.
An adventurer's guild rank is intended to directly correlate to competence. To reach higher ranks a person has to demonstrate a track record of successfully completing missions, real world combat strength, accurate judgment, trustworthiness and interpersonal skills. It is certainly possible to rank up without them, but it's much harder and for good reason.
If they all behaved the way you suggest, no one would commission requests with the guild and the system would collapse. As a broker, the guild absolutely has to maintain a reasonable reputation for that reason, and to do that they have to manage the adventurers properly. Beyond simply disapproving of them, criminal activity by a member can't be tolerated, and in particularly serious incidents the guild would have to take action to catch or kill an adventurer gone bad... nobles won't commission people who might turn out to be bandits.
To further add to that, reputable jobs go through the guild, that's the point of it, so if you want to make money killing monsters or escorting people then you'll have to go through the guild. If you misbehave badly enough to be kicked out then you no longer have access to guild posted jobs, for most people it's not something they'd risk for a one time gain.
And no, you can't go around the guild mediation ... in a lot of cases quests are posted without specifying the client, escort jobs may not even specify the departure date, they tell you the essentials if they approve you taking the quest so that you can't go directly to the client. Equally, the client won't be comfortable working with someone who the guild didn't approve, because there is obviously a reason they didn't approve.
The few bad adventurers that crop up have to be careful not to go too far... otherwise they might end up with the guards AND the guild putting a bounty on their head.
@kaithar maybe i have see a little too much of dirty people around, and guy realy good to weasell their way after doing bad thing, and get scott-free even with obvious intel against them because they know how to deeply f*ck the law. Bad people are not all idiot. Many smart and bad people exist everywhere. It's just reality, and what some people are, that's all. And adventurer/mercenary are right on target for that. So no, i stand my point. Even more when you see than in real world, only country without real power, or already in war let the corpo of mercenary go and do whatever they want. Any country with power and control will never let people wander around, armed to the teeth, and totaly free of their power/grip like that. Ruler are paranoid for good reason.
Beside, you forgot about something there : many of the story with medieal-setting and magic don't even have fast way to send intel (wich is logical) so no, someone who break the rule of the Guild can do it again, again and again if he is smart about it and go around, etc, etc So yeah, never get the trope of the "adventurer Guild" so powerfull they spane on the whole world without a real, REAL good reason behind it (with is not the case, most of the time).
Trust, and not power and ability to kill/other is far more important than anything. You don't go find a protection/guard/watch/bodyguard corpo to protect you because they have "big gun" but for their rating and how trusted they are. And if the country, fed and other as put a "seal of approbation" on them.
Like the author himself said it : after the C rank, it's one of the point taken to rank-up.
@Ombre37 With respect, your argument literally reduces to "criminals exist so do nothing because everyone's a criminal".
The first part of your claim, "Any country with power and control will never let people wander around, armed to the teeth", is stupid unless you've no idea of the existence of the USA... it's not valid internationally either, countries that fully prohibit firearms are far fewer than those with permissive laws, and that's not counting weapons other than guns. Then there's the number of countries that have some degree of hunting permission for either food reasons or dangerous animals. So I mean, sure, if you want to call a good chunk of the western countries powerless and uncontrolled... I think you'll get some objections though.
Moving on to the second claim, that no ruler would allow the forming of mercenary organizations, that's incredibly shallow thinking for someone familiar with middle age history or fantasy works. For a start, you're implying that a mercenary force would rival the force commanded by the ruler, but that's backwards. Firstly because the ruler holds national power, the army, that force is intended to handle *humans* while most armed civilian groups are intended to manage *non-human* targets. Secondly because rulers historically and in fantasy works have rarely maintained large private standing armies and absolutely never have only a single authority force in their country.
Standing forces are expensive and inefficient, they're also terrible to use against civilians. That's why normally feudal systems and other kinds of delegated force are used. Military force is, generally speaking, recruited from subordinates rather than directly raised, and only applied against other military forces or in national emergency. Police forces are structured the same but for application to civil order, they're just named differently these days, the name varies but in fantasy works they're the city guards. In functional countries, the ruler has limited control over these structures, the point being that a leader can be removed if they prove to be a threat to the country... in theory, at least. In practice it's a lot more complicated, but the basic idea holds in less modern societies.
Adventurers, or rather hunters, exist to handle the gap. You can't task a very expensive army to run around handling wild animals, and the legal enforcement side isn't really equipped or intended for it either. Thus, hunters and local militia. What fantasy worlds have that we don't is monsters and dungeons, both things that fall into that "gap" responsibility, particularly collecting resources for private individuals isn't the job of the military or police. One of the oddities would be tasking adventurers with tackling bandits, but that's actually not that dumb... it would be the job of a state force, but it's far cheaper to outsource the job to a civilian contractor than risk the expensive employee force. We have civilian contractors in both military and law context, so that much isn't actually odd, and a more direct comparison is the existence of bounty hunters and private security companies.
What else... fast communication isn't uncommon in these worlds, you just don't hear it much since it's strategic and not relevant to most stories. Actually the guild is usually the more visible example, since a system where membership and rank couldn't be validated between branches would be essentially useless. That also tends to be why it functions as a civilian intel organisation and message courier in a lot of works. If anything, fantasy worlds have it far easier than real world history, since they have magic to help them. How do you think this kind of thing functioned in, say, pre-mass communication USA, the empires of recent history like British, French, Ottoman, or the less recent like the Roman sprawl over a large portion of Europe and the Middle East?
Seriously, if you spend time looking at any of this properly, instead of trying to apply 21st century political design to everything, you'd quickly realise that these problems aren't new or unsolved. The reason the solutions aren't always a simple or obvious thing is pretty clearly illustrated by how much I just typed to fill out the fundamentals of a few basic systems. The reason novels don't constantly dump all this information in our faces is equally well illustrated by how few people care about this stuff enough to properly read this giant wall of text I made.
Nobody gives a sh*t how your world's sewer systems work as long as they work and they can take a sh*t without risking their lives. If no-one is complaining you assume someone in universe, smarter than you and with more time on their hands than you, has already solved those problems... ya know, like happens in reality.