"Your adventurer's card. This card identifies you as a part of the adventurer's guild, well, provisionally. Once you prove yourself, we'll give you a metal card, marking you as a full member."
"Thank you." I wasn't really too sure how to feel about this. Or rather, there were other questions I had to ask. "Um… What exactly is an adventurer anyways?"
"You don't… If you don't know, why did you agree to it?"
"I'm sorry! I end up just going with the flow a lot of the time. And it seemed like it would be better than the alternatives."
"Well… that's likely the case." She seemed kinda tired of dealing with me at the moment, which is fair. I would be tired of dealing with me. In fact, I am tired of dealing with me and I am me. "Adventurers are people who are a part of an adventurer's guild to work as an adventurer… would be the basic description, but I suppose that isn't very helpful. We, who manage an adventurer's guild, act as an intermediary between adventurers and those looking to hire an adventurer for temporary work, and we buy materials from adventurers to sell to various dealers and traders. The former tends to be inner adventurers, and the latter are outer ones."
Okay, this is basically the same as those I hear in stories, that said, there's a few new terms here. "What's an inner adventurer and an outer one?"
"It's mostly an unofficial classification, but inner adventurers tend to work within town limits. Outer adventurers work outside of the town. The latter are usually better suited for combat situations, which is why the distinction exists. Yaten and Kala are outer adventurers, and I put you down as one as well."
"Wait, me?"
"The combat ability you've shown is adequate enough for me to put you at rank three. Once you get used to using the system and magic, you'll probably be at least rank seven."
"Rank…?"
"We give adventurers a rank to approximate their ability in various tasks, the most important of which is usually the combat rank. It goes from one to twenty. The first two ranks aren't considered capable enough to be an outer adventurer, but starting from rank three, we believe they have the strength to be able to handle themselves for at least basic outer challenges. After rank ten, it becomes necessary to complete a test to raise one's rank, and adventurers of rank eleven or higher are considered to be advanced. It's considered a bit of a different level than before."
"What rank would I get a metal card?"
"Metal card isn't about rank but how much you've proven yourself, and that's subjective. There are metal card adventurers of combat rank one, after all. As long as you continue working here, I'll be able to grant you one soon enough."
"Okay."
"Do you have any other questions?"
Good question… Thinking about it, there's something that I should probably know. "Where… am I?"
"? You're in my office. In the adventurer's guild."
"I mean, what's this town called? This region? This country? This continent? This world?"
"Ah, I see. This is the town of Midforest. It's in the Northern Ool Empire region, the country being the Ool Empire. This… landmass doesn't have a specific name, but we call our world Kalensha."
"Okay." I nodded. "Um… I don't think I have any more questions right now, but…"
"When you think of further questions, you can just ask for me at the reception and I'll do what I can if I'm not too busy."
"Yes, thank you."
"It's getting about time for dinner. I'll show you where you can get your meals here. But before that, there's one last thing I want to tell you: If you ever find yourself in need of some coin or less basic information, I'm willing to help with that, but in exchange for information about the other world."
…Information about another world. Is that why she's been nice to me? Should I be more careful?
…Would I be able to kill her if things go wrong?
