{Well, with that done, how to get a Mana Core.} – Natria says. – {First and foremost, let me make one thing clear in case you haven’t registered that properly. I was saying that Mana Core is a container limited by the size of your soul, but the container itself doesn’t exactly have a size. It is placed inside your Origin Core and its size is more figurative that it is a real value.

{With that said, to put it in the Origin Core, you need a layer of free space, but I’ll get to that later. The most important, the base of the Mana Core. You see, it is normally created by the accumulation of mana on the free layer, but the very base of it, the nucleus, is always there normally, inherited from parents, or placed during a ritual. It depends on the race, but humans here, including you, for some reason totally lack it. So I need to create it and artificially place it inside your soul. As a side note, the nucleus is the same for every being, because it is the most fundamental thing your soul is made of. It’s where mana crystalizes, accumulates and assimilates into the core, figuratively rather than literally of course.

{So, the easiest way would be to take one from a monster with one and place it inside you, but the problem is I don’t see a monster with one in this place. There might be if it was a powerful monster like a dragon or something, but we have no time for that. For that reason I was making it while you slept for last few nights-.}

‘Wait, you were making it while I sleep!?’ – I shout in my mind, unable to stop myself.

{Yep, it’s no big deal, it’s just very precise work, so it requires concentration.} – She replies casually, making me sigh and let go of the issue, since no matter what I say she will refuse to say that she exerted herself greatly when doing that, which I am almost sure she did. – {Back on topic, I have finished it yesterday, but I can’t yet put it in because I am still too weak. To be able to place it properly, I need a lot of mana, but this is not an issue as long as you are fine with the process taking a few days, though you would be able to shorten it by at least half if you find a place with a large concentration of mana or some kind of mana source. There are also a few other things, but I will take care of them.}

‘And that’s it?’ – I ask, kind of surprised she had no more to say.

{Technically that’s it, at least for you since there is no need to tell you the details you won’t understand either way. If anything… it will be a bit dangerous thing. If it’s about monsters, then there is no problem because I will scare them, but humans might get suspicious and in worst case I will need to abort the process and escape, but I hope there are no people who can see through my barrier.}

‘Well, no point worrying about it since we can’t help it.’ – I shrug mentally. – ‘Also, from what you said, you will be doing that in the forest?’

{Yeah, unless you are willing to do that in the city and inform everyone that something suspicious is going on, and I don’t think it’s a good idea. As a side note, when you get your Mana Core and learn to channel your mana, I should have enough mana to block my aura and I will be able to show myself, but right now I can only hope no one will be stupid enough to approach us while I am out to make your Mana Core.}

‘Um, why must you be out?’ – I ask, perplexed. – ‘Or actually, I never bothered to ask, but why do you need mana to restrain your aura?’

{Um, first things first. Technically I don’t have to be out, but let’s just say it’s not a good idea to stay in the spirit of a person whose soul I am tampering with, especially during something like placing a new Mana Core. We could take steadier approach and wait until you are about a hundred times stronger than you are now, then I would be able to do it from the inside safely, but I don’t think you are willing to wait so long, especially considering you won’t get to see me as soon.} – She says in a teasing tone, to which I chuckle with a smile.

‘I would like to say you are wrong, but I can’t say that honestly.’

{Tehee~! Anyway, why do I need mana to restrain my aura. Well, that’s simple. You need something to stop your aura from leaking. In case of aura of soul, or bloodline, you can stop it with spirit, but what leaks from me is aura of a Supreme spirit, which is the outermost part of the soul. Without a body that would naturally block it the only thing that can take this role is mana, magic barrier, but I have too little to make a good one right now. As a side note, right now I am using your spirit to mask it, but I won’t be able to do that when I go out.}

‘I see.’ – I nod my head and look forward, noticing we are close to the Hunter’s Guild. – ‘Well, let’s focus on the guild now.’

…

The building, or rather the whole complex the guild is located in is a well-kept, really large thing spanning at least a few hundred meters in each direction and build on a base of a square. There are training grounds on one side, accommodations for the better hunters on the opposite and other smaller buildings in between, including mainly the canteen, building with refining formations, the trading hall where they buy and sell mana stones and monster materials, and the headquarters we are headed to right now.

The size of the whole thing is really impressive, especially considering that all the buildings are at least three stories high, and the headquarters are built eight stories tall from red brick. It pales in comparison with the royal palace of course, but it is probably the largest building in whole commoner’s district, maybe apart from Merchant’s Union.

We go into the Hunter’s Guild’s headquarters, functioning also as the office where you come for any matters you have with the guild. Its insides are rather spacious and neat despite how many people shuffle through this door each day, definitely in hundreds, maybe even thousands.

The room we are in is also filled with people. There are a few counters on one side of the room, each handling different affairs and mostly with a few people in queues. Laura heads to one of them, labeled ‘Guild registration and employment affairs’, pulling me along. This one desk is almost free, with only one person right now talking with the receptionist.

As a side note, the receptionist is a young woman with features on pretty side and long, brown hair and the person with business is an even younger man, or boy even, considering he is significantly shorter than Laura, in quite good clothing and with a short sword on his waist. At first glance it is a considerably wealthier and ambitious teenager coming to register as a hunter and learn to fight.

I don’t pay attention to their conversation I can overhear, instead deep in thought about the state of this building. That’s because the whole building is in brick red and gray colors apart from a few signs and minor details, and there are absolutely no decorations in this place. There are a bit more intricately designed boards on one side of the room and the carved pillars supporting the ceiling, but the only thing that can be called pure decoration without particular purpose is a large, carved stone door directly in front of the entrance, most likely leading to the actual headquarters. If I didn’t know better I would think this building belongs to a single, not particularly wealthy person, not a giant like Hunter’s Guild.

It might be because the guild doesn’t want to show their power in this way, or that the higher-ups don’t spend their money on useless decorations. Sure, everything here is of good quality and doesn’t look in any way neglected, but if the representative headquarters look this way, I dare guess that the lower quality dorms are so crude and dull that even slums would appear more lively and colorful.

After a few minutes during which we are standing there with nothing to do apart from looking around the guy finally leaves with a few papers in his hand and leaves for the training grounds for a practical exam to check how good he is apart from his pure strength.

We walk towards the desk together.

“Hello, how can I help you?” – The receptionist asks after glancing at us, stopping on me for a bit longer and raising her brows in surprise when I take my hood off. – “Is it for registration as a hunter?”

“Yes.” – Laura replies politely. – “This girl would like to register.”

The receptionist looks at me for a long while and finally reaches to the desk and takes out a few sheets.

“Alright, please sit then. I’ll ask you a few questions then, I hope you can answer them as truthfully as you can.” – She takes a pen in her hand and adjusts her posture while I and Laura sit side by side on the other side of the table. – “First, name and age, please.”

“Nea, fourteen.” – I answer.

I have decided I will go as a fourteen year old to reduce the attention on me a bit. Additionally I have still immature body, but quite well developed for my age, so fourteen matches my appearance better, and is high enough for people not to be surprised you can kill anything over E- Rank.

The receptionist’s brows twitch, but she continues unfazed. – “Do you have any talents, abilities?”

“Yeah, an earth type. It allows me to harden my body parts to a large degree, though it restricts my movements greatly if I use much mana.”

She nods and writes something. – “Quite simple, but effective. It doesn’t really match your stature, though?” – She raises her brows.

“It depends. It grants me high defense and allows me to fight with my body as a blunt weapon while still having the advantage of small and flexible body.”

“Good you know that and don’t go for pure defense.” – She nods appreciatively. – “Have you fought with monsters? Do you have experience in combat?”

I hesitate for a moment. – “Yes, I do. I train and spar regularly and I have killed a few monsters before.”

“Alright. Seeing you are with a hunter, I assume you know about normal and free hunters?” – She glances at Laura.

“Yes, I would like to be a free hunter.” – I say without hesitation.

She raises her brows in momentary surprise.

“You will be permitted to go out of the city, but we will not be responsible for anything that happens to you and all our services will need to be paid unlike for normal hunters, including food, refining formations and equipment we normally provide and deduce from your pay a small amount. You will only be able to join other hunters in training free of charge. And we will not do anything if you don’t come back and neither heal if you get wounded unless you or someone else pays for it.” – She lists quickly and glances suggestively at Laura. – “Are you sure?”

“Yeah. In the first place I am doing it mostly to get permission to go to the forest, so I have no problems with that.”

“Alright.” – She writes something on paper. – “Would you like us to test your capabilities and assign matching rank or are you fine with the lowest for now? You will need to take separate tests if you want to change that later.”

“I’m fine with the lowest for now.”

“Okay then. For you to be a free hunter, you need a confirmation you are qualified from at least upper bronze hunter. Can I assume you are here for that?” – She looks at Laura.

I look in her direction with momentary surprise, but quickly return my expression to normal. In the end Laura is an upper bronze, so the requirement is automatically fulfilled for me.

“Yeah. This is my hunter token.” – Laura says, taking out her token and passing it to the receptionist. – “I can guarantee Nea is skilled enough and has enough knowledge to be able to go out to the forest and at the very least not hold back teammates.”

The receptionist nods, taking it, then turns back to me. – “Good. Please sign this document by dropping bit of blood on the stamp, then. It is a formal contract that protects the Hunter’s Guild from repercussions and complaints in case anything happens to you. Free hunters are technically under our guild, but keep in mind that being a free hunter means you are completely on your own and we will not cover for you if anything happens, save for unique cases, but you would need to be stronger to warrant that.”

“Alright.” – I nod.

I read the document along with Laura to make sure there is nothing that shouldn’t be there, since what I am doing right now is contract magic that will bind me and the guild forever unless someone breaks the contract forcefully. I then bite my finger lightly with my teeth, already noticeably sharper a few days since Natria tampered with them, and touch the stamp with my finger.

The originally blackish red stamp becomes bright red, indicating successful contract, and I give the sheet back to the receptionist.

“Good. In that case I will give you a bronze hunter token, just a moment until I process everything.”

She writes a few things on various sheets and then gets them in a stack with another small stamp, this time with no magic involved, and after that uses some little spell white pressing Laura’s token to the stamp on the contract I signed.

She then reaches to her desk and takes out a small, reflecting light bronze token. It is round, around two inches in diameter and a few millimeters thick. It would have resembled a large coin if not for its center sticking out slightly, but visibly, like a round shield. The receptionist then takes out a small magic tool resembling a stamp and first presses it to the stamp on the stack of sheets with my information, then presses it to the token.

After a second during which faint light shines from below she takes the stamp back and pushes the token in my direction.

I take it in my hand and notice a few lines of neat, black text on the protruding side, slightly carved inside. There is my name, ‘Nea’, then ‘3rd Grade’, which is probably indicating I am on the weakest side of bronze rank, then ‘Bluesky’, the capital’s name, indicating where I live, and lastly ‘Fighter’, probably meaning I have no special abilities that can make me useful in other situations.

“With this you will be let through the gates and you will have slight discount on some services we offer, mainly refining formations.” – She explains. – “Please turn it around.”

I do as she says and notice that there is a small cavity on the other side of the token.

“Please touch the cavity with your finger. It will suck a bit of your mana, but it will be a negligible amount. You will be registered by the token as its owner. It will work as a method of identification, because the stone is designed the way that any mana other than that registered will trigger a red light, while yours will trigger green. This way no one other than you will be able to use it and if by any chance you died, the stone inside will break. And token’s functions will be blocked.”

“I see.” – I reach out to the small hole with my finger and feel a bit of my mana being drained as a moment of weakness. Then I watch with interest a small, translucent orb largely resembling mana stone forming inside.

When it’s finished I look at the receptionist with questioning gaze.

“That’s all from me. There are also a few things to take care of on guild’s side, but don’t concern yourselves with that. If anything, I think you know about the forest seeing you are here with a hunter, but please remember that even the weakest monsters in the forest can be very dangerous. I’m not sure how strong you are exactly, but remember that there is a very good reason why free hunters are much lower in number than normal hunters despite the number registering being slightly higher even.” – She sighs lightly. – “There are too many young people who die out there, but we can’t do much about it apart from warning and training them. The guarantee from upper bronze helps, but it is still bad.”

I glance at her and ask. – “In that case, you could hypothetically forbid them from coming out until they are strong enough.”

She sighs once again. – “That’s not so simple. We could do that, but then young people would have no chance to properly fight monsters and see how scary they can be. And believe me, you would be surprised how stupidly many silver hunters die because they overestimate themselves after training in controlled environment and having nothing to challenge themselves, making them too full of themselves. In fact, comparing to the total numbers of each registering, there are more silver hunters that don’t return from their first excursions than bronze hunters doing the same, and I am afraid there is no cure for that.”

“Oh… I see.” – I nod my head. – “Well, thank you for everything.” – I get up from my chair and bow my head, then turn around and walk to the exit with Laura.

…

“Hm, Laura, how does your token look like?”

Laura takes it out of her pocket and shows me.

It’s very similar in size to mine, but looks like a shield, with the base of a square and a wide triangle attached on the bottom. It is also made of two parts that can be differentiated easily, one of them being the insides, slightly protruding similar to that of my token, and another being a thicker frame over the whole shape. They are both in the same, polished bronze color, and there are a few lines of text inside and one on the top of the frame.

They read, from the top, ‘Murky Vestair, 1st Grade’, then ‘Laura’, ‘1st Grade’, ‘Bluesky’ and ‘Scout’.

They are all self-explanatory apart from the topmost one on the frame.

“It’s the leader of the team and the team’s rank.” – Laura says before I am able to ask anything. – “In the guild teams have no individual names, but are recognized by their leaders.”

I nod my head.

“As a side note, the base and the frame can be of different color and frame is detachable, though you need a special tool for that. Murky for example has it silver inside since he is 3rd grade silver hunter. Oh, and his token has another triangle on the top just like here is on the bottom, indicating he is a leader of a team. There are also some working alone with no frame, but that’s very rare and mostly temporary.”

“I see.” – Well, that’s a nice system. Very simple to understand and easy to modify if anything happens. For example, if Laura’s team gets promoted for some reason, they will simply change the outside of Laura’s token with the base remaining the same. Or, if she changed her team, it would be the same, just the frame will get swapped with no need for some troublesome process, and if she ranked up, they would still use the same frame.

On the other hand, the person who sees that token gets to know Laura’s approximate strength and her team’s with a just glance, and he can get practically everything important with three lines of text inside: team’s grade, hunter’s own grade and their job.

“Hm, what about Stars?” – I ask as a thought passes my head. – “I mean, what about their tokens?”

“They are very similar to these of free hunters, but are in the shape of a four-pointed star. That’s why they are called as such. They also quite often have additional ‘S’ by the grade, indicating they are special in some way. There is, for example, that guy who has insanely strong kineticism talent that works only on iron. He is not so powerful by himself, he is an upper silver, but in favorable circumstances he can easily kill golden hunters. The stars in general are very scarce and are moved practically only during emergencies or urgent missions.”

“Oh, I see.” – Upper silver probably means 1st Grade.

{How strong is he?} – Natria asks suddenly.

“Ha? Oh, Natria, nice to… hear you.” – Laura says, taken by surprise and probably almost saying it’s nice to see Natria. – “Well… I don’t know exactly, but he can easily bend and mold iron as if it was clay, and slightly worse in case of steel. There is a joke among hunters that if you want to fight him, you go naked, because normally hunter’s equipment is reinforced by metal he can use against you.”

{I see, that’s quite powerful.} – Natria comments.

“Yeah. Anyway, when are you planning to go out?” – Laura asks me, slightly tense, though I doubt she noticed that.

“Hm, this evening probably. Alternatively tomorrow morning, but I have nothing to do, so I think I won’t be waiting needlessly.”

Laura nods with a slightly sour expression.

“Well, then good luck and come back safely. Just remember to see Yana before you go out, because she will throw a tantrum if you go out just like that.”

“Yeah.” – I reply with a faint smile. – “Let’s go.”