Otjag

There is a change regarding levels and rank in the adventurer guild to adapt to the other changes I did to the system.

Copper is now 1-9

Bronze is 10-24

Silver is 25-49

Gold is 50+

These are the ranks for low density mana regions. I haven't bothered with the rest yet.

If you are interested you can also check out the map for the story. It took me 8 hours and is accordingly large.

https://www.patreon.com/posts/rofta-map-92012154

Anyway, have a nice day and enjoy!

Inside of a walled town next to a river ford stood a four story building close to the northern gate, the administrative building of the adventurers guild. The building itself housed a variety of offices predominantly used by scaled humanoid figures with snake-like heads, snake-kin a race of humans. Worthy of note is that none of them had tails, only filthy lizard-kin had legs and a tail. 

In the highest office one particular snake-kin man was currently busy making himself coffee. He had the most unique appearance out of all of the snake-kin in town. Whether it was the shade of green and the form of his scales, the muscles rippling underneath or the shape of his head no one else shared those traits with him. It was a sign of power, a show of all the cultivation induced evolutions he had already been through and for those perceptive enough, proof of his age hidden beneath his otherwise relatively young appearance.

Guildmaster Sehshua reclined in his office chair and deeply inhaled the scent of the most divine morning brew, coffee. Bringing the cup to his mouth he took a measured sip and sloshed the bitter liquid around with his tongue, making sure to savor every single nanoliter.

Hmm, he swallowed and breathed in again. Slow mornings were the best and Sehshua thanked the gods for the system. He wouldn’t have as much time as he had now without it. As it stood though, being the guildmaster of the local adventurer guild was a privilege and not a hell of paperwork and bureaucracy. 

There weren’t a lot of tasks he had to do to fulfill his position, though the duty that was by far the most bothersome was ensuring the guilds neutrality, which meant dealing with the local government. 

Then again, even that wasn’t normally a problem. Most governments were in fact very happy to have the adventurer guild. Their laws were solid and adapted to adventurers, making it so that the government didn’t have to bother with that, the guild always paid a good portion of their income in taxes and the guild was the main recruitment ground for the monster hunters, so without the guild there likely wouldn’t be any locally raised hunters and that had everyone on their toes. 

Nobody wanted to live without the monster hunters. Doing so mostly resulted in planet wide carnage after a while because most nations didn’t bother with anything outside of their borders, but monsters had a tendency not to care about borders after they grew strong and big enough.

The guildmasters musings were interrupted by someone politely knocking on his office door and a moment later his assistant entered the room.

“Sir, you have an appointment with Baron Varfron in half an hour about the situation and our guild's findings in the barrier forest.”

Ah, that would explain why his thoughts had slowly wandered in that direction. Sehshua’s pupils retracted into predatory slits at the thought of having to meet that bastard of a baron face to face and he tensed ever so slightly, though apparently enough for his assistant to notice.

“The room afterwards, sir?”

The guildmaster blinked, forcefully repressing his emotions and nodded at his assistant. “Yes, if you would be so kind as to prepare it.”

“It will be done.” His assistant inclined his head slightly.

‘The room’ as the assistant had called it was constructed to withstand a good amount of violence dished out by high level people such as the guildmaster and would be filled with old furniture and other miscellaneous stuff that no one had use for anymore. It was a place to let loose repressed feelings and aggression and while it had once been somewhat popular with the adventurers, the only one using it lately was the guildmaster. All the others were either dead or had left 10 years ago and lower leveled adventurers had rarely lived through experiences that warranted an outlet like the room.

The guildmaster heaved a heavy sigh and dismissed the assistant before stared out of the window facing the town for a moment. Sometimes he wondered what his team, his friends, his family really, would be doing right now if they weren’t long gone. 

A lone tear ran down his cheeks, joining the many that had come before.

He wondered and wondered, but really he wanted them back. He missed them so so much and how they always barged into his office just to annoy him. But no, Sehshua would never see them again and all because one little bastard son of a baron had thought it was a good idea to prove himself to the world by harvesting silk from and subsequently set fire to the nest of Xanai, the moth-terror of planet Szalukar.

The guildmaster wiped away the tear and took the report out of one of the drawers next to his desk in a bid to distract himself. He had had enough time to mourn his loss and curse the baron to the deepest pit of hell. No amount of teenage stupidity excused that amount of pigheadedness and ignorance.

Still, even though he had the approval of his higher ups to make the baron's life a bit more miserable to the point that it was implied he did so, he couldn’t actually do much more than intentionally coming too late and being impolite. Not delivering on the services bought would needlessly damage the reputation of guild and some baron on the ass end of a low mana density planet close to the frontier of the universe wasn’t worth that.

Right, back to the report on the quest ‘Investigate the heightened activity of Xanai and what caused it’, though calling it heightened activity didn’t quite do it justice seeing as how Xanai hunts went from every other week to every night.

Anyway, the quest fell perfectly into the dominion of tasks for retired adventurers and had been assigned to Svek, a level 25 Silver rank turned hunter proficient in a variety of things, he was a jack of all trades really, who lived closest to the barrier forest. Svek had reportedly only joined the adventurer guild to quickly progress to Silver rank and make use of the retirement program to ensure the financial safety of his future and get a hunting license without having to join a noble house as a retainer.

It was the smart thing to do if you wanted to live a relatively calm life and guildmaster Sehshua could respect that sort of thing. Not everyone wanted to be a hero fighting against a rival nation or monsters.

Sehshua quietly read through the impressively thorough report once more, noting down the most important and relevant information in his mind. Apparently the young Xanai had used the dungeon of the destroyed frontier town as a food source before their nightly hunting had begun, though Svek had noted that it was less hunting and more suicide out of desperation after he had discovered the cause.

He had discovered an to him unknown sapient species building their settlement in the middle of the barrier forest and in a way that negated most of the Xanais natural advantages by forcing them into tunnels just large enough for them to enter before safely bleeding them out with the help of crude javelins.

The only reason they were successful according to Svek however was that they were only attacked by the young and that those young appeared to be severely malnourished, though the people there didn’t seem to be aware of that. He doubted their ability to fight off anything beyond level 15 for the time being.

After careful first contact and them thankfully being able to speak ancient fluently, Svek concluded multiple things. 

First, the young Xanai appeared to be the only ones hunting and always carried their prey away to the hive, possibly feeding the older Xanai and thus unable to eat themselves. 

Second, the young Xanai ate their own dead, which also appeared to be their reason to attack the settlement. Namely not to hunt the Antanoid, as they called themselves, but to eat those Xanai that died.

Third, there were at least 50 Antanoid with the highest level being 5. Their insectoid nature however made it inconclusive whether their ant-like pets were part of their people or not.

Fourth, the Antanoid appeared to be friendly and could be reasoned with. They did not divulge their origin though, but their lacking knowledge of the surroundings made it clear that they did not come from the settled plains. 

Fifth, the Antanoid were very interested in anything related to mana to the point where Sveck started to question their education and intelligence.

Sixth and last, though this note was made by Sehshua, their time in the barrier forest roughly correlated with the debris falling onto the planet 6 months ago, the so-called ‘star fall’. It was worth investigating further, but should under no circumstances be divulged to the Ekam Federation. Thanks to them most people on their planet weren’t aware, but space travel was very much a thing and their level of technology was quite frankly embarrassing, though that was more due to the Federation artificially suppressing their civilization and not with a lack of trying.

Sveck didn’t write much else. He wasn’t a diplomat and had excused himself as fast as possible so as not to sour any chances of peaceful coexistence.

Guildmaster Sehshua tapped his finger on the table repeatedly as he thought. He didn’t really know what to make off the whole situation. As far as he was concerned the Xanai mission was completed and did not warrant further concern for the time being, but the Antanoid were a whole nother thing. If they really did come from the falling spaceship and were kept a secret they may be the key to free the planet from its imperialistic overlord. They were also insectoid however and that made them a major risk, for there were no known friendly sapient insect species in the universe.

Sehshua sighed and made another note in his notebook. He would have to talk with his superiors about this later. They knew a lot more than him and how to deal with this.

Putting all that stuff out of his mind, the guildmaster tidied up his desk and then left for his appointment with the baron. He arrived at the town's keep a few minutes later and more than 15 minutes too late and quickly made his way to the petition hall, ignoring all the usually necessary procedures and the guards. 

They couldn’t do anything to him anyway. He was way too strong for them and that wasn't his arrogance speaking, it was simply the harsh truth of reality.

Guildmaster Sehshua opened the heavy-looking double doors before him and entered the hall, laying eyes on the waiting baron and baroness. The former had gotten fat since the incident 10 years ago, positively filling out the massive throne and was undoubtedly drunk, going by the stench of alcohol that wafted all the way to the entrance.

The latter, the baroness, was sneering at Sehshua with open disdain as she watched him walk into the center of the room where they could thoroughly look down on him.

“So you have finally come after a two week delay.” There was no love or greeting lost between them.

Sehshua smiled apologetically, trying to contain his hatred for the baron and not let it slip into his interaction with the baroness. “My apologies my Lady, but the report had to go through the necessary administrative checks before our findings could be presented to you. We wouldn’t like any mistakes to happen when dealing with such prestigious individuals after all.”

Before she could answer the baron slumped slightly forward in his throne, his glassy distant eyes wandering over the guildmaster. “Must you hate me so? Must you make my life more difficult than it already is?”

His voice was weak and hollow. There was no energy there, no hope and no future. It was the voice of a man who had seen his father die before his eyes in the midst of a slaughter that sought its equal, the voice of a man who had seen his friends get eaten by something incomprehensible strong and who knew that it was his fault, that he was the one to wake and enrage the beast. Letting him live had perhaps been the worst punishment Xanai could have given and yet the guildmaster couldn’t care less. Seeing the baron like this had never and would never satisfy his grief.

“Hush dear. Let me do the talking and remain silent.” The baroness looked like she would gag at having to call the mound of flesh next to her dear, but quickly rained in her expression again.

“So, will you finally give your report or do you plan to stand there for another two weeks?”

Guildmaster Sehshua stared at the baron, disgusted at the thought of having to see him longer than necessary and then focused on the baroness, before reporting the guild's findings while leaving out as much as possible about the Antanoid as possible.

He really wanted to punch something right now.