Raine went to one of the desks in the room. No one else was there. 

It was a small, simple space without much inside except desks and chairs.

No dictionary? Well, I guess that’s okay. Raine picked up the pencil on his desk and started reading the sample.

“With this year’s Expansion almost upon us nearly three weeks early, a significant opportunity has arisen for the sale of <redacted> in Karlis’ eastern villages.”

Yeah, let’s go sell some redacted to the villagers. Raine wrote his translation of the sentence at the bottom of the paper. He paused once or twice to think as he did so, but it didn’t take much effort.

“There has been a sudden rise in the demand for bodyguards due to the unexpectedly early Expansion, causing the cost of their services to shoot up (It’s even gone beyond what we believe should be the equilibrium price. Prices are likely to fall soon, hence our haste), making the sale of <redacted> significantly less profitable for merchants, so its price in Rialis City has yet to rise to the level normally seen prior to past Expansions.”

Raine breezed through most of the translation but got stuck on two words at the bottom of the text until he realized they were names from English: Poirier and Beverley.

Then he was done. That was the whole sample.

Well that was...kind of easy. Raine frowned. Am I missing something here?

He read over the sample and his translation. He didn’t see anything wrong with his work, so he shrugged and got up. He grabbed the paper, left the room, and went down to the first floor. He went to the same counter as before.

“You’ve finished it already?” the woman asked.

“Yes, I have,” Raine said. He passed her the paper.

She looked over it. Her brows rose.

What, did I screw something up? Raine sighed lightly. Well, it’s not like I spent that much time learning Ephrian anyway.

“Okay, you can take the request,” the lady said with a nod. “This is very good work.”

“Oh, that’s great. Thank you.”

“But I have to say, very few people get this good at Ephrian so quickly. Did you spend all day, every day learning Ephrian in the last few weeks?” she asked jokingly as she looked through a file again.

“Not quite, but I did spend a lot of time on it,” he said.

“By the time I was good enough to translate what you did, I was at the end of my second month here,” she said. “You must have put in a ton of effort into learning Ephrian.”

From the file, she pulled out five sheets of paper held together with a paperclip.

“Here you go,” she said, passing it to him. “There are two blanks that you can write your translation on.”

“Thank you,” Raine said. “When I’m done, I just come back here, right?”

“Yes. And by the way, it’s better to come back to the same receptionist you spoke to when you took the request. In this case, me,” she said, pointing at herself with a smile. “It makes the whole process faster and easier for everyone.”

“Alright. I never got your name, by the way.”

“It’s Shirley,” she said with a smile. “I’m looking forward to working with you from now on, Raine.”

. . . .

On his fourth day in the New World, he woke up with a heart full of anticipation. 

He got out of bed and stood up. His injured leg still wasn’t that strong, but it felt much better than it had the previous day. It was no trouble to walk around. Oh my god, I won’t need the crutch anymore. At all.

He put his hands on the edge of his desk and did a slow squat. His injured leg shook slightly, but he still managed to finish it and then do several more. That’s fucking magical. 

Then he moved on to the second source for his excitement. He sat down at his desk and grabbed a box of pencils he’d bought the previous day. Five sheets of paper were in front of him. 

Paper, you are money. I’ll now work my alchemy on you to reveal your true form. He started translating the document. The first 100 words were easy, since he’d already translated them before. And instead of ‘redacted,’ there was ‘healing potion.’

He put his head down to think, translate, and edit for hours. For a while, he tried to be perfect. He made every translated sentence flawless before moving on. He only finished translating 600 words before he threw his hands up into the air and decided to do a rough translation of everything first. That got him through the last 600 words before lunchtime, although his translation was in dire need of editing, including one sentence in particularly bad shape: “And so logical think the demand high for potions since many goblin attack.”

Raine groaned and leaned back in his chair. I’m fucking hungry.

Then he heard a knock on his door.

“Hi, Raine.” It was June’s voice. “We’re going for lunch soon. Are you going to join?”

“Yeah, I’ll join,” Raine said. He went to the door and opened it.

June glanced at his leg. “How’s your leg?”

“Much better,” he said.

“Well that’s good,” Ava said from the living room.

Raine’s gaze went to her. She was sitting on the sofa, as was Cecily. Kayden was on an armchair, yawning.

Raine blinked. Why the hell is everyone here? You have your own places, people.

Edgar’s room door was open. The man himself was nowhere to be seen. Raine asked June where he was, and she said Edgar had just left to take a walk around the block.

“Hey, guess what,” Cecily said to Raine. She had a grin on her face. “Magic.”

She clapped her hands, and a tiny flame appeared above them for a second before disappearing.

“Oh, wow. Congratulations,” Raine said. Fire seems about right for you.

“She’s been talking about it ever since she got up,” June whispered. “She’s talented, but my god, she really has an ego.”

Raine smiled wryly and headed for the kitchen to grab a snack.

“Hey, since everyone’s here, how about we talk about what kind of request to take?” Ava asked.

“Edgar isn’t here,” Raine said.

“Meh, we’ll fill him in later.”

“We basically have two options,” June said. “Requests that will pay decently but won’t teach you anything useful for hunting, and requests that won’t pay as well but can help you later on.”

“Obviously the latter,” Ava said. “It’s stuff like patrolling the edge of a forest, clearing paths, and scouting an area.”

“That sounds pretty good,” Raine said. “How dangerous is all that?”

“Well, regardless of the specifics, the data says you’re more likely to die in a car accident in L.A. than on your first request,” Ava said.

“That’s not very comforting. I almost got hit by a truck in L.A. when I was in high school.”

Ava shrugged. “Even idiots have a hard time getting hurt on their first request. We can’t take any seriously dangerous requests.”

“Oh, I did take some work, so it technically won’t be my first one. I have a translation job,” Raine said.

“Shit,” Cecily said. “I have to do that too.”

“Huh, nice,” Ava said to Raine. “How much will you get for it?”

“260 vurs.”

“Daaamn, nice. I only got 80 vurs for my first request.”

“What was it about?”

“I helped some random Iurisian lady build a cabin on a hill with my team.”

“Oh, I had a similar first request,” June said. “I helped build a fence in someone’s yard.”

“Jobs like that make you suck up your pride and take what work you can,” Ava said. “But they don’t teach you shit about hunting.”

“Yeah, that’s true. Anyway, it’s decided that we’re prioritizing valuable experience over pay, right?” June asked.

Everyone agreed.

“Earlier today, I saw a request about clearing the paths in the outskirts of the Irin Forest,” June said. “Two fallen trees are blocking the way. Everyone okay with that request?”

“Yup,” Cecily said.

Kayden gave a thumbs up, and Raine said yes. 

“Then I’ll go grab that request if it’s still there. You guys can head to the cafeteria first if you want.”

June left the apartment. The rest slowly got ready to leave for lunch, and about five minutes later, Edgar returned. Raine gave him a summary of what they’d said.

Then the five of them headed for the cafeteria.

“Raine,” Cecily said as they walked. “What did you do to get the job? And what’s it like?”

Raine told her what he’d done the previous day, skipping over some details. He even remembered one of the sentences he had to translate, so he repeated it verbatim.

“Shit,” she said. “I could have done that with some time.”

“Suuure,” Ava said sarcastically. “Documents like that really do take a year of translation experience for the vast majority of people. Raine is a crazy outlier.”

“Who said I’m not one too?”

“Well, think of it this way. The majority of people have a skill level of about X in Ephrian by the end of training,” Ava said. “Then we get a few outliers that are around 4X or 5X. You’re one of them. Then we go all the way to 10X. That’s where Raine is.”

“Bullshit,” Cecily said. “He isn’t twice as good as me.”

“You sure about that?” Ava asked in Ephrian. “Let me guess: you’re near the middle of Intermediate Ephrian, right?”

“Yeah, what about it?” Cecily asked.

“He finished it before training was over,” Ava said. “Along with Blackwood’s memoir.”

Those aren’t exactly noteworthy accomplishments. Raine smiled wryly. And Cecily should know about it because she saw me carrying around the books in our last week on the island.

Cecily blinked. She opened her mouth to respond, but then she closed it and walked on with a frown.

Raine glanced at her and tilted his head. Did she think I didn’t finish them?

“Talented people are everywhere in the Guilds,” Ava said. “Until you can prove you’re special even among them, you need to chill out and turn down the ego.”

“Uh, I have to stop you there for a question,” Kayden said. “What are the Guilds?”

“Xiyashi, Shields, and Hopkins,” Raine said. He’d read about it in Blackwood’s memoir. “Only the first two actually call themselves guilds. It’s just a name.”

“Bingo,” Ava said. “But anyway, that’s not important. What’s actually important is that I’m hungry and we’ve arrived. Let’s eat.”

While talking, they’d already reached the cafeteria. They went inside.

Cecily ate in silence, seeming to mull over something. The rest ate and spoke about what they thought about the New World up to now.

“It’s fucking weird not having electricity,” Edgar said.

“I didn’t even know how to wash clothes without a washing machine until I got here,” Kayden said. “It’s a lot of work.”

“Yeah. And I miss having a fridge,” Raine said. “It feels weird to always drink lukewarm water.”

“You’ll get used to it,” Ava said with a shrug.

Soon, June arrived with a rolled up piece of paper in one hand, and they spoke about their team’s plans.

“So I got the request I was talking about,” June said, unrolling the paper. It had a map of the Irin Forest, as well as the directions for getting there from Rialis City. “I think we should take care of it on Friday. It should be really simple work. We’ll each get about 40 vurs for it.”

“Friday sounds good,” Kayden said.

“What do we do after that?” Raine asked. “Or rather, what are we going to ramp up to? Killing goblins?”

“For the ambitious, it’s killing an orc together in the last week,” Ava said. “With minimal help from an experienced member. Most people only get to killing goblins by then.”

“How about a great orc?” Edgar asked.

“Ha. Without me and June, this team would get slaughtered by a great orc in seconds. They’re fucking dangerous. Forget about the end of your first month, even trying to fight one at the end of your first year is suicide.”

“But they’re really rare, so you don’t have to worry about them,” June said quickly.

“Well, what do they look like?” Raine asked.

“Imagine an ugly guy who’s six-and-a-half feet tall,” Ava said. “He looks like he’s on steroids, has an ape-like face, and greyish skin. Also, a bald head and sharp teeth. That’s an orc. Great orcs are just a bit bigger and smarter and use magic.”

“They can use magic?” Kayden asked in horror. “Jesus.”

“Yeah, but anyway, let’s get back on track. We went off on a hell of a tangent.”

“Yeah,” Raine said. “So do we keep taking the same jobs while practicing until the last week? Or is there a way to progress from path-clearing to orc-killing smoothly?”

“The latter,” Ava said. “You do the simple requests for the first two weeks while you learn how to use a weapon. Then in the third week, we go to goblin hunting. There’s a way to slowly increase the difficulty for you with me killing off more or less of them to start. In the last week, we hunt orcs.”

“That’s a brutally fast progression that most people can’t handle,” June said. “Even a lot of people in the top tier never manage to do it. So please don’t be afraid to speak up if you think you aren’t ready for it.”

Kayden suddenly snapped his fingers. “Wait, what happened to my reward for placing in the top ten for the individual competition?” he asked. “The mentorship thing with someone really experienced.”

“You can start that whenever you want,” Ava said. “Most people do it after the beginner’s month is up, and you should too. Afterward, just go to the Hopkins Tower and talk to a receptionist about it.”

“Oh. Okay.”

The team spent a bit longer talking about what they were going to do for the next few weeks before heading to the practice hall. Raine finally got to hold a wooden sword and swing it around.

Then, after two hours of practice, with his arms feeling powerless from exhaustion, he returned to his apartment to edit and proofread his translation.

Okay, this is good. Raine took one last look to make sure that every single sentence was translated correctly. He wanted to make sure his work for his first request was perfect.

Done. He gathered the papers on his desk and took them with him as he left the apartment and headed to the Hopkins Tower.

. . . .

Shirley stifled a yawn with the back of her hand.

“Oh my god, I hate some of these new kids,” Zahra said, throwing a cookie into her mouth. “Like Marco Morales? What an annoying prick.”

Shirley sighed.

“What did he do?” she asked. She was pretty sure she knew the answer.

“He asked me out on a date,” Zahra said. “I was all smiles as usual and did my absolute best to be polite when I refused, but the bastard was persistent, I tell you. And that was just the third time I met him.” She threw her head back and groaned. “You know, sometimes I just want to show up to work with my hair looking like shit and no makeup on and scare away all those pests.”

“Come on,” Shirley said, patting Zahra’s shoulder. “It’s the tiny minority of them that stick in your mind because they’re hard to deal with. If you just think about it, a lot of them are pretty nice, or at least polite.”

“Weeeell,” Zahra said. She frowned. “You’re right. But shit, those annoying ones ruin my day no matter how many nice guys there are.”

“You just need to change what you focus on,” Shirley said. “Try to think more about all the nice people you meet.”

She checked her watch. It was almost 4:45 PM, the end of their break.

“And we should head back down now.”

“Noooo,” Zahra said, holding her head in her hands. “Why can’t the day end already? This job sucks.”

Shirley held back a sigh. She didn’t love her job either, but at least it paid well. She got plenty of opportunities to make new friends, too. That made up for her having to deal with the womanizers and troublemakers. And if nothing else, their work was far more pleasant than hunting. Shirley had struggled to spend more than two years killing orc after orc after orc while watching her team slowly shrink as her friends retired or died.

Zahra stayed in her seat for a few more minutes. Then she finally got up, and they went into the bathroom to fix up their appearances before heading downstairs.

There weren’t that many people there. Shirley headed to her counter and put away the sign saying she was on a break.

Someone who’d been looking at the requests on the bulletin board came over. She recognized his face and racked her brain for a name.

Come on, I don’t have much time. She smiled politely at the approaching man and greeted him. I know him. I really do. But dammit, what was his name?

“Hello, Shirley,” he said with a smile. He put five sheets of paper on her counter. “I finished the translation.”

Oh my god, and he knows my name too. Come on, brain! Produce a name!

She went to her last resort.

“Great,” she said. She opened her records book and scanned the day’s entries. Shit, not this page.

While trying to look as calm as possible, she flipped to the next page. She was hoping that she would recognize his name as soon as she saw it. Did it start with an ‘A?’ or a ‘V?’ Wait, no. That’s a dead end. Well, he sounds American. Probably biracial, so guessing by appearance will be unreliable. Let’s just start simple. The most common American surnames are Smith, Johnson, Williams...Aha! Raine Williams! Her lips curled in a relieved smile without her even thinking about it. Crap.

She shook her head and killed the smile.

“Sorry for the wait, Raine,” she said. She said his name just to make sure it stuck.

“No worries,” he said.

Ah, a nice person. This is the kind of guy you forget after the annoying ones because he’s so easy to work with. She picked up the papers he’d put on the counter and glanced at them. This one’s the original. These two as well. Here’s the translation. 

She skimmed it. Then about halfway through, her eyes stopped and went back to the start. She read more slowly. Wow, this is quality work.

“Is there a problem?” he asked.

“No, not at all,” she said. She finished reading and put the papers into an empty file. “It’s a great translation.”

She opened a drawer and pulled out an envelope labeled, “Payment, Raine Williams (ID 2554) for Request #001.” She looked inside it and made sure it had 260-vurs’ worth of bills. Then she presented it to Raine.

“Here’s your payment,” she said.

“Thank you,” Raine said, taking the envelope. “With this, I’m rich enough to buy my first coffee in the New World. Do you know any good coffee shops around here?”

Oh, a fellow coffee fan. “There’s a great place down the street called Yuu’s Coffee. I always grab their iced latte when I go.”

“Do they have takeaway?” Raine asked.

“They do. I bring my coffee to work every other morning.”

“That’s really cool. It’s almost like I never left Earth.”

“Right?” Shirley laughed. “Rialisian businesses never cease to amaze me with how they manage to offer so many of the same goods and services we're used to getting on Earth.”

“Well, money does a great job of getting people to do cool things.” As he said that, his gaze went to the clock on the wall behind her. “Ah, I should get going now.”

“Alright then. Take care,” she said. She waved. 

“You too.” He headed out.

She watched him leave for a moment before her eyes went to the file containing his translation. She smiled lightly. Raine Williams. I really shouldn’t forget that name again.