Mally tied up Rat outside the guild hall, next to a line of similarly tethered horses. They looked up at the sign hanging above it, and then they took a deep breath in. This was it. The first step into a new life. They had successfully defended themself against bandits, they had successfully defended themself in the DeVille house, and now they had everything in order. It was time for their relife to begin.

They pushed open the thick double doors and stepped into the hall.

There were people everywhere, hanging out around the bulletin board, chatting up the barmaid, sitting at tables, and no one was looking at them. Taking a deep breath in, they closed the door behind them and made their way to the front, where an attendant was waiting behind a counter. No one paid them any mind, and they approached the young woman with red hair plaited down her back in a thick braid.

“Hello,” they said pleasantly and slid across their identification card. “My name is Mally Mack, and I’d like to register for the guild.”

“Oh, are you looking to become an adventurer?” the attendant asked in a sweet voice, and they nodded.

“That’s right,” they replied, and she hummed.

“Are you a swordsman?” she asked, and he smiled.

“Magic swordsman, actually,” he replied, and she blinked.

“Oh, that’s great!” she said and pulled out a clipboard with a form attached to it. “Can you read and write?”

“I can, yes,” he replied, and she nodded.

“Good. That’s a must for adventurers,” she said warmly. “Well, if you could go ahead and fill this out, we can get you started. We base ranks on merit here, no matter how good you are of a swordsman or mage, so you can only level up by completing quests. Is that alright with you?”

“Yes, that’s fine!” he replied, and took the clipboard and pen. His eyes scanned over the document, and he began to fill it out. Magic aptitude: fungal. Martial arts? Yes. Age? 15. Date of birth? 02/25/5123. Name? Mally Mack. Next of kin? None. Gender? Prefer not to. They filled out the rest of the inane questions, and then they pushed the clipboard back across the counter.

“Wonderful! It’s two gold to register, and if you lose your guild card, it’s one silver to replace!” the woman said, and he opened his coin purse and pulled out two gold. That was a hefty fee. It equaled about $200 in regular American USD, but his markings, but he didn’t say as much. Ten coppers were  a silver, ten silvers were a gold, and ten golds were a platinum. Nothing much else changed. He really couldn’t wait for the world to move on to paper currency. The coins were hard to deal with. And heavy.

“Okay, I’ll get you registered right away!” she said cheerfully, and disappeared through a door at the back. He leaned on the counter, waiting patiently as he looked around, and took in the denizens of this place.

Most of them looked hard, scarred, but there were a fair few of them that still looked fresh and youthful. He probably wasn’t going to make any friends. He was probably the ‘youngest’ person here. That was alright. He could manage on his own for now. He had never been all that good at making friends, anyway.

The attendant came back out with a card made of metal, and she showed it to him.

“It’s magically enchanted so it updates with your age and rank!” she said. “You’re E rank right now, but you can change that with a few quests! So, let me explain the point system to you.”

He took the card and looked down at it, and she gave him a beaming smile.

“You have to complete ten quests of each variety to move up to the next rank, and once you complete them, you can take any quest at your level and below, but it still takes ten quests of your specific rank to move up to the next rank. So, you can’t do twenty E-rank quests and move up to C. You have to do ten D-rank quests. Most people stick around their rank for a while before trying to move up to the next rank. You don’t want to do it all at once!”

He slowly nodded, understanding the concept.

“Okay, I think I get it,” he said, and she smiled at him.

“Guild dues are five silvers a month, and you can pay all at once, or once a week,” she said, and he nodded. Months were five weeks here, so that made sense. “We keep very good books, so don’t worry about being overcharged if you do choose to do it weekly. And that’s about it!”

“Thank you,” he said, and she gasped.

“Oh, I forgot! You can team up with parties at random, or you can make a consistent party. I would recommend teaming up with various parties to see who you have good chemistry with before settling on a party,” she said, and he thought he probably wasn’t going to be joining a party, but he didn’t say as much. “Just be aware of your skill level!”

“Alright, thank you,” he said, eager to get to the bulletin board, and she smiled at him.

“And I’m Mirabel, so you can just ask for me if you have any questions!” she said, and he nodded.

“Thank you, Mirabel,” he said, and then he turned for the bulletin board. There was a group of adventurers milling around it, and he looked over the section set aside for E rank. It all looked boring. Gathering herbs, running errands, safe things, but he supposed that was standard for this. He would just have to grind so he could get to fighting monsters quickly.

Not that he wanted to fight monsters, but he didn’t want to rely on his savings too much, and the E rank quests did not pay well. They did not pay well at all.

Yes, he would just get through the first ten quests quickly, and then he would move on to the actual fighting monsters bit. He should be able to get all ten quests done in a week, and if he played his cards right, he could be to A rank in a matter of weeks, by his reckoning. That was fine. He could do that.

Maybe he should take today to get familiarized with the city, he thought, and pulled down a leaflet about doing courier services. That would be a good way to familiarize himself with the city. Actually…

He made his way back to the counter and leaned on it.

“Do you sell maps of the city?” he asked, and Mirabel blinked at him.

“Yes! We do,” she said, and held out her hand. “Two silvers.”

He counted out the two silvers, put them in her hand, and she took them and disappeared into the back again. She came back out with a small puck of metal, and set it down on the counter.

“You press the two buttons on the side here, and it opens up the map to where you are,” she said, and pressed the two buttons. Glowing blue lines erupted from the device. “Now, if you want to go to a specific address, you say it out loud, and it directs you there. You can also zoom out like this and manually go there yourself.”

She pinched it, and it zoomed out, and he nodded. So, it was like a magical GPS. Cool.

“Got it?” she asked, and he nodded.

“Got it,” he replied, and she passed it across the desk to him. He slipped it into his pocket, and then he walked right out the doors. No one bothered him, for which he was grateful, and he looked down at the address. It looked like he was supposed to deliver books to nobility. Which meant he would be in a swanky side of town. He wouldn’t really blend in, but he had his guild card to show if anyone had a problem with him. He would scout out potential inns on the way over. He’d heard his whole life the capital was more expensive than the countryside, so he would have to choose carefully.

Ah, well. They were kind of hungry, so they would grab something to eat on the way over. Inns in densely populated cities like this didn’t typically have stables, so they would have to either find one with one, or find a stable to house his horse at. They didn’t want to bother Mirabel anymore, so they would figure it all out on their own.

This wasn’t their first rodeo in living on their own, but it was their first time in a new world. They would have to be cautious and be sure to not be scammed. It was delicate work, living as a commoner, and he would have to be sure not to offend any of the nobility. City skunks, as their father called it, were rampant in the capital. They were nobility that lived beyond their means and spent the full year in the capital, not just social season, and typically had a higher impression of themselves than they typically deserved. They were terrible to just about anyone of a lower class than themselves, and made nobility ‘look like fat and repugnant pigs, suckling the Imperial teat’, in their father’s words. They didn’t agree with the fat part, but they were sure his assessment wasn’t off.

They untethered Rat and swung astride him, settling down firmly and pressing the buttons on either side of the puck. It flared to life, and they read out the address. A glowing red line appeared, and they urged Rat into a walk down the cobblestone street. It would be better to take Rat to a stable, they thought. A farrier would be easier to come across in a stable, and they could probably pay extra to make sure he was exercised when they weren’t using him. It would be expensive, but that was fine. Inflation was low right now.

Rat led them through the streets, and they watched the GPS thing carefully, making sure to turn where they needed to turn. There were a lot of people on horses on the streets, and they felt weird being above so many people, but they supposed no one really cared. It was a pleasant ride, and they kept an eye on the passing buildings. They passed a fair number of inns, but none of them looked like they had a stable attached. There were a handful with an alleyway clearly intentionally built in, so they could check into those, but they would look later.

It didn’t take long at all to reach the bookstore. They swung off Rat and tethered him to the front, and then they stepped inside, looking around at the eclectic bookstore that smelled like paper and leather. Maybe they could pick up a book on constellations here. They would visit again later.

“Hello?” they called, and a man with wild, gray hair and wire rimmed glasses popped his head out.

“Hello!” he called. “Have you come to look for a book, young sir?”

“Ah, no,” they replied and held up the leaflet. “I’m here about the book deliveries.”

“Oh! Excellent!” the bookstore owner, they were assuming, said and tottered behind the counter. “Right this way. What is your name?”

“Mally, sir,” Mally replied, and he nodded.

“Excellent,” he said and lifted up a small chest. “This needs to go to the Harwith mansion. The young master arrived today and requested these books specifically.”

Mally froze, because wasn’t he meant to be avoiding Edwin? What the hell? What kind of cosmic joke was this? And Edwin, reading? What was he reading about? If Mally remembered correctly, his character was a muscleheaded---

Actually, he was far more intelligent than Artesia, and he wasn’t a character. He was a real person, in a real world, and he could have dimensions that were not explored in the manhwa. Damn Mally for judging.

Besides, there was no reason to panic. They would just pass it off to the butler and leave. There was no reason to get in a tizzy about it. Gods. Fuck. He was starting to act like a paranoid shoujo protagonist. This was embarrassing.

“Alright, I’ll have these delivered right away,” Mally said, and took the chest. “Do you have an address?”

“Oh! Let me write it down for you---”

“You can just speak it into this device,” Mally said and triggered the map on and held it out to him.

“Ah! A map! You must be new to the city!” the old man said, and Mally smiled.

“I am, sir. It’s actually my first quest,” they replied, and the old man brightened up.

“Ah! I’m your first quest!” he said. “Ah, I hope you remember it. I remember my first quest.”

“I’m sure I will,” Mally promised, though probably not for the reasons the old man thought they would. “You were an adventurer?”

“Oh, ages ago. Made a pretty penny, too. It let me open up this shop!” the old man said, and Mally nodded. “I was a book mage. Very good at it. Oh, you’ll have to come back so I can tell you all about it!”

“I will,” Mally promised, and the old man spoke the address into the map. It clicked on, the red line lighting up, and Mally paused. “Hey, do you know of any inns with stables, so I don’t have to find an inn and a stable tonight?”

“Oh, that would be the Lucky Maiden, near the guild!” the old man said. “Go north down the block and take a right at Lancest, and it’ll be right on the corner!”

“Thank you,” Mally said, meaning it genuinely, and the old man beamed at him.

“Wonderful! Do come and visit again! If you have any book needs for your magic, I can find them!”

“I will,” Mally promised, even though they doubted the old man could find books on life and death magic. They had cost a pretty penny Mally didn’t have nowadays.

“Now, go, go!” the old man said. “Don’t leave the duke’s heir waiting!”

“Thank you,” Mally said and made their way out the door, awkwardly juggling the chest and strapping it down to the back of Rat before they swung up and got in the saddle. They led their horse down the street, and off they went.

To Edwin’s house.