I walked back toward my class, weaving through the lightly scattered trainees who were lined up youngest to oldest. Being three meant I went first, so I had already finished handing in my quest. Now I was trying to make my way all the way to the back, where Winnie waited since she was going last. It was not that crowded, but I was small, so it still took me a while to navigate past taller kids and the occasional swinging practice weapon. The line stretched from the Guild Hall doors all the way to the edge of the practice yard, a noisy, restless snake made of children.

  I slipped past a pair of older kids arguing about who had landed the better strike during a past spar. The air smelled like dust, sweat, and the smell of wood from cheap training weapons that had smashed against too many rocks.

  I finally reached the back of the line, where Winnie stood proudly with her log resting on one shoulder as if it were a royal scepter. She had her chin lifted, like she was king of the line and the log was her crown. Greta waited nearby with Meka tucked behind her again, the poor minotaur girl trembling because this was her first day here and she did not know what to do. Her tail flicked nervously, and she kept glancing at all the other kids as if they were about to attack her with questions.

  Greta rested one hand on her hip and pointed at me with the other. “Alright, Runt. You are going to take your trainee and help her the same way Myrda helped you lot yesterday. Show her the quest board. Explain how things work.” She gave Meka a reassuring pat on the shoulder, fingers tapping twice against her fur like a promise. “He is going to be taking on the role of your instructor. I am not sure how much training he has done in his past life but if he mess up. I’ll still be here to help even if I don’t understand magic. I can still help with general adventurer stuff.”

  “I can do that,” I said, holding my staff in one hand and my little pouch of coins in the other. The pouch jingled faintly, each fred clinking against the others like they were proud of themselves for surviving my first real quest. “I am going to put these in my chest first. Do you want to come as well Winnie? It might take a while for you to get your reward anyways.”

  “I’ll go with you instructor Runt,” Winnie said immediately. She shifted her log into a more dramatic pose and gave my staff a curious look. “So, you got a staff. Very wizardly of you.”

  “Yeah,” I said, shifting it under my arm. The wood was smooth and slightly cool, the weight heavier than I remembered staffs feeling in my hands. “I have used a staff before. Even though this one is a lot bigger, relatively, than I am, I should be able to readjust to using an oversized weapon. Even if it is not meant for martial users.”

  “It is still not as good as my log,” Winnie said, patting her half rotted treasure. Bits of bark flaked off and drifted to the ground. She did not notice or did not care. To her, it might as well have been a holy artifact.

  “I think it is pretty cool,” Meka said softly, stepping out just enough to defend me. Her ears flicked as she spoke, and she stared at the staff like it was some legendary relic.

  “It is okay,” I said. “Not great. I am going to make it better in the future. But it will help me actually have a weapon to fight with, because my body is not strong enough to do any damage at all right now.”

  “Your fists look soft,” Winnie said with a grin. “Like they would actually heal your opponent by being so cute.”

  “I can see that,” I muttered.

  Greta snorted quietly at that, then jerked her chin toward the 1. “Go on. I will keep these lot from starting a brawl in the line.”

  We peeled away from the queue and headed toward the trainees’ quarters. The building was plain from the outside, all rough wood and stone, but inside it held rows of simple bunks and small chests at the foot of each bed. The floor creaked as we stepped inside, and somewhere farther down the hall someone laughed too loudly.

  We walked past a few kids who were sitting on their beds cleaning practice weapons or counting their own small stacks of coins. Some glanced up at us. Most of them stared at Meka. It was hard not to stare at a minotaur girl trying very hard to make herself smaller than she was.

  I went straight to my bunk and knelt in front of my chest. The wood was a bit scuffed already, but the lock was new and shiny, a tiny symbol that I belonged here.

  I lifted the lid. A single fred lay at the bottom beside my folded clothes, my adventurer’s manual, and the tiny pouch carrying a vial. I took the pouch, dropped the ten freds into it, then added the lonely one from the chest. Eleven freds. Pathetic, but it was mine. With nothing else to store, I closed the lid and turned the key in the lock. The click of the lock was satisfying.

  Meka hovered near the end of my bed, hands twisting together. Winnie leaned her log against the wall and poked the chest with her toe.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  “You really lock it?” Winnie questioned.

  “Yes,” I said. “That is the point of a lock.”

  “Fair enough,” she said.

  “Alright, Meka,” I said, turning toward her. “Let us go to the quest board.”

  She nodded quickly, as if afraid I might change my mind and hand her back to Randall.

  We walked back out into the main hall, passing the waiting line of trainees again. The noise washed over us in waves. Kids chatted, complained, bragged. Wooden weapons clacked together. Someone dropped a shield and cursed under their breath before Myrda glared them into silence.

  I stopped in front of the large wooden quest board and gestured to it. The board took up most of the wall, covered in neatly pinned slips of parchment.

  “This is the quest board and the slips of parchment are the quest themselves,” I said. “Each one has a star ranking on it. One star means Tin rank. Two stars means Copper rank. Three stars means Iron rank, and so on. This Guild Hall only has quests up to Iron rank because it is mostly for trainees.”

  Meka leaned forward to read, lips moving silently as she traced the words with her eyes. Her fingers twitched like she wanted to touch the parchment but did not quite dare.

  She nodded, hanging onto every word.

  “If you see a half star, it means the quest is still in the full stars rank, but it is more difficult,” I continued. “Some quests can be repeated.” I pointed toward the center of the board where the familiar slip had been. “This is the one you were supposed to take. Did you happen to kill a hammer turtle and collect its lump?”

  Meka’s ears drooped. Her shoulders sagged like someone had hung weights on them.

  “No,” she said. “Randall said we had to kill something, but he did not say anything else. He just brought us to the tin zone and let us run free. And… everything was so cute.” She sniffled, eyes shining. “I did not want to hurt anything.”

  “That is a problem,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm. Inside, I felt a small, familiar flare of anger on her behalf. “I will talk to Greta about what happened.”

  “Thank you, Instructor Runt. I appreciate that,” she said.

  She wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. A faint smile flickered there anyway, because someone had actually said they would fix it.

  I crossed my arms and looked at Winnie’s log. “When you hand in your quest, are you going to replace your log?”

  Winnie tilted her head. “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “The quest reward for the purple snail is ten freds and a training weapon from the Guild,” I said. “Don’t you want a better weapon?”

  She hugged the log a little closer, fingers digging into the soft bark. “Nah, I like my log. It is lucky.”

  I looked at the log properly this time. Half rotten. Mushrooms actually growing out of one side. A bug crawled out of a crack, saw us, and crawled back in again.

  “Are you sure?” I asked. “They have axes, hammers, big clubs, probably better than that thing.”

  Winnie tapped her chin thoughtfully, then shifted the log onto her other shoulder. “Maybe Myrda can make my log into a club.”

  I examined it again, tilting my head. “There might be enough material to get a club out of it… maybe. I do not know if Myrda would be willing to do that. Or if the Guild would even let her. You should ask.”

  “I will,” Winnie said. “My turn is coming up soon anyway.” She glanced toward the line and judged the distance with a practiced eye.

  “I thought everyone else would have taken a similar amount of time. I guess that’s not the case.” I said looking back at the mostly empty line.

  “That is what happens when you take the hardest quests, you get the most rewards.” Winnie said with a grin before walking off toward the line, log bouncing on her shoulder with every step.

  Meka watched her go, then looked back at me like I was the only stable point in a world that had shifted too quickly.

  That left Meka and me alone.

  “So, Instructor Runt,” Meka said, holding her hands together nervously. Her fingers fumbled with the hem of her shirt. “What do I need to do to be a wizard?”

  I straightened my back and cleared my throat, slipping into the most ancient, wise old wizard voice I could muster. The staff in my hand suddenly felt more like a proper tool and less like an oversized walking stick.

  “Alright, apprentice,” I said. The word felt good. Heavy. Right. “Let us begin. What type of magic are you strongest with?”

  “I am good with plants,” she said.

  “Botanomancy. That is a very good starting school, a very rare and powerful start indeed,” I said with a nod.

  She perked up immediately. Her ears lifted, her tail gave a tiny hopeful flick.

  “Starting school? But I thought people only studied one school of magic,” she said. “Instructor Randall said he was a master pyromancer, and that everyone picked one school to focus on.”

  Of course he did.

  “That is not how I am going to teach you,” I said.

  She blinked. “It is not?”

  “No,” I said, tapping the ground lightly with my staff, more for effect than anything else. “That is not how you become a great wizard. And you, my young apprentice, are going to be a great wizard. We will start with the school that comes easiest to you, so you know what magic feels like when it flows without effort. Then we will find the school that is hardest for you, and you will work on both together until there is no difference in your capability. Once your easiest and hardest magics become equal, everything else will fall into place.”

  Her eyes widened. “That sounds very hard.”

  “It is,” I said. “But it is the right way. If you only train what is easy, you will never know where your limits truly are. If you train what is hardest as well, then everything in between becomes yours.”

  She stared at me like I had just opened a door in the air that she had never noticed was there.

  “And I believe in you,” I added, the same way I had spoken to my apprentices in my past life. A little bit of motivation went a long way.

  Meka’s tail swished once behind her, the minotaur version of jumping for joy. Her shoulders straightened a little, and her hands stopped twisting.

  Her training had officially begun.

  The hall around us buzzed with the noise of children waiting for their turns, Myrda calling up the next in the line, and wooden weapons clacking. Life continued on all sides. But for a moment, standing there between the quest board and the line of trainees, it felt like the world had narrowed down to just the two of us.