Chapter 5 – The Guild

  Ethan pushed the green door open and stepped inside.

  The Guild hall was smaller than he’d expected. One main room, a long wooden counter along the far wall, and a few tables scattered across scuffed plank flooring. A notice board took up most of the left wall, crowded with parchments in different colors and sizes, pinned in overlapping layers like someone kept adding work faster than they could clear it. Glow stones set into shallow sconces provided steady light that didn’t flicker, the pale wash making everything feel clean enough to be official while still showing every scratch and stain.

  A few adventurers sat at the tables. One bent over a map with a finger tracing a route. Another ran a whetstone along the edge of a short blade with slow, patient strokes. In the corner, a woman with a falcon perched on her shoulder spoke quietly with a man in intricate leather armor, the bird’s head turning now and then as if it was listening for things the humans missed.

  Along the right wall were three mismatched chairs that looked like they’d been pulled from three different rooms and never returned. One chair held a man slumped forward, either asleep or pretending to be.

  Ethan stepped in and the room noticed him.

  Or more accurately, the room noticed the dogs.

  Heads turned. The map-reader paused. The blade-sharpener’s hand stilled for a heartbeat. The falcon shifted its feet and gave a soft, impatient ruffle of feathers.

  Behind the counter stood a man with a scar on his cheek and short-cropped hair that was going gray at the edges. He had the posture of someone who’d spent years standing in the same spot and still managed to look alert doing it. His eyes flicked over Ethan, then locked onto the Pack. His expression tightened, professional and unimpressed.

  “Wild beasts don’t belong indoors,” he said flatly.

  “They’re with me,” Ethan replied. He kept his voice even and his shoulders squared, the way he did when he was trying to sound more in control than he felt. “I’m here to register. I’m a Tamer.”

  The man’s gaze held on Moose for a long moment, then moved to Buster, then Pixie. It wasn’t fear. It was an evaluation. Like he was deciding whether Ethan was about to be a paperwork problem or a structural problem.

  Finally, the man raised an eyebrow. “Name?”

  “Ethan Cross.”

  He pulled a heavy ledger from beneath the counter and dipped a quill. The motion was practiced enough that he didn’t have to look at his hand. “Level?”

  “Two.” The quill stopped midair as he looked at Ethan in disbelief.

  The man looked down at what he wrote and looked back up again, this time at Ethan’s face instead of the dogs. “Two,” he repeated, as if saying it twice might make it make more sense. “At your age?”

  “Bit of a late bloomer,” Ethan said.

  “Clearly.” The man resumed writing, the quill scratching across thick paper. “Class?”

  Ethan hesitated for a fraction of a second. Saying it out loud still felt strange, like he was trying on a title that didn’t fit yet.

  “Arcane Tamer. Variant.”

  The man blinked once. “That’s not a real class.”

  “It is now,” Ethan said. “System gave it to me.”

  The quill stopped again, slower this time.

  The man’s eyes narrowed. “Show me your status.”

  Ethan focused, keeping it tight the way he’d learned to do. He didn’t need the whole panel floating in the room. He needed the part that proved he wasn’t making this up.

  A faint hum filled the air. A glowing blue window appeared above the counter, angled toward the registrar.

  [Status – Ethan Cross]

  Class: Arcane Tamer – Variant

  Level: 2

  Bonded Companions: Moose, Buster, Pixie

  The man leaned in, squinting at the display like he expected the words to rearrange themselves out of spite.

  “Well I’ll be damned,” he muttered. He straightened and let out a slow breath through his nose. “You weren’t kidding.”

  Ethan let the window fade.

  The man set the quill down, then picked it up again as if he’d forgotten what else to do with his hands. “Rolan,” he said at last. “Guild registrar.”

  His gaze flicked to the Pack again. “We’ll need to register your companions as bonded beasts. Names?”

  “Moose. Buster. Pixie.”

  Pixie’s ears perked so hard her whole head seemed to lift.

  “He said our names,” Pixie said within the bond, like it was a historic event.

  “Stay calm,” Moose said within the bond.

  “I am calm,” Pixie said within the bond, and Ethan could feel the lie in the way her energy bounced against his senses.

  Buster stared at the counter as if he expected food to appear if he looked hopeful enough.

  Rolan scribbled quickly. “Species?”

  “They’re dogs,” Ethan said, then hesitated. “From far away. You don’t have them here.”

  “Huh.” Rolan studied them with professional wariness. “They look like oddly-shaped wolves. But I’ve seen worse.”

  Rolan reached under the counter and set three small metal tags on the wood. They were flat, oval, and stamped with the Guild’s crest. The edges were smooth, worn from handling. Each tag held a faint warmth, like it had been sitting in sunlight even though it hadn’t.

  “Tie these where they’re visible,” Rolan said. “Bonded and registered. It keeps idiots from panicking and it keeps guards from trying to run you out of town with a spear.”

  Ethan picked them up. The metal hummed very softly against his fingers, a sensation that matched the bond in the back of his mind.

  “Do they do anything else?” he asked.

  “They mark them as your responsibility,” Rolan replied. “Legally. If they break something, you pay for it. If they hurt someone, you answer for it. If they save someone, it still ends up in the file.”

  Ethan crouched and fastened them one at a time.

  Moose accepted his with quiet dignity, holding still and watching Ethan’s hands like the act mattered.

  Pixie spun once when hers clicked into place, then immediately tried to angle her head so she could see it.

  “It’s shiny,” Pixie said within the bond, pleased.

  Buster took his tag as a personal insult and tried to chew it off.

  “Leave it,” Moose said within the bond, the warning edged with the tone he used when Buster was about to do something stupid.

  Buster froze, jaw still open, then slowly shut his mouth. His eyes stayed locked on the tag like it had betrayed him.

  Rolan watched the whole exchange, not seeing the bond itself, but noticing the coordination. His expression tightened a fraction.

  “They understand you,” he said.

  “They understand everything,” Ethan replied. He didn’t correct the next part out loud. They could answer him. They simply couldn’t do it with their mouths.

  Rolan’s pen tapped the counter once, then twice. “We’ll keep the details brief in the ledger,” he said, voice a notch lower. “Frontier town. People talk.”

  “Noted,” Ethan said.

  Rolan slid the ledger aside. “Last step. Follow me.”

  He led Ethan through a narrow side door into a smaller room that smelled like chalk dust and old stone. A pedestal sat in the center with a crystal orb mounted into it, the surface of the crystal smooth enough to reflect the glow stones in tiny points of light. Etched lines ran around the pedestal’s base, faintly luminous, like a dormant circuit waiting for input.

  “Place your hand on the resonance stone,” Rolan said, gesturing to the orb. “It measures your magical potential and helps confirm class and guild rank.”

  Ethan hesitated, then placed his palm against the crystal.

  The orb warmed under his touch.

  It glowed.

  Then it pulsed, brighter than he expected, a clean blue-white that lit the room sharp enough to throw hard shadows against the shelves. The light wasn’t blinding, but it had weight to it, like pressure against his skin.

  Rolan leaned forward, squinting.

  The orb pulsed again.

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  A faint ping sounded inside the crystal.

  Hairline fractures spiderwebbed from the point of contact, thin as threads and fast as thought.

  Ethan pulled his hand back reflexively.

  Rolan winced. “Well.”

  Ethan stared at the cracked orb. “Is that… bad?”

  “It’s annoying,” Rolan said, and the way he said it made it clear that was the most honest answer he had. He rubbed a hand over his face and then pointed at the fractures. “Either you’ve got an absurd amount of mana and potential, or this is another cheap batch from the South District.”

  “Does this happen a lot?” Ethan asked.

  Rolan gave him a look that carried eleven years of frontier work in one expression. “We get hand-me-downs from the bigger Guild branches. Capital cities get the new gear. We get what’s left. Junk enchantments. It’s a wonder anything in here works.”

  He sighed and waved Ethan back toward the main room. “Come on. It read before it cracked. I can work with that.”

  Back at the counter, Rolan retrieved a wooden medallion stamped with the Guild’s crest: a sword crossed with a quill. It was simple, functional, and worn smooth at the edges as if it had been passed through many hands.

  “Here’s your token,” he said, setting it down. “As a Level 2 adventurer, you’re Rank F. Don’t lose it. First replacement’s free. After that, we charge.”

  Ethan picked it up. The wood felt solid and slightly warm. There was a faint pulse when he wrapped his fingers around it, like the token recognized him and settled into place.

  Rolan’s eyes moved over Ethan again, lingering on the blood smear at his sleeve and the dirt in the seams of his clothes.

  “You’re an odd one, Ethan Cross,” he said. “And not only because you walked in here with three bonded beasts and cracked my resonance orb.”

  “…Thanks?” Ethan offered.

  “That wasn’t a compliment,” Rolan replied. A slight smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth anyway.

  Ethan shifted the token into his pocket. “Speaking of pay, how much was registration?”

  “Free,” Rolan said. “Frontier branches waive it. We need bodies willing to take contracts, and we can’t afford to scare them off at the door.”

  He reached under the counter and slid five rune-marked discs across the wood.

  “Stipend,” he added. “Five copper bits. It won’t make you rich, but it’ll get you a meal and a bed. Or a drink if you’ve got low standards and a strong stomach.”

  Ethan picked up one disc. It was a copper bit, flat and round, runes etched into its surface that shimmered faintly. It wasn’t heavy like he expected metal to be. It felt… tidy. Like someone had built rules into it.

  “I don’t suppose you could explain how your currency works,” Ethan asked. “I’m not used to… this.”

  Rolan’s posture shifted. His expression brightened in a way that made Ethan suspect he rarely got asked questions he actually enjoyed.

  “Never seen proper currency before?” Rolan asked, and then his brow furrowed. “And what are… ‘co-wins’?” He pronounced the word carefully, like it had rough edges.

  Ethan blinked. Guess that one didn’t translate cleanly. “Back where I’m from, money’s shaped differently,” he said, choosing the safest version of the truth. “These are new to me.”

  “Ah.” Rolan’s eyes lit with genuine interest. “Currency studies were a passion of mine back in my academy days.”

  Ethan wouldn’t have guessed the Guild registrar had an “academy days” voice, but there it was.

  Rolan took the copper bit and held it up between finger and thumb. “Copper bit. Base unit. You carry up to nine. When a tenth joins them, the enchantment upgrades the set into a copper piece.”

  He set the bit down and reached under the counter. This drawer had a faint shimmer over the wood, a protective ward that rippled when his hand passed near it. Rolan pressed his palm against a carved rune. The ward dimmed with a quiet hum and the drawer slid open.

  He withdrew a velvet-lined tray and set it on the counter with care. Inside were neat rows of currency examples—copper, silver, and gold bits and pieces. Each glowed faintly, amber for copper, cool white for silver, and warm gold for gold. The shapes were different, but the overall size was nearly identical, like someone had forced them to fit the same pocket space.

  Rolan arranged a few of them in a line.

  “Copper bit,” he said, tapping the flat disc. “Copper piece.” He picked up a small four-sided shape and held it so Ethan could see the edges. “Tetrahedron. The upgrade form.”

  Ethan leaned closer. It looked like a perfect little pyramid, sharp and precise.

  “Ten copper pieces upgrade into a silver bit,” Rolan continued, setting down a cube that shimmered with pale light. “Silver piece is eight faces.” He placed an octahedron next to it, its glow cleaner and colder. “Gold bit is ten. Gold piece is twelve.”

  Ethan stared. The shapes clicked into place in his brain in a way that felt unfairly satisfying.

  “They all fit the same space,” Ethan said, mostly to himself.

  “Magic compression,” Rolan confirmed. “Each bit is slightly smaller than the matching piece, but the set is designed to carry clean. Watch.”

  He picked up a gold piece—twelve faces, warm glow—and pressed his thumb to a faint mark at its center. With a small twist, it separated with a soft chime into ten gold bits, each shaped like a perfect ten-faced die. Rolan let them spill into his palm to show the full set.

  “Bits,” he said, and then he cupped them together, pressed them, and turned his hand again.

  The pieces fused back into a single gold piece with a smooth, satisfied click.

  “And pieces,” Rolan finished, setting it back in the tray.

  Ethan stared at his hands as if the currency had personally challenged his understanding of reality. “That’s… it upgrades on its own.”

  “Officially sanctioned Treasury-minted sets,” Rolan said, clearly enjoying himself now. “You can’t shave them. You can’t counterfeit them. You can’t damage them in any meaningful way without making them useless. It keeps the economy clean.”

  Ethan nodded slowly, trying to build the ladder in his head without falling off it.

  “So copper bit to copper piece. Copper piece to silver bit. Silver bit to silver piece. Silver piece to gold bit.” He looked up. “And it keeps going.”

  “Exactly,” Rolan said. “When a count hits ten, the enchantment upgrades it. The names alternate. Bits and pieces. Materials climb. Copper. Silver. Gold. Platinum. Mithril.” He paused, then reached into a different drawer and pulled out a hand-painted display board with replica models. “Frontier branch,” he added with a dry look. “We don’t keep real platinum or mithril in this building. These are demonstrations.”

  He lined the models up beside the real currency.

  “Platinum bit,” Rolan said, tapping a twenty-faced shape. “Platinum piece is thirty.”

  He lifted the final replica, a glass marble flecked with pale silver. “Mithril. Real ones are nearly translucent in places. The runes are embedded inside. The model doesn’t do it justice.”

  Ethan stared at the row.

  A disc. A tetrahedron. A cube. An octahedron. A ten-faced. A twelve-faced. A twenty-faced. A thirty-faced. A marble.

  His brain supplied the label before he could stop it.

  “They’re D&D dice,” he muttered.

  Rolan raised a brow. “D-and-D?”

  Ethan cleared his throat. “A game. Back where I’m from. We used shapes like these to calculate probability.”

  Rolan’s expression didn’t change, but Ethan could tell he was listening.

  Ethan pointed down the line, speaking as much to himself as to Rolan. “A two-sided flip. A d4. A d6. A d8. A d10. A d12. A d20. A d30.” He looked at the marble. “And then mithril is… a marble.”

  Rolan scoffed with mock offense. “A marble. The infinite-sided currency used by crowns and vault-lords, worth a small estate, and you call it a marble.”

  “It’s a very important marble,” Ethan offered.

  Rolan grunted, but the smirk came back. “Don’t let a banker hear you say that. They’ll charge you for the insult.”

  Ethan chuckled, still staring, still trying to accept that someone had built a monetary system that behaved like a neat little program.

  His eyes caught one final note on the display board.

  “What about orichalcum?” he asked. “You mentioned it before.”

  Rolan’s tone shifted. Not fear, exactly, but weight. “No one has a real one. Only ten were ever officially minted. Some say twelve. Most believe they were broken down into lower denominations long ago.”

  “Why?” Ethan asked.

  Rolan looked at the models, then back at Ethan. “Because they’re not shaped like the rest. Scholars call them tesseracts. Cubes within cubes, folding in ways most people can’t perceive. The stories say they glowed deep crimson, with lines traced in darker hues that never held still. No two witnesses describe them the same way.” He paused, then added, quieter, “They only agree that seeing one felt like looking at something the world wasn’t meant to hold.”

  Ethan held that for a moment, the words settling into place alongside everything else.

  “And they power the whole system,” he said, more statement than question.

  Rolan nodded once.

  Ethan let out a slow breath. “Thanks, Rolan,” he said, and meant it. “That’s a lot more helpful than I expected.”

  Rolan gave him a modest shrug. “Currency and economics is a hobby. It’s rare I find someone who doesn’t glaze over halfway through.”

  Ethan slid the five copper bits into his pocket carefully, like they might rearrange themselves if he was careless. He still felt the faint hum of them through the cloth.

  As he turned, the notice board pulled his attention. The papers on it were layered and messy, some fresh and crisp, others faded at the edges. It looked like work. Real work, with real stakes, written by people who needed things done.

  “Mind if I check your job postings?” Ethan asked.

  Rolan made a vague gesture. “That’s what they’re there for.”

  Ethan walked over, the Pack trailing behind him.

  Moose moved with that same steady awareness, watching the room without staring. Pixie bounced at Ethan’s heel, then darted forward and back as if she couldn’t decide whether the board was interesting or the cat was. Buster stayed close enough to bump Ethan’s leg every few steps, which Ethan recognized as a form of pressure and also, probably, a request.

  The postings advertised everything from escort work to herb gathering to pest control. Ethan’s eyes skimmed until they snagged on a fresh piece of parchment pinned near the center. Crisp edges. Dark ink. A few symbols at the top that looked like they belonged to a language he didn’t know.

  He stared anyway.

  The symbols shifted.

  Not on the page, exactly. In his head. The shape of them slid into meaning the way spoken words had earlier, rearranging themselves into clean English without asking permission.

  System shenanigans, Ethan thought, and felt the same weird gratitude he’d felt the first time he’d understood someone speaking to him in this world.

  [URGENT REQUEST – WILD BOAR THREAT] Multiple farms along the eastern fields report a massive wild boar terrorizing the area. Beast has destroyed two season's crops, injured three farmhands, and killed several livestock. Extremely dangerous.

  Hunter required to eliminate threat. Return both tusks as proof. Reward: 8? copper and T4 silver (increased from 8? copper and T2 silver)

  Ethan’s eyebrows lifted.

  Then his stomach sank.

  Tusks as proof. Both of them.

  He’d left the boar where it fell. He’d taken meat, fought his way through the mess of cutting it up with a rock, and then kept moving because he’d needed to get the Pack to safety and get himself out of the forest before night got worse.

  The tusks were still back there.

  He could picture them too clearly, curved and heavy, attached to a head he’d been too exhausted to deal with.

  He glanced down at the symbols in the reward line again.

  “What are these?” he asked, still staring at the stylized marks.

  Rolan didn’t even look up from his ledger. “That one’s a piece,” he said, nodding toward the stylized P. “The other’s a bit.”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  Ethan read the posting again, slower this time.

  A large wild boar. Farms. Eastern fields. Tusks as proof.

  He felt Moose’s attention sharpen within the bond, quiet and focused.

  “Same boar,” Moose said within the bond.

  “The big angry one,” Pixie said within the bond, excitement fizzing through her like she’d just spotted a toy.

  “The one that tree-stabbed itself,” Buster said within the bond, sounding weirdly proud of that detail.

  Ethan blinked. If they’d already killed a wild boar with tusks like that, and if the reward had been increased, then either the town didn’t know it was dead yet or it wasn’t dead when the posting went up.

  Either way, the tusks were still sitting back there waiting for him.

  He started to reach for the parchment, thinking about the walk back and the time and the fact that he needed supplies before he did anything else.

  Buster nudged his leg insistently.

  He nudged again, harder.

  “Food,” Buster said within the bond, his mental voice taking on that pleading quality Ethan knew all too well. “We have been walking all day. I am starving.”

  “We’ll get food soon,” Ethan whispered, keeping his voice low in the room full of listening strangers. “I just need to check this—”