Victor

  All right, so, we were at the adventurer's guild and I found out a few things. The guild was using some frighteningly powerful magic, which I'll discuss more about later, to record deeds imprinted upon our very immortal souls - or something to that effect. They also had a doohickey capable of printing out little collectibles that adventurers could earn by performing specific feats; in other words-

  "Merit badges," I shook my head, unsure of what to make of this.

  The receptionist tilted her head, "well I suppose you could call them badges but, it seems like you're familiar with the concept!"

  I could only nod, man that took me back. My old merit badge sash was chilling at my now abandoned home, the one grandpa raised me in. I had it on a life sized Halloween skeleton that I was using as an eclectic coat rack. Having that explained to me, the receptionist went on to explain the ones I'd already earned, and she even gave me a pamphlet with a list of a couple hundred or so of them. Okay here goes, the complete list of merit badges - er - achievement patches:

  Pentastrike, which we talked about already. Evidently, there were also patches for ten, twenty, thirty, forty, and fifty. They also had ones for beating a number of enemies in a single battle, and some for tactical things - which will become important later.

  Underdog, defeat an opponent with a threat assessment two ranks higher than your own rank; I guess that means those cult assassins must have been at least the equivalent of tin-ranked adventurers or the monsters they tend to go up against. Indeed, it was their overall skill that led Val, Hanzo, and even me to the same conclusion: they didn't need to send eight of them to take on the first prince, who had the fighting strength of a drunk trout on a good day.

  I'd asked why, despite his age, Illorien wasn't that powerful, and they told me that it's largely based on effort but every elf has the potential to gain legendary martial or magic skill if given enough time. So in other words to become a Feanor or a Glorfindel an elf had to work for it; what, everyone read the books after the movies came out, it's mainstream! Even that cockroach king guy knows these things.

  Heroic, which was the same as Underdog only it was four ranks higher, or any "gold"-ranked threat regardless of your own rank; wait, one of those guys was a similar power level to a bronze-ranked guy? Well okay, I didn't have my graphing calculator handy but I knew that the impact force of a '67 deVille was somewhere in the neighborhood of a million joules - I'd only hit two of them head on at full speed though, the other four were flattened by the chassis whenever I'd landed.

  Whoever or what ever had summoned me put me at just the right angle to where I'd kept going when I'd landed - since magic could mess with physics I wasn't fixin' to worry about it too much, and the princess did tell me after the fact that summoned things are protected from damage for a limited time.

  The next one made me go "huh?" as well: Mageslayer, defeat an evil-hearted spellcaster with a bronze-rank threat assessment regardless of your own rank. I guess the guy with the wand on him was a mage of some sort, he was the one I'd hit dead-on I think. Come to think of it, that guy did have nicer-looking gear than the others - squad leader maybe? I could mull about it later. Yikes, though, I don't know what sort of magic-user he was but if I hadn't made a human speedbump out of him I might have been in some serious trouble.

  Next was Classic Hero: rescue a princess from mortal danger singlehandedly; hah, of course she'd cover her mouth and blush after hearing me read the description out loud. There were a bunch of caveats to prevent abuse, of course, which was helpful. Incidentally, this one had a gold border; these were the "special" badges that existed solely to make especially brave adventurers stand out.

  Another gold-rimmed one, Elf-Friend, ah so there was a merit badge for that, described as: through your own deeds, earn elf-friend status whilst being a member of a non-elven race. So exactly what it says on the tin, eh? Those were the only gold-rimmed ones I'd gotten so far.

  Ah, these ones were related to marksmanship. Crack-Shot, with a ranged weapon neutralize five enemy combatants with a single arrow, bolt, or other projectile apiece in rapid succession; this wasn't much of a surprise, even with a bolt action I could manage to pop off a few good shots as long as I was able to remain still. The scope helped too of course but even with iron sights I'd have gotten all six of those guys no problem.

  Longshot, neutralize an enemy from a distance exceeding 200 yards; pedestrian for me. Why, there was one large buck deer I'd dropped from about 300 yards; man that was some good smoked venison, plus I had a new set of antlers to hang Christmas decorations on! Okay on to the next set.

  Guile, concoct and execute a cunning trap successfully. This must be about the thing at the wine bar. Clever Combatant, successfully win a battle wielding an object or set of objects generally not considered to qualify as weapons; okay some Jackie Chan stuff, probably talking about my car again or maybe the trick with the baseball. Protector of the Innocent, rescue children from kidnappers, slavers, or monsters by yourself or as part of a team effort; also self-explanatory.

  Incidentally, the princess had actually earned a new one for herself the night we met. Survivor, engage in a battle where you are severely outmatched due to an innate power imbalance or a depletion of your own resources, and live to tell the tale. She held that patch in her hand, smiling, and secured it in one of the pockets of her corset. There were ones for surviving against bigger and bigger problems, too.

  Ah, she also scored one for teaching me: Tutor, successfully educate another person in language, geography, history, magical theory, or any other academic field. That one was always gold, I guess the guild was always looking for people with a knack for teaching others. To earn the next badge up, Teacher, she'd have to do it for multiple people at once. There were also badges around for training people in weapons or magic to the point where they actually got good.

  Basically, the tutor-teacher-professor line was all about theory, and the beginner-intermediate-advanced instructor/master lines were about practice. I couldn't get a straight answer about what qualified as success here, as apparently it's a complex algorithm. Huh. So magic could be like, programmed? That's helpful. If I was a wizard with all my modern knowledge I could be pretty dangerous!

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  "So where do I stick 'em, anyway?" I asked.

  "Anywhere you like, the fact that you earned them is written down in your personal record, and they're also inscribed into your chip."

  "My what now?"

  The princess pulled upon that leather necklace, the one which disappeared into you-know-where, and drew out an oblong piece of wood in a steel setting. I'd say it was like a small amulet, finely polished, roughly the size of my thumb. It was etched with tiny runes, so small that it reminded me of that guy who wrote like the friggin' bible on a piece of rice or whatever it was he did.

  "The chip shows us at a glance what your rank is based on its material, and is imbued with all of your vital information including what the assessor learned about your capabilities."

  "Do I gotta use that thing again, next time I learn something?" I thought that was an important question.

  "No, actually, once the assessor has worked its magic and created your chip, you don't need to use it again unless someone steals or destroys your chip. The chip itself is a magic device capable of acquiring new information using pattern magic."

  I was scratching my head, "So that means the assessor, or something it communicates with, is a magical tool that creates other magical tools?"

  The princess and the receptionist both nodded, oh are you proud of me that I figured it out? Gawrsh I'm blushing. But really, what a brainful - this is heavy, doc. "So, um, how many ranks are there?"

  "There are ten ranks in all. In order they are wood, iron, tin, copper, bronze, electrum, silver, gold, platinum, and mithril. Once you rank up, your chip will be replaced with a new one made of the next material. Advancement is generally based on completing a number of jobs, and attaining sufficient power to deal with specific monstrous creatures we use as a sort of baseline."

  I turned to the princess, "Val's platinum rank, right?" she nodded. He wasn't kidding when he said he was high up there. I asked the receptionist, "So are monsters pretty common? I don't think I've seen one yet."

  The princess chuckled, "Sir Victor, we've been speeding along the land in your Cadillac - of course we haven't run into any monsters yet!"

  "Oh. I guess that's true, sorry, miss, um, receptionist, please continue."

  "Ah, I am so sorry, I forgot to give you my name: It's Juliette. But to answer your inquiry, yes, around here they're mostly weaker ones such as goblins - they breed like rabbits, so we'll likely never be rid of 'em. The further away you get from a town or city the more likely you are to run into a monster, a dangerous wild animal, or just plain old criminals. But sometimes a big one will wander into the area and will need to be dealt with - someone will report a sighting, put up money for the bounty, and then the guild will assign a quest with a rank based on the creature's threat assessment. Especially dangerous quests may have the backing of a noble, the guild, or even the crown itself."

  "Suppose I accept a job from some important official, and I end up kicking the crap out of some bandits in the process, does that count towards advancement?"

  "In situations like that, your patron could write up what we call an impromptu field quest. They'll state the nature of the work, the relative importance, the pay rate, the duration, and any added bonus pay. Also if you happen to stumble across a wandering beastie and defeat it, your chip will know about it - if there was already a quest posted you'll get the bounty."

  Huh, seems like a reasonable system. This is good - it means that if we stumbled across some random troll under a bridge trying to extort us into paying the troll toll - that of course begs the question of whether there are trolls in this world, and if so, do they even live 'round these parts, but no matter - if we nailed the troll, we might earn some scratch. Hey, I ain't been a literal boy scout in over ten years - besides, this is an honest day's pay for an honest day's work not a "reward".

  I mean doing heroics for free if I just happen to stop by is fine, but if someone actually went to the trouble of putting a bounty up I'd take it. Well I mean, I guess it depended - if it was some poor village scraping together whatever coin they could I reckoned I'd probably decline the money, tip my hat and say something like "that was my good turn for the day, so this one's on the house." Besides, from what the princess and the receptionist said, it looked like you needed to advance a bit before you got the big jobs - so quest credit is the most important metric.

  So I stopped playing it whenever I joined the army, but I'd heard that the famous online RPG I'd dabbled in added an achievement system later - Sakamoto, before he switched to that game with the goth catgirl wizard, was what you'd call an achievement hunter. I was thinking to myself, I might need to look up the requirements to acquire more of these patches and then go out of my way to make some of them happen. Just a passing thought, really. Oh well.

  Eventually, the receptionist had me sit in a chair under a lamp, and then she set about making my adventurer's card. This was also kind of a cool process and I could see why you needed to go to a "major" branch to get this done - these magical tools would cost over a hundred thousand pieces of gold if you tried to buy one outright which is enough to kit out a highly seasoned adventurer in magic gear!

  This thing shined a gentle light on my face, and then an actual friggin floating pen started drawing me, took less than a minute. I'd never seen anything like it! If this kind of thing existed in my world there'd be an uproar, maybe even heated online debates. Once the card was finished, I also received my very own guild chip, which I put around my neck. Hmm this isn't my style, I wonder if I could get it converted into like, I dunno, a bolo tie or something.

  Juliette said, joyfully, "Congratulations, sir, you are officially a registered adventurer with the guild!"

  The princess was also leaping with excitement, "oh yes, we should form an official party too!"

  "Yeah good idea," I said, "looks like there's a blank space here for a party name. I take it they have some means to write that in?"

  Juliette nodded, "it's a short form, if you'll just tell me what you'd like to call yourselves and I'll use transcription to add the name for you." I gathered that was the name of some utility spell or other the way she treated the word like a proper noun. Okay, so I guess the receptionist had a modicum of magical talent? I wondered if she, too, was an adventurer. Was this the case of some obscenely powerful individual pretending to just be a lowly employee? Nah, she was wood rank too, turns out.

  I gave it some thought, thinking that maybe we should be the Wildcats but that was taken. We might take on more members so that rules out names based on the number two, can't really make something based on our present composition or gender balance either since that could change too. Okay. what was a constant. I was summoned here from another world, I drive a red classic 1967 Cadillac deVille, a very fast metal vehicle, complex machinery with a license plate of - ah ha - I snapped my fingers.

  So it was upon that day that the adventuring party "Red Lightning" was formed.