The adventures' guild was a broad-fronted building, four stories high, in an upmarket area of the city a little further from the centre than the noble estates in which I'd spent the previous day.

  I was damn sure the guildhall in Greenhold hadn't been so big, mainly because there were no buildings that tall in Greenhold, the temple excluded. It wasn't in an upmarket area of town, either, but that would have been difficult given that Greenhold didn't have an upmarket area for it to be in. The baron's manor aside, the place was pretty homogenous.

  A number of grizzled-looking adventurers were hanging around outside, drinking and smoking, laughing and being generally boisterous. Not just men, either; the System didn't discriminate, and ten points of Strength were ten points of Strength regardless of gender.

  ... In fact, now that I thought about it, it was odd that the soldiers and guards I'd dealt with had mostly been men. The knights had all been. What was the reason for that? It obviously wasn't ability. If my parents were any indication, all of Count Harvent's female employees could have had sufficient Reasoning to get out of there before the canton went to hell, but even that bit of pseudo-logic wouldn't explain my experiences elsewhere. Aside from the maid, I hadn't seen a single woman in the Order of the Thorned Rose.

  The adventurers nodded friendlily as I approached.

  "Don't think I've seen you around before. Come to sign up?" called one.

  "Yup," I answered.

  "Come by when you're done with the paperwork, then. I'll give you a few pointers for the local beginner dungeons in exchange for a pint."

  "Bugger that," said another. "Don't you remember how much paperwork the guild makes you sign? Waivers, disclaimers, non-disclosure agreements. I plan to be in bed long before he finishes it all."

  "Seriously? It wasn't that bad when I joined. Heck, I didn't even know how to sign my name back then. They handed me a sheet of squiggles and I just drew a big X at the bottom."

  "You still sign things with an X, and even then you spell it wrong half the time..."

  I ignored the banter and continued to the door, speeding up a little when one of the spectators suddenly blinked, did a double-take, then started nudging and hurriedly whispering to someone else on her table. Probably an appraisal Skill of some sort, but given the number of inspections I'd safely been through recently, I was fairly sure she hadn't seen my entire Status. I just needed to get used to the fact that people occasionally got an estimate of my Stats or saw [Murderer II].

  The front door led into a tavern. It hadn't been what I was expecting, but there was no other way to describe it. A bar occupied an entire wall, serving a constant stream of adventurers. Long tables ran the length of the room, half the seats occupied by enthusiastic eaters and drinkers. Another wall held a large noticeboard, a bored-looking receptionist sitting at a desk alongside it. In the absence of any better options, I made my way there.

  Why was the place so busy? By the time I'd finished my business at the Order of the Thorned Rose and then walked here, it was already mid-morning. I could understand some stragglers having a late breakfast, but shouldn't the bulk of the adventurers be off on jobs by now? But most of them weren't eating at all, but drinking. It wasn't even lunchtime...

  Maybe this was a city thing, and they kept different hours?

  "Good morning," said the receptionist, perking up a little at seeing someone approach. "Can I help you?"

  "I hope so. I've come to sign up."

  He peered at me appraisingly, but didn't show any of the flickers of surprise I'd come to associate with people using appraisal Skills. "You look freshly unlocked," he said. "Just to check, you aren't signing up because you've seen that lot over there and are envying their lifestyle?"

  "Hey! What's wrong with our lifestyle?" called one of them.

  He completely ignored the interruption, not even sparing the adventurer a glance.

  "No," I answered. "Why?"

  "Because the sort of jobs you'll be taking at the lower ranks won't pay well enough to drown yourself in booze for a month between each one. It'll be a lot of hard, dangerous work to reach that level."

  I felt my jaw drop. All those 'adventurers' were hanging around here because one job paid well enough to not need to work for the next month? And they just... wasted that time? What the hell?

  It was certainly true, now that I paid more attention, that the average age here was on the high side. The adventurers weren't elderly, but neither was there anyone here even close to my age. They were in their prime, and they spent it drinking.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Hopefully, not all of them did. There was obviously a shedload of observational bias going on, in that I wouldn't see the ones with a decent work ethic on account of them being out working. But even so, the place was half full!

  "I can assure you, I will never end up like that, whatever the pay is like," I said.

  "Hey! What's that supposed to mean, brat?" came a shout from the same direction as the previous interjection.

  "I'm glad to hear it. Let me get you the paperwork," said the receptionist, once again ignoring the interruption. "My name's Oliver, and I'm usually on duty here in the mornings, so I hope we'll see a lot of each other."

  "And I'm Robin. Nice to meet you."

  From beneath the desk, he produced rather more paper than I'd ever before dealt with. The adventurer outside hadn't been joking.

  Oliver was, however, rather surprised that I actually read the entire thing.

  Most of it was fairly sensible. I agreed that if I did something insane like run into an A-rank dungeon, the adventurers' guild would have no responsibility for my certain and swift demise. Less obvious was them not taking responsibility for bad intelligence—the way it was written, if I took a job to wipe out a goblin village that had cropped up too close to civilisation, and arrived to find a village of ogres, the guild would take no responsibility for death or injury. They would, at least, not penalise me for failing to complete the job, but that seemed small comfort.

  On reflection, though, it did seem reasonable that they weren't able to authenticate the details of every job they accepted. Or rather, they could, but that would be an adventuring job of its own. As the adventurer, confirming the facts was part of my job. Maybe they did lie detection or similar to avoid outright exploitation, but that wouldn't help if Random Villager A who was making the request didn't know the difference between a goblin and ogre.

  The worst condition of all was mandatory quests. By joining the adventurers' guild, the guild had the right to force me to take on jobs, although there were enough rules attached that I didn't immediately back out. Things like only being used in cases of emergency and jobs being at or below the rank of the adventurers involved unless no-one of higher rank was available. Besides, the tables of wasters behind me were fairly conclusive proof that the guild didn't invoke that power on a regular basis.

  More interesting to me was the note on combat skill crystals. Being a member of the guild in good standing gave the right to purchase combat skill crystals no higher than my guild rank. Since I'd be joining at rank E, that meant I could buy crystals immediately. It was fortunate that I'd saved a couple of points.

  "Okay, you can keep that copy," said the receptionist, which was actually a bit of a pain. My Memory was good enough to remember exactly what it said, and it wasn't like I had anywhere to store it. I didn't want to be carrying it around in my backpack forever. "Put your hand on this, and I'll get you registered."

  "Oh, hang on," I said, producing the letter of introduction from the Order of the Thorned Rose.

  Neither Earl Alexander nor Sir Christopher had shown their faces this morning. The sealed letter had simply turned up together with breakfast, along with directions to the guild and instructions to return once I hit the second growth milestone. Hopefully, the reason I hadn't seen them was because they were busy fixing Harvent canton.

  Oliver raised an eyebrow as he inspected the seal. "The Order of the Thorned Rose?" he asked, tearing the envelope open. "You the kid of one of their knights or something?"

  He read the letter in silence, then gave a big, disappointed sigh.

  "Uh... Is something wrong?" I asked, suddenly rather nervous about what was in there.

  "No, no. It's fine. Given your opinions towards all those wasters behind you, I was just hoping that once you'd risen through the ranks a bit, we'd get to enjoy the services of a high-ranked adventurer with an actual work ethic. Alas, it seems not. Between the various knights' orders and the army, trying to keep hold of decent talent is impossible."

  "Hey!" complained the complainer, only to once again be ignored.

  "If it helps, I haven't decided what to do yet," I said.

  "Why in the hells would you stay here when you can join a prestigious order like the Thorned Rose?" asked the receptionist, looking genuinely confused.

  "My normal answer would be 'freedom', but it's finally starting to sink in that there's no such thing. So I asked myself what I mean by 'freedom', and I think I finally have an answer, or at least the beginning of one."

  "... Okay?" said Oliver, who obviously hadn't been expecting an entire speech on the subject.

  It was true, though. I'd been thinking about it last night, and what stuck out to me was how different Harvent Canton was from my home. The royal canton was different again. What else was out there?

  "I want to travel and see the world. I also want to do some good while I'm out there, and stab a few monsters. Joining the army and protecting the royal canton would be... boring. Joining a knights' order wouldn't be much better."

  The receptionist failed to stifle a laugh, despite the quick application of hand to mouth. "Going travelling would still result in us losing your services," he pointed out. "Not to mention that with the periodic dungeon breaks, life here in the royal canton can be quite interesting. Still, it's better than 'I want to earn enough money to not need to work anymore'."

  "Maybe. Anyway, shall I touch that appraisal thingy?"

  "Please do."

  "Robin, zeroth growth milestone, not previously registered," confirmed Oliver, reading from something only he could see. "Since you have Earl Alexander himself vouching for you, you can skip F-rank and join directly at E-rank. I hope you've spotted the job board by now. I strongly advise you not to attempt anything with a recommended rank above yours. Heck, even if you skipped F-rank, I'd advise you to complete a few F-rank jobs just to get used to things."

  "Actually, before I take a real job, I'd like to know where I can get combat skill crystals, and where I can find information about the available dungeons in this canton."

  "Shopping is on the second floor, library is on the fourth."

  Ooo, an entire library? What sort of information dwelt up there? Locations and information about dungeons, obviously, since that was what I'd asked for, but what else? Monster compendiums? Lists of high-ranked Skills? Maybe I could find some information on how to evolve [Expert Stealth]. The Order of the Thorned Rose may have kicked me out until I 'proved myself', whatever that entailed, but I had more than enough money left to conduct a few days' research before taking on paid jobs.

  On the other hand, I was less than twenty thousand experience away from level twenty-one. My first growth milestone. I kinda wanted to hit it.