The Adventurers Guild was the kind of building that looked like it started as a small little tavern that got too big for itself. The energy of this place was pure chaos....
The inside was also so damn loud too. Lik even at sixth bell the main floor was packed ass hell.
You had people picking up morning contracts and people handing in finished ones with the hollow look of someone who had seen some crazy shit underground and they werent ready to talk about it.
There was a long this super freaking long counter at the back wall full of contracts covering most of the left side tables everywhere with people arguing about money or planning jobs or doing both at the same time.
Nobody looked at me. Which was fine. In a room full of people ranging from barely equipped to full on Excalibur wielders. I was on the cheaper end of normal.
Sable on the other hand got so many looks. She carried herself like a knight even in regular clothes.
We went to the registration counter. The woman behind it was maybe forty, with the expression of someone who has done this exact thing thousand times and stopped caring.
She didnt bother to look up at us. "Registrations?" the woman asked.
"Yeah," I said.
Now she looked up. She took a good look at what I was wearing, the battered cup I was still carrying because I had nowhere to put it and looked straight into soul (not really) but it felt like it.
Then she wrote my name down.
"Kingdom of origin?"
"Stateless," I said.
She made a note and reached under the counter and pulled out a stone. Smooth, pale, about the size of a large egg. There was a blue vein in it pulsing slow and steady from the magic in the room around us.
"Hold it until I say stop," she said and handed it over.
I held it.
For two seconds nothing happened, the stone sat in my hand with its blue vein doing its thing, and the woman went back to her paper.
A loud noise came from the rock seconds later.
The blue went out like a light and the woman looked up. The vein colour came back but it wasn't blue anymore, it was green, then it turned gold and then white. The kind of white that makes people nearby squint.
Then white went out too.
The stone went dark.
Half a second of nothing. The woman had fully put her pen down now and this big burly guy at the next counter over had stopped what he was doing.
Then it went red.
Not a little red, deep crimson red,
The room went quiet.
Not all at once. It went quiet in a wave starting from the counter and rolling backwards through the whole floor as people turned to look at what other people were looking at until the entire Caldenmere Adventurers Guild was doing nothing but staring at me and the glowing red rock in my hand.
Sable, did not react.
"Stop, Put IT DOWN!" the woman behind the counter said.
I put the stone down right away.
She picked it up with both hands and the red faded slow, like it didnt want to go. She set it back in its box and looked at me with the face of someone who has processed eleven thousand registrations and just hit the one that broke the scale.
"How?" she said.
"Unusual circumstances I guess??,"
She looked at the stone really carefully then looked at me and she reached under the counter really fast and pulled out this registration card that looked different from the ones she was using before. This one had some cream coloured instead of the pale brown,.
She started writing and stamped it.
"Whats that stamp?" I said.
"Exceptional Classification Flag," she said. "It means your registration goes to the Guild Master before your starting rank gets set. It also means you go on the special records list." She paused. "That list has twenty three names on it. Total. Going back three hundred years."
"Right," I said.
"Last person on it won a war."
"Right....." I said completely shocked
She handed me the provisional card and I took it. Then I turned around and walked out towards the entrance with the whole room still watching. Nobody said anything.
We both proceeded to walk out and slowly closed the door behind as peering eyes watched our every move.
Once we made it outside Sable let out a huge breath of relef he had clearly been holding in.
"The room went silent Rymur."
"I know finnaly some peace and quite,"
"The stone turned red."
"I was there Sable."
"That hasnt happened in three hundred years."
"Yeah and?" I looked at the provisional card in my hand. "So it says we need to go to the "Level Evolutions facility" for further evaluation."
"Wanna come along with me?" I asked.
"Take the lead Mr Rymur!"