Myrda, the woman in leather armor, stood from her chair the moment we entered the Guild Hall. To my still-shaking nerves, she looked like one of the pillars holding the building upright. Her armor was dark, scuffed, and shaped by long years of use, not decorative flair. She wore it the way a blacksmith wears soot. Her sharp smile widened the moment her eyes landed on us, like she had been waiting all day for a fresh batch of fledglings to shepherd.

  The Guild Hall around her stretched wide, larger than I expected for a building tucked in the Iron zone of the Sea of Trees. Tall beams of dark wood supported a high ceiling lined with iron hooks that held lanterns filled with blue-white flame. The flames crackled quietly and gave off a soft glow that made the whole hall feel like a safe pocket carved into hostile wilderness. The smell inside was a mix of old wood, leather oil, drying herbs, and faint traces of metal dust. I had never been inside a place that felt so used, so lived-in, but also so ready to withstand a siege.

  Tables lined the walls, stacked high with boxes of gathered materials. Jars of mushrooms, bundles of vines, coils of rope, feathers sorted by color, small bags of powder, and even neatly stacked turtle shells. The guild processed everything. Nothing went to waste. Every usable monster part, every plant, every scrap had a place here.

  In the far corner, an iron cage held several training dummies. One had been smashed so badly its straw insides spilled out like guts. Nearby, racks displayed Tin-ranked tools: short knives, rope darts, tiny hand-axes, and beginner-level gear that looked simple but sturdy. Above that rack, a sign read: EQUIPMENT RENTAL. RETURN CLEAN.

  "Welcome, Tin sprouts," Myrda said, spreading her arms as though greeting royalty instead of a gaggle of trembling children. "I am Myrda, the quest manager for this Guild Hall. Greta brings you in, I send you out. I handle the quests, the rewards, the paperwork, and the yelling if you turn something in wrong. Come closer. Do not hover by the door like lost ducklings. The Hall does not bite, even if the forest does."

  We shuffled forward. A few of us clutched our jars of turtle fat so tightly the glass squeaked. Others looked at the racks of supplies with wide eyes, absorbing every detail. The dwarven girl stood with her arms crossed in stubborn determination, while Shawn hovered behind me, still shaken.

  Myrda waited until we clustered around her in a lopsided semicircle.

  "Good enough," she said with a warm chuckle. "Now, let me teach you how to get your first quest."

  She strode to the massive quest board that dominated the wall. Up close, it was even more impressive. It stretched from floor to ceiling, bordered by carved runes that glowed faintly. The wood was dark and polished smooth by years of hands brushing past it. Notices covered almost every inch, some pinned neatly, others layered on top of each other.

  The board hummed with faint enchantment, as if it were alive.

  Myrda slapped her palm against it, rattling the notices. "This is the quest board. Every Guild Hall has one. Everything anyone wants done in this region will show up here. Monster slaying. Gathering plants. Escorting lost sheep. Fetching lost trinkets. Clearing gutters. Helping an old woman move a crate. If coin can be attached to a task, it ends up here."

  She pointed at a row of carved stars etched into one notice.

  "You see this? The stars tell you what rank the quest is. One star is Tin. Two stars is Copper. Three is Iron. The board goes up to eight stars, but if you ever touch a seven-star or eight-star quest, you had better have written a will."

  A few kids paled.

  "Do not worry," she added cheerfully. "You will not be touching anything above one star for a long while. You do not take quests above your rank unless your instructor signs off. And that will not be happening today. Or tomorrow. Or the day after."

  Myrda scanned the board, plucked a specific notice from the center, and held it high.

  "This here is the First Quest. Every Tin-ranked adventurer starts with this one. It requires you to go out, slay one Hammer Turtle, and bring back one lump of Hammer Turtle fat. It pays one fred."

  Some kids puffed up proudly, holding out their jars.

  Myrda smiled. "Excellent. You have already done the hard part. Now I teach you how to claim it."

  She moved her fingers to the bottom of the notice and tugged. A slip tore away with a crisp snap. Another identical slip dropped into place with a faint shimmer.

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  "This is the quest token. The paper is enchanted. It replenishes automatically. Training halls like this would drown in traffic without enchantments like this. Even if a thousand Tin recruits took this quest before breakfast, there would still be another token waiting."

  She tucked the token into her belt. "Other quests marked as repeatable work the same way. Bring in more materials than requested, take more tokens. But if the quest is not repeatable, you turn in exactly what it asks for. Nothing more. Nothing less. And no, you cannot argue with the desk staff. They bite harder than the monsters."

  She tapped another notice, this one with three stars and a painted picture of three red berries next to it. "This is an Iron-ranked quest. It requires three ornerberries. These grow on Ornerberry Bear Bushes. They look like bear shaped bushes. They act like bushes. Until they stop pretending. Think of topiary that can chase you. Do not attempt this. And before anyone asks, yes, the berries are edible, but you will not be touching them until you reach Iron rank."

  One boy lowered his hand sheepishly.

  Myrda clapped once. The sound echoed loudly. "This Guild Hall services Tin, Copper and Iron ranks. You will start here and remain here until you complete your first Copper quest. Then you will be Iron-ranked officially."

  She gestured grandly at the board. "You will spend a lot of time here. Get used to it."

  Then she planted her fists on her hips. "All right. Time to complete your first quest properly. Line up, youngest to oldest."

  We scrambled into order. I ended up first as expected. The orcish boy was surprisingly only slightly older than me. The dwarven girl, despite her stoutness, was last.

  Myrda beckoned. "Up the ladder."

  I climbed to the counter. It felt like approaching a throne.

  "Greetings, adventurer," Myrda said, bowing theatrically. "How may I assist you today?"

  I straightened and handed her the token. "I would like to redeem this quest."

  "Ah. Long adventure?" she asked with a playful tone.

  "Very," I said gravely.

  She laughed, took the token, and slid it into a metal press. The machine hummed before stamping it with a sharp click. She held the slip beneath a glowing crystal lens that shimmered with symbols.

  "Good news. You are an adventurer in good standing. Now, do you have the required material?"

  I nodded and placed the jar on the counter.

  Myrda inspected it, then nodded again. "Very good. Here is your payment."

  She slid a wooden coin toward me.

  I blinked. "The quest said we would receive a fred."

  Before she answered, my eyes wandered across the counter. Up close, I noticed carvings in the wood, tiny grooves worn into it by decades of adventurers fidgeting while waiting for their turn. Names and initials were scratched into the side, some crossed out, some circled, some marked with tiny symbols. Myrda noticed my curiosity and chuckled.

  "Every Tin-ranked adventurer leaves their mark somewhere in this Hall," she said. "Some on the counter. Some on the walls. Some on the floor, usually when they fall off the ladder. The Iron zone Guild Hall has seen thousands come through. Half of them thought they were destined to be legendary. The other half were sensible enough to listen to their instructors. Most of those sensible ones are still alive."

  She grinned. "Ah. A reincarnator. This is what freds look like now. The Frederick Empire collapsed, gold coins were counterfeited too easily, and the world switched to enchanted wood. The name stayed the same, but the material changed. And yes, that is Fred on the coin. He was a very important man once. Happier on the old coins, miserable on the new ones. Artistic decline, economic decline, or personal decline, who can say."

  I stared at the scowling face etched into the wood. In my time, Fred had smiled like he loved life itself. His coins had been cheerful. Jolly. Almost smug. As decades passed, the faces grew more worn, more defeated. Collectors treasured ‘Happy Freds.’

  I wondered if the ones in my vaults were still there. Those vaults had been built to outlast empires, nations, and the rise and fall of whole magical eras. I had designed them that way on purpose. Wizards, nobles, merchants, farmers, everyone understood that some souls returned. Not all, not predictably, but often enough that entire professions formed around preparing for it. Great wizards especially took it seriously. Many of us set up inheritances for our future selves, stockpiling wealth and artifacts in hidden vaults, trusting that in our next life we would be clever enough to retrieve them.

  This had created an entire industry of tomb raiders, historians, crypt-breakers, and thieves who specialized in looting the vaults of wizards who never came back. Some reincarnated far away from their treasures, some came back too late, some without complete memories of there vaults designs, and some simply refused to crawl through half-collapsed tunnels for their own things. People being people, they learned to exploit every oversight we left behind.

  I had known all of this, and still I played the game. I commissioned vaults carved into mountains, sunk beneath rivers, hidden in collapsed cities, each sealed with locking spells meant to keep out even determined raiders. They required complex magic to open, layered spells, mana signatures, or keys only I possessed. Back then it had been a delightful puzzle, a challenge I fully intended to solve in my own future. A private riddle left by one version of me for another.

  Now, in this tiny body with no magic at all, the game felt less funny. Most of the vaults would be completely inaccessible to me. Their locks required magic, mana signatures, spell casting capability, or keys long since lost.

  Except one.

  One vault had been made with a fail-safe: a way to open it if I ever lost magic entirely. The most secure, the most paranoid design I ever created. It would be brutal to reach, dangerous to access, and infuriatingly difficult. But it existed for this exact scenario.

  If I had any hope of reclaiming my old tools, treasures, or resources, that would be my only path forward. It had been lifetimes since I last saw them, tucked away in marble boxes under locking spells I doubted still existed. A distant reminder that even coins outlast most empires, and most people.

  I nodded. "Thank you."

  "You are welcome. Good luck, adventurer. May you find more quests worth your time and fewer things that try to eat you. Next."