As Ash walked out of the building he was almost overwhelmed by the sight that stretched out above him. The small glimpse he'd gotten of the sky had only slightly prepared him for the full expanse of beauty that expanded before his eyes.

  Incredible. So this is what it's like to be inside of a nebula, huh? It's more beautiful than I could have possibly imagined.

  A thought occurred to him as he looked down at the city around him. He immediately took note of how it was far larger than any town he'd ever been to. But that wasn't what truly caught his eye. It was the soft light that filled the streets, bright enough to see by but nowhere near as bright as a sunny day.

  It begged the question, "Does this place have a sun? Or a day-night cycle for that matter?"

  "There's no proper day or night, no. We use the clocktower to keep track of time. Most of us abide by the artificial cycle, but there are also those who prefer the quiet of the slow hours," Alicia said from behind him.

  Ash saw the clocktower in the distance, a massive structure that could be seen from practically anywhere in the city. He looked down at his map and took a mental note of the location, as well as where he currently was. Plotting a course through the city in his head, he almost wandered off before realizing he was forgetting something.

  "Uh, thanks."

  When was the last time I had reason to thank someone?

  "I hope you can find it within yourself to call this place home. Good luck."

  Walking through the streets was a strange feeling. It was nostalgic, and it really hammered home to him that he was no longer bound in that horrible compound he'd spent the last three years in.

  He passed a motley mix of businesses as he made his way into the city. It was shocking how normal most of them seemed.

  He'd assumed based on Alicia's explanation of the Fragmented Wilds that it would be a place where adventurers dominated. How could it not be, with the prospect of leaving requiring such a high bar of strength?

  But the city he walked through was astoundingly ordinary. He imagined there were more restaurants and workshops of various crafts than normal, but a lot of it was very plain. He even saw a shop that specialized in baby products.

  She did say that around half of the city's population came through the space between dimensions. I guess the other half were born here, descendants of others who previously got sucked in.

  The guild building was massive. It was by far the largest structure he'd ever seen. The building made the guild he'd joined on Vorillion IV look like it was run out of a shack.

  Alicia said there were three guilds like this. I guess I wasn't wrong that is an adventuring town. It just has everything else alongside the adventuring. I guess a lot of people think life here is okay enough to settle down.

  In truth, I'd have probably been fine with that if it wasn't for-

  Another shot of pain ran through his head before he viciously shut down that line of thought. Thinking of the past wouldn't do any good. He needed to keep moving, keep himself occupied.

  As soon as he opened one of the large double doors of the establishment and walked inside he was met with a cacophony of voices. The space was dominated by what looked like the largest tavern he'd ever seen, with rows upon rows of tables set up throughout the hall. On the other side of the room he could see what looked like a reception desk.

  There was more variety among races in the room than he'd ever seen before. He supposed it made sense considering people from every corner of the universe got dumped here.

  The vast majority were humans or variants of humans. He did spot a table of strange insect-like people with natural chitinous armor.

  As he walked through the tables there were some people who raised their beverages to him as he passed, though he had no idea why.

  When he reached the other side of the room he stood behind a demibeast woman with what seemed to be the features of a cat. The only real reason she stood out to him was her pearly white hair, similar to his ashen gray. Idly, he inspected the woman while she argued with the receptionist.

  [Aria Black - Level 3]

  Black, huh?

  Taking the last name Black was pretty much a universal sign that someone had cut ties with their family.

  "Oh, can we put a lid on this for the moment Aria? We have a newcomer."

  As the demi-beast girl stepped to the side with a look of annoyance, she spotted Ash standing behind her and seemed surprised to see him.

  Aren't you part cat? I thought beast people had better spatial awareness than to not notice someone standing right next to them. Maybe it's just the noisy room.

  "Welcome to The Hunter's Lodge! You can call it the lodge for short. I was wondering if my sister was going to send you over here."

  With a start, he realized the handsome young man before him did share some resemblance with Alicia.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  [Brent Norin - Level 37]

  "Uh… Hi. Is there a process to join? I was hoping to be able to fight monsters and hopefully have a place to sleep."

  "Mind if I see that sheet of paper you've got there?" Brent said, pointing at the map.

  Ash handed it over and the man looked over it, musing to himself.

  "Ash, huh? Are you really sure you want to do this?"

  Ash's gaze sharpened, "What do you mean?"

  "My sister only recommends people places she thinks they'll fit in well. The fact that she listed exclusively crafting workshops means you have a crafting class. So I'll ask you again. Are you absolutely sure you want to fight monsters? We have gathering roles as well that are much less dangerous if it's a matter of getting your own materials."

  "I want to fight monsters. If I could have a place to craft as well that would be amazing, but I want to hunt more than anything."

  Brent examined Ash's expression for several seconds before nodding sadly, "Alright. I'll walk you through the introductory quest. We'll start you out with foraging one of the wilds for mushrooms."

  "Mushrooms? I said I want to fight monsters, not gather fungus." He was fuming. Such a task was beneath him. Even the shoddy guild back on Vorillion IV had let him pair up with a party for his first quest, and they'd hunted monsters in the woods nearby.

  "I know. But the wilds aren't like any other place you've ever known. We send everyone new on this quest, even the ones that come to us already at a high level. Rushing into the unknown is a sure way to get killed."

  That helped settle Ash's indignation. He supposed rushing blindly into something wasn't smart, and the fact that they made higher levels do it suggested that this place truly was something entirely unknown. Even so, he felt the burning need to throw himself into the process of getting stronger.

  "Fine."

  "Alright. Then let's get started with the onboarding process. Sis, can you watch the counter for me?"

  Alicia walked into Ash's peripheral view as she came up to them, "Sure. Been itching to get back to it."

  Ash stared at her with a deadpan expression, "Somehow I get the feeling there was a bias when you recommended a guild to me."

  "Haha," Brent laughed at that, "No, the other guilds wouldn't take it kindly if we fleeced out all the good talent. It's much more about what each guild wants in their applicants. Syndicate doesn't usually take anybody below level 3, and they're much less picky about someone's ah… criminal tendencies. Meanwhile, Strongfist is a group of roided out barbarians. They're generally pretty amiable though, so we usually get along well with them."

  "And the lodge? What makes it stand out?"

  "We take anybody that doesn't fit or doesn't want to fit into those roles. Frankly, we're the only guild that would allow a crafter to join as a hunter. Everywhere else would have simply directed you to their associated workshops. Though frankly, I'd sleep much better tonight if you chose that route instead."

  Ignoring Brent's attempt to divert his course, Ash asked, "Associated workshops?"

  Brent took the dismissal in stride as he led Ash to another counter, "If you're fully set on your path then we can leave that question for later. For now, take this." The man fiddled with a strange device before stamping it on a plaque twice.

  Ash took the small plaque, about half the size of his hand, and looked it over. At the top was his name burned into the wood above the symbol of the lodge, a spear, sword, and axe arranged in a triangle around some kind of wyvern.

  "That's your badge. It does a couple of things, but mainly it serves as an identifier. Come, follow me."

  Brent led him through a pair of double doors with a guard who nodded to Brent. The man quickly shut the doors behind them as soon as they were through. Ash immediately understood why this room remained closed, the amount of mana in the atmosphere was almost enough to make him gag.

  Arranged in a grid were rift gates sitting atop unbelievably complex arcane circles. Most of the rifts were a nice blue, but some of them were a concerning red or even black. Some of the arcane circles didn't have a rift gate above them at all.

  "So many rifts… Surely you didn't create them all, right?"

  "Ah, you refer to the rift seeds. No, those don't work properly here. These are all naturally occurring rifts, our gateways to the wilds."

  Ash turned to the man in awe, "You mean that all those lights out there in the sky… Those are rifts?"

  "Yep. There are so many of them they distort space around them. It's why nothing can get through by simply taking a starship. Anything that passes through in the physical realm gets sucked into the space between dimensions and ripped apart."

  "But if they're all naturally occurring then how did you manage to collect them into this room?"

  Brent tapped his foot against one of the arcane circles at the base of a gate, "Don't ask me about the specifics of it, but these circles basically latch onto the signature of a specific rift as it's about to be born and forces it to put a gate down here."

  "Born? Is there something out there creating rifts?"

  "Maybe reborn is a more accurate term. Usually, rifts appear in random places and have a random interior. The rifts in the wilds are always created based on what we like to call the memory of a world. But these memory rifts only last for about a month. Once they fade it takes a few days for the rift based on the memory of that world to be created again."

  "Are there truly entire worlds within them?"

  Brent smiled, "Maybe it'd be better to show you."

  The man stepped up to one of three circles with the words 'reserved' across the floor in front of them. Brent took an identification plaque of his own out of a pocket and motioned for Ash to do the same.

  The man slid open a compartment on the back of the plaque Ash hadn't noticed before, and a glowing blue light spilled out. Brent took the glowing rectangular prism out and motioned for Ash to do the same, which he did. He noticed his name had been stamped on this too.

  [Waystone]

  This is a soulbound item. Do you wish to bind it now? (Yes/No)

  "This is a waystone, it serves as your marker. It's half of a set, the other is buried inside the badge. We use these to declare our presence within a rift and they serve as markers for whether or not we're still alive in said rift. Go ahead and bind it."

  "But waystones don't work across rift gates," Ash said as he binded the small blue stone. He knew about waystones from when he was a child. They were stones that glowed brighter the closer the stones were to each other.

  Brent smiled, "I should have known I wouldn't need to explain how waystones work to a crafter. But it'll be hard to show you how it works without a demonstration. Come, it looks like you arrived perfectly on time to experience my favorite rift to start off with."

  The man placed the waystone with his name on it on a stand next to the portal before stepping through. And just like that, he was gone.

  Ash looked at the other portals around the room. Each had a pedestal next to it, several of which had waystones similar to his own. He noticed each stand had eight indentations where the stones would fit perfectly.

  Turning to the portal before him, Ash took a deep breath. His last experience with a rift hadn't been very pleasant.

  Well, nothing ventured nothing gained.