A rather small yet nevertheless sufficient room, at the center of which was a desk that was elaborate yet also fairly straight-to-the-point. There were two windows that allowed light to enter from the world beyond, and cabinets of sorts near and around the desk’s vicinity.

  Such was where the foreigner was and had been for last… Actually, she had little idea anymore as to how much time had passed. Time, it seemed, had once again broken down as a sensible and discernable construct.

  “Great!” The receptionist, seated on other side of that desk directly in front, so gleefully smiled, slipping off a document to toss upon one stacking and towering pile, only to slide yet another document right before the foreigner’s sight from that other…still towering stack. “Anyway, soo… This right here is the ‘Membership Detainment and Treatment Guarantee Agreement’, which stipulates that, for whatever reason, should you find yourself within the custody of the Guild’s Security Office or imprisoned within a Direct Dominion of the Adventurers’ Guild, we are obligated to ensure …” thus her voice continued to so enthusiastically explain away, her fingers poking at the document.

  The fingers which held that quilled pen felt so sore and swollen… Such had become all the foreigner knew any more, in effect; to endure these unrelenting and endless explanations after explanations, to sign document after document after document after document… And despite multiple forevers having seemingly passed, only half of these documents-needing-to-be-signed were, in fact, signed… Many more still remained.

  Truly, the simplicity of this task—to merely sit there and scribble ‘Nilia de Relevancia’ over and over in the precise manner in which she had been instructed whenever prompted to do so—belied the utter arduousness… Indeed, this had to be the most arduous task she had ever needed to do in this past year stranded in this place. In fact, in this specific moment; in this specific circumstantial instance; it felt as though this was the most arduous task ever experienced in her full eternity of continued and ceaseless existence.

  The receptionist exhaled such a breath, her strained yet enduring voice being granted momentary respite; her eyes were tired, having become baggy, yet her charm and enthusiasm persisted. Receptionists such as her would not be what they were had they been unable to retain their persona in face of stress and exhaustion. “Is that all understood? Do you need me to repeat anything?”

  Rather instantaneously, the foreigner’s head rapidly shook, “No… No.” Truth be told, she was uncertain if she had even processed any of what she had just heard. Quite frankly, she had long stopped paying proper attention; most of these documents and technical whatevers were all just so…complicated, most especially in their language and wording.

  The receptionist smiled; “Greatly heard!” Her finger then began to point and poke at that straight line at the bottom of the document. “You may sign here, then!”

  Decisively and swiftly, the foreigner signed her full Guild-given name. The receptionist almost immediately after, at speeds beyond even anomalous, placed that signed document onto the stacked mountain of prior signed documents, before instantly taking and sliding onto the desk…the next document needing to be read aloud and signatured.

  The foreigner’s exhausted mask-obscured eyes stared down at this document of words and letters…as if both her mind and essence had so thoroughly squeezed empty.

  “Now this right here is the…”—the receptionist’s eyes squinted slightly—“Ah! This is the Member Acknowledgment of Deathly Risk Agreement, with Contemporary Amendments thirty-four dash four-B through fifty-seven dash—”

  “I… I thought that I already…signed this…” the foreigner’s beleaguered voice so interject…

  Yet the receptionist merely smiled… “Rightly so! But… As I just said, this is the Member Acknowledgment of Deathly Risk Agreement with Contemporary Amendments, not simply the basic Member Acknowledgment of Deathly Risk Agreement; because of the different eras of origination, certain base agreements are treated as separate to all their amended variants! Our millennia-spanning records and registries have to be very precise, after all!” Her cheerful enthusiasm had long become increasingly sadistic, her charm having become almost malevolent—all coping methods to inhibit her own internal suffering, no doubt.

  “Ah… I see…” The foreigner could do nothing more than accept the inescapable reality she had found herself entrapped within. Although, she was in no position to complain or truly judge of having such a complex and overly bloated records—not at all, in fact. Even so, this Guild was turning out to be quite the…procedural and bureaucratic institution… Almost as if it were procedural and bureaucratic for the sake of being procedural and bureaucratic, truly.

  Nevertheless, the foreigner promptly, without any additional cognition, so quickly signed that document and well before the receptionist was even finished.

  “Woah! Hey, hey!” The receptionist abruptly yanked the document away from her; “Do not do that!”

  “Huh?” Yet the foreigner just looked at her, confused…

  “Listen, I understand you might be very…fatigued in soul by now, but you have to let me finish. The Guild only recognizes signatures provided after the thorough explanation is provided… Liability and whatnot, it is how we operate: you need to understand what you are agreeing to before agreeing to it.” the receptionist thus explained.

  The foreigner, however, continued to stare rather blankly… Considering that she was not and had hardly been understanding any of this anyway, such a requirement was redundant.

  However… If this was the necessary protocols to which receptionist needed to adhere, then she herself might as well cooperate and make this receptionist’s existence marginally easier. The foreigner knew well enough herself…being bounded to such protocols and regulations that demanded strict adherences and the subsequent frustrations when those unbounded were being…uncooperative.

  “…I give the apologies” she thus apologized, evasively looking down and away, seemingly embarrassed.

  The receptionist let out a loosening sigh… “Normally, I would have to go fetch a new document and do this all over again… But…” She placed that preemptively signed document into the signed stack… “I am going to borrow a play from the book of my certain supervising other and…not do that since I am the only one here, and…I would prefer to move along…” However, she gave the foreigner a stern eye. “But do not do that again, please.”

  The foreigner nodded… “It is understood…” she acknowledged; “Any of the ways, you may continue, then, for grace…”

  The baggy eyed receptionist smiled… “Alrightly then!” She slid the next document onto the foreigner’s side; “Ahem… So, this right here is the ‘Mutual Trust and Adherence to Honesty Agreement’, which stipulates that …”

  -||-

  “Greatly done! We are almost there! And you are still alive! Fantastic!” the receptionist exclaimed in such a cheer, one of the last documents having finally been signed.

  “Thus, that is…to say that… We…are…almost…concluded, then?” the foreigner’s strangled breaths so pondered…

  “Almost, almost!” The receptionist placed that finalizing document onto that gargantuan mountain of signed acknowledgements, agreements, obligations, and the like…at which she so stared.

  Indeed, thousands of years of stacked bureaucracy and administrative custom towered menacingly before their eyes, as if in wobbling defiance to gravity itself and the very laws of physics that so demanded its tumbling collapse.

  “…now we have to…process all of that… Yay… Ha…ha… Gods’ sacred toilet…” The receptionist’s quasi-sadistic smile faded, becoming simply broken… “I am glad I am not a junior light-blue guild-lady anymore…”

  The foreigner remained silent, battered and beaten in soul yet she remained seated with gracious patience and calm… She still had no idea how much time had passed, only that time had passed.

  The receptionist yawned, which caused the foreigner to yawn in kind—ugh—as she turned her attention to those few remaining documents left behind. However, these papers were…different, not merely just things to be signed. Rubbing her eyes, she took a form that needed to be filled into hand… “Hm…” She evaluated… “Oh, this is just the…prestep initial base-combat eval. and disclosure…”

  The foreigner promptly tilted her tired head… “And…to me…what does this…supposed to mean?” Her accent was noticeably stronger by now… Her ability to, well, word…having begun to break down.

  “Basically, whether or not you have any preliminary or preexisting experience with combat associated proficiencies in a specialized skillset of fighting, and-strike-or any relevant details appertaining to style and ability—stuff like that…” the receptionist courteously explained; “It’s not truly mandatory, but it is helpful to gauge you early-hand, assuming you are truth-telling.”

  The foreigner stared, her exhausted mask-obscured eyes drifting astray in…cogitations… “Oh, uhm… Well…” Her eyes returned to the receptionist… “I suppose that…I am…with the fastest speeds and the swiftest movings… I can do the…uhm… Bending? Or…no, that is not the… Uhm…”

  “So… You consider yourself agile, dexterous, and flexible?” yet the receptionist simply remarked, having picked up a quilled pen the tip of which dripped with gentle ink.

  “Hm… Yes. I suppose that, yes…” The foreigner kind of shrugged.

  “Alrightly, well that is all…something, at least…” The receptionist thus promptly began to write…

  “I am goodly with the…climbing and the…jumping around too, I may suppose… And I am fast with the reactions…” the foreigner opted to add.

  “So, reflexive too…” the receptionist thus scribed… “But uhm… Do you have any, like, proficiencies with a type of weapon or…?”

  The foreigner deliberated, though… “I can do the shooting with…most of the things, or, at the least, with the…uhm… Guns? Yes, guns…” she ultimately answered; “And…I can…kind of use the…uhm… Uhm…” She needed to… “The sword…? Yes, the sword. The thin…pointy…pokey sword—it pokes… I am not really the sword’s person, so it is not the…specialty to me in…that way, but…I can use it suchly if I must…”

  The receptionist just kind of stared… “Alrightly, then… So, claimed proficiency with firearms and… Rightly right…” she transcribed the foreigner’s words into something more…appropriate. “And by a ‘thin, pointy, and pokey sword’, I imagine you mean something like… Hm… What? A Far West thrust-oriented smallsword…or rapier or the like? Those are common.”

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  The foreigner faintly nodded; “Yes… I think that is the word for it… The ‘rapier’, that sounds like so…” She was uncertain despite the fact the local words for ‘rapier’ and other things that had some direct relevance to her and her own…stuff were amongst the first and foremost words she had learned.

  Such was simply the state of her mental fatigue; words in general were blanking in her mind.

  “Alrightly…” The receptionist thus wrote down… “Rightly right, so… Do you have any magical prowess or associated talents? And if not, do you know if you have any card immunities or abnormal difficulties with…arcane processes?” she inquired, eyes looking.

  “Duhm…” The foreigner deliberated, her attention becoming slightly evasive… However, by this point, it was perhaps redundant to be opaque about this simple fact anymore… “Yes…” she thus finally answered; “I do have some…of the…uhm…alien magics, I suppose that I may say… It is not from this…place…” Her voice was a little awkward.

  The receptionist nevertheless scribed and wrote… “Alrightly, so… Claimed talent in an exotic and-strike-or foreign art of magic and-strike-or related…” Her eyes returned to the foreigner… “Can you describe a little what that is? So that we may have better painting…”

  Yet, “No.” The foreigner was not only very quick to reply as if automated, but also very blunt.

  “Uhm…” The receptionist blankly stared… “Alrightly, then… So…” She thus wrote, “Refuses to describe the…details thereof…” She ahemed… “Rightly, then… Do you have any prior history of service to a lord or involvement in an army, mercenary company, militia, and the like during wartime? Or…” Pausing momentarily, “Basically, do you have any military experiences and-strike-or fighting in war?” she rephrased.

  ? … ? The foreigner, however, just silently stared, deadeye.

  The receptionist…suddenly felt very awkward and perhaps a little embarrassed… Her head gently nodded… “Rightly, yeah… Considering you are a, well, a girly lady-gal… I’m going to assume that is a giant and obese no…”

  “That is for the better.” the foreigner merely replied, flatly. Indeed, such was for the best.

  “Yeah, sorry, that was part of the standard…” Aheming, the receptionist thus scribed and wrote… “Anyway, let’s see what else… Da-da-dum…” With the tip of her pen, she quickly skimmed the words… “Oh, rightly! So…”

  This back and forth continued for a little longer, the receptionist inquiring and writing, and the foreigner replying and…well, just replying. It was evident from these inquiries that some kind of initial ‘profile’ was being constructed; thus, the foreigner tried to be both forthcoming…yet also as vague as possible whenever necessary.

  “Alrightly! That should be enough!” The receptionist slid the filled out form to the foreigner’s side; “Just sign right here ”—the tip of her pen pointed—“to say that you have been as forthcoming and truth-telling as possible, and that should be it!”

  “…goodly heard…” the foreigner thus signed away.

  With a smile, the receptionist then tossed that form near the grand towering stack of all the rest… “And with that, we should be…” Mid-sentence, her voice skewed as it drifted to a pause, noticing that there was, in fact, still one last document left to be explained and signed… “Oh, rightly…” With an ughing sigh, she so took that document into hand, looking with eyes of disdain… “This thing… Let us get this one finished with, then…” She slid the document to the foreigner.

  “Uhm… And what may be this?” the foreigner inquired, having noticed the tonal shift in the receptionist’s voice.

  “That is the…Vow of Allegiance, Commitment, and Pledge of Non-Aggravating Association… Whereby signing, you declare under true pledge to Honor and Virtue that you vow unconditional adherence to the customs and traditions of the Adventurers’ Guild and commitment to the policies, standards, expectations, rules, and laws thereof; and that you are neither presently associated with nor have any intention to associate with aggravating parties antagonistic to the Adventurers’ Guild, more specifically the self-declared Empire of Pegasus and her allies.” the receptionist thus explained with frank yet dampened voice.

  The foreigner tilted her head slightly… Well, that was a rather odd and…peculiar thing to be abruptly concerned about. She had heard of this so-called ‘Empire of Pegasus’ a plenty before, however she did not know much about it extensively, besides being some kind of ‘looming inevitability’ that haunted within the lurking shadows that was this continent’s bottom half, controlling the entire southeast of this continent and much of its south.

  “Well, I am not from this…uhm Empire or any of that… I am from somewhere someplace else, so…” she thus…replied.

  “You better hope you are not from the Empire or associated with ‘any of that’… Because, if you are and do sign these, when—big stress on the when—the Guild finds out, most of our just-signed agreements and obligations would be nullified to naught, and it will be a very unpleasant time for you.” The receptionist was frank, though precautioning—not necessarily threatening.

  “Well, I am not.” the foreigner was equally frank; she simply signed away between those two signature lines.

  The receptionist promptly retrieved the signed pledge, sliding it atop that recently filled in form.

  “Uhm… If it is allowed for me to ask… Why was any of that…relevant?” the foreigner…decided to ask, curiosity perhaps getting the better of her. “That was the…weird thing to sign…”

  The receptionist so sighed… “Yeah, weird and a relatively recent requirement for new incoming members—it shouldn’t be relevant, but… It’s a measure the Security Office’s eggs managed to shove through during the last Great Convention between Branches, Citadels, and Capital Administration due to…” Her voice abruptly paused… “Oh, you probably do not know what any of this even means, haha…” She let loose quite the exhale… “It is all just Guild politics… So, nothing you need to be too concerned about as a new prospecting member…”

  Ah. Politics. That one category of local shenanigans and denizen nonsense affairs the foreigner would prefer to avoid as if it were some sort of essence-contaminating horror, never mind the clear directives that mandated staying out of such affairs, period. Yet, even so…curiosity persisted within, oddly enough.

  “I see… But I asked of the why—not the what.” the foreigner thus spoke; “Though, to ask the what: what is the…problem with this ‘Empire’? I am very ignorant…”

  “…oh, well…” The receptionist took a moment to gather her words… “I will just say that… In some ways, on the outside the Empire and the Guild are…fine, and we do sometimes cooperate… On the inside, however, it is very much the opposite—we do not get along and, in truth, and there is a lot of hostility…” she somewhat awkwardly answered.

  “But… Why?” The foreigner tilted her head.

  The receptionist blew a type of…slightly perturbed breath… “Pegasus wants us gone, and we want to survive. It’s…ultimately that simple.” It was evident in her voice that she did not particularly care for this subject…or the foreigner’s persistence. Aheming, “Anyhow! Now then!” she thus redirected the subject with a single cheery clap; “Congratulations! With all of that finished, you are now very close to being admitted as a freshly new member of the one and only Adventurers’ Guild!” However, her sudden enthusiasm suddenly whimpered… “All that is required is the…uhm…fee… Which… Uhm… Did I tell you…there was a…fee…?”

  The foreigner’s mind nearly blanked from that ever-accursed alone, before remembering… Right, indeed, there was such a fee. However, even so… “…why is this fee…now being demanded? After doing all of…that…” Indeed, she had to wonder… Why have her or anyone go through this proceduralist horror of endless signing and signing and so much…signing and then ask for that so-called ‘fee’…

  Although she had been given the coin to pay the fee, she could not help but wonder… What if she did not have the coin? Would all of this have been done for naught, then?

  Yet the receptionist gently smiled; “Yes, it might seem rather weird, I know… But often times, prospecting members tend to not have enough coin to pay the full fee, and a lot of newly fledged adventurers come in without…any coin at all… So, usually they either prefer to return another time when they can pay it in full or proceed with joining the Guild under the condition that they pay it off in due time.” she thus explained; “In either case, we hold onto these documents regardless for at least a full year, sometimes more, so that we do not have to repeat this entire procedure again…”

  “I see…” Huh… Well, that actually made perfect sense, then; rather pragmatic, too…

  The receptionist leaned herself back slightly against her chair, relaxing… “So, ‘Nilia de Relevancia’, what type of new entry and membership fee-type are you interested in?” she casually inquired… “Do you…even know what those are?”

  Yet the answer was clearly evident from the foreigner’s tilting head… “…you imply that there are…the different types of these ‘fee’s…? I thought that there was…one…” She was confused and needed immediate clarifying answers.

  The receptionist cleared her battered but still functioning throat, relaxing her strained voice… “Rightly, of course… So, there is the standard entry fee—which used to be the only entry fee—for any prospecting newbie joining at our starting and lowest rank, Copper. However…” Her voice began to shift… “We do also…now…allow prospecting members to…join at a higher initial rank…for an extra premium, all the way up to…Steek-rank, but no higher than that—for now, at least, since they said that about Iron…” There was disgruntled disgust sprinkled within her explanatory voice; “It is, admittedly, as…desperate as that sounds, but it is a premium…offer, so you have to pay the entire charge fully and upfront—no joining and paying it off overtime, or any other accommodation; those are courtesies exclusive to those who join from the very beginning bottom.”

  “I see…” the foreigner just acknowledged… “So, then, what are these…fees?”

  “One gold and twenty-five… Or, rightly, it is now one gold and forty-five silvers for standard entry at Copper-rank. For premium entries, it is two golds and ninety silvers for Iron-rank, and five golds and eighty silvers for entry at Steel-rank.” the receptionist explained.

  Hearing such numbers, the foreigner’s soul immediately shriveled to ash… One gold and forty-five silvers… Ah… It appeared that a certain weaving someone had not actually provided her with the full coin to pay for any of these ‘fees’… The foreigner could not help but assume that he had done this intentionally, considering that she would now be obligated to actually participate in this Guild to pay off this…deficit.

  As if a broken zombie of a hollow shell, the foreigner thus simply took out her measly one gold and placed it onto the desk… “This is all that I have… I will do the standard one, then… It will be necessary for me to do the later…payment…thing…”

  “Alrightly, then… Incomplete payment it will be…” The receptionist immediately took that single gold and placed it into a special Guild-specific coin-container of sorts located within a drawer at her side of the desk; “I will sort out the processing later, but it will be a flag added to your…soon-to-be-compiled profile indicating that you owe us forty-five silvers; failure to pay duly will result in suspension… But most have it paid by their first quest.”

  “I see. And, to ask… Are there any more of the fees that are beyond this?” The foreigner wanted to know…

  “Hmm… Well…” The receptionist gently pressed her index finger on her chin as her eyes gazed slightly up for a moment, thinking… “There used to be annual membership and quarterly service fees a long-long time ago, but since we are the ones who…pay our adventurers the coin they used to pay those fees, we now…deduct it straight from the quest reward calculations, disbursement, and such; so, they go unnoticed…”

  The foreigner lightly nodded; “I see… That is goodly heard, then…” She nearly sighed in relief, frankly.

  “Of course, if you stumble into another Guild branch, although you are able to use their services as a Guild member, you may still have to register with that branch which may come with an associated fee.” the receptionist added; “But in general, most of the Guild’s charges goes to those contracting our services, not our members.”

  “It is noted…” The foreigner noted, indeed.

  “Now then!” The receptionist had a sudden surge in energy; “With that all settled, congratulations! For all intents, you are now a newly registered adventurer of the Coastfield branch of the one and only Adventurers’ Guild! However, before you can begin your adventuring career, you will have to wait up to five to seven days for us to process all of this and prepare your very own Copper-rank badge…” she thus specified, though then…eased; “Although, since you are the…only newbie we have received in…weeks, we should not take…that long…at all… Could have it done by tomorrow, to be honest—maybe overmorrow…”

  “Goodly heard…” Finally, the foreigner could sense… “I take it, then, that this is over?” Indeed, smiling, she preemptively stood herself up…

  Yet…

  “…over?” There was quite the shift in the receptionist’s voice… “Heheh… Done? Over? You think we are done, missy?” Her smile lost its sanity. “No, no… We are not finished quite just yet… We still have that one last tiny step: the new member briefing and orientation disclosure!” Her declaring delight seemed estranged. “A mandatory procedure during which I must explain everything that is necessary for you to know about being a functional member of the Adventurers’ Guild and all of the services and opportunities available to you!”

  ? …quid? ? The foreigner stared if her essence had completely detached, abandoning its host. “Ah… I see…” Silent and merely accepting, she simply retook her seat… “My attention is to you, then…”

  The receptionist smiled with quite the enthusiastic charm, one that masked an equal displeasure. Clearing her battered throat, with an ahem, she thus promptly…began.