“Varen, do you know who the clerk is today?” I asked as we crossed the threshold of the guild hall. “I didn’t see them when we were leaving earlier.”

  Varen slowed and grimaced, his shoulders rising slightly as if he had just remembered something unpleasant. “Oh, it’s Brenda. So, I wouldn’t linger too long if I were you. She’s kind of in a mood today.”

  “Ah,” I said, letting out a breath. “Just our luck.”

  “Yeah,” Winnie added from my side. “And we’ve got stuff to identify too. It would be a lot easier if we had a spyglass, but you know how expensive those things are.”

  I nodded. A spyglass would have made this faster and quieter, but it was not a realistic option right now. I could probably make one in the future, given time and proper materials, but not at our current level. Even ignoring the effort involved, the cost alone was far beyond what we could justify. For the moment, letting the guild handle item identification was simply the sensible choice.

  The items themselves were clearly magical. That much was obvious even without specialized tools. What made them interesting, and frustrating, was that they we dungeon loot.

  Dungeon made items did not have circuits in the way crafted enchantments did. Their magic was woven directly into the object itself, layered and integrated rather than assembled piece by piece. That meant people like me could not just take them apart and copy the work. Especially not items like these, which were named after people who may have never existed and carried abilities never really explained what the things actually did. When I tried to imagine what kind of circuits would be required to recreate them, the whole idea started to fall apart.

  We made it fully into the guild hall, and the noise hit us all at once. Copper-ranked adventurers filled the space, talking over one another in a raucous cacophony. Everyone seemed to be sharing stories about the day’s adventures, their quests, their close calls, and their small victories. Voices overlapped until individual conversations blurred together into one constant roar.

  The line at the counter was long, stretching nearly halfway across the hall.

  “Everybody probably just got back,” I said, glancing ahead.

  “Looks like it,” Winnie replied, craning her neck to see how fast the line was moving.

  I turned slightly to look at Raven and her group. “How do you want to do this?” I asked. “We can alternate if you want.”

  “You guys can go first,” Raven said without hesitation. “It’s fine. We’re in no rush.”

  “All right,” I said.

  The four of us lined up together, and Raven’s group fell in behind us. I took the last spot, close enough to hear what was going on at the counter and far enough back to watch the room and the people moving through it.

  “Oh, it’s you, runt,” a voice said from in front of me.

  I looked up and saw Oliver standing there, arms folded and wearing the kind of expression that suggested he had been waiting for an audience.

  “Clarice?” he said, glancing past me as if I were barely worth acknowledging.

  She met his gaze and nodded once. “Cousin,” she replied, her voice cold enough to frost glass.

  From what I understood, Oliver and Clarice had never gotten along. Oliver was the Count’s actual son, but Clarice had been treated like his daughter all the same, and that imbalance had never sat well with Oliver or his mother. Oliver had been raised mostly by his mother rather than his father, while the Count had taken an active role in Clarice’s life after her mother passed. His wife had never liked that arrangement, at least according to Clarice.

  When Clarice got sick, Oliver’s mother had forced Randall to leave his post in Talaris and return home. If they were going to look after Clarice, then Randall was also going to be responsible for Oliver. Randall was a terrible teacher, but he kept his word when it came to that kind of thing.

  Other than the one time I beat the crap out of Oliver, we did not actually have many problems. He was mostly just a constant irritation, the kind of person who showed up often enough to be annoying but not often enough to be worth thinking about. I barely spared him any thought at all.

  Apparently, he had decided that today required my attention.

  He looked down at me with a smug grin. “My father says I’ll be moving to a city guild after this.” He let the statement hang there for a moment. “What about you lot?”

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  I shrugged. “I’m planning on being a real adventurer. City guilds don’t really suit that, but good for you.”

  He scoffed immediately. “All the best adventurers come from city guilds. Don’t you know anything?”

  I looked at him for a moment before answering. “The rich ones come from city guilds. There’s a difference between being rich and being good.”

  “Where are you planning on venturing exactly?” I asked, genuinely curious. “In a bar?”

  He laughed. “City guilds have access to gold-rank dungeons. Even platinum ones. It’s much easier to become a real legend from a city guild than one of those wild guilds.”

  I nodded slowly. “I know. One of those legendary fox stories.” I tilted my head. “You do know everyone makes fun of city guild adventurers, right? They take the easy jobs, do the paperwork, drink, and leave the actual fighting to other people. If that works for you, that’s fine.”

  I looked at him again. “Just so you’re aware, there’s a very real chance this is already a platinum dungeon, and it’s a wild one.”

  He scoffed. “If this is a platinum dungeon, do you know what happens when they find the core?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “We celebrate, turn things in, and keep moving toward gold.”

  He shook his head. “Do you have any idea how rare a scaling dungeon reaching platinum would be? There’s only one other, and it’s in Telitha. If this becomes the next one, nobles are going to swarm it. Anyone not high on the priority list is getting pushed out.” He smiled thinly. “You, meanwhile, can enjoy your little nothing dungeon in the wilds. I’ll be on that list.”

  “That’s assuming we lose the copper tournament,” Meka said, pushing her glasses up as she looked down at him. “And just so you know, we’re not going to.”

  Oliver scoffed at her. “You’re not going to win. You might be able to beat me, but you won’t beat the real high nobility and their teams. They’ll be fully attuned before they even step into the arena. What are you going to do, beat them with that stick?”

  I sighed and adjusted my grip on the staff. “I’ve beaten you with this stick before. Do you want me to remind you how easy it is to beat someone who’s that arrogant?”

  He raised a hand quickly. “I’m not getting into this. You cheated. You started that fight.”

  I looked at him flatly. “You’re really going to say I started that, Oliver? Just because I almost killed you doesn’t make it my fault. You tried to cast Firestorm in an enclosed space.”

  Brenda slammed a hand on the counter hard enough to cut through the noise of the hall. “You two shut the hell up before I make you regret it.”

  We both shut up immediately.

  The line moved quietly after that. Brenda had that effect on people.

  Her sister, Edith, was much kinder. Unfortunately, Edith was asleep today, which was easy enough to confirm from the deep, rattling snore coming from behind the counter. The Ettin shared one body between the two of them, but each head had its own mind, its own temperament, and its own shift.

  Brenda was angry, sharp, and perpetually annoyed with the world. Edith, on the other hand, was the sweetest person you could hope to meet behind a guild counter. They rotated. When Edith slept, Brenda was awake. When Brenda slept, Edith handled the desk. Most people learned quickly to hope for Edith in the mornings.

  Today, we had Brenda.

  The line crept forward at a painful pace. Nobody complained. Nobody even whispered. The sound of the guild hall seemed to dampen as we approached the counter, conversations fading into low murmurs whenever Brenda glanced up.

  When it was finally our turn, Meka stepped forward first and smiled.

  Brenda looked down at her, then, surprisingly, smiled back.

  I still did not understand how that worked. Somehow, Meka had found a way to get along with Brenda well enough that it passed for something like a working friendship.

  Meka handed over the quest materials and calmly requested completion for the Alpha Slime Wolf quest. Brenda frowned and glanced at the posting board.

  “That one was time-limited,” Brenda said. “It technically expired today. I already pulled the notice.”

  Meka nodded. “It’s still today. We were already on the quest before it was taken down, and we finished it within the listed window.”

  Brenda stared at her for a long moment, then clicked her tongue and scribbled something onto the ledger. “Fine. I’ll allow it.”

  Meka collected our reward without comment and moved back toward our table. I could also see Greta was sitting at the main table for the instructors.

  Seeing her there sent a quiet ripple of excitement through the group. We had not seen her in a while, and knowing she would be here tomorrow meant instruction was coming.

  Winnie stepped up next and set her helmet on the counter. “We’ve got some items we need identified.”

  Brenda eyed the helmet. “Let me guess. Chest drop.” She glanced at Meka. “Alpha Slime Wolf?”

  Meka nodded.

  Brenda snorted. “Those damn chests have been spawning way too often lately. Makes good adventurers greedy.” She glanced at the clock on the wall and scowled. “You know what? It’s my break.”

  She lifted one heavy hand and slapped the side of her sisters face.

  Brenda’s head went slack as her eyes closed. A heartbeat later, Edith’s eyes blinked open.

  “Oh,” Edith said brightly. “Hello, dears. How can I help you today?”

  I silently thanked every god that was worth thanking, except for that one asshole we did not talk about.

  “Hi, Edith,” I said. “We got some dungeon loot from a boss chest and need it identified.”

  “Oh, how exciting!” Edith said, leaning forward. “Dungeon loot is always exciting. It’s been a very busy month. So many of you have been bringing in such interesting things lately.”

  She picked up the helmet and retrieved what looked like a magnifying glass, except the lens was a halved crystal sphere mounted in metal. When she passed it over the helmet, the surface darkened, clouded, and then resolved into a floating item card.

  The God of Dungeons had designed tools like these to help adventurers understand what they found. His priesthood had passed the designs down, but they were expensive to make.

  The guild offered the service for free.

  Which was fortunate, because the materials involved were absurd. Just the tailbone of an Alpha Dracis Glassrike, for example, was almost impossible to acquire. They were silver-ranked boss monsters, and only two dungeons in the entire world spawned them. Their components were worth more than most gold-ranked dungeon clears.