Reborn as an Adventurer: I Gain a Skill From Every Monster I Eat

Chapter 10: Chapter 10 — The Guild

The Greyhaven Adventurer Guild looked larger up close than it ever had from a distance.

Arlen had walked past the building more times than he could count over the years, had studied its gray stone walls and heavy double doors from across the square the way a man might study a mountain he intended to climb someday. But standing directly in front of it now, cloak settled over his shoulders, money belt snug beneath his shirt, he found the building somehow more imposing than he’d remembered — four solid stories of stone, banners bearing the guild’s crest hanging from the upper windows, the low hum of noise already audible from inside even before he’d touched the door.

He took a breath, the kind he’d have called steadying if he’d been willing to admit he needed steadying, and pushed his way inside.

The noise hit him first — a warm, overlapping wall of sound that took a moment to sort into its individual pieces. Voices, dozens of them, layered over each other in a dozen different tones: the low murmur of quiet conversation near the tavern counter, a burst of laughter from somewhere near the quest boards, a heated argument between two men over what looked like payment for a completed job. Underneath it all, a persistent clatter of mugs and boots and shuffled papers, the particular busy music of a place that never really stopped moving.

Then came the smell — roasted meat and spilled ale, old parchment, leather, and beneath it all, faint but unmistakable, the sharp, wild scent of monster hide that Arlen had learned to recognize years ago from a covered cart near the western gate.

And then, finally, the sight of it.

The guild hall’s ground floor sprawled out before him, larger than any single room he’d ever stood in. Wooden quest boards lined one wall, thick with pinned notices, a small crowd gathered in front of them reading and arguing over which postings were worth taking. A long tavern counter ran along the opposite side, already busy despite the early hour, adventurers of every description perched on stools or gathered around low tables — a dwarf with a beard braided in three distinct sections, laughing uproariously at something his companion had said; a pair of beastkin with matching fox-tufted ears, comparing what looked like claw marks on their forearms with the casual pride of soldiers comparing scars; a woman with unmistakably pointed ears, elven, reading quietly by herself near the window, entirely unbothered by the chaos around her.

Arlen stood just inside the doorway for a long moment, drinking all of it in, and felt something in his chest swell with an emotion too large and complicated to name cleanly. This was the room he’d watched from a distance for eight years. This was the room he’d built his entire life around reaching.

He was, at last, standing inside it.

Nobody paid him any particular attention. That, more than anything, struck him as oddly perfect — he wasn’t a curiosity here, wasn’t a slum boy staring through a gate at something he wasn’t allowed to touch. He was simply one more young face among dozens, unremarkable in exactly the way he’d always wanted to be, in exactly this room.

He made his way toward the registration counter, tucked into a corner near the quest boards, where a young woman sat behind a stack of papers, her dark hair pinned back practically, her expression pleasant but efficiently businesslike as she processed the adventurer currently ahead of Arlen in line — a nervous-looking boy not much older than himself, stammering through what sounded like his first attempt at registering as well.

Arlen waited his turn, watching the process carefully, the way he watched most things now, filing away the shape of it before it became his own turn to go through it.

”Next,” the receptionist said, and looked up at him with the same brisk, practiced pleasantness she’d shown the boy before him.

Arlen stepped forward.

Up close, she looked to be a few years older than him, with sharp, observant eyes that Arlen suspected didn’t miss much, despite the routine boredom evident in the set of her shoulders. A small nameplate on the counter read *Mina Ashford.*

”First time registering?” she asked.

”Yes.”

”Name?”

”Arlen.” He hesitated for half a second — he’d never had cause to use a family name, growing up in the slums, where such things mattered considerably less than they apparently did elsewhere. ”Just Arlen.”

If Mina found anything unusual about that, she didn’t show it; she simply wrote it down, the quill scratching briskly across the page. ”Age?”

”Eighteen. As of three days ago.”

”Race?”

”Human.”

”Any prior combat training? Guild affiliations? Family history with the guild?”

”No,” Arlen said. ”None of that.”

Mina glanced up at him then, something faintly assessing in the look — not unkind, but clearly cataloguing him against the dozens of other hopeful newcomers she processed every week, most of whom, Arlen suspected, came through this exact counter with exactly this same combination of nothing behind them and everything ahead of them.

”No training, no connections,” she said, not unkindly. ”Most people in your position start with gathering quests. Herbs, materials, that sort of thing. Low risk, decent pay if you know what you’re doing. Combat quests come later, once you’ve built up some experience and, frankly, some muscle.” She glanced briefly at his lean frame, an assessment rather than an insult. ”You’ll want proper gear too, if you haven’t already got it. There’s a registration fee — one silver — which also gets you your guild badge and your Explorer’s Journal, if you want one. Most new adventurers do.”

”I want one,” Arlen said, immediately, and something in his voice must have carried more weight than he intended, because Mina’s businesslike expression flickered, just slightly, into something more curious.

”Most people ask what it’s for before they agree to pay extra for it,” she said.

”I already know what it’s for,” Arlen said. ”I’ve wanted one since I was ten years old.”

Mina studied him for a moment longer, and Arlen had the distinct impression of being properly seen for the first time since he’d walked through the door — not as one more nameless hopeful in a long line of them, but as something slightly more particular.

”That’s an unusual thing for a slum-district accent to say,” she observed, though there was no judgment in it, only genuine curiosity.

”I’ve had a long time to think about it,” Arlen said simply.

Something in her expression softened, just slightly, the professional efficiency giving way to a flicker of real interest. ”Well. You’ll want to fill this out, then.” She slid a form across the counter toward him, along with a quill. ”Basic information, and a mark or signature at the bottom if you can write your name.”

”I can write,” Arlen said, and there was a quiet pride in the words that he didn’t bother hiding.

He filled out the form carefully, methodically, the same way he did most things, while the noise of the guild hall churned on around him — the laughter, the arguments, the clatter of mugs, the enormous, layered sound of a life he’d spent eight years imagining and had finally, actually arrived inside of.

When he finished, he slid the form back across the counter, along with the single silver coin from his money belt — a coin that had once been part of a much larger, carefully hoarded sum, now finally being spent on the exact thing he’d always intended it for.

Mina reviewed the form briefly, nodded, and reached beneath the counter for a small guild badge and a leather-bound journal, setting both down in front of him with practiced efficiency.

”Welcome to the Greyhaven Adventurer Guild,” she said, the standard phrase delivered with just enough genuine warmth to feel less like routine than Arlen suspected it usually was. ”Rank F, provisional, until you’ve completed your first few quests. Anything else you need?”

Arlen looked down at the badge sitting on the counter in front of him — small, unremarkable, the kind of thing that meant nothing at all to anyone who hadn’t spent eight years watching adventurers wear exactly this kind of badge through exactly this kind of gate.

He picked it up, felt the solid, simple weight of it in his palm, and looked back up at Mina with a smile he couldn’t have suppressed if he’d tried.

”No,” he said. ”I think that’s everything I need.”

He paused, the words arriving with a quiet certainty that had been building in him for eight patient years, and finally let himself say them out loud, exactly as he’d always imagined he would.

”I’ve become an adventurer.”