Ember followed Chris down to the main area of the Guildhall, where the massive quest board, covering the majority of the back wall, was located. Dozens of people stood in front of the quest board, most dressed in gear, some dressed casually.

  Ember stared at Chris, not even attempting to read the posters. “What are we looking for? Are we going to just save some old lady’s cat or something?”

  Chris gave him a questioning look. “Why would the Guild take requests like that?”

  Ember shrugged. “I don’t know, I just saw it somewhere.” He trailed off. He had assumed that the quest boards worked similarly to how they would in the fantasy media he consumed back in his world—menial tasks and the like.

  Chris shook his head. “No, there’s another board for smaller tasks, “ he pointed to a smaller board on the far end of the guild. “In an adventurer guild, you usually just have large tasks, monster subjugations, risky recovery missions, yada yada.” He turned to the board. “They also happen to have much bigger rewards, which is exactly what we need because we’re completely broke.”

  “I thought you said you had a lot of money,” Ember teased

  “I did,” his companion grumbled as he stared at the wall. “Now the question here is, can we find a quest that the two of us can do by ourselves?”

  “Are we not going to look for party members? Or at least people to help us later on down the road? You said you wanted me to be your banner boy or whatever.”

  Chris shook his head. “You might have a strong weapon, but most people aren’t going to take me seriously if I go around flaunting that my Commoner companion has a strong weapon. That doesn’t mean anything to most of these people. Anyone can have a powerful weapon. It’s how you use it and how strong you are that really matters.”

  He sighed, eyes scanning the crowd, “So unfortunately, my goal to use you as a banner boy is going to have to be put on hold until you reach a higher level of strength, or your name becomes well known to the Guild. Until then, we’re going to have to bank on the fact that I’m a Transitional to get us some attention. But there’s no point in looking for party members right now. Not with the disparity in our levels.”

  Ember clicked his tongue but didn’t disagree. I really need to get stronger. Chris is right. As long as I’m weak, we’ll have a lot of closed doors.

  They turned their attention back to the board, and while it was true that Ember couldn’t read what the posters said, he could get a basic idea based on the images as well as the reward below. Though the letter didn’t look like anything he was familiar with. Chris gave him a quick explanation.

  “You’ve probably already figured it out, but we use gold, silver, and bronze in the frontier. What we’re looking for are quests that only give us a couple of gold. That stuff goes a long way out here, so we don’t need to do anything crazy.”

  Ember nodded and went to look at the quest board. They both scoured it, and Ember found a few quests that were around three gold and below. He had a total of seven, and Chris found six. They took them down and went over to a nearby table to look through them.

  “Goblin Subjugation, Wyvern Sighting, Recovery of a Lost Item, Dungeon Crawling—” Chris tossed that one to the side. “Not ready for that yet. Trolls. The Stone Bore. Ooh, what’s this?”

  He looked at the poster with a mix of surprise and interest. “A Carton. Those are rare.”

  “And that is?” ]

  Chris showed him the poster. It was an image of a horse with what looked to be fire and electricity swirling around it. “They’re elemental horses. They’re kind of on the same level as unicorns, and they’re really rare. They’re also really strong. I’m surprised the reward for this is only seven gold. No one worth their salt would take this one. These should at least be sixty to seventy gold.”

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  “Are we going to take it?” Ember felt dumb as soon as the words left his mouth. Obviously not. Why would you ask that?

  Chris laughed. “Yeah, right. You’d need at least three Transitionals to take that thing down—even if it was a baby. I saw one in the civilized world. It was quite the experience.” Chris tossed the paper to the side, a nostalgic look on his face, before returning to the stack. A few moments later, he set a samll stack between them.

  “Here are the three that I’ve nailed down. We have a Goblin Subjugation mission, an item recovery mission, and last but not least, an investigation mission. Each one offers about four gold.” He put the three in front of Ember. “And I’m going to let you decide what we tackle.”

  Ember looked at him, confused. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

  Chris shrugged. “Well, I know about as much as you do regarding a lot of this stuff. I’ve pretty much exhausted all the knowledge that I know about the frontier. So, your guess is as good as mine.”

  Ember sighed and stared at the three posters. He picked the item recovery one. “What’s this?”

  “That would be a recovery mission, not too far from here, in the forest to the north of us. Apparently, someone dropped their item, some kind of sword, and they weren’t able to retrieve it. It mentions werewolves, though we’ll have to visit the requester for more information.”

  Ember put that one down and pushed it to the side. Werewolves don’t sound like a good idea. If they function at all as they do in my world, then we have no way to kill them.

  He picked up the Goblin Subjugation mission.

  “That one’s pretty straightforward,” Chris said. “All we have to do is go destroy a small camp of goblins. But the problem with that is goblins tend to be at minimum Fundamentalist level, and you’re a Commoner, so chances are we’d get our shit rocked. Or at least you would. But I do think it’s a better option than the other two.”

  Ember pointed to the last one.

  “That one,” Chris starts, “Is investigating a monster nest. We’d be doing recon. Personally, I recommend against it. If we get caught, there’s no guarantee you’ll survive. Even I’d have a hard time getting back.”

  “Oh,” Ember said.

  “Yeah. So, none of the missions we have are very good options, but these are the best options that are available.”

  Ember rubbed his chin as he thought. “I guess this one.” He tapped the Goblin Subjugation mission. “At the very least, the chances of us dying are less likely.”

  Chris nodded. “You’re not wrong. Alright,” he said. “Let’s put the rest of these back.” It didn’t slip Ember’s mind that Chris pretty much decided for them. Or at least guided him to the goblin quest.

  After returning the fliers to their positions, Chris and Ember walked up to the desk where the same lady who had taken them to their rooms was sitting.

  “We’d like to activate this quest,” Chris said as he handed it over.

  The lady looked at it and then back up at them. “Is it just the two of you?”

  Chris nodded.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “Unfortunately, combat quests require three members or more.”

  “What?” Chris looked at her like she was insane. “That’s like two gold per person!”

  “Company policy,” she replied. “Not including the one-gold tax for the Guild, it would be one gold per person.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Company policy,” she repeated, seeming bored with the conversation. Must be a common complaint.

  “Can we at least hold the quest?”

  “Of course,” she said. “Please come back when you wish to reactivate it.”

  Chris dragged Ember away, grumbling about guilds and their petty money tricks.

  “Where are we going?” Ember asked as he was pulled along.

  “To the training hall,” Chris growled.

  The training hall was situated on the right side of the Guildhall. It was indoors, and there were dozens of people here. It was very big. It was mostly made of stone, and there were a few lanterns around, but they were situated up high so as not to be destroyed during training. The walls were lined with all kinds of weapons, and there were at least thirty to forty dummies situated inside the massive building.

  Chris tossed Ember a training sword and shield for himself. He set up position a few feet away from him.

  “Alright, so we’re taking on a combat mission. I want to see how well you’re getting along in your training. You have continued to train, right?”

  “Of course,” Ember said as he gripped the sword.

  The entire time they were on their journey, when Ember wasn’t helping Chris with the camp, he spent his time working on his swordsmanship. He got into a stance he was comfortable with, both hands on his sword and the blade aligned with the center of his body.

  Chris nodded. “Alright. Show me what you got.”