Adventuring was an occupation for the insane.

Everyone knew it: joining the Guild was as good as signing your own death warrant.

Every child had once dreamed of leaving their dreary daily lives behind to embark on grand journeys into the unknown, but reality was a good deal less shiny than the copper-store novels that told of great escapades by glorious heros.

Not many adventurers existed outside of the Kingdom of Tayan’s official Adventurers Guilds, and the few that did were little more than murderous vagrants. As for those who joined the guilds… well, the army was always open to an oathholder that wanted to fight, and the pay and hours weren’t nearly as horrendous. In every metric except autonomy, the military was frankly a superior option over adventuring.

Official statistics stated that nearly nine out of ten people who successfully enrolled with the Tayan Adventurers Guild never made it to the second tier of membership. Leaked reports claimed that the average lifespan of an adventurer was about nine to fifteen months after beginning. Survival didn’t mean a good life, either; even in the remote village where I had spent my teenage years, the sight of a travelling ex-adventurer missing body parts— limbs, eyes, and in a couple particularly nasty cases, the entire lower half of their bodies— was all too common.

Adventuring was a job for the insanely powerful and the powerfully insane.

And, unfortunately, a job for those seeking money and freedom who could not find a better job. I wasn’t sure which of the three categories I fell under. Maybe all of them.

With a long-suffering sigh, I reached the front of the line for Guild registration. It said a lot about this current generation that I could recognize three others in the line that had entered Yaguan Mage University with me just days ago.

Well, that was their choice. If they wanted to get themselves into an activity that would almost certainly get them killed, it was on their heads.

“Guild registration?” The receptionist at this branch of the Tayan Adventurer’s Guild was a man sitting behind a solid true-oak desk. He was bulky, his body a warrior’s build that belonged out in the field, not here, and the increasingly annoyed look on his face led me to believe that this assignment hadn’t quite been his choice.

“That’s what I’m here for,” I replied.

“Your form and your fee.” The receptionist stretched out a meaty hand, beckoning.

I procured my form and two golden suns, wincing at the price. Before I passed the coins to the receptionist, I scanned my registration form one final time.

Name Lily Syashan Hometown Syashan Mage Y/N Oathholder of: Igni/Und/Caël/Ditas/Aedi/Unaffiliated/Other Oathholder Signature Lily Syashan

My signature was, as mandated by Guild procedures, written in my own blood. Supposedly, it meant that the Guild would have an easier time tracking me and my progress.

Thankfully, the Tayan Adventurers’ Guild was not nearly as scrupulous as other government-associated organizations. Instead of doing a rigorous background check like every other kingdom-run group, the Guild claimed any and all who sought it. My lineage, problematic as it was, wouldn’t be a problem here.

“Lily Syashan. You have been registered,” the receptionist drawled.

He passed me a thick pamphlet, a leather-bound volume with what had to have been a hundred pages inside. It looked small in his hands, but when he handed it over I saw that it was as large as a university textbook, though it was significantly thinner.

“Familiarize yourself with the contents of the guild rules. Your obligations will begin with your first quest.” The receptionist finished his spiel and looked past me, already deaf to anything else I would say.

I nodded, then turned and left without a word. Better to get out of here now before one of my classmates notices me.

There was a disturbingly high number of people in this room. As I left, I glanced around at my surroundings. It was a large building, enough so that I wouldn’t have been surprised if it was a warehouse, and even the adventurer registration area we were in was bustling with activity. It was organized a little like a train station, with a winding queue established by wooden poles and an assortment of benches to rest on pushed up by one side.

The queue for registration was full of a hopeful lot. Many of them would be oathholders, I was sure, and my suspicion was proven right when I glanced over at a green-robed boy not much older than me. He was chatting with another girl our age, gesticulating wildly, and as he did a flash of white energy formed between his hands.

Wrapped up in my thoughts, I had barely made it ten steps when I heard the receptionist again.

“…Jasmine of House Rayes. An honor to serve you.”

I nearly froze at the sound, barely managing to keep myself in stride as I continued on my path to exit the building. A noble.

What was this young lady thinking, enrolling as an adventurer? Nobles had positions to hold, roles to fulfill, reputations to keep, and this one seemed intent on throwing that away. My father was too much like you.

That line of thought came dangerously close to touching on a still-sensitive nerve, so I discarded it. She wasn’t of my house. It wasn’t my problem what happened to her.

“Lily… Syashan, was it?” A voice came from behind me.

I turned. The speaker, a fair-haired woman with gleaming blue eyes, was walking away from the guild receptionist. She was no taller than me, but something in her manner of carrying herself made her seem larger than that. Combined with the oddly light lilt in her voice, there was no mistaking her for anything but a noblewoman.

“Jasmine of House Rayes. My lady,” I replied with a graceless curtsy, voice utterly flat.

“You’re in my year at the University, aren’t you?” the noble asked.

“Am I?”

“I saw you at the entrance ceremony for first years, I’m sure of it.”

“If you’re a first year, then you are with me,” I shrugged. “What of it?”

“I find it odd that a first year university student is already trying their hand at adventuring.”

“I could say the same of you. What’s a daughter of a noble house doing at a place like this?”

“I asked first,” she said, petulant words contrasting with her aristocratic lilt.

“Going to the university isn’t free,” I shrugged, “The military doesn’t accept undergrads from the University, so that’s out, and other jobs are boring.”

“So it’s for the money, then? You should be aware the TAG doesn’t pay much.” She likely wasn’t trying to be condescending, but it was irritating. It wasn’t like there weren’t others from the same university entering the same job.

“Crap pay is better than none,” I replied, a hint of venom creeping into my words. I turned away to leave, but there was only one exit close to us, allowing the blonde noble to follow me out the door. “Not that you would know, seeing as you’re apparently here to spend your House’s money and disgrace it.”

“That’s not quite true, but I can understand why you would believe that,” she said. “Apologies if I offended you.”

“You’re fine,” I grumbled, waving her off. “So… why are you here then?”

All irritation aside, I was genuinely curious as to why a noble girl had chosen to join the Adventurers’ Guild when there were so many other options available to her.

“I’m sixteenth in the line of succession to House Rayes,” she readily admitted. “I want to make a name for myself, and though I already have years of experience as an oathholder I dislike the thought of entering the Tayan military.”

“Gold and glory,” I said, grabbing a TAG pamphlet from a nearby kiosk. Potential calamity-level threat on the Eastern border, huh? I’d leave that one up to the professionals. “Noble motives, if I do say so myself. Though I do have to add, getting some level of practical combat training seems useful.”

“It appears that it will be some hard work achieving those motives,” Jasmine noted airily, “Given that we have just about thirty days to acquire a hundred Member Contribution points.”

The booklet noted them as MC points for short. I was generally familiar with how the TAG worked, but a refresher never hurt. Each quest offered through the TAG, acquired through questgivers who needed a strong helping hand to get something done, gave MC points when completed, the quantity of which increased with the difficulty of the quest.

For beginners like me, it looked like ten or eleven basic quests were needed to clear just one month’s contribution.

“This is definitely an obligation,” I said, frowning as I read more. “There’s a minimum party size?”

“Most beginners, well…” the Rayes daughter said, hedging her words. “… They’re incompetent. The requirements of the basic quests reflect that.”

“In that case, since we’re going to the same school and will likely share similar schedules, would you be open to partying? Two people is enough to meet a good chunk of the party minimums.”

The noble eyed me dubiously. “Do you even have an oath?”

“Yes, and I know a little magic besides,” I said, twisting the threads of the cosmos ever so infinitesemally to create a swirling blob of black energy in one hand. “And I’m not terrible at conventional weapons.”

Her lips arched up into a smile that failed to reach her eyes. “That’s about the best I could hope for, I suppose. I’ll party with you.”

“What can you do?” I asked. Probably should have asked that first.

“I hold an oath to Igni,” she replied, forming a will-o-wisp between her hands and reshaping it into the outline of a human. “By my last assessment, I possess enough proficiency in magic to be a class four oathholder.”

Seriously, class four? I knew for a fact that most oathholders coming out of the University were barely class one, class two at best. I’d been happy enough to have met the higher end of the benchmark before entering. She was on a different level, no doubt due to the resources offered to her by her noble house.

That could have been me.

“Sounds more than good enough to me.”

“It’s a deal, then.”

Jasmine Rayes extended her right hand out to me. As I shook it, an unexplainable chill shot up my spine.

The noble stared at me, cold blue eyes scanning me as if I was a damaged piece of armor. “Are you alright?”

I nodded. “It’s nothing.”

The noble had a passable reason to be here. She hadn’t come off as dishonest during our agreement, and her magical dexterity was leaps and bounds better than mine. Theoretically, this exchange should favor me.

So why did I feel like I’d just walked into a trap?