Lilly entered the building and found herself in a large hall. A royal blue carpet led to the reception desks on the far side of the building, the far left desk sported the word Registration in bold lettering. Marble staircases going up to the second floor flanked the reception desks. To her left was a tavern where a couple dozen adventurers were lounging around. To her right was the bulletin board with all the job requests that were posted. The board itself was around six meters long, with three columns for requests, ordered by general expected difficulty.

Lilly walked up to the reception desk on the far left. There stood a young woman, maybe in her twenties. She had straight brown hair that fell to her shoulders, piercing gray eyes, and lightly suntanned skin. The lady was wearing a blue vest over a white collared button-up, A name tag on her chest imitating the Society’s emblem stated her name, Melly.

“Hi! You’re here for registration with the Society?” Melly asked.

“Yeah, I’m new to town so I was hoping you could explain the basics to me,” Lilly said.

“Of course! To start with, here’s the form that you will need to fill out.” She handed Lilly a form, which asked for her name, level, age, and other miscellaneous information. It also indicated a registration fee of ten silver. “Adventurers are ranked by their levels and Society evaluation rank. Ranks follow the coin system, with coppers going up to level 25, silvers up to 50, golds up to 100, and platinums up to 200. There are more but people rarely reach that point. Your Society rank ranges from C through A, based on how requesters evaluate your performance on your jobs. A meaning you’ve done the job well and to the fullest, while C means that you completed the job to the bare minimum. Going below C too often will result in a revocation of your membership. On that board over there, you will find copper job requests. For higher-ranked quests, you would need to go upstairs.

Lilly nodded, finishing up the form and handed it back. “Alright thank you. Here’s the form.”

The receptionist studied the form for a few seconds. “Lilly Nightingale, is it? Hold on while I get you an ID card. Would you like to pay the registration fee now or have it paid through 5% commissions from your jobs?”

Lilly pulled out the silvers from her pocket, placing them on the counter. “I would like to pay now.”

“Okay! Please hold on for a moment.” She took the coins and went out of view. A few minutes later, she came back and handed her a card that had her information imprinted on it. In the center was the Society’s emblem. The card itself was the same blue as everything else, but the outer edge had a copper lining. “Here’s your card. Please press your thumb on the rune on the backside of the ID to imprint it with your mana, so that no one else can use your card. Also, please remember that if you do not complete jobs at least once every three months, you will lose your membership. This grace period gets increased with every letter rank, but you still are encouraged to finish jobs with relative consistency.”

She pocketed the card. “Alright, can I take a job immediately?”

“Yes, of course! Head to the board, grab a slip of paper, and bring it to one of the desks to my left.” Melly gestured towards the board.

“Okay, thanks, I’ll be right on my way then.”

“Good luck! And welcome to the Society,” she said.

Lilly nodded gratefully and went to look at the board. Heading to the board, she saw that each slip indicated a level recommendation, a deadline, and an expected reward. She had read on the form that the rewards on requests can vary depending on the satisfaction of the requester. Looking at the jobs available, there were jobs ranging from manual labor, monster extermination, material collection and more.

Most of the exterminations featured low leveled monsters, like goblins, orcs, rats, and wolves. She grabbed three slips at random and headed for the desks. She handed the slips to the receptionist sitting on the far right, a bubbly woman with a tight blonde bun, brown eyes and pale skin. She was wearing the same uniform as Melly, and a name tag that displayed "Shannon."

Shannon flipped through the slips, “Goblins extermination, herb collection, and wolves extermination?” She looked up at Lilly. “Are you registering all these requests for yourself?”

“Yeah, I am.”

The receptionist looked at her skeptically. “Do you understand that if you do not meet the deadline on these quests, you will be forced to pay a fine and your rank will be reduced?”

Lilly nodded. “Yeah, I got that.”

“Okay.” She said, concerned. “Please give me your card.”

She handed over her card. “Here you go.”

Shannon took the card and pulled out a form. She filled out her information and assigned the job requests. Once she was done, she stored away the form and handed Lilly her items. “Alright, here’s your card and job slips. Are you sure you can handle this on your own?”

“Yes, I’ll be fine, thank you.” Taking her stuff, Lilly left the building, leaving Shannon with a worried look on her face.

***

Lilly passed through the city gate and activated her cloak. She traveled on foot to the village indicated on the request and arrived within the hour. There, she talked to the village chief about the details of the request and learned that the goblins had kidnapped some young girls. After he told her the location of the nest, she headed off into the forest.

Jumping quietly through the treetops, she arrived at the goblins' nest. It looked like a small makeshift fort, with a wall made of mismatched wood logs. There were a few goblins roaming around the outside of the encampment, holding small clubs and the occasional short sword, most likely looted from adventurers. They were short, greenish humanoids, with knobby joints, pointy ears, piranha-like teeth, and angular eyes. Their race was made up of males and needed other races’ females to reproduce, so they were a menace to any village in the vicinity.

She used [Perception], trying to see past the wall, but she wasn’t close enough. Instead, she jumped from tree to tree, looking for lone goblins. Every time she found one, she blinked behind it and stabbed its neck, holding it in a chokehold to prevent screaming. She stored the bodies to keep the other goblins from finding them, hunting them one by one. She got a level up after killing about nine of them. Soon, all the remaining goblins were in groups. Scouting around, she found that there were two groups left outside of the walls, each with three goblins.

Goblins were weak on their own, but notoriously troublesome to deal with in groups, partly for their numbers and partly for the fact that they would always scream for back up if given the chance. While Lilly could use her mobility to fight them in numbers, she couldn’t ensure that none of them would run away and wreak havoc elsewhere.

Sneaking up on one of the groups, she flipped her dagger to hold it by the blade. Angling her arm over her head, she aimed carefully for the head of one the goblins. Waiting for them to stop moving, she whipped her aim, sending the dagger flying through the air. Right before the dagger made contact, Lilly blinked behind the other two, pulling both of them into chokeholds as she heard the third drop dead.

The goblins struggled fruitlessly, unable to let out a sound. Goblins ranged from level nine to thirteen, so they really couldn’t do anything against her. Soon, their bodies went limp and she got the ding! for their deaths. Dropping their bodies, she grabbed her knife and stabbed each of them in their heads before storing them away. She learned early on that the defeat messages didn’t always mean that she killed them, only that they were incapacitated. She swiftly went to the other group, clearing them in the same manner. Now she considered how to deal with the fort. It was sitting on a hill, with some space from the trees, so burning it down would be the fastest option. Unfortunately, it seemed that the goblins had kidnapped some of the village girls, so she couldn’t do that.

She walked up to the closed gate that led into the fort. Looking around, she found a reasonably large rock, placing her hand on it for ten seconds before storing it away. Going back to the gate, she pulled the stone out, positioning it against the doors, effectively blocking their way out. Blinking up, she grabbed the edge of the fort and peeked over the wall.

Inside, she could see a few huts, with one large hut sitting on the far side. There were two campfires on opposite sides flanking the large hut, with a few goblins sitting around each, drinking from mugs. She noted that there were five total huts, with a small hut off to the right, slightly isolated from the others. There were no goblins moving around, so that was good. She dropped to the ground outside the wall and silently ran to the part of the wall nearest the small, lone hut. After she used [Perception] to check that the coast was clear, she teleported through the wall and walked up to the side of the hut. Using her skill again to look inside, she saw two sleeping goblins. Within seconds, she had appeared in the hut and quietly killed them.

“This is almost too easy…” She looked around for anything of use. Upon finding nothing, she hid the bodies and used [Perception] to find the next closest hut. There were three more left, including the big one. Around each campfire, were three goblins. She peeked out of the flap covering the doorway of the hut, looking for signs of danger. None of the goblins were facing her way and didn’t look like they planned to get up anytime soon. Clearly, they thought everything was fine since none of the patrols had called out.

Too bad they bit the dust. She smirked, before teleporting as close to the next hut as possible and running the rest of the distance. She was unable to stop her teleport from leaving an afterimage, so if she had teleported a second time, that would’ve left an image of her standing in place for a few seconds. Lilly checked the hut and found more sleeping goblins, so she made their rest final too. The goblins in the two remaining small huts were exterminated in like manner, leaving only the goblins around the campfires and whatever resided in the large hut. Lilly decided to check the big hut first. Since it was too far from the other dwellings for her to approach with cover, she went back outside the wall and walked around.

Once back in the camp, she pressed against the hut and used [Perception]. Inside, she found that there were no goblins, but three naked girls, all unconscious. Blinking inside, she checked their conditions. Their bodies were covered in scratches, but besides that, they were alive and in stable condition.

“I’m sorry, I’ll get you three out real soon.” She looked around the room to see if there was anything she could use to barricade the door. There was nothing of use, and she was at a loss as to how she would kill the goblins outside without exposing these three to danger. She decided that the only way was to kill the goblins faster than they could grab a hostage. She walked to the side of the room closest to one of the campfires, blinked out as far as she could, and appeared behind two of the goblins. The goblin across from her screamed in alarm, but not before she swiftly stabbed the first in the head. She ripped the dagger out and whipped it across the fire into the other goblin’s chest. It made a gurgling sound, stumbled around and fell to the ground. She pulled one of her swords from her [Inventory], quickly parried the incoming club from the last goblin on her right, then stabbed into its chest.

She left the sword and kicked the dying goblin away, and quickly turned to see the other three headed for the girls.