How to Succeed In Business in a New World

Bureaucracy in Inaction

Today’s the day, the day I finally become a real adventurer in the eyes of the law. I had been waiting and even working for this day for the better part of a week now. The only hurdle left was to actually get into town and file my application. I was a bit nervous about the exam portion but it seemed to be as much a personality test as it was an actual exam if not more so. After all I had watched Marie go through it in a matter of minutes so I had no reason to expect it would be otherwise for me. I hadn’t seen Marie at all yesterday but I could only assume she had recovered from her exertion the night before or I had severely misjudged her father’s character because the quilt I had been using was laid out on the table for me when I got home last night. I did want to see her this morning, it’d be great if I could convince her to come into town with me so we could go do our maiden quest right after I joined the guild. The first quest would be the hardest to get to come on but with her dad on his feet I figured it would be within my cajoling powers to convince her to come on. The work around here would get done and if I promised another revenue stream that’d be enough to tip the scales in my favor. I had slept in a bit as it turns out so father and daughter were both working outside when I came looking. 

“Good Morning!”

“Mornin’.” It seems they weren’t at all surprised to see me considering they had to plan their breakfast around me. 

“Morning. I was planning to go into town again today and join the adventurer’s guild, once I do it shouldn’t be long until I’m out of your hair.” I felt the need to break the ice a bit considering I was about to be rather familiar and ask the man’s daughter to come on an adventure with me. “Would you mind if I had a word with Marie in private?” There was no point potentially getting her dad upset if she was just going to veto the idea anyway so getting her bid of enthusiasm would be an ideal first step. 

“Sure thing.” She looked a bit concerned as I pulled her aside and began speaking in hushed tones. I gave her my pitch and examined her reaction closely, it seemed she was cautiously optimistic about the idea.

“I’d like to go but I’ll have to ask my dad.” It was funny how she sounded like an eight year old who had just been asked to come and ride bikes. “Father...”

“I heard the whole thing, run along you two.” He smirked to himself. For the process to have been this easy she must have told him about how he got better so suddenly, and that made him feel like he owed us a favor. That or maybe he had something of an adventurous streak when he was young. There was no way of knowing for sure but as long as we got what we wanted in the end I was fine with not knowing.

The walk into town was a lot more interesting with another person, even if we weren’t doing much talking the whole time it was still a bit entertaining to see what someone else would be paying attention to. We did take on a more leisurely pace though, which wasn’t exactly a bad thing. It was a nice day out and the late morning sun felt good on the skin. The landscape was rather incredible, even if it was never developed I don’t think there would have ever been views like this back home. The way fields turned into mountains one side and forests on the other, it was like an absolute smorgasboard of biomes. It would make a great starting town from a game design perspective a good variety of monsters and conditions. I wouldn’t doubt there were some pretty intense cave systems, natural and man made, with a king’s ransom of loot and the beasties to protect it no doubt. I let my mind wander, hypothesizing all the encounters I’d have in those sprawling areas and how I’d always come out on top of whatever would be threatening my status as a mighty hero and adventurer. All the contracts I could complete for slaying hundreds of this or even thousands of that. And it all started today, once I can get my guild card and start taking on some quests. From here on out it would snowball, do a quest, get some loot, get some gear, do a harder quest, better loot, better loot, and so on until I’m an absolute force of nature, able to wipe continents off the map with a single blow from my... I did still need to pick a weapon of choice and a class at that. All the down time I had only allowed me to put it off more and more until now when I’m on the brink of the decision. This time I wasn’t procrastinating a paper or anything this was actually going to be determining the course of my life. I started weighing all the pros and cons again and again. I was on autopilot for the rest of the stroll, we were pretty much waved through the gate and I honestly think I could have gotten to the guild hall on my own. There were throngs of people out and milling around, I had no clue why that could have been, was it just because this was my first time I was actually on the main streets during lunch hour or maybe there was some festival coming up and everyone was abuzz getting ready for it. Marie didn’t mention anything about the crowds so I figured the reason would lean much more on to the mundane reasons. Either way we waded our way through the sea of bodies and made our merry way to the guild. The side streets weren’t as crowded but there were still a decent number of people who thought they were clever enough to beat the rat race. When we arrived at the hall I could scarcely believe what was going on. Out and around the block was a line of people only rivaled by Comiket. No way all of these people were here and waiting to get into the same stupid place I am. Sure enough they were all dressed in the most pathetic leather straps and headbands that could be called adventuring gear. 

“Excuse me is this the line to get into the Adventurer’s Guild?”

“Yuh-huh.” The guttural utterances of the stout ranger almost made me attack him on the spot. But of course that would solve nothing… Other than maybe getting me his spot in line. I thought it over for a second but decided against it. He was still outside so it wouldn’t be moving up all that much really. I settled in at the back of the line and regretted my previous decision, even if it was just to shorten the line that little bit it seemed worth it to me. My emotions played a bit of musical chairs when I realized that I had dragged Marie here to wait her day away along with me.

“I’m really sorry I had you come, I had no idea it was gonna be like this.”

“It’s fine really, I’ve always seen the line here on weekends but I’ve never actually been on it. Isn’t this exciting?” Well that explained why everyone and mothers were here, this must be all the schlubs who can’t cut it adventuring full time so they need to have real jobs to actually make a living. Then once the weekend rolls around they waste most of it waiting for a chance to be able to do something exciting. But, wait did this girl just say she was excited to stand on a line? 

“Are you saying that you’ve always wanted to do this?”

“Well, yea! It’s almost like a landmark in this town, it’s what really sets us apart as a City of Beginners. A lot of other places will be pretty popular towns to start in but once that pond gets too small for the fish, they’ll go somewhere more challenging. But here the beginners usually stay for years at a time if not for good. It is sort of a cycle, since there are too many adventurers here, none of them can get a lot of experience under their belt so they can’t leave. Some people in town are even third or fourth generation adventurers who have never been able to move beyond this area.” What encouragement.

“So you’re saying that this line is part of the city's culture?” More like it’s emblematic of a major societal problem. Shouldn’t this but fantasy world city planners should be addressing? They don’t need to create bus routes so they should be doing something. Though I guess if these guys are coming in their dollars will follow. Typical government, not actually caring about the quality of life of its citizens and instead just fussing over population figures. Don’t they know it’s inconveniencing me personally?

“Oh absolutely. Sometimes when a few different passenger ships come in all on the same day the line almost reaches all the way to the docks. Performers can make a lot of money working the newbies over on those days.” Maybe I was getting into the wrong profession then, if I had any musical or performing talent I would in a heartbeat. Afterall when someone tells you there’s money to be made somewhere you find a way to profit off all the people going there. Who makes more money, a hundred gamblers or the casino. Sure a few of them may walk out richer men but at the end of the day the house always wins. For now though I accepted my fate of having to wait in line, it was definitely moving but not nearly enough, though there was a small consolation in the fact that people were still getting in line behind me. I could at least cling to my schadenfreude that these chumps would be waiting at least as long as me. It may have been sociopathic but in situations like these you need to hold on to something to stay sane. If I couldn’t take joy in the suffering of others then I would have no joy at all in a situation like this. Of course there was always Marie, who looked downright pleased as punch to see the line from the inside for once. The way she was throwing her head around gawking at all the buildings she had already seen but never from these specific angles I thought her neck would break off or something. There had to be some sort of way that I could effectively siphon off some of her enjoyment of the situation. Maybe we could play a game. Games had always been a staple of the lengthy road trip so why not here too, where our trip was just to get inside a building. Try as I may I could only think of games that depended on license plates, road signs, or car colors, none of which were exactly available to us. If I really got desperate I could teach her truth or dare and I could try to taste the alleged glory that was boy-girl sleepovers in middle school that I was never invited to. There was word associations even if that was less of a game and more of a psychological evaluation tool, not that it would be a bad thing to understand how someone I’m adventuring with thinks. 

“What do you say we play a game? I’ll say a word and then you say the first word that comes into your head based on that word then I’ll do the same thing with your word.” Since I wasn’t some psychoanalyst with an approved chart of words, for convenience sake we’d just do a self sustaining version.

“Okie doke, sounds interesting.” Let’s see how to get the ball rolling… If I did want a window into how she would act in the field it wouldn’t hurt to start with something a little on the nose.

“Adventure.”

“Fun.” I was half surprised she didn’t repeat what I had said. She was more clever than I thought.

“Game.”

“This.”

“That.”

“These.”

“Those.”  That had devolved shockingly quick. There was no real point in replying to that other than to see how deep the rabbit hole goes so I decided I should start a new chain.

“Danger.”

“Scary.”

“Mushrooms.” I had never really told anyone about that but I guess that was the point of this.

“Foraging.”

“Gatherer.”

“Scavenger.”

“Disaster.”

“Crisis.”

“Dino.” We went on like this for a while, it turns out it wasn’t actually that easy to just think of something. I did have to put on a bit of a filter to make sure I didn’t say anything that hadn’t been invented, though I don’t know how well I did considering the confused looks I got every now and then but that could have easily just been the fact that my mind had been fried by years of being addicted to the internet and didn’t work anything like how it was supposed to. With any luck she just assumed she didn’t understand my city talk as a humble farmgirl. Once we got into our second or third loop we reached the mutual agreement to drop it and do something else. By this time we were nearly in the door, for whatever reason I assumed that would be the halfway mark. Without a word we started to kick an above average sized pebble back and forth. As we were reaching a fevered pitch the line lurched forward and we were now inside, though without our pebble.

“Ugh we made it! We’re inside, I’m sure it won’t be long now.”

“Uhm, are you sure?” She tugged on my sleeve and pointed out over the veritable sea of people all still waiting. The entire front area was packed with the serpentining line, at least outside the line was a straight shot but here it doubles, triples, and quadruples backed on itself, and worse still we didn’t have our pebble. It must have been some sort of illusion because it seemed like the line moved faster in here, though that was probably since you could see the head of the line inch forward and by the time the person in front of you inched forward the front was moving again. The illusion of movement only went so far though, the time was still moving at quarter speed. 

“Have you ever heard of thumb war?” The ultimate decider of the schoolyard pecking order would surely be adequate to pass the time, at least a few minutes or so. With two people I couldn’t imagine dozens of matches being all too exciting. After a crash course of the rules, with emphasis put on the fact that the wrist was not to get involved and should stay level the entire time, we locked hands and I gave the countdown, I spared the particular niceties as I figured they would just confuse anyone unfamiliar. The match started off and I was immediately sizing up her play style and technique. But my analysis was cut a bit short as I was overwhelmed at how soft her palms were. Her fingers and palms were a bit calloused but in between the hardened bumps it was extremely overwhelming to the senses. It was hard to believe they didn’t have lotions or anything after feeling this. Or maybe they did, I really had no idea, but I also had no idea whether it was lotion that made your hands soft but I knew it had something to do with skin.

“One, two…” Uh-oh. I wriggled my thumb free with not a moment to spare. I tried to immediately go for the pin while her thumb was down but she pulled straight back out into a resting stance. I followed suit and recentered as fast as my digits would allow. We squared off in a battle of wills for no more than a moment but in that moment the realm of competition was flooded with determination and powerful desire. As quickly as the monsoon of mental force had blown in it drained leaving only a build of residue made up of pure strategy. I jabbed to the left, and then to the right and then back to center but bent at the knuckle, a dodge, a weave and the count was started in my favor now.

“One, two.” I clear my throat as I prepare to announce the final nail in this matches coffin. On the dawn of my victory this little scum pile starts digging her fingernail into the base of my thumb. I suppress a yelp and instead declare with complete certainty, “Three.” My voice may have cracked a bit and let out a mild “Yeow.” as I shook the pain off, but I had been the victor. And on top of that we had killed about two minutes. We stepped up into the space that had been cleared for clearly the two most noble warriors to ever step foot in this hall. So what if we had never actually been in combat, beyond any disbelief the souls of every soldier and hero flowed through our veins, but mine were better of course. We had a few more rounds and it seems that beginner's luck was more powerful in this Beginner’s Town because by the end of it I had lost three in a row. That’s mostly why it was the end of it. I wasn’t embarrassed to lose or anything but I just didn’t see the point in continuing if we knew how it would turn out every single time. I definitely did not have trouble accepting the fact that I had lost three times in a row to someone who just learned the game. Besides I was still recovering from that stunt she had pulled with her nail in the first game. 

The clock made is rounds, or at least it would have had there been any clocks in the building. I could only imagine how much time had actually passed, I was reminded of whenever you go to see a movie in the late afternoon and then when you come out it’s full blown night. Except you’re supposed to enjoy the hours you spend in a theater and you’d also have a rough idea of how long you’d be in there. I couldn’t be more glad that they finally found a way to eliminate those two aspects from the formula. The only slight indication we had that time was passing was the brief glimpses of light from outside we got when a new soul shuffled into the new level of torment that awaited them. It seemed that the light was turning a deep golden as the sun started to slip below the horizon. We were over halfway through the line now but it had taken us so many hours, my chief worry now was that the guild would close for the day before we got to the front, but if people that presumably knew better were still waiting outside then that didn’t seem to be much of a worry. I did have to wonder a bit how late this place would be open dealing with everyone. In a place like this you had to wonder what was going on with the employees. I started to understand why that guy the other day sounded so bored and all of his actions were so robotic, no doubt he had said all of that hundreds of time this week alone. I pitied him a bit but still not nearly enough as I pitied myself for having to wait here while his soul was crushed into a fine particulate. Did places like this have like counselors in a back room somewhere that employees could talk to whenever they felt particularly suicidal? There’s no way you can be this surrounded by people who have had hours to stew in negative emotion and will blame you for it without getting some sort of psychological complex. But maybe it’s the perfect job for a sadist. But then again it’s arguable how well they would perform since they would inevitably be more interested in serving their needs than actually helping people, which was what their job was actually supposed to be. I wonder if these people had to pass the civil service test, though that would mostly depend on whether the guild was a freely functioning body or if it was an arm of the local government or at least got funding from them. If there are privileges that can only be gained if you’re in the guild then there must be some government involvement. That or maybe they just greased the right palms or paid a certain tax or something. There was probably some amount of money going one way or the other. That’s usually how these things worked.

Unless I wanted to regress back to patty cake or peekaboo I wasn’t coming up with any other time killers so we had to kill time the old fashioned way. Through a combination of small talk and just plain old boredom we were within a stone’s throw of the front counter, within a matter of minutes I would receive my reckoning. I listened to what everyone else was asking for and a good number of them were re-enrolling. I guess when you have an actual job and don’t have time to go on quests it may pay to let your membership lapse so you don’t have to pay the monthly fee, Though you’d only be saving money if you took three months off, so all of these people may just be idiots who can’t think ahead and end up paying the price. This was probably why they couldn’t level up and out of this town, because they wasted their money in the interest of saving it. From where I was standing now I could also get a look at the quest board and it seemed the pickings were rather slim. We’d probably only be able to get something excessively boring or way above our pay grade. If I had to choose between the two I’d prefer to find something that’s too hard for us, that way we get a nice juicy payout of cash and experience to start off. I had been doing menial grinding the whole time I’ve been here, I need some excitement now or I could fall into the drudgery of being a regular civilian. I could have stayed home and become a salaryman if I wanted to have a boring life like that. Or I suppose I couldn’t have, given the whole dying thing. But that still isn’t what I wanted, dead or not. Besides I’m sure I could take on something a few levels above me, not that I was confident in my physical attributes or anything but I have my near encyclopedic knowledge of fantasy creatures and a dedicated healer would be just enough to put me over the edge. If we could jump up three or four levels just from one quest that would be just the thing we’d need to rocket ahead of all these other chumps and really get the ball rolling on the becoming legendary heroes thing. But doing something braindead like picking some flowers or collecting some rocks would be fine I suppose, the experience wouldn’t be as sweet but the money would probably be better relative to the effort and danger involved, especially if we could combine a few trips and do a bundle of quests all at once. Not to mention we may be attacked by something while out smelling the flowers so that’d be worth some more xp even if there wasn’t a quest for it. As long as there were still quests to be done I’m sure we’d be able to find something worth our time. At least more worth our time than waiting to be able to get the quest.

I stepped forward triumphantly to take the spot in front of the counter as if I had achieved something, even though what I had just achieved was something that I had just watch dozens.

“One guild entry form please.” My mind was a bit fried from the ordeal and had I had my wits about my I would not have been nearly as polite but it worked in my favor this time. 

“New applicant?” It wasn’t the same bored guy as the other day but you just by their tone you could have fooled me.

“Yes, sir.”

“Guild entry fee is 25 ducats and dues are 10 due at the first of every month. Take this form, go down the hall and fill it out.” 

“Wait, can’t I just fill out the form here?” When we were here the other day we had just filled it out at the counter, there wasn’t any of this going anywhere to fill it out.

“There are people waiting, if everyone filled out the form here I’d never get home.” I wasn’t asking him to let everyone fill out the form here, just to let me fill out the form here. “Now please sir, go down the hall. Someone there will be happy to help you.” That’s what I was afraid of, if there was someone else to handle this task that meant another bottleneck which must mean another line. 

At the end of the green mile there was a set of swinging double doors which I didn’t have the mental energy to actually open but my torso opened just fine for me. The set up inside was almost suspiciously like a classroom, which was strange considering that this “test” wasn’t really one about right answers or anything, why would they need a proctor?

“Are you taking the test?” The stern old woman pointed an accusing finger at Marie.

“N-no ma’am.”

“No one who is not taking the test is allowed in the room while testing is in progress!” She shouted at us as if we were supposed to know that. Marie scampered out of the room and I could see her eyes getting watery while she did. I grabbed a pen and took a seat at one of the empty tables towards the back of the room. As I gave the questions a quick once over my instinct was to lie and give the answers that would fit the class I wanted to be but, since I still had no idea what class I wanted I guess I’d just have to answer honestly. Except of course for the things like where I’m from and my parent’s names, that’d all be lies. I’m sure it was just used for notifying your next of kin just in case you died and my parents had already been through that once. As much as I would usually power game something like this, waiting for hours really just made me want to get through with this as soon as possible. And if your abilities as any given class were affected by your personality then for once honesty might be the best policy. I ticked boxes and filled bubbles as hastily as I could just so I could get out of this place and actually do something exciting in this fantasy world. When I tried to hand the paper in to the woman at the desk she gave me a sneer and told me to go into the next room and wait for it to be graded. I handed my paper off to someone sitting behind a counter who stamped a number onto it and onto another slip of paper. He handed the slip to me and placed the application on a stack behind him. There were a few long benches around the room and filling in the center, sparsely populated with people all holding slips of paper with numbers. There seemed to be about 20 of us give or take. Every few minutes and a half or so a number would be called by a different employee at the long counter and someone would get up and receive their results. It was a fairly efficient system I suppose but I still would have rather just joined when we were here the other day and everything was done right there in a matter of a minute or two. 

“47!” A rather surly looking older guy called out from the far end of the counter and after confirming that it was my number I was on my way over. “You’ve passed the examination, once you pay the fee you’ll be given your guild card.” I fished the handful of coins out of pocket and dropped them on the counter, after this I’d be left with only the twenty I had gotten from yesterday from Catherine so I really wanted this to pay off as an investment. “As for class we recommend that you go with the err, ehh let’s say the generalist. Sound okay to you kid?” It did not sound okay, generalist was the surefire way to not scale as well with anything. Getting access to more abilities was pretty much worthless if there was always going to be someone who could use them better, especially if I still had a party to fill out then I might even end up taking abilities that someone else does ten times as well.

“Are you sure? What about like a Paladin or something?”

“Kid, have you looked at you? What about you do you think says ‘Paladin’?” He was right of course but I just wanted to be something other than the lousy stinkin’ generalist. “Listen, you seem like a pretty smart kid, we could call you a Tactician or somethin’ but no one is gonna be looking for a Tactician in a party of four people, especially not in this town.”  He was right again but also again I wanted to be something useful rather desperately. 

“What about a rogue or something like that?” In the stages of grief I was mostly flipping all around the triumvirate of denial, anger and bargaining.

“Kid, there are other people here that want to be helped, do you think I’ve got the time to go down the class list and tell ya why you’d make a crummy example of every single one of ‘em?” Not particularly, my self esteem was already damaged enough as it was. 

“What if I focus on training a few of my skills over the next few levels and then could I come back and specialize in something?” This was my Hail Mary bargain, more of a way to cling to hope and save some face than anything else. 

“Eugh, sure kid.” He stamped my card as a Generalist and I began the walk of shame out of there. 

I found Marie sitting demurely in the tavern area, still emotionally bruised from the scolding she had gotten. 

“C’mon let’s go.”

“What happened?” She could tell that I was upset, not that I was trying to hide it.

“I don’t want to talk about it.” In a perfect world I could hide my shame until I could grow into a real proper class and then pretend the whole thing never happened.

“Well what class did you get?”

“I said I don’t want to talk about it!” I had to admit I did get a little snippy there.

“You said you didn’t want to talk about that other thing, the thing that made you upset. Unless, your class is what you’re upset about…” She had two and two. “Is that what you’re upset about? Did you get a lousy class?” And there was four.

“I’m a Generalist…” I tried to not grumble like seven year old recovering from a tantrum but I could sympathize with them right now.

“Really?? That’s so cool! Doesn’t that mean you can do anything?” I don’t know why I expected her reaction to be anything different frankly. This was the girl was so excited to wait in line. The more mundane the more it astounded her. 

“I guess so… Now come on let’s go look for a quest we can do.” I was somewhere between wanting to tell her about how tragic it actually was and actually catching some of her enthusiasm. I started to peruse the notices on the board and was somewhat shocked to see they already had multilevel marketing type schemes, talking about needing self starters and people that wanted to see success fast or whatever, but it also looked like they weren’t there officially because everything else had a seal from the guild on it and a colored border. After mentally filtering out the garbage there were only two types of quests left and they pretty much fell into the two categories I had predicted. On one side herbalists who wanted specific roots to powder and somewhat surprisingly naturalists who wanted sampling of droppings. Then on the other side there were requests to take down specific animals that were disrupting the work of various groups. I was intrigued by one in particular that wanted a sea monster captured but that seemed like it would need a diving bell or something. The one that seemed most doable to me was one about how a Parandus had been harassing some furriers in the forests. I had never even heard of a Parandus so I was glad to see that it wasn’t just the typical MMO fodder of oversized creepy crawlies and rodents or goblins and kobolds. But this did mean that my knowledge of this monster was failing. It was ranked as a difficult quest for levels 3-5 and that was a full party so splitting the xp two ways would be all the sweeter as long as we could actually put it down. We could probably get some good info from the fur trappers and maybe even devise some sort of trap for him ourselves. After all I had the knowledge of several centuries so I could probably think up something a little more effective, but for all I know they didn’t use snare traps or anything and just used magic for trapping. From what I’d seen it mostly seemed like if you had a job that needed doing magic could do it but it just usually wouldn’t be worth it from a resources perspective. After all it’d be cheaper to hire an unskilled worker to carry boxes from point A to point B rather than pay a mage four times as much to do the same job with levitation magic. It was just a matter of breaking even and profit margins. But since I was losing one of my greatest strengths, truthfully probably one of my only strengths, by going after this critter I would need to reclaim that upper hand somehow, and I think I had an idea on how to do just that. For now though I was absolutely exhausted and borderline starving, if I weren’t so used to for going and forgetting meals during marathons I probably would have collapsed by now. I was tempted to get something to eat on the way out of town but that would mean I’d have to break my twenty and I just wasn’t spiritually prepared for that. If I could get away with I’d like to never spend it and maybe get it framed sometime down the line. Though that would mean completely forgoing gear for the first mission, but how hard could it be? Ideally I would never even come into contact with it and we could just trap it and subdue it peacefully but I could probably fend it off with a sufficiently large branch or maybe I could borrow a pitchfork. As for armor, that’s what I had a healer for. I’d just keep my body between the beast and her and we’d be in business. 

Once back at the farm we had some cold bread and made plans to leave early the next morning and hopefully get the quest completed by tomorrow evening. After that we could be real professional adventurers.

End of Day Report

Start:       ¤45.00

 - ¤25.00 Entry fee

Change: -¤25.00

End:         ¤ 20.00

KEY ITEM: Guild Card Obtained!