As Bral and Bao walked back into the building, the rest of the group immediately turned toward them. Idin raised an eyebrow and asked, "Oh? So you managed to convince her? How'd you do it?"
Bral, with his usual wide grin, spread his arms dramatically. "Haha… I've got what it takes."
Bao shot him a sharp glare, arms crossed. "Don't think it was you who convinced me." Her voice carried its usual sharpness, but there was a subtle shift in her tone, something less rigid than before. "Maybe you weren't completely wrong. Maybe he wasn't an asshole entirely."
Bral clasped his hands together as if he hadn't even heard her protest. "Okay, so now that everyone's here, let's get to what we actually came for." Without further delay, he strode toward the counter where a middle-aged woman sat, organizing papers. She looked up as they approached, her expression neutral but professional.
Bral gestured toward Amukelo and said, "We'd like to make an adventurer out of him and recruit him into our guild."
The woman's sharp eyes landed on Amukelo, scanning him briefly. "Very well." She reached for a sheet of parchment and pulled a quill from a nearby inkwell. "First, I'll need to ask you a few questions."
She glanced up, quill poised. "Your name?"
"Amukelo."
Her brow twitched slightly. "No second name?"
Amukelo tilted his head slightly, confused. "Second name?"
She nodded. "A family name, surname—anything?"
"Oh… No, I don't think so."
"That means no." She made a note on the paper before continuing. "Your age?"
Amukelo hesitated for a moment, counting in his head. "Eighteen… I guess?"
There was a beat of silence. Then Bral's eyes widened. "Eighteen!? No way!"
The others shared similar looks of surprise. Pao's mouth opened slightly in shock, and Idin leaned back, shaking his head in disbelief.
"So… when did all of this happen?" Bral asked, blinking as if trying to process it.
Amukelo smiled awkwardly, scratching the back of his head. "Well, it all started around two years ago… but I lived in the wild for just a few months."
Idin scoffed. "'Just a few months,' he says. Like that's normal."
Bao, who had been silent, glanced at Amukelo with a subtle shift in her gaze, as if reevaluating something about him.
The woman behind the counter cleared her throat. "Can I continue?"
Bral held up his hands. "Yeah, yeah, sorry about that."
She turned back to Amukelo. "What is your combat experience?"
Amukelo paused, thinking for a moment before answering. "I've been training seriously for two years. But the last few months… well, that was on another level."
Bral nodded. "Mark him as 'moderate.' He's pretty strong."
The woman simply made another note. "That doesn't matter too much unless you're too weak for bronze-level quests. But if that's not the case, then it's fine."
She moved to the next question. "What is your combat style?"
"I use a sword," Amukelo answered. "And sometimes daggers if I see an opening."
She nodded again. "A swordsman, then."
With a few more strokes of her quill, she finalized the document. Then she looked back up at them. "That's all I need for now. The registration fee is one gold coin."
Bral didn't hesitate, pulling a small pouch from his belt and dropping a single gold coin onto the counter. The woman took it, nodded in acknowledgment, and reached for another parchment.
"Now, sign this agreement," she instructed. "Both the new recruit and the leader of the guild must sign it."
She slid the document forward and handed them a quill. Amukelo hesitated slightly, staring at the parchment for a second. He took a slow breath, then reached for the quill, signing his name as best he could. His handwriting was clumsy—he never had to write much before—but it was legible enough.
Bral followed suit, signing his name with a confident flourish before handing the quill back. The woman scanned the document, nodded, and rolled it up.
"I'll take care of both the adventurer badge and the guild badge for him at the same time," she said as she stood. "Please wait here for a little while. I'll return shortly."
With that, she disappeared into a back room, leaving the group standing there in silence. Amukelo exhaled, suddenly feeling the weight of the moment.
As they sat waiting, a long silence stretched between them. The excitement of making Amukelo an official guild member had settled, leaving them with nothing but the quiet murmur of the adventurers' association around them. Amukelo shifted slightly in his seat, glancing at each of them before finally deciding to break the silence.
"So, I've been thinking about this," he started. "Yesterday, you all talked about guild ranks. What is that about? I mean, you mentioned silver, golden, and whatever ranks. What does it mean?"
Pao immediately perked up. "Oh, it's actually really simple," she said, folding her hands neatly in her lap. "So, as an adventurer, or as a guild, you start at a Bronze Rank One. That's the lowest rank. From there, you progress by completing quests."
Pao nodded. "Guilds have the same ranking as adventurers. But while individual adventurers rank up based on their own contributions and abilities, guilds rank up based on the collective strength and achievements of their members. So, when you joined our guild, our overall standing remained the same, but as you get stronger and contribute to more quests, our guild rank will start reflecting that too."
Amukelo furrowed his brows slightly. "So if I joined a top level guild, and they took me on a high rank quest, would that improve my rank?"
Pao chuckled. "Nope. A Bronze-ranked adventurer can't just tag along on a high-level Golden-ranked quest and expect to shoot up the ranks overnight. It doesn't matter if there are a hundred people on that quest—if you didn't contribute anything significant, you wouldn't rank up much just because you are on a high rank quest."
That made sense to Amukelo. He tilted his head slightly. "How do they even know if I contributed or not? It's not like someone from the association follows us around to see if I helped or just stood in the background."
"That's what the adventurer's badges are for," Pao said. "They don't just prove your rank and let you take on certain quests. They actually track your contributions."
Amukelo blinked in surprise. "They… track it?" He reached up, touching the empty space on his chest where soon he'd be wearing his own badge.
"Yeah," Pao confirmed. "The badges are enchanted. They measure how much effort and impact you had during a quest—whether you fought, healed, strategized, or even helped in ways that weren't direct combat. It's not just about how many enemies you kill, but how you help the team. Your performance gets recorded and evaluated."
Amukelo frowned. "But how? How does a piece of metal track all of that?"
Pao shrugged, a bit sheepishly. "No one really knows. It's some kind of ancient magic developed by high-level mages. It's supposedly really easy to distribute and use, but the actual process behind it is a mystery to most people. We just know that it works."
Amukelo thought about that for a moment. The idea of something magically measuring his worth on a battlefield was strange, but at the same time, it seemed incredibly useful. It meant that adventurers were judged fairly based on their actual abilities, not just by reputation or connections.
"So when individual members progress, the guild progresses too?" he asked.
"Yes," Pao confirmed. "But it's a little harder for guilds. Since guilds are judged based on the collective ability of their members, even if one person gets stronger, the entire guild might not rank up right away. It usually takes multiple members improving or completing major quests for the guild itself to rise in rank."
She paused for a moment before continuing. "The ranking system goes like this: First, you start at Bronze Rank One. From there, you advance through Bronze Two, Three, all the way up to Bronze Seven. Once you reach the peak of Bronze, you advance to Silver Rank One. And again, Silver progresses from One to Seven before you reach Gold Rank One. After that, it's the same—Gold Rank goes up to Seven. And finally, above Gold, there's only one more rank… Diamond."
Amukelo's eyes widened slightly. "Diamond Rank? Only one level?"
Pao nodded, a small smile on her face. "Yep. There's no 'Diamond Rank Two or Three.' If you reach Diamond, you're already at the absolute pinnacle. There's no higher place to go."
"And people actually get that high?"
Pao's smile faded slightly. "Very, very few."
Bral leaned back, crossing his arms. "You don't really see Diamond-ranked adventurers walking around casually. A Gold-ranked adventurer is already considered someone incredible. To reach Diamond… you'd have to be almost a living legend."
Amukelo exhaled slowly. He thought about Elian the Resolute, the hero he had admired since he was a child. He had no idea what rank Elian had been in his prime, but if he had to guess, it had to be Diamond. So that was what he had to aim for.
Pao continued, "The difference between each rank jump is massive. Moving from Bronze Rank Six to Seven is a lot easier than moving from Bronze Seven to Silver One. And when you finally transition from Silver to Gold, that's where the real difference starts to show. It's like stepping into an entirely new world of adventuring."
Amukelo nodded slowly, letting it all sink in. "So for us, as a guild… our goal right now is to get to Silver?"
Idin smirked. "If you ask Bral, he'd say Gold."
Bral chuckled. "Hey, I'm just saying, why settle for Silver if we can push further?"
Bao rolled her eyes. "Because it's unrealistic to sit in one place for years trying to become Gold when we could be out there actually living our lives. Silver Rank Seven is good enough to take on most major quests and travel safely through most of Elandria."
Amukelo glanced at Bral, then Bao, then back at the rest of the group. "And where are we right now?"
"We're Bronze Rank Five," Pao said. "We've made good progress, but we still have a long way to go."
Amukelo nodded thoughtfully. He was still wrapping his head around all of this, but at least now he understood where they stood and where they were aiming.
Bral clapped his hands together. "Anyway, all of that is for the future. Right now, we wait for them to bring out your badge, and then we officially welcome you into the world of adventuring."
Amukelo took a deep breath and nodded. "Yeah… I'm ready."