As soon as he entered the guild, he walked towards the counter where a girl with cat ears greeted him.
I knew about beastmen existing in this world but this is the first time I've seen one, I guess Brucia is mostly inhabited by humans so it's not surprising that I haven't seen anyone from other races till now, Neoh thought.
Even tho previously neoh hadn't thought much of the city, suzeria was bustling with crowds and carriages, the roads were stone paved and packed with people, and market stalls could be seen all around the city selling everything ranging from food to magic trinkets and scrolls, the closer someone got to the city center shops would take the place of stalls and they would get more extravagant the closer they were to the inner castle.
Even tho Sylvia was supposed to be the one showing neoh around, neoh took it upon himself to explore the city first, Sylvia served him enough just as a pawn and his ultimate goal was to gather information and get himself some position in human society, so he can begin to fit in with them.
"Greetings, welcome to the adventures guild, my name is Ria how can I help you "
She had a cute smile on her face and her behavior seemed inviting, to say the least.
'Hi my name is neoh, nice to meet you, I'm not from this city so I'm just here to get some general information about the activities of the guild, since I wanted to apply as an adventurer'
"No problem, the adventurer guild is an extension of the main adventurer society which is located in the Brucia, the capital city of the Brucia empire, our contracts range from, gathering herbs or helping with manual labor into bandits subjugation orders and dungeon clear requests for the highest tier of adventurers"
'Can you tell me more about the adventurer tiers?'
"Of course, the adventurers are divided into 2 main categories, the first group is simply called adventurers, these are the ones with no magical core in their body, they instead sick more power by learning different combat and sword techniques to enhance their performance in the battlefield, these people, as you may know, as you may know are unable to use magic without the help of scrolls and trinkets created by the sorcerer guild and they range from rank F into rank S with rank S being the most powerful."
'That's intriguing, what about the ones with a magic core?'
"Most of those people are scouted by the Sorcerer guild from a young age and never make it into our guild but the ones that decide to leave all the prestige and wealth associated with being a mage, find themselves taking contracts from us to earn some money, between me and you most of them are outcasts from the Sorcerer guild, who would in their right mind pass on getting admitted to the Platinum academy of brucia, am I right?"
'I guess you are' Neoh had no idea what she was going on about but she seemed passionate when she was explaining the situation
'So what are the ranks for those people ?'
"You see, we don't actually have a ranking system for them but the Sorcerer guild does, so we use the same ranking system they do, and it looks something like this:"
-Neophyte
-Amateur spell caster
-Expert spell caster
-Elemental adept
-Elemental senior
-Amateur mage
-Mage
-Expert mage
-Grand mage
-Magus
-Grand magus
"Although it all depends on what kind of core you are born with most of the people don't even get through the Elemental senior phase"
'Thank you for all of this information Ria, you have been of great, help', neoh pulled out a pouch of silver coins and gave it to her, 'here's a token of my appreciation'
"I can't accept this while I'm working here the rules are against it I'm just happy to be able to help an outsider since I've always been one"
'Oh I'm sorry, I didn't know, can I ask one more question?'
"You are free to ask any questions you want, these days not many adventurers come here due to the ongoing war, most of them are contracted by the state,so I have all the time in the world at my disposal " Then she let out a warm smile
'Do you have any reference to compare the power of a mage with for example an S-rank adventurer?'
"Hmm, tricky question but I've once heard of a mage who killed five S rank adventurers on his own and the other time there was an S rank adventurer who took on two mages and won the fight, but if I had to make a wild guess I would say in terms of combat capability an average mage rank could be compared to an S rank albeit with a slight advantage, but it all depends on the knowledge of the mage about combat spells and the equipment of the adventurer and a lot of other factors such as train the fight in and the element of surprise'
'You seem quite knowledgeable about combat, why are you not out there killing monsters ?'
"Oh you flatter me I've been an A-rank adventurer before but since an injury left my left leg crippled I can't keep up with others anymore, so the guild master offered me this receptionist job he is very kind"
'Oh I'm sorry for what happened to you, it must be hard '
"I'm used to it now at least I get to meet different people every day that I work here but rarely people as handsome as you hihei"
She giggled a little after she said that, she looked 10 times cuter with her cat ears wiggling and her face becoming red from embarrassment.
But neoh kept his composure
'Thank you for the compliment, although I'm not used to people calling me handsome it is well appreciated, I'm ready to apply as an adventurer '
"Great, first you need to fill out this form "
The form looked something like this
Name:
Profession:
Age:
Do you have a magic core?
What elements are you able to use?
What is your main weapon of combat?
What is your plan by joining the guild?
And various other questions regarding his background and his combat abilities.
Neoh knew that if he declared himself a mage it would raise suspicions and they would ask the Sorcerer guild if he had ever attended the academy and who is his master but if he told them that he had no core he would be robbed of the opportunity to rip the benefits of being a mage adventurer so he did the next best thing and wrote that he doesn't know if he had a core or not.
This would simply work better with his background of being from a backwater village nobody has ever heard of, it's easy to go unnoticed by the Sorcerers guild if you live on the border of the empire.
He also wrote a lot of other lies for example when he was asked about his weapon especiallity he couldn't write down that he was the master of any weapon so he just wrote than the sword.
After he was done with the form he gave it back to Ria who was staring at him all the time he was writing.
Ria took the form and started reading.
"Thank you, wait what? You don't know if you have a core or not? How is that possible? Every child is taken to the church at the age of 15 to determine their magic capabilities "
Neoh had fucked up, he hadn't asked Sylvia to accommodate him, He went out by himself and now he had made a mess, he had no choice but to go with the plan and hope for the best
'Ah you know, I'm from a backwater village nobody told us about this so I never went to the place you are talking about '
"Hmm, I guess you are right, villagers don't have any information about this kinda stuff, and because of the war this past couple of years churches don't send out missionaries anymore to find kids with talent, that's unfortunate, let me call the guild master,he is a mage, he can help you find out if you have a core or not "
Hoooof, that was very lucky if the war had never happened he would be in big trouble right now, and he would have to start by mindwiping Ria.
I should not let something like that happen again.
Suddenly the sound of someone walking down the stairs could he heard, leon looked in the direction of the sound and enhanced his vision to check out the core Ria was talking about, he had never seen a mage from this world before so he first tried to figure out what was actually a core.
It turned out that the core they were talking about was a sphere in their body able to store a limited amount of mana to be later used by the individual for casting spells.
The amount of mana that someone could store in their core depended on the quality of the core their body produced in their mother's womb.
The man in front him was in his 50s but he looked much older, with wrinkles all over his face, in that small amount of time, he managed to analyze his core completely and figure out how to figure out somebody's core quality, it was not a simple matter of what color the core is or of what quality is the mana inside the core, it was about how thick and big somebody's core is, thicker and bigger cores could simply hold more dense mana thus enabling the user to use bigger and more sophisticated spells.
Armed with this knowledge Neoh devised a plan to sell himself as a legit mage.