After asking direction Reinhardt was standing in front of a two storied building with adventurers going in and out, it was the Adventurers Guild.
Realizing he was like most modern teenagers and knew jack shit about earning money he accepted that the only way he could earn it and also learn combat to ensure his survival was to become an adventurer and do odd jobs and maybe go further a step and become a legend in this world. 'pssht who am I kidding I would be dead in a week tops if I start doing things like most isekai protagonists do'
Entering the two storied building he could see a bunch of adventurers sitting here and there and chatting while some were standing in front of a board filled with what he assumed were tasks and others were looking for a party to join.
They had a variety of armor on them and to be honest looked pretty cool. The building had a wooden floor and stone walls and gave an antique vibe and looked pleasing to the eye and the walls were lined with decorative weapons and paintings of the epics of various legendary adventurers.
Spotting the reception, he went up there and waited in one of the lines until his turn came.
"Hello there-" A voice greeted him.
"General Kenobi!" (AN: if you know, you know)
"…"
"…"
"So what can I help you with?"
"uh where are you? I can't see you." He couldn't see the person he was talking to but judging from the voice it seemed to be a girl and a very young one at that.
"I am down here." Hearing a reply Reinhardt stretched his neck looked across the counter and saw a little kid standing on a stool. 'Man how irresponsible, who leaves a kid to do their job.'
He turned to the receptionists standing a little to the other side of the kid talking to another adventurer and asked with genuine concern, "Um excuse me but I think someone forgot their child here."
As soon as he said those words everyone stopped doing what they were doing.
Silence ensued as every just stopped moving. He felt almost as if they were…scared shitless. Reinhardt heard the sound of someone gritting their teeth. " I... am ...NOT.A.KID!"
Reinhardt made a confused expression, "Well you do look like-". Before he could continue a pen went whizzing by his face missing him by a few inches and got embedded into the opposite wall leaving cracks on it. The adventurer sitting next to the wall yelped and backed away a few inches. Whatever expression Reinhardt had on his face became frozen on it and only one thought raged in his mind. 'getting killed by an angry little loli, I can almost feel the shame of my ancestors'
"I have two more pens, say it one more time and you won't see the sun set today." Reinhardt gulped audibly and nodded furiously showing he understood whatever she was telling him and then some.
The girl smiled and asked again "So what can I help you with." Everyone else sensing there was no longer any danger returned to what they were doing although casting a few nervous glances towards the little devil occasionally.
Reinhardt sucked a breath and calmed himself so he would stop trembling and proceeded to butter her up…..that didn't sound right, " ah yes fair young maiden, I would like to apply to be an adventurer."
The little girl nodded, "okay, do you have any experience or a recommendation, if you have any notable achievements or a recommendation that could help with your adventurers grade after giving the test or you can skip the test and be an F grade adventurer though you would mostly just do odd jobs and still take a test to leave the F rank and then increase you rank normally by doing task. If you don't take the test, you will forever stay in the F rank limiting the benefits the adventurer's card gives."
Reinhardt nodded, "I understand, I would like to start as F rank and then give the test later. By the way, just out of curiosity, how young can a person be to sign as an adventurer."
The girl shrugged, "Well it varies for various races but for humans its 10 year old. Reinhardt looked at the pink haired demon that had her hair in a twin pony tail and had pink colored eyes who looked around that age.
"huh….quite a young age….yep". Reinhardt was fighting his conscience at this moment 'it not worth it, don't say it, it's not worth it.'
"Well, what do I need to do to sign up." Ultimately, he chose life and asked for the forms.
The pink haired demon took out a form and told Reinhardt to fill it up. Once he filled it according to the identification paper's he got in the morning from one of Celine's men, he handed it to her and she took out a grey card and asked Reinhardt to put some of his blood on it so it could bond to him. She said it was a magical item.
What followed was one of the most embarrassing moments in his life where a 'kid' was struggling to make him use a thumb pin to puncture his finger to draw some blood since he always chickened out at the last moment which led to the nearby adventures laughing at his struggles and a really pissed off little demon.
After some time, the little demon just stopped convincing him and just took his hand and jabbed the pin in his finger and the stamped it on the card.
"Ow that hurt." The grey card took on a red color, signifying it was now bounded to him.
The little demon with a pissed of expression replied, "Are you sure you want to be an adventurer considering you can't handle a little prick to your finger."
"Don't worry, I will get accustomed to the pain." Reinhard gave a confident smile while assuring the young devil while thinking otherwise. 'No I won't'
With a suspicious expression she replied, "You don't sound very convincing, well anyway here is your card. It serves as an identification for you, you can use it to travel across borders without the travel permit, it also records your ranking as well as tasks completed. The other privileges will only be available to you after you take the rank up test. That will be 2 silver coins"
Reinhardt handed her the coins, "By any chance do you have anyone that can teach me how to use a sword I am a complete beginner."
The little demon gave a smug smirk, "I am not surprised." A vein popped on his forehead 'Yeah laugh all you want little midget, at least I am taller than you' Reinhardt made the comeback in his thoughts since he valued his life very much understanding that comment on her short height was also a 'no no' for the girl.
She proceeded to explain about the beginner courses available to newbies so new adventurers wouldn't just die on their first mission and once he selected a good instructor, he paid the tuition fee and would return the following day to start his lessons, but before he could leave an adventurer stopped him.
He had a lean physique with a bow strapped to him and also had pointy ears showing his elven heritage along with long golden hair with blue eyes. "Hey kid, a quick word?" The elf pointed with his head to the side.
Reinhardt shrugged and followed the elf but was still wary of him, "The name's Ibru. Pleasure to meet you." He put his hand forward for a handshake. Reinhardt was sure he heard 'legolas' from somewhere as he observed the elf.
Reinhardt reciprocated and shook his hand, "Reinhardt. So, what's up?"
The elf had a weird expression, "The ceiling?" Reinhardt gave a small laugh until he saw that the elf had a confused expression.
"Oh, you weren't joking." He realized some common slang might not be so common in this world. At least the handshake was still here, but what about the middle finger, was it common too? He needed to test that theory.
"You are weird new kid, but that's not what I wanted to talk to you about. I wanted to talk to you about her." Ibru pointed to the little demon.
"Are you talking about the little dem-" the elf immediately put his hands in a panicked expression on Reinhardt's mouth to shush him.
"Quiet fool, if she hears us, it will be the end for us both." Reinhardt nodded in agreement, that was quite reckless of him to wake up a sleeping tiger.
"Her name's Enid and despite looking-" he cautiously looked left and right whispered in a low voice, "-despite looking like a kid she is 30 years old and takes comments about her stature very, very seriously. I still remember when a few fools from a neighboring town came here and made fun of her size….."
Reinhardt listening intently beckoned him to continue, "No one knows what happened to them, except that they crossed a line, and they were never seen again. Not even their bodies were found. Enid is a retired A rank adventurer due to an injury she had in her adventuring days but don't let it fool you, she can kill you without you even knowing. There have been other idiots over the years that have disturbed the peace of the guild by incurring her wrath and believe me when I say it, you don't want to see her angry. Look, since you are a newbie, I wanted to warn you on behalf of the guild and also, we like the guild being in one piece."
Reinhardt understood, he understood that he dodged a big bullet with the information he got from Ibru. He didn't want to be a missing person case any time soon. "Thanks for warning me, don't worry I won't make the same mistake again."
The elf smiled, "No worries kid, I was just looking out for the newbie. Well then, farewell." The elf got and joined a few other adventurers at a table and started chatting with them. Reinhardt got up and left the adventurers guild.
The sun was still high up in the sky and he still had things to do. He started walking down the street looking for a blacksmith.
While he was looking around, he could sense that someone was following him. He guessed that it was someone sent by Celine to spy on him. She was a cautious person by nature and although she seemed to believe him, she would still double and triple check his story.
He was already expecting something like this to happen. Reinhardt didn't think about bothering him, he wasn't doing anything suspicious and they guy would probably spy on him for a few days only.
Ignoring the one spying on him, he continued his walk. Last evening, he didn't get a good look at the town since everyone was in a rush to escape the rain but now that he looked at it, it looked quite beautiful.
Proper roads, no littering, magical lamps on the side of the roads to illuminate during the night, stall vendors were busy setting up their wares and negotiating with customers and the shop owners were also busily going through their day. Carriages and carts moving down the road and even people on horses rode past him.
The street although not crowded wasn't that vacant and people of various races continued on with their day. He could see the social class difference as well with some well clothed while a few were wearing rags and asked for coins and food but they were very few of them for a town this big.
Went to show how Duke Restize took care of his citizens since in the game he was a very just man and was the epitome of the word 'Noble' compared to the other rotten nobles, still it was a pity he died during the Mirkum wars, it was a bloody conflict leading to many deaths.
Reinhardt strolled around when he stopped near a shop. It had a sign that showed a hammer hitting an anvil. He entered it realizing it was the shop he was looking for, a weaponsmith.
After an hour he exited the shop with an annoyed expression, "What a stingy dwarf 3 whole gold coins for this sword, and I thought they were a friendly race." 'Well, they were in the game, maybe this one is a black sheep among the herd.'
There were cheaper swords but they looked rather unreliable to Reinhardt and this one looked durable enough but not special, the dwarf justified the price by stating it was much sharper sword compared to others being 'special' which he didn't believe one bit.
With addition of a sword in a scabbard he proceeded to buy an armor next, he didn't want to spend too much money on armor since he wouldn't be doing anything too dangerous…probably.
Next he found an armorer's shop and commissioned a light leather armor and gave his measurements. It wasn't anything special and was the standard for most adventurers.
Looking at the sky he could see there were still a few hours before dusk so he decided to do one final thing. He bought a diary, some ink and a pen since ballpoints didn't exist here and headed towards the towns library but stopped when he heard a rumbling from his stomach.
Deciding it unwise to torture himself with hunger when it could be avoided, he went to a nearby restaurant and had a delicious lunch before going to the town library. The librarian who was an old woman was happy to help out a young man in his search for knowledge, 'more barbarians than scholars these day the youngsters' she said.
If only she knew that Reinhardt detested books and only came here out of necessity, he need a second reference to his knowledge about the game world. He couldn't be sure his knowledge would stay accurate to the real life adaption of the game and real life adaptions most of the time totally suck.
He went around the history section of the library and took out a few books and went to sit at a secluded place. "Okay let's review everything I know, if I want to go back to my world, I need all the information I can get."
The game took place in the world of Astraga. Many eons ago there were gods and spirits that solely inhabited the world. No one knew how they came to be.
The gods, in the many milleniums they existed, did as they pleased as beings of immense power there was nothing they couldn't do and the spirits although not nearly as powerful were much more attuned to the world and were deeply connected to it. The gods and the spirits lived in harmony as the gods saw the spirits as a part of their home world, Astraga.
As time passed on the other life forms began to emerge animals, magical beasts, demons, orcs, elves, the dwarves then came the humans as well while others followed in later years.
Some of the gods watched with curiosity and amusement the new inhabitants of astraga especially the intelligent ones and the humanoid ones while other gods considered it beneath themselves to even acknowledge their existence.
Time continued to flow but a peculiar incident occurred with time the population of the humanoid species started decreasing.
The gods that were curious about them noticed that in the span of a few thousand years they had made great strides in improving their living standards but they were now being threatened with extinction by the magical beasts and unknown abominations that ran rampant throughout astraga, this was the time referred by historians as the dark age.
The gods decided to intervene, they gifted the races with magic and special few chosen by the gods called the gifted and the chosen were given special boons that elevated them from the others.
The spirits sensing the despair of the races and the disharmony it caused in their world also decided to help and gave them the ability to wield the spiritual energy of the world to strengthen their mind, soul and body. With their bodies strengthened by the spiritual energy and epic abilities granted through magic the races fought back and in a short span of a century drove back the magical beasts and won the war for survival.
The races had now noticed that there were higher beings beyond their comprehension that decided to help them in their most desperate moment, so the races praised them and praises later changed to prayers and then into faith.
The various races had their own patron gods which they started worshipping due them believing they were more closely related to them and the gods finding it amusing allowed it but slowly they started to care for their followers but some gods were infuriated that their brethren even allowed such filthy life forms to utter their name. Alas they couldn't do anything unless they wanted to incur their kin's ire.
The mortal races prayed to the spirits too but the spirits being reclusive since time immemorial didn't answer the mortals back and hid away from the them not liking their peace and quiet being disturbed.
Having no contact with the races for centuries they were eventually forgotten. With time the mortal races continued improving their magical abilities and spiritual arts, civilization flourished, kingdoms came into being, heroes were born and kings were made and temples of the god showed them the way forward. It was the golden age.
But like a wise man once said, nothing lasts forever for the peace and prosperity was short lived. One of the gods dissatisfied with the love and care their kin showed to the lesser ones much more than his other brethren that disliked them, so much that he wanted to put an end to them all.
His views made him an outcast among the gods and eventually his extremist tendencies grew so much that he was banished and stripped of his powers that threatened to sow discord among the gods and cause the end of the mortals they grew to care for.
The god hurt and angry for being abandoned by their family for the low life mongrols could do nothing as he lay imprisoned for a long time but there was one thing he had that they couldn't control, that they could take away his emotions. In exile only one thought and one emotion encompassed his whole body, Hate. Hate for all that was.
His hatred was so much that it couldn't be contained within him, the hate slowly changed him, corrupted him.
With his hate he gave birth to an evil within himself, an evil so vile the scars of which can still be seen today in Astraga, for he gave birth to nuclear chaos, a corruption that almost destroyed the world, even the gods. This exiled god was only known as Morgut the corrupted.
Nuclear chaos slowly started corrupting the mortals of the realm turning them into feral beasts and against their kind, much bloodshed followed and eventually the corruption reached the gods as well.
The gods that were corrupted had lost all rationality and only sought to cause destruction on such a scale that life on astragah was on its last vestiges once more but now even the gods weren't safe from it.
The gods unaffected by the corruption unwillingly had to put an end to their kin's rampage, with no cure they could only stop by giving them true death.
The war between the gods lasted for hundreds of years, with the mortals dying by the millions by the wanton destruction caused by it, with none of the sides showing signs of winning, even gods dropped like flies during those times.
But then came the god slayers, the mortal race's strongest champions. Among all the chaos a group of mortals had reached an unprecedented level of strength and could face even the gods. With the aid of the god slayers the war came to an end but not all corrupted gods were slain, some just disappeared never to be seen again. Some say they were banished to another dimension all together.
Although the war was won, Astraga was devasted with Billions dead, the once thriving and rich civilizations were gone, the abundance of knowledge of the golden age lost and the culture they were once proud of forgotten, but not all was lost after the great catastrophe for life always finds a way, they started rebuilding society from scratch.
Time went on and the wounds on astraga started to heal, society slowly recovered. The few gods that were left went into deep sleep to recover their wounds while the god slayers vanished almost as if they never existed. A new era began, an era of men.
Reinhardt comparing his knowledge and that of the history books came to one conclusion. Much of the history before the great collapse wasn't recorded most likely being lost with the passage of time the only source being the game and somethings were redacted.
Even immediate history after the great collapse wasn't recorded until a few hundred years later, but of what was recorded there still were things unknown to Reinhardt which he quickly noted down in his diary in French. What? who on earth….on astragah would be able to read French, hell even back on earth the language was almost alien-ish considering how fucking impossible it was to pronounce the words properly. Although it was a fault on reinhard's comprehension skills since French was supposed to be one the easiest languages to learn.
"Damn I almost forgot about the past of this world since the game was set in the current era and the gameplay was so pg 13. I forgot this was a brutal word with mad gods, abominations , corruption, god slayers.....…..HOLY SHIT I AM FUCKED!"
A shush from the librarian shut him up. The game world didn't have such things in the gameplay, they were only described in notes collected from old ruin when one explored them in passing showing that the game didn't show the whole picture of the story. Reinhardt held his head as he felt a migraine coming as he realized it wouldn't be so easy to go back home considering this world was so dangerous, his mortality became as delicate as a glass. '*sigh* one step at a time Reinhardt, one step at a time'
Making a separate portion from world history he wrote down the plot of the game despite him finding it nauseating it was essential to have as much as information as possible.
He wrote down the important characters, important locations, dungeons, ruins, kingdoms, politics and the whole shebang and that was a lot.
The only reason he wrote as much as possible was because he knew he could forget important details later on which would pose a problem. What? Was he supposed to remember all this by heart, he wasn't some genius protagonist from an anime or a webnovel, he was just a normal 14 year old kid. He wasn't anything special.
He also drew the map, since he had to review it multiple times for 100% completion, he had memorized it quite well. He did it in bits only so only he could understand because if he ever got caught with it, how was he supposed to explain a highly detailed map of the whole world of Astraga, he would just end up dead with no explanation given and the map would be taken considering its value but he hoped him breaking it into pieces would make people clueless about it.
Reinhardt noticing the sunlight dimming asked the librarian to turn on the magical lamps which she did kindly. After sorting everything out one more time and realizing there were still things missing despite getting help from the books and his memory of the game.
What happened to Morgut, how did they stop the corruption, what about the other corrupted gods, where did they go, why are the god slayers are not mentioned in the history books. There were still many loopholes in the story but maybe he would find them out one day…..lets hope not that sounded hella dangerous.
Reinhardt seeing how it was now night time got up and left the library bidding farewell to the kind old librarian. He went back to the inn had some dinner and jumped into his bed and in a short moment was fast asleep.