Chapter 004: Ambition Rising
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{LUCIAN GILFORD}
The Guild was even busier in the daylight. Rows of counters stretched across the hall, the air full of rustling parchment, clinking coins, and the low hum of tired voices. Adventurers stood shoulder to shoulder in front of clerks, trading monster cores for coin or arguing over contract details. The smell of metal and sweat hung thick, but under it was something else—paper dust, ink, bureaucracy. Civilization's true cologne.
I joined the queue that looked the least likely to stab someone before noon. My badge—if you could call a piece of stamped parchment a badge—was tucked safely in my pocket, already wrinkled from travel. It wasn't much, just proof that I existed on the Guild's records and wasn't some wandering vagrant. A low bar, but one I'd cleared with grace and an alarming amount of paperwork.
When my turn came, the clerk on duty looked up from a stack of ledgers. She was young, maybe my age when I'd died, with an expression that suggested she hadn't been paid enough for the day she was already having.
"Need work," I said carefully. "No fight. No Dungeon."
Her eyes flicked over me—plain clothes, no armor, no weapon, no clue. She nodded faintly and pulled a thin binder from under the counter, thumbing through it. The pages were filled with neat columns of text and little stamps beside each line.
"Non-combat postings," she said, her accent rounding the vowels in that same way that made every word feel like half-translation. "Courier jobs, city errands, warehouse work, delivery assistance. You can't handle weapons?"
"Can," I said, then gestured vaguely. "Just… prefer not to bleed for minimum wage."
Her brow furrowed, probably not catching that last part, but she nodded again like she understood the sentiment anyway.
"Most couriers pay small," she warned, "but safe. Some need a bond from employer. You can sign here for general labor postings."
She handed me a thin sheet of paper covered in tight script. I stared at it for a moment, trying to decide which language was actually printed there. Half the words were legible, the other half looked like someone sneezed mid-ink stroke. I signed anyway, which earned me a skeptical look from her and a faint smirk from the adventurer behind me.
"Work will find you on board," she said, pointing to a long cork wall covered in slips of parchment. "Mark jobs you take. Bring proof back. Payment at counter six."
"Got it," I said. Probably didn't, but smiled like I did.
The board itself was chaos—paper layers stacked two or three deep, every one pinned under a splintered thumbtack. Most of it was Dungeon-related: monster slaying, escort missions, resource gathering. The non-combat section was tucked off to the right, half-empty and half-ignored.
I scanned the slips, trying to make sense of the scrawled handwriting. Help needed for crate inventory. Runner to the West Gate. Kitchen help for Adventurers' canteen—temporary.
Then one caught my eye near the bottom, written with neater hand:
Warehouse Assistance – Great Warehouse District
Light labor, 1-day duration. Payment on completion.
Report before noon to Master Ilka, Warehouse 7.
The "Great Warehouse" part snagged my attention like a hook. Coincidence or cosmic humor, it didn't matter—the name was too on the nose to ignore.
"Warehouse work it is," I muttered, pulling the slip from the board.
The adventurer next to me raised a brow. "First job?"
"Yeah."
He gave a sympathetic grin. "At least it's not the Dungeon. Those crates don't bite back."
"Yet," I said, earning a chuckle as he turned away.
I took one last look around the hall before heading for the door. The crowd, the noise, the faint metallic scent of coin—it all hummed like a machine I hadn't yet figured out how to operate. But I was moving. I had a job, technically. Ambition might've been too strong a word for it, but it was a start.
Outside, the light was sharp and warm again. My phone buzzed once in my pocket—an automatic calendar entry appearing out of nowhere.
Appointment Added: Great Warehouse District, Warehouse 7 – Start: 11:00
"Of course," I muttered, pocketing it again. "Even death can't save me from scheduling apps."
The road to the Great Warehouse District wound eastward, away from the glitter of the main plazas and deeper into the city's working veins. The air shifted as I walked—less spice and perfume, more sawdust and horse sweat. The streets grew wider to make room for carts and haulers, and the stone underfoot was gouged with ruts that spoke of centuries of trade.
Vendors here didn't shout their prices; they negotiated in low tones over crates of goods and shipping manifests. The smell of the sea was faint but present, carried by the wind that swept down from the eastern gates. It mixed with tar, oil, and old rope until the whole quarter smelled faintly like hard work.
Warehouses rose on either side—huge brick or timber structures marked with faded numbers and family crests. Some were open, revealing men and women moving crates with hooks and gloved hands, shouting directions I understood only halfway. Every third building had a team of adventurers carrying out bundled hides or ore sacks, most still spattered with monster ichor. I walked faster when I saw those.
The map on my phone pinged quietly with every street corner, somehow keeping pace with a city that shouldn't exist on any satellite. Warehouse 7 wasn't hard to find—it stood on the edge of a long canal where barges waited for loading, their hulls creaking softly against the mooring posts.
The sign above the broad wooden door read ILKA TRADING & STORAGE, the lettering hand-painted but neat. A few laborers were already outside, arguing over a manifest, their sleeves rolled up and skin slick with sweat despite the morning breeze.
I tucked the job slip into my pocket and stepped forward. A tall woman with short dark hair noticed me first; she looked me over once, taking in my lack of equipment and my faintly lost expression.
"You the Guild's send?" she called.
"Uh, yes. Lucian."
"Great. You can read?"
"Mostly."
She grinned. "Good enough. Come on, then."
Inside, the air was cooler and smelled of grain, rope, and old stone. The building's ribs were visible above—massive wooden beams crossed by iron hooks and pulley lines. Workers moved steadily, rolling barrels, stacking crates, shouting measurements that turned to echoes in the rafters.
Ilka—if that was her, and I was betting it was—pointed to a small desk near the back. "Log deliveries, keep track of who takes what. Don't move anything heavier than your pride, and we'll get along fine."
"Got it," I said, trying to keep my tone professional and failing somewhere between sarcasm and sincerity.
She smirked. "You talk funny. Don't worry, it grows on people."
I found a stool by the desk, the ledger thick enough to qualify as a blunt weapon. The handwriting was neat but alien; still, I could make out numbers and quantities well enough. I flipped to the current date—4/15/999—and the page marked Morning Shipments.
For the first time since waking in this world, I felt something almost familiar. Paperwork. Lists. Organization. Civilization's shared delusion of order.
Maybe this wasn't glory, but it was stability.
By the time the first hour passed, I'd learned three things about warehouse work: it was loud, it was endless, and it made me miss Excel.
The air smelled of grain and sweat and the faint tang of iron nails. Crates creaked as they were rolled across the floor; every so often, a pulley would shriek overhead as a rope strained to lift something that definitely exceeded the manufacturer's recommended limits. I'd been handed a ledger, a quill that didn't like me, and the vague instruction to "make sure the numbers add up."
The numbers, I discovered, did not add up. At all.
Someone had been counting by creative approximation, possibly blindfolded, and I spent the better part of an hour trying to decode which entries were quantities and which were just bad penmanship. It was almost nostalgic—like trying to balance my old tax returns but with more hay dust in the air.
Around midmorning, Ilka reappeared. She moved with the kind of efficiency that comes from long experience—broad-shouldered, hands calloused, sleeves rolled high. The sort of woman who looked at a problem, spat on her palms, and solved it before lunch.
"Still breathing?" she asked, leaning on the edge of my desk.
"Barely," I said, squinting at a column of figures. "Someone seems to have recorded 'a lot' as an actual number."
She barked a laugh. "That'd be Bren. He's our resident optimist. Everything's 'a lot' or 'not enough.' Don't worry, you'll get used to him."
"I'm not sure that's comforting."
"It's not meant to be." She grinned, then glanced over the ledger. "You're keeping up fine, though. Most new hires are slower their first day."
"That's because most new hires probably aren't fighting the quill," I said, gesturing to the ink-blotted tip. "This thing leaks more than my old car."
"Old what?"
"Never mind."
She gave me another look—curious, assessing—then clapped me lightly on the shoulder. "Keep it up. Lunch bell's at noon. There's a canteen down the lane. Don't get lost."
When she left, I realized I was smiling. Not because of the work—it was tedious—but because it was familiar. Systems, order, process. It was something I could do without dying.
By late morning, I'd organized two pages of shipments, sorted them by date, and even redid a few of the earlier counts. The others occasionally called out to me for a confirmation or to jot something in the log, and I did it automatically, language barrier be damned. Numbers were a language I spoke fluently.
At one point, Ilka returned carrying a crate lid under one arm. "You ever load one of these?" she asked.
"Can't say I have."
"Come on, then. Time to learn."
She led me to the loading area where two haulers were stacking sacks of grain onto a wagon. The trick, she explained, was balance—too much weight to one side, and the cart would roll wrong. I followed her instructions, watching how she braced the base with her knee, how she tested the weight before lifting. When I tried, she nodded.
"Not bad. You've done some work before, then."
"Different kind," I said. "Less… literal heavy lifting."
"Well, you'll live longer for it. Most idiots rush, tear a muscle, or drop a crate on their foot." She smirked. "You think before you move. That's rare."
She left me to it after that, and the day passed in a steady rhythm—ledger, lift, mark, repeat. Every now and then, Ilka would drift by to check the manifests or ask about counts, and every time she did, her nod came quicker, her tone softer.
By the time the lunch bell rang, my shirt clung to my back, and my arms felt like they'd been introduced to gravity for the first time. I sat on the stoop outside, eating a bread roll someone had passed down from the canteen—stale but edible—and watched barges drift lazily along the canal. The city's pulse slowed here, quieter than the markets, steadier than the taverns. Work, not chaos.
When the afternoon came, the pace picked up again. A new shipment arrived from the western gate—iron fittings, bundles of rope, barrels sealed with wax. Ilka oversaw it personally, barking instructions with that rough-edged voice that carried over the racket. She caught my eye once across the floor and gave a small nod—not a smile, exactly, but something close.
By dusk, my ledger was full. The last line read 4/15/999 – Received, Checked, Logged. I closed the book and rubbed my wrist, smudged with ink.
Ilka came by one final time, wiping her hands on a rag. "Didn't expect you to stick through a whole day," she said. "Most green hires quit after lunch."
"I didn't have anywhere else to go," I said with a shrug. "Figured I might as well be productive while I starve."
She laughed—short, genuine. "You're a strange one, Lucian."
"I've been told."
"Come back tomorrow if you want more work. Pay's the same, but you'll learn the routes. And if you're still alive by week's end, I'll call that ambition."
The word landed heavier than I expected.
"Ambition," I echoed.
She wiped the ink from the ledger's cover and handed me a small pouch. "Half-day pay, since you started late. Enough to eat decent. Don't lose it."
The weight in my palm was small but solid—real Valis, clinking faintly when I turned it over.
"Thanks," I said.
Ilka nodded once, already turning back to her workers. "See you in the morning, clever boy."
Outside, the air had cooled by the time I left the warehouse. The sun hung low behind the rooftops, staining the canal in long streaks of gold and rust. The shouts from the loading bays faded behind me, replaced by the creak of wagon wheels and the occasional whistle from someone finishing their shift. My hands still smelled faintly of ink and rope tar.
I leaned against a railing overlooking the water and untied the little pouch Ilka had pressed into my palm. The drawstring slipped loose easily, and the sound inside was soft but unmistakable—a small handful of clinking metal, solid and honest.
I tipped the contents into my hand and counted them.
Twenty-five 100Ʌ̶ coins.
2,500Ʌ̶ total.
They were dull bronze, the edges worn smooth, each one stamped with the Guild's crest and the little Ʌ̶ mark in the center. The kind of coin that passed through a hundred hands before finding mine. Not much by local standards, but it was the first thing I'd actually earned here—proof that I could function in this place without starving or begging.
I turned one coin over in my fingers, studying how the sunset caught on the faint scratches. "First paycheck in another world," I muttered, half to myself. "Guess capitalism really is eternal."
I pocketed the pouch carefully, the coins' soft weight pressing against my thigh with every step. It was grounding in a way nothing else here had been. For once, I wasn't just some confused reincarnator wandering around with a phone and misplaced optimism. I'd worked, been paid, and hadn't died in the process. Progress.
Across the canal, a bell rang the hour, its echo rolling through the warehouses. I checked my phone out of habit—the screen's glow cut clean against the fading light. 18:02. Battery: still 100%. Date: 4/15/999.
A quiet notification blinked under the Costco app icon:
Status Update: Order in final transit. Estimated arrival: 0700, 4/16/999.
Right on time. I huffed a small laugh through my nose. "Warehouse efficiency never dies."
I slipped the phone away and started down the road, hands in my pockets, coins jingling softly with each step. The city lights were coming alive one by one—lanterns strung between posts, the warm glow spilling across cobblestone. People laughed somewhere ahead, the scent of food hanging thick in the air.
For the first time since waking up in that field, I didn't feel like a lost soul wandering through someone else's dream. I had a job, some money, and bottled water arriving at dawn.
Small victories—but they counted.