Tim's POV
The next day, I had been told, that I rank up to Iron Rank, a brief conversation at the desk, the copper plate exchanged for an iron one, a standard congratulations delivered of a small clap form the deck lady.
I examined the iron plate for a moment, turning it over in my hand. It was heavier than the copper.
The desk attendant, a different woman from my registration, ran through the standard iron rank orientation. New available quest categories, updated danger thresholds for monsters I can face, the expectation that iron rank adventurers had demonstrated sufficient capability to handle moderately dangerous solo or group assignments.
I let her finish. Then I asked her, "What's the hardest monster an iron rank adventurer can reasonably target?"
She looked at me with the slight worry as she said.
"Orcs and trolls are the upper end of what iron rank is expected to handle. Group assignments, typically. A troll alone will put down most iron adventurers who try it solo."
"Most you say" I said.
"The ones who survive solo troll encounters usually make it their whole life story," she said, in the dry tone of someone who had seen this pattern before.
I thanked her and left.
The forest nearby E-Rantel's walls I had been to many times before, the herb hunting circuits had taken me through it repeatedly, the plant perception mapping its interior with the accumulated detail. I knew which sections were densely inhabited by what kinds of life, knew the established trails.
I extended the perception as I walked the tree line, letting it run ahead and wide through the undergrowth. The plants communicated in their continuous passive register, the aggregate information of a forest's worth of vegetation, the disturbances and pressures and weights that moved through the ecosystem leaving traces in the substrate.
Heavy. Two-legged. Approximately half a kilometre northwest, moving in the unhurried pattern as it's heading to the river, as I run there.
I found the orc in a clearing where it had apparently been working on something, there was evidence of recent occupation, a rough camp, the remnants of a fire.
Brown-skinned, perhaps two metres tall, with the characteristic build that this new world's orc variant produced.
It heard me at perhaps ten metres, good ears, better than human baseline and turned slowly my way.
I crossed the remaining distance faster than it could fully process the movement and hit it in the head with my balled fist. The orc's head did not survive the arithmetic.
I stood in the clearing while it fell, then crouched and removed the left ear with my dagger.
One down.
I let the perception run wider and began working through the forest systematically, the plants reporting heavy footfalls across a range that expanded as I moved deeper into the territory. The orcs were present in greater numbers than I had expected, a sizeable group, which explained why the surrounding farmland had been reporting disturbances in recent guild postings. A group this large was a problem that would eventually require a proper guild response, which meant today's work was solving a real issue.
The trolls were larger and louder in the plant perception, heavier even, their movement leaving more pronounced traces in the substrate, the vegetation communicating their presence with stress.
I found the first one near a stream and the second in a rocky outcrop where it had apparently been sleeping, and handled both with the same approach, modified for the troll's regeneration capability which required destroying enough vital tissue quickly enough that the regeneration couldn't keep pace.
The ears accumulated. I carried them in a sack I had brought for this purpose.
The Basilisk was not on my original plan for today.
I found it in the late afternoon while following a cluster of orc tracks toward what turned out to be a territorial boundary, a zone of significantly damaged vegetation where something large had been moving, and it was large.
The Basilisk was occupying a rocky hillside perhaps three kilometres from the orc territory, which explained why that territory's edge was so definitively bounded.
I had not encountered a Basilisk before. I assessed it from a distance through the information available to me, the physical description I had saw from the adventurer guild's reference materials, and the common sense observation that this particular creature's primary offensive capability was vision-based.
I came at it from behind, and cleanly cut off it's head.
The head I took whole, which required a second sack and carrying both sacks was genuinely awkward for the walk back to the city. I managed it, I'm cool like that.
I walked in to the guild with my two large bloody sacks.
but I was aware that my entrance was receiving attention. Conversations paused when I entered the space.
I reached the desk and set the first sack down and looked at the attendant, who was not the woman I had spoken to this morning but a man of perhaps forty in age.
"you gotta hEAR this for youself," I said, and upended the sack.
The ears came out in a pile that was larger than the desk was designed to accommodate. They spilled over the edge and several made it to the floor, Thirty-four left ears, orc and troll both.
The desk attendant looked at the pile.
He looked at me.
He looked at the pile again.
"Wait here," he said, in the careful tone.
The guild leader was a broad man named Brita, as he stopped completely when he saw the desk.
He examined the ears, checking freshness. His hands moved through the pile with practiced efficiency, sorting, checking the cut quality, the preservation state.
"These were all taken today," he said.
He looked at me with the particular attention, as he tried to find out how I took down thirty-four orc and troll ears in a single day. I was eighteen years old and I was not presenting the physical profile of someone who could take down a small army of monsters.
He signed.
"Platinum rank," he said, the decision forming visibly as he spoke. "your skipping both silver and gold ranks, congrats on your new promotion"
"WAIT, I have more" I said.
I reached over and upended the second sack.
The Basilisk's head occupied a significant portion of the available desk space and continued off the edge, and its eyes were closed, tongue out with purple blood.
The guild leader stood very still for a moment.
Then he slowly turned to me with the pure horror, as he tried to clam down.
"Fine, Orichalcum rank, and no higher," he said, as he sat back on the chair.
He named the payout for the orcs, trolls, and Basilisk separately, and the total was 132 gold coins.
I received the payment with a smile on my face, as I left the guild a happy man.
Tim's stats.
LeveL: [45]