Chapter 62 (1/2)

After eating breakfast, we began moving early, just as travelers leaving a city should.

Our destination is the Adventurers’ Guild, and naturally, our objective is to register as adventurers and acquire adventurers’ identification papers.

The Adventurers’ Guild is an agency that acts as the intermediary between clients and adventurers.

It’s an organization that exists in the Kingdom, the Beast Nation, the Empire, the Lawful Nation, every country without belonging to any of them, with freedom, power and adventure as its symbols.

An organization that at least guarantees the social status of an adventurer of its members and ensures that there is no trouble between clients and adventurers.

Well, to put it simply, it’s a ‘temporary employment office’ that spans every nation.

Though ‘adventurer’ is pleasant to hear, not all of the work is as full of adventurous spirit as that word might make one imagine.

Gathering medicinal plants, cleaning up the city, collecting rent, investigating extramarital affairs.

Jobs of delivering letters like a courier and requests to act as escorts.

In short, it’s correct to think of them as freeters who do whatever is requested.

They accept some of the numerous one-off work requests, not tied down to their clients for any longer than their contracts specify.

Of course, it’s not like they’re constantly employed, so work doesn’t come around periodically. It’s an occupation with an unstable income and lifestyle.

With that said, they only do these odd jobs at the start. Regardless of everything else, the main work of an adventurer is to defeat monsters and obtain their materials.

If they gather experience in combat through fighting weaker monsters like Goblins and Garms, soon enough, they become able to accept the monster extermination requests that earn more money.

Of course, they can’t accept dangerous monster extermination requests from the beginning. Adventurers are separated into ranks based on their achievements, and can only accept requests suitable for their ability.

Excluding apprentices too young to become adventurers who are sometimes called G-rank adventurers, the lowest real adventurers are F-rank adventurers who can accept requests to exterminate monsters like Goblins and Garms. From there, they make their achievements and become stronger, climbing the ranks one at a time until they are placed at the highest rank, the SS rank.

And in the same way, officially recognized monsters are classified from F-rank to SS-rank, sometimes with + or – signs attached to the rank, so that each rank of monster has three different extermination difficulties. The ranks of the extermination requests correspond with the monsters’ ranks.

In other words, adventurers cannot accept dangerous, relatively well-paying work while their ranks are still low.

Those who become SS-rank adventurers are treated as legendary individuals. However, like legendary individuals, only a handful of people are able to succeed as adventurers to the point of exterminating powerful monsters like Dragons, successfully defeating Guardians deep within high-difficulty dungeons and becoming famous.

Among all of the occupations that currently exist in this world, the occupation of adventurer has an extremely high mortality rate.

Before reaching SS-status, most adventurers lose their lives or realize their own limits and decide to stay at a comfortable level. Even so, the reason that there is no shortage of people becoming adventurers is because there is no shortage of people who earnestly desire to become such heroes, and because there are many in situations where they are forced to become adventurers.

The requirements of becoming an adventurer is to be over fourteen years of age and to be able to pay the initial registration fee of a few large bronze coins, which is about the cost of a single meal.

Connections, large sums of money, a prominent family or a distinguished personal history aren’t necessary.

Those who have so little money to begin with that they can’t even pay the initial registration fee can postpone their payment.

In other words, even truly broken orphans without a single possession to their names can become adventurers.

That’s exactly why the adventurer occupation acts as a receptacle for those who couldn’t acquire, or refused, proper, safe jobs like being a knight, soldier, merchant or craftsman.

Bringing it back to the original topic, acquiring adventurers’ identification papers is beneficial for us in a lot of ways.

First, as their name suggests, they identify us as adventurers.

The human-supremacist Kingdom, the Beast-person-supremacist Beast Nation, the power-supremacist Empire and the religious nation that is the Lawful Nation are the four powers that are conquering the continent. And there are a number of small countries of minority populations that exist like stitches in between these four major powers.

When moving between these nations, the Adventurers’ Guild vouches for adventurers with respectable ranks, so it’s easier to cross borders.

Also, in cities beyond a certain size, someone with no identification can’t stay in one city for long. Identification papers are needed to stay for longer than ten days, so the identification papers that can be easily obtained at the Adventurers’ Guild are convenient.