Prologue: Running to the End of the Rope

Prologue:
Running to the End of the Rope

 

THE RUMOR WAS SPREADING—a whole village, wiped out.

So what? That’s nothing new. Loren tipped back his glass. It was certainly a pity for whoever had lived there. But the moment Loren heard the village had been an outpost claiming new farmland, the only words to cross his mind were: What else did they expect?

These humans had built their home in inhospitable lands they’d had no right to enter. That made them little more than invaders to whoever—or whatever—had lived there before.

In a dispute between humans, the two sides could squabble all they wanted over land rights and whatnot. Unfortunately, the entities who ruled the outlands didn’t generally respond well to discussion, and the moment they ran out of patience for intruders, all that awaited was the natural conclusion.

Not that they had to be left completely helpless. Loren turned a tipsy eye to the wall beside the desk of the adventurers’ guild—the organization that owned and operated this bar. There, one could find a lopsided board crammed with papers: recruitment notices for the plethora of jobs the guild had the gall to call quests.

Sure, the word “adventurer” did have a nice ring to it, but these people essentially made a living doing the dirty work no one else wanted. This guild was the mutual aid group that catered to them.

“There’s even more of them than last time.”

The board was so jam-packed that not a single gap remained for new posts. Yet people continued plastering new requests over the old, and now the whole thing was multiple layers thick.

Loren could hear the adventurers standing in front of it from all the way across the room. They had fallen into a heated debate over which quests were worth it and which were right out.

“So that village south of Vesta bit the dust? Guess they built it pretty close to the Forest of Chaos.”

“No way, it wasn’t that deep in. Still hate to think the monsters on the outskirts of that forest could wreck a whole village.”

“Coulda been a herd of smaller ones. Can’t expect a farmer to handle something like that.”

However, the problem presently plaguing Loren had absolutely nothing to do with these adventurers’ noisy banter, or the annihilation of some outpost in who-knew-where. In fact, these were the least of his concerns.

“I’m broke.”

Loren hadn’t begun life as an adventurer. He had belonged to a mercenary company with which he made a living fighting in wars for pay. He’d been with them for as long as he could remember, and that had been a stable source of income until quite recently. Now, as for why such a man was sitting in a corner of a guild bar, a cup of ale his only company, it just so happened that, on their last outing, his mercenary company had been obliterated.

Loren had experienced innumerable battles over his career, on both the winning and losing side. Each time, his mercenary company had cut their way through all obstacles and survived somehow or another. Evidently, the time had come to pay the piper. The war they had been so certain they were winning suddenly turned sour, and Loren’s comrades were taken out one after another. During that terrible final battle, Loren told himself over and over again that it was the end of the line—yet, somehow, he had survived, if by a narrow margin.

Of course, that being the case, his pockets felt especially light right now.

The words “mercenary” and “savings” did not generally belong in the same sentence, and Loren was no exception to this rule. He almost always spent his money the second it came to him, and while that would have been bad enough, he’d also had to abandon everything he owned on the battlefield along with his comrades’ corpses.

All he had left to his name was his leather armor, a two-handed greatsword, and a small sack of coins he’d stuffed into his pocket. A depressing sum, considering it amounted to the culmination of his life’s work.

Loren knew he was far better off than someone completely penniless, but he too would wind up on the streets if he didn’t find a source of income soon. His head hurt as he pinched the metal tag dangling from his neck.

This identification tag was proof of his registration with the adventurers’ guild. The tag’s material revealed the rank of its adventurer, and since he had just paid pocket change to register, Loren’s tag was a cheap copper alloy—the lowest the guild had to offer. It would be swapped out for rarer, more expensive metals the higher he climbed. Not that Loren had any interest in rank. All that mattered was that this tag let him take jobs, and those jobs would get him some quick cash.

Here, he ran into yet another problem.

“I’ve got no one to quest with.”

His comrades had all either split or been split open.

Folks outside the business saw mercenaries as a detestable bunch who paid for their meals in stolen lives. Needless to say, this often left mercenaries friendless outside of their own company. Yet again, Loren was no exception to the rule. And, as he had barely escaped the killing field that took everyone he knew, he had no one left to rely on.

He had his reasons for choosing the adventuring life now. Sure, society thought adventurers barely better than mercenaries, and like mercenaries, they often had to wander around searching for unsteady work. However, guilds didn’t vet applicants prior to registration. While they did look into whether you had a criminal record, that check only extended to the country of registry. In short, the crude system missed any crimes the applicant might have committed on the other side of a given border. Consequently, even a rootless mercenary like Loren could easily register as an adventurer simply by paying the fee.

That said, no matter what quest he took, it would be tough going on his own. Whether he wanted to exterminate the beings called monsters that brought harm to humans, to harvest plants or gather ores, or to search for a lost something or someone—every one of these tasks was far too dangerous to tackle without a party.

Loren had full confidence in his skills, to be clear. He just knew better. Being alone in the face of unexpected odds was a great way to die in a ditch, and quick.

“Huh, should I clean ditches or something?”

The prospect lacked appeal, to say the least. Loren had been more than a little surprised when he found out the adventurers’ guild accepted requests for ditch and drain cleaning—practically the furthest thing from an adventure he could imagine. Although people in this occupation famously did anything for the right price, so it kind of made sense.

But if that’s how it works, then drop the “adventurer” and just call yourselves the Odd Jobs Guild, Loren grumbled.

On the other hand, those sanitation jobs were low risk for decent pay, and they were gradually beginning to look more and more appealing. It would just be for a short while, just enough to get him on his feet.

Of course, Loren didn’t want to muck about in filth, but if you asked him to pick between mud and blood, he had experienced enough of the latter to immediately choose mud. As long as the job paid out, he’d plug his nose, close his eyes, and go for it. Even better, drains and ditches were features of civilization. In that line of work, he’d always be near people, which lowered the overall risk even further.

Now that I think about it, it’s not bad work at all.

With that, Loren convinced himself to make his way to the bulletin board to look for a job of that stripe—only to be caught off guard by a voice.

“Hey, tough guy. Are you looking for work?”

He glanced up to find a blond young man with shiny new armor and a one-handed sword at his waist. The young man stood across the table from Loren, and after taking a seat that Loren hadn’t offered, he leaned in and spoke again.

“You’re a swordsman, I see. A lone swordsman at that. Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but it looked to me like you were mulling over how you don’t have the manpower to take on anything too big. But if you’re up for it, how about tagging along with my party for a quest?”

I’d turn him down instantly if I were still with my company, Loren mused as he scanned the man in front of him.

Any mercenary who graciously accepted a job offered by a complete stranger couldn’t expect a long future. Before accepting a job, it was essential to run a background check on the client, perform an analysis of the area, and conduct an investigation to ensure the absence of any dark rumors or shady dealings. This was common sense Loren had acquired in childhood.

Mercenaries understood they existed solely in order to temporarily bolster the causes of other people. As they maintained no affiliations, they could move freely, but in exchange, they usually had little to no backing from higher powers. Occasionally, that led employers to use them as disposable pawns, and as such, despite having rowdy dispositions, mercenaries were profoundly cautious when taking on new jobs.

There was one exception to this rule, however, and it was one that Loren fell smack-dab in the middle of: all rules went out the window when the mercenary in question was broke.

No matter what you set out to do, society barred you from doing it if you lacked sufficient funds, and this held true for mercenary companies as well. It took money to feed a crew, and it took money to renew and maintain equipment. It took money to move from battlefield to battlefield, and you needed reserves for times when jobs were thin on the ground.

Thus, when funds were low, a mercenary didn’t have the leisure to pick and choose his work. Mercenaries who found themselves in this position often jumped at jobs without doing proper research, and soon, the unlucky ones no longer had to worry about money anymore.

“Our party has the manpower, but our front line is thin. You’re an experienced swordsman by the looks of it. I’ll make it worth your while, so how about you come with us? You won’t regret it!”

Who could say what the man took Loren’s silence to mean? Whatever the case, he continued soliciting with an impassioned zeal.

Loren, for his part, was considering his options. He could muck ditches without thinking too hard or having to fear for his life. In fact, the ditches were probably preferable to whatever job this guy was offering. But when all was said and done, Loren was still praying for an option that didn’t end with him getting knee-deep in filth.

However, he didn’t have enough information to determine whether this man meant to lead him to heaven or to hell. “What quest did you take?” Loren asked. If he’s trying to reorganize his party, that means he already has a job in mind.

If the man said he hadn’t decided, Loren intended to turn him down then and there.

And yet, it seemed the young man took the question as a favorable response. His face lit up proudly. “A simple extermination quest. My party has a thief, a priest, and a magician, but we might be going up against a lot of enemies, and I don’t know if I can protect them all on my own.”

“You’ll have to be clearer than that. I still don’t know if I’ll be useful yet. I mean, have a look at this.” Loren jingled his measly copper ID tag.

“Believe me, it’s easy as pie. They’re just asking us to take care of some goblins in the woods.”

The young man continued to insist that it was no big deal, leaving Loren unable to do much save awkwardly nod along.