Chapter 436: Registration
Chapter 436: Registration
Bruce flagged down a soul carrying an empty basket who looked like she had finished her work for the moment and was in no hurry. He asked her, plainly, how a newly arrived awakened soul earned soul points.
She looked the three of them over, recognized them instantly for what they were, fresh off a harvester carriage, cracks still showing, and gave them the answer with the patient efficiency of someone who had probably been asked this exact question before.
The fastest way to earn soul points, she said, was hunting.
There was a Hunters Guild in the city. Every awakened soul who wanted to hunt registered there. Once registered, a hunter could take contracts and head out to the dungeons though they were not reached the way Bruce expected.
There were soul dungeon portals set throughout the city and just outside it, gateways that opened into the dungeon spaces, and beyond the portals were the hunting grounds where the soul beasts lived. Fresh souls. The pure-souled native creatures the harvester had described.
A hunter killed soul beasts. And then a hunter had two choices with what they killed. They could eat it, the cores, the flesh, the rich soul energy, to heal and strengthen their own soul. Or they could carry the parts back to the city and sell them at the Guild exchange for soul points.
Or both. Eat some, sell some.
The three of them brightened at the same moment.
It was, Bruce thought, almost too neat. They needed to eat. They needed soul points. And hunting gave them both, food on the spot and points to sell. A hunter could fill his own hungry soul on the kill and still come back with enough to rent a room and rest. It solved every problem they had at once.
"That’s it, then," Kael said. He was grinning again, the hunger temporarily forgotten in the face of a plan. "We hunt. We eat what we kill, sell the rest, get a roof. Easy."
"Easy," Theron echoed, a little doubtful, cradling his bad arm. But he was smiling too.
Bruce thanked the soul with the basket. She told them the way to the Guild, down the main street, left at the fountain of light, the big building with the green banners, can’t miss it, and then went on about her day.
The three of them set off.
The Hunters Guild was, as promised, hard to miss.
It was one of the larger buildings in this part of the city, a broad, solid structure of pale soul-stone, three stories tall, with wide steps leading up to a set of open doors. Green banners hung down its front, embroidered with a symbol Bruce did not recognize: a stylized creature, half-beast, pierced through with a single line. The doors stood open. Souls came and went through them in a steady stream, some clearly seasoned hunters, armored and confident, glowing bright and stable; others, like Bruce and his group, newer and dimmer, looking around with the same uncertainty.
Inside, the Guild was busy and loud in the way a working place is loud. The ground floor was a wide hall with a high ceiling. Along one wall ran a long counter where clerks, awakened souls in green sashes, handled a constant flow of hunters: taking in goods, paying out points, posting and removing contracts from a great board that covered most of another wall. The contract board was thick with notices, layers of them, pale slips of soul-light pinned up in rows. Hunters clustered in front of it, reading, arguing, choosing.
The smell of the place hit Bruce as soon as they walked in, that same rich savory smell from the carriage food, drifting from somewhere deeper in the building. Theron’s stomach, if a soul-body could be said to have a stomach, made a sound. Kael laughed at him.
They made their way to the counter. There was a short line. They joined it.
When they reached the front, the clerk, a brisk older soul with a green sash and the unimpressed eyes of someone who processed dozens of newcomers a day, looked the three of them over.
"New?" she asked.
"Yes new," Bruce confirmed. "We want to register as hunters."
"Off a carriage?"
"This morning. Or, whenever it was." Time was still slippery to him.
"Mm." She reached under the counter and produced three pale slips of soul-light, sliding them across. "Registration’s simple. First you get tested, rank and talent class, on the orb in the testing alcove there." She nodded toward an alcove off to the side, where a large softly glowing sphere sat on a stone pedestal. "Then you come back here, the test results get written to your record, you pay the registration fee, which for newcomers off a carriage is waived, before you ask, the Guild knows you’ve got nothing, and you’re certified. After that you can take contracts. Understood?"
"Understood," Bruce said.
"Testing first. Go."
They went to the alcove.
A second clerk waited there, a younger soul, bored-looking, leaning against the pedestal that held the glowing orb. He straightened slightly when the three of them approached.
"Hand on the orb," he said. "One at a time. It reads two things. Your soul rank, that’s how strong your soul is, F up to whatever, doesn’t matter, everybody off a carriage is F. And your soul talent class, that’s how good your talent is, also graded F up to SSS. The orb shows both. Takes a second. Doesn’t hurt." He gestured. "Who’s first?"
Theron, surprisingly, stepped up first. Bruce suspected the hunger had made him impatient.
Theron put his hand flat on the orb.
The orb pulsed. A soft light ran up from where his palm touched it, spreading through the whole sphere, and then numbers and letters formed in the air above it, clean and clear for the clerk to read.
Soul Rank: F.
The clerk nodded. Expected.
Soul Talent Class: SSS.
The clerk’s eyebrows went up.
He looked at Theron, the young, thin, nervous former tax clerk with the wrenched arm and the dim, cracked glow, with new attention. SSS was the top grade. An SSS talent class on a soul fresh off a carriage was not common. The clerk did not make a fuss about it, but he made a small note on his slip, and he looked at Theron a beat longer than he had before.
"Soul reaper talent, right?" he asked.
Theron blinked. "How did you,"
"Orb gives me a sense of it. Don’t worry about it. Your talent is actually very closely related to the talent of harvesters, next time you meet them you can take guudance from them... Next."
Theron stepped back, a little dazed, clearly not having known his own talent was rated so highly. Bruce filed that away. Theron’s talent is SSS class. It fit, somehow, with the way Kael had frowned about it on the carriage. There was something to Theron’s talent that the demon found significant, and now the Guild’s orb agreed.
Kael went next.
He put his hand on the orb with the easy confidence of a man who already knew what it was going to say. The orb pulsed. The light ran up. The display formed.
Soul Rank: F.
Soul Talent Class: SSS.
The clerk’s eyebrows went up again, higher this time. Two SSS talents in a row, from the same carriage group. He looked at Kael, at the horns, at the broad build, at the grin already spreading across the demon’s face.
"Pleased with myself," Kael announced, to no one in particular. "As I should be."
"Demon," the clerk said, not unkindly. "Lesser branch?"
"You wound me. Lesser." Kael placed a hand over his chest. "We prefer select."
The clerk almost smiled. He made his note. "Fire talent. Strong one. Next."
Kael stepped back, grinning at Bruce. "Your turn, Writer. Try not to embarrass yourself in front of two SSS souls."
Bruce stepped up to the orb.
He put his hand flat on its surface.
The orb pulsed, the same as before, light running up from his palm, spreading through the sphere. The display began to form in the air above it.
Soul Rank:
The letters flickered. They did not settle. Where Theron’s and Kael’s ranks had appeared cleanly as F, Bruce’s wavered, the display trying to read his soul rank and failing to land on a value, the way a scale flickers when it cannot find a stable weight. After a moment it produced, faintly:
Soul Rank: ???
Question marks. Unreadable. The same answer Kael had failed to give him, the same answer the soul-point window had given him at the gate. His soul rank could not be read.
The clerk frowned slightly at that, but did not seem alarmed. "Happens sometimes with Ascendants," he muttered, more to himself than to Bruce. "Body’s alive in another realm. Throws the rank read off. We’ll log it as unread, you’ll get a normal rank once you’ve settled in."