Nyra’s voice cut through his spiral like a thrown dagger. “Alright, rookie. You’re not getting out of prep duty that easily.”
Jace looked up, already bracing himself. “Prep duty?”
She gestured to the contracts. “You’ve got no coin, no gear, and no idea what you're walking into tomorrow. First things first—we need to sell your loot and fix that.”
Sylas leaned in conspiratorially. “Preferably before someone mugs you for that sad excuse of a coin pouch.”
“I don’t even have a coin pouch,” Jace muttered.
“Exactly,” Sylas said, delighted.
Nyra rolled her eyes and started toward the main hall. “Come on. We're not leaving until dawn. That gives us the rest of today to sell what we’ve got, gear up, and maybe teach you how not to die before lunch.”
Torak fell into step behind her. “Preparation increases survival rates by 67 percent.”
Patch rumbled. “Confirmed.”
Jace sighed and followed, tucking the contracts into his belt like they weren’t just formal death threats. “You people are way too excited about this.”
“Better than crying,” Nyra said, flashing him a grin. “Now come on. Let’s turn your junk into something that won’t get you killed.”
The Guild's main hall thrummed with life. Even this early, it was packed with adventurers of every shape and disposition. Shouts echoed off vaulted ceilings as contract disputes flared beside bragging rights exchanged over clinking mugs. The air buzzed with the sharp tang of sweat and iron, parchment dust, and torched pitch.
Jace paused near the entrance, eyes sweeping the chaos with that lingering mix of awe and slight existential dread. "Do all these people live here? Or are they just... always loud?"
Nyra glanced back with a grin. "Get used to it. This place never sleeps."
She jerked her chin toward the stairwell. "We’re selling our loot here. It’s faster. We might not get premium rates as Bronze rank nobodies, but it beats sniffing out back-alley merchants who think a glowing rat tail is some kind of divine relic."
Jace snorted, rubbing his chin. "Way better than trying to haggle with some sweaty dude who smells like expired stew and tells you the rusty dagger you found belonged to a dragon-slaying king."
Sylas yawned like she hadn’t just slept in a proper bed for once. "And for Tin-rank peasants like us? That stew guy is our economy."
Torak gave a thoughtful chitter, the clicking of his mandibles rhythmic. "Volume over value. Complete more contracts. Gain more coin. Ascend ranks."
Patch rumbled in agreement, his glowing engravings pulsing faintly like a heartbeat. "Maximize throughput."
Jace raised a brow at the squad of weirdos he'd somehow become attached to. "So what you're telling me is... we’re broke, but ambitious?"
"You," Sylas said, patting his shoulder with mock sympathy, "are adorable."
After a brief exchange with one of the front clerks, they were directed to the second floor. Jace followed the team up a winding staircase, each footstep adding to the low hum of tension in his bones. The moment they stepped into the crafting hall, he felt the temperature shift.
Warmth rolled over him like a forge's breath—thick with the scent of burning metal, heated leather, and ancient wood polished by centuries of effort. The space was massive, a cathedral to craftsmanship.
The ringing clash of hammers on steel set the rhythm. Sparks flew in bursts, cast from blacksmiths shaping molten metal with the fervor of a religious rite. The air shimmered in waves near the forges, every strike sending vibrations through the stone floors and up Jace’s legs.
To the left, a dozen blacksmiths toiled with the intensity of gods forging worlds. One of them lifted a newly forged blade, still glowing red, and plunged it into oil—a hiss and a plume of smoke erupting like a warning shot.
Jace found himself slowing, pulled toward the spectacle. He didn’t know much about smithing, but it was mesmerizing.
Leatherworkers claimed the next sector, hunched over thick hides and exotic materials laid out on wooden tables like offerings. The scent of beeswax, fur, and oil teased his nostrils. Armor pieces were sewn with care and confidence, some laced with enchantments, others built for brute survival.
To the right, chaos reigned. The alchemical district was a mad circus of glowing potions, hissed debates, and controlled detonations. Shelves overflowed with vials in every hue imaginable—some gently swirling as if stirred by an unseen hand, others bubbling ominously.
One gnome, barely taller than his table, stood behind a flask of purple liquid that had just started vibrating.
Pop!
A cloud of bright pink smoke puffed out with a sound like a cork snapping. The gnome waved at it dismissively. "Hmm. Could explode. Probably won’t."
Jace didn’t wait to find out which it would be. He veered so hard to the left that he nearly walked into a runesmith.
The runesmith, hunched over a suit of chainmail, etched glowing glyphs with the precision of a surgeon and the language of someone who’d lost an argument with their tools. Every few seconds, the armor pulsed blue, casting shifting shadows across the floor.
Jace couldn’t stop staring. His gamer brain was losing it. The whole place felt like an endgame crafting hub from a fantasy RPG—except it smelled like scorched copper and wet dog, and nothing came with a tutorial.
"Stop drooling," Nyra said, elbowing him lightly.
He wiped his mouth just in case. "Was not."
She chuckled. "You don’t even get access to half this stuff until Silver."
"One day," he whispered, reverent.
The clerk guiding them stopped in front of a set of six reinforced doors, each ringed with faint magical glyphs.
"These rooms are private. Warded, soundproofed, fire-resistant. So you can sell your loot without someone trying to rob you before lunch."
Jace arched his brow. "That’s a thing?"
The clerk gave him a look. "Some adventurers are better at stealing loot than earning it."
Noted.
She gestured to the first door. "An appraiser will be with you shortly. Place your items on the table. And don’t touch anything that glows unless you want to lose a finger."
Jace opened his mouth, then thought better of it.
At another workstation, a runesmith was delicately etching glowing inscriptions onto a suit of chainmail, his expression tight with focus. His hand moved like a surgeon’s—controlled, exact—each stroke of the rune-engraver igniting brilliant blue light that pulsed across the armor’s surface. Occasionally, the glow flickered violently, and he’d mutter something under his breath, adjusting his angle or pressure with surgical precision.
The air in this corner of the hall buzzed—not just with noise, but with raw magical energy. Jace could feel it on his skin like static, an invisible current that raised the fine hairs on the back of his neck. The scent here was different, too—less smoke and sweat, more ozone and scorched copper. Every breath came tinged with the faint tingle of magic.
Jace slowed his pace, drawn in by the sight. Runes—actual magical runes—being carved into armor by hand. His eyes widened as he watched the process, hypnotized.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
This place is incredible, he thought, almost reverent. I’ve seen stuff like this in games, in anime, in books—but now I’m seeing it for real. No screen. No pixels. This is actual magical craftsmanship. This is real.
A grin tugged at the corner of his mouth.
“Stop drooling,” Nyra teased, nudging him with her elbow.
Jace wiped at his mouth on instinct, then narrowed his eyes when he realized she was messing with him. “I wasn’t drooling,” he muttered, trying not to smile.
Nyra just grinned wider. “Like I said, rookie—you gotta be Silver rank before they let you anywhere near this stuff.”
Jace sighed theatrically. “A man can dream.”
The clerk leading them gestured for the group to follow her deeper into the crafting hall. They passed even more workstations—scroll-scribes bent over glowing parchment, jewelers embedding mana-infused stones into rings, a potion mixer whose concoction briefly turned a table pink—and finally reached a set of six heavy wooden doors in the back wall.
“All of these are warded,” she explained, placing a palm against one door. A soft shimmer pulsed over the surface like ripples in water. “That way, no one overhears what you’re selling and gets any ideas.”
Jace raised a brow. “People seriously rob adventurers in their own Guild?”
The clerk smirked. “You’d be surprised. Some people are better at stealing loot than earning it.”
Jace couldn’t argue with that. He nodded slowly and filed the information away.
She motioned toward the first room, stepping aside. “An appraiser will be with you shortly. Go ahead and place your loot on the table.”
Nyra clapped her hands together. “Alright, let’s offload this crap.”
The room inside was small but clean—wood-paneled walls, a long rectangular table, a few chairs, and a single magical lantern hanging from the ceiling, casting a warm, golden glow. The scent of parchment and aged wood mixed with the faintest trace of lavender, as if someone had tried—poorly—to mask the smell of sweaty adventurers.
Jace looked around with a mix of awe and disbelief. This was it. A legit loot appraisal room inside a real-life adventurer’s guild. The kind of thing he’d clicked through in a game menu a thousand times… now he was walking into it with armfuls of loot.
And speaking of loot—
The group began unloading their haul, placing various weapons, bits of armor, and rare crafting materials onto the table.
Jace… kept going.
And going.
And then some more.
His pile quickly became a small mountain. And then it began to spill over onto the floor.
Everyone stared.
Sylas slowly turned to him. “…Jace.”
“Yeah?” he said innocently.
She crossed her arms. “Be honest. Are you a loot goblin?”
Jace glanced at the absurd pile of items in front of him, half of which he didn’t even remember grabbing. He winced, but didn’t argue. There were worse things to be called. Like dead.
“…I just didn’t want to leave anything valuable behind,” he admitted sheepishly.
Nyra groaned. “Seriously—how big is your pouch?”
Jace scratched the back of his neck. “Uh… ten by ten by ten?”
Dead silence.
Then—
"WHAT?!" Sylas shouted, nearly knocking over a chair.
Nyra’s ears twitched in disbelief. “Ours barely holds two cubic feet!”
Even Torak’s mandibles clacked audibly. “Five times the standard capacity. Highly efficient.”
Sylas narrowed her eyes. “I feel personally attacked.”
Nyra bumped Jace with her hip. “Guess we need to find ourselves a pack-wark.”
Jace blinked. “A… what now?”
Nyra grinned. “Big golden bird. Fluffy feathers, six feet tall, fast as hell. Strong enough to carry a full cart of loot.”
Jace’s brain short-circuited. That… sounds a lot like a certain avian he knew very well.
He filed that information away for later—mentally stamping it with a goblin-shaped label and reluctantly accepting the new nickname.
Sylas exhaled dramatically, tossing her hands in the air. “Well. At least now we know. Jace is an absolute loot goblin.”
Jace gave a noncommittal shrug. “Goblins live longer than heroes.”
Not long after they’d finished unloading their absurd piles of loot, the door creaked open again—and in stepped a man who looked like he could wrestle a forge and win.
Harkin.
The Guild’s senior appraiser. Built like a dwarven vault door, wrapped in muscle and cynicism. His dark apron was stained from years of soot, ash, and likely a few minor explosions. Scars trailed up his thick forearms, and a pair of spectacles sat precariously on the bridge of his nose—comically delicate compared to the rest of him.
Nyra gave a smug grin. “Harkin.”
He grunted back, a noise so deep it might’ve registered on the seismic scale.
Then he saw it.
Jace watched the exact moment the man’s soul tried to flee his body. Harkin’s eyes locked onto the pile—his pile—and the spark behind those spectacles died a little.
With the sort of exasperated slowness usually reserved for dramatic exits and dads leaving the room after a bad joke, Harkin turned on his heel… and left without saying a word.
Jace blinked. “Did I just… break him?”
Nyra covered her mouth, shaking from the effort of holding back laughter. Sylas didn’t even try—she was wheezing into the crook of her elbow.
“Overwhelming inventory detected,” Patch noted helpfully.
“Logical response,” Torak added, ever the tactician.
Five minutes later, Harkin returned with backup.
Two assistants, no older than twenty, shuffled in behind him carrying clipboards and the thousand-yard stare of interns who’d seen too much. They looked at Jace’s loot mountain with silent horror, visibly questioning every life choice that brought them here. The taller one looked like he’d aged three years just looking at the loot pile.
Harkin crossed his arms. “Alright. Let’s get this over with.”
What followed could only be described as a loot audit.
For the next hour, the room became a whirlwind of parchment rustle, grunted appraisals, and the occasional hissed curse whenever someone poked themselves on an errant bone shard. Harkin’s patience frayed more with every rusted dagger, moldy cloak, or broken tooth that surfaced.
At one point, he held up a dagger so rusty it looked fossilized. “Tell me you have something better than this.”
Jace raised both eyebrows. “Oh, definitely. I’ve got Wyvern bones, Horror remains, a behemoth fang… I swear I didn’t just rob a skeleton closet.”
Harkin’s eye twitched. But at least he stopped muttering under his breath.
Sylas leaned against the table. “That’s just Jace. If it sparkles, glows, or smells like death, he’s pocketing it.”
“Goblins,” Nyra agreed cheerfully, arms crossed. “But tall. And prettier.”
Jace rolled his eyes but didn’t argue.
Patch chimed in, “Hoarding tendencies are statistically beneficial in survival scenarios.”
Torak nodded. “Tactical advantage. High carry capacity is ideal.”
Harkin ignored them all and kept sorting, pulling out anything of value with the efficiency of a man long past the point of being impressed. His assistants looked like they were one magical pop quiz away from a mental breakdown.
Eventually, the junk pile was hauled away, and what remained gleamed—potions, enchanted shards, alchemical components, rare monster parts. It was more than respectable.
Harkin finally looked up, rubbing his temples. “Not bad,” he admitted. “Buried under six layers of trash, but not bad.”
Jace gave a tired smile. “Hey, treasure and trash are just cousins that need some space.”
“Next time, maybe don’t bring the entire family for a reunion,” Harkin muttered.
They laughed, and for a moment, the tension eased.
Then, the final tally appeared on the assistant’s ledger.
And Jace stared at the number.
His jaw dropped. The number glared back at him like it couldn’t believe it either.
His share alone would cover armor upgrades, a small arsenal of potions, and probably dinner that didn’t involve questionable meat on a stick.
Now, he didn’t feel poor. He felt like a true adventurer.
Before the group could celebrate, Harkin handed Jace a folded contract slip. “Be ready. You’ll need all this coin tomorrow.”
Jace accepted it, feeling the weight of it settle in his hand. Not just coin, but responsibility.
Tomorrow wasn’t going to be easy.
Three contracts. One day. No level-ups. No second chances.
And if Garrik was testing all of them… then the dungeon wasn’t going to be a stroll.
He glanced at Nyra, who gave him a confident nod. At Sylas, already twirling a dagger. Torak’s unreadable eyes. Patch’s calm resolve.
By the time everything was finally sorted, appraised, and categorized—down to the last bent arrowhead—the final tally was in.
Nyra, Sylas, Torak, and Patch each received 10 silver and 5 copper.
Jace?
27 silver and 9 copper.
He stared at the hefty little pouch dropped into his palm, the satisfying weight of it pressing into his fingers like confirmation that, yes, he was finally not broke.
He raised an eyebrow and looked around at the others, smug creeping into his grin like a cat discovering sunlight.
Patch inclined his head, runes pulsing faintly. “Efficient looting techniques.”
Sylas groaned, dramatically tossing her arms into the air. “You’re never going to let this go, are you?”
Jace smirked. “I’m just saying… maybe I start offering inventory management classes. The first one’s free. For friends.”
Nyra chuckled, her tail flicking. “Or we start charging you a carrying tax.”
Jace clutched his pouch protectively to his chest like a goblin guarding its hoard. “Let’s not say things we can’t take back.”
Laughter bounced around the room, but it faded quickly when Harkin, still at the table, paused with one last item in his thick, scarred hands.
The Charm of Harmony.
A thin, slightly curved piece of crystal-bound metal no longer than Jace’s pinky. Runes coiled around it like vines etched in silver, each pulse of light barely perceptible—but steady, rhythmic. Like a heartbeat.
Harkin turned it over in his hand, his brows knitting together. “This one’s… strange,” he muttered, voice quieter than before.
The room followed suit.
Jace felt it again—that faint, impossible pull. Not a sound, not a voice… just a presence. Gentle. Faint. Like a memory brushing fingertips along the back of his mind. Like it recognized him.
Like it was waiting.
Harkin ran a thumb over the runes. “No value I can place on this,” he finally said. “Could be enchanted. Could be cursed. It could just be old. If you want, I can have it sent to the enchanters or scholars, see if anyone can make sense of it.”
Jace didn’t answer immediately. His fingers closed around the charm before he even realized it, the cool surface familiar now.
He should’ve handed it over.
But instead, he tucked it back into his pouch.
“…No,” he said softly. “I’ll hold onto it.”
Harkin shrugged, but didn’t argue. “Suit yourself.”
The moment passed. Receipts were written, notes were logged, and they were handed thick envelopes of parchment stamped with the Guild’s seal.
“Take these downstairs,” Harkin instructed, his voice all business again. “They’ll handle your coin at the main desk.”
As the group filed out of the room, coin pouches heavier and arms lighter, Jace’s hand lingered near the pocket where the charm rested.
It was pulsing now.
Not visibly. Not audibly.
Just… present.
Warm and soft. Like it knew him.
Like it was waiting for something.
He exhaled through his nose, keeping pace with the others, not saying a word.
Something was coming. And deep down, Jace knew:
The charm wasn’t just loot.
three metric tons of rusted junk, wyvern knuckle-bones, and what I pray was once a potion ingredient onto my table.
nothing—prepared me for Jace’s loot pile. It was like watching someone vomit a dungeon into my office.
“Maybe culinary school?”
But there’s one thing in that pile I haven’t stopped thinking about.
That weird charm.
sang. Not out loud—gods help us—but… I felt it. In the runes. Like it was humming just under the surface. And I don’t like things I can’t identify. Not anymore.
—Harkin
(Senior Appraiser, Beard Enthusiast, and Now Considering Therapy)
Intern Appraiser Debrief Poll: So… what did we think of Jace’s “loot” was the worst?
