The clerk on the left was a woman in her mid thirties with short cropped hair and the particular efficiency of someone who had processed enough registrations to do it in her sleep and had strong feelings about people who wasted her time.
She looked up when Marcus and Liz approached.
"New registration or contract submission," she asked in a polite tone.
"Registration," Marcus replied .
She pulled a form from the stack beside her without looking and placed it on the counter with a pen.
"Guild name, founding member names, class declarations, intended operational territory." She said it the way people said things they had said several hundred times. "Fill the top section. I'll process the rest."
Marcus picked up the pen.
Guild name.
He wrote it without hesitating.
THE RAVAGERS.
Liz read it upside down from across the counter.
"The Ravagers? What does that even mean."
"It means what it sounds like," Marcus said and kept writing.
"That's not an explanation."
"It wasn't meant to be."
He inputted Nil for the rest sections
The clerk processed the form with the mechanical precision of someone who had seen everything and was surprised by nothing.
Then she reached the member count.
Then the operational territory section where Marcus had written Nil.
Then the secondary objectives section. Nil.
Then the allied factions section. Nil.
She looked up slowly.
"You left everything blank except the name and the two members." Flat. The tone of someone trying to determine if they were being pranked.
"The important parts are filled." Marcus held her gaze without blinking.
She looked at me for few seconds and decided not to proceed with the interrogation
"Two members," she said.
"Two members," Marcus confirmed.
She looked at them. At the form. Back at them.
"Standard recommendation for operational guilds is a minimum of six members for basic contract eligibility. Below that and your access to certain contract tiers is restricted until the roster expands."
"Noted." Marcus didn't look up from the counter.
"You still want to proceed with two."
"Two is more than enough." The kind of answer that didn't invite a follow up.
The clerk looked at him for a moment with the expression of someone deciding whether to argue further and concluding it would not be worth the energy.
She stamped the form with a sound that meant the conversation was finished and reached under the counter for two small metal badges, the guild name pressed into each one.
"Tier F starting rank," she said, sliding them across.
"Contract access opens immediately. Tier upgrades are based on completed contract volume and coalition reputation scores. Next review at fifty completions." She produced a small card with the guild registration number on it. "Keep this. You'll need it for payment processing."
Marcus picked up his badge and looked at it for a moment. The Ravagers. Two words stamped into plain metal.
He pocketed it and turned toward the contract boards.
The boards were organized by tier, color coded from the bottom up. Red for Tier F at the bottom, orange for E, yellow for D, and the colors graduating upward through the spectrum toward the gold bordered Tier A and S postings at the top that most people in the room had no current business looking at.
Marcus and Liz stood in front of the Tier F section and read.
The contracts were straightforward. Creature culling in the forest sectors outside the city walls. Material collection from designated harvest zones. Patrol work on the eastern roads. Each one listed the target, the location, the required evidence of completion, and the payout.
Forty coins.
Fifty coins. The highest posting in the Tier F section sat at thirty coins, the bottom of the range, with the work required to earn it being straightforward enough that the low payout made sense.
Marcus looked at the numbers.
Tier F topped out at thirty. Tier E ran between thirty and sixty. Tier D between sixty and a hundred and twenty. The payouts climbed from there through C, B, and A before hitting the S tier postings at the top of the board that started at three thousand and had no visible ceiling.
He ran the math quickly. At Tier F rates he needed volume and he needed it consistently. The short sword in the system shop was five hundred coins. At thirty coins a contract that was nearly seventeen completions for one purchase.
Tier B is where this starts making sense, he thought. Everything below that is just building toward it.
He looked at the three Tier F contracts in his hand.
Somewhere to start.
Marcus was already doing the math.
"How many can we take simultaneously," he said.
A voice came from his left. "Three is the standard limit for Tier F guilds. More than that and the coalition considers it overextension and flags the registration."
Marcus turned.
A man was standing two boards down from them reading a Tier D posting with the focused attention of someone who already understood what he was looking at. Average height, neat clothing, nothing about him that immediately announced what he was or what he could do. He had the kind of face that was easy to overlook and the kind of eyes that suggested he knew exactly how useful that was.
"Corvan," he said "Merchant class", not extending a hand, just offering the name like a business card. "I've been registered here four months. I know how the system works."
"Merchant class?sounds new," . Something about the way he held himself made it obvious.
'Nothing is surprising about this world there's even a class for merchants'.Marcus clicked he's teeth.
"Logistics and intelligence specialization," Corvan said. "Which sounds less impressive than fighter or mage until you need to know which contracts are worth taking, which locations have changed conditions since the posting date, and which payout figures have hidden deductions in the small print." He looked at Marcus. "The Ravagers. I saw the registration go through ten minutes ago."
"News travels fast,"
"In a guild hall everything travels fast." He turned back to the board. "The forest sector contracts on the eastern wall are the most efficient for new guilds. Consistent creature density, clear completion conditions, straightforward evidence requirements. The material collection ones look better on paper but the harvest zones are currently over-farmed and you'll spend twice the time for the same payout."