"That's actually good news." Marcus leaned back slightly. "We register and participate first thing tomorrow."
"But first."He remembered he was forgetting something important.
He opened the system mentally while Sable and Liz debated food options across the table.
The moment he had been building toward for a week sat right there in the corner of his vision, clean and ready.
[CURRENCY: 508 COINS]
He opened the shop.
[SHORT SWORD — 500 COINS]
He clicked the details icon.
[SHORT SWORD — TIER C]
[PURCHASE PRICE: 500 COINS]
Tier: C
Type: One handed short sword
Weight: Balanced. Sits naturally in the dominant hand.
Description: A well crafted short sword built for fighters who know where to place a blade rather than those who rely on force alone. The edge holds longer than standard iron, the balance favors speed over power, and the faint luminescence at the tip indicates a minor enchantment applied during forging. Not a weapon that ends wars. But in the right hands it ends the right fights.
Marcus read it once.
Atleast this will be better than my present rusted deceased one.
He bought it.
The sword materialized in his inventory with a soft chime and a new empty field appeared beside the registration.
[WEAPON NAME: UNREGISTERED]
He looked at the field for a moment.
Dagon.
He typed it mentally and the system responded immediately.
[NEW WEAPON REGISTERED: DAGON]
Now to test this bad boy tomorrow.
"Marcus." Liz's voice pulled him back to the table.
"We were just talking about food. Tacos and cheese or chicken nuggets."
He closed the system window.
"Anything but fish," he replied.
******
The guild hall the next morning looked nothing like it did on a regular day.
Every table was occupied. People stood along the walls, sat on windowsills, crowded the entrance in groups that kept getting told to move and kept not moving. The notice boards had been cleared of contracts entirely and replaced with assessment information, brackets, room assignments, registration windows. The air had the particular charge of a room full of people who all wanted the same thing and understood that not all of them were going to get it.
The reason was simple and everyone present understood it.
Tier upgrades through the assessment were not just about better contracts. High ranking guilds became visible to government officials, regional administrators, military coalition representatives.
The kind of work that came from those connections paid four times what even the highest S tier guild contract offered. For a registered guild willing to put in the work there was genuine life changing money sitting on the other side of a good assessment performance.
Nobody was going to miss this.
Different bystanders making sorts of arguments and noises.
"Move, I was here first!"
"Your foot was here. The rest of you wasn't."
"That's not how space works!"
A clerk near the registration desk had produced a handheld speaker and was using it with the weary authority of someone who had done crowd management before and had no patience for it.
"Attention." Her voice cut through the noise with the practiced projection of someone who had learned that volume alone wasn't enough and you needed certainty behind it.
"The guild ranking assessment is a system event open to all registered guilds. Combat challenges are generated by high tier magic constructs designed to mimic real creature behavior at escalating difficulty. Performance is assessed against your guild's existing record. Registration closes in twenty minutes."
Marcus and Liz moved toward the registration window.
They found Renn first.
He was standing near the left wall with four other people behind him, all of them in matched gear with the particular energy of a group that had been operating together long enough to have an identity.
He spotted Marcus and Liz and his face did the thing it did when he found something genuinely amusing.
"Finally." He spread his arms. "Look who showed up. At least you have a guild now Marcus. Not a lost dog wandering around for scraps anymore."
"Atleast you found a pack willing to tolerate you," Marcus said. "I was starting to worry."
Renn let out a laugh that was only partially genuine and stepped forward to clap Marcus on the shoulder.
"Watch your mouth." His voice dropped to something theatrical. "Wouldn't want to disgrace you in front of your woman."
Marcus looked at the hand on his shoulder.
The four guild members behind Renn straightened with the collective energy of people who had just heard their guild leader spoken to in a tone they had opinions about.
"You're talking to the mighty Renn like—"
Marcus reached up and lifted Renn's hand off his shoulder with two fingers, the particular patience of someone removing something mildly inconvenient.
"I can se…"
Before he completed he's statement Liz's hand closed around his arm.
"We're running late." She was already pulling him sideways toward the registration window, her voice carrying the bright specific tone she used when she was preventing something. "Bye Renn. Good luck in there."
Renn watched them go with the expression of someone who had not finished the conversation but had decided it could wait.
"Your woman has good timing!" he called after them.
Marcus said nothing and let himself be pulled to the window.
The sealed assessment chamber was exactly that. Sealed. The door behind them closed with the particular finality of a system event locking into place and the space inside was larger than the exterior suggested, stone walls, high ceiling, the floor marked with a boundary circle that glowed faint blue at the edges.
No windows. No audience. Just the two of them and whatever the system decided to send.
[GUILD ASSESSMENT: THE RAVAGERS]
[PERFORMANCE DATA LOADED]
[CALIBRATING DIFFICULTY: TIER F,E AND D CONTRACTS COMPLETION CONFIRMED. ]
[PERFORMANCE BASELINE: ABOVE STANDARD FOR NEW REGISTRATION.]
[ASSESSMENT WILL BEGIN ABOVE STANDARD BASELINE.]
[WAVE 1: INITIATING]
Three constructs materialized from the floor, Tier 2 Brutes built from condensed magic energy, the detail on them precise enough that the joint lines in the plating were exactly where they should be. They moved like the real thing. They hit like the real thing.
Marcus materialized Dagon from empty air.
"Nice, Won't have to worry about forgetting my weapons at home".
The balance was immediately different from everything he had been using. The sword sat in his hand like it was made exactly for him.
"The system sure knows my stuff", he though glamorously as he tightened his grip.
"Here we go".
He dashed left while Liz took the right.