Koneu was a city that sparkled—not with magic, but with the kind of polished beauty that screamed, "Look! Civilization!" Towering white-stone buildings curved with elegance, their pointed rooftops glittering with enchanted tiles that shimmered in the daylight. Floating lanterns drifted lazily in the air like they had nowhere better to be, and the streets bustled with a mix of humans, beastfolk, elves, and a dozen other fantasy races that Cael definitely couldn't name without a bestiary.
At the heart of it all stood the Adventurer's Guild: a massive, castle-like structure with archways wide enough for a dragon to comfortably stroll through. It was an architectural contradiction—part medieval fortress, part cozy tavern, and part aggressively cheerful reception area where the true battle awaited.
Paperwork.
Five confused otherworlders stared blankly at the stack of parchment in front of them.
"This… this is worse than slimes," Renna whispered, clutching her quill like it might stab her back.
"I haven't filled out this many forms since my internship," Lys muttered, already halfway through page three of twelve.
Cael narrowed his eyes at the form titled 'Adventurer Aptitude Identification and Classification Request Form 3-A.' "Why are there questions about my soul resonance? What if I say the wrong thing and they smite me?"
"They wouldn't smite you over paperwork," Alaric said. "Probably."
Cael glared at the question: "On a scale of one to 'dragon sneeze,' how volatile is your magic output?"
"I don't know, man! I haven't even sneezed since we got here!"
Thorne was leaning back in his chair, arms crossed behind his head, not having touched his form. "They'll recognize my greatness with or without me checking boxes."
Lys didn't even look up. "Then your greatness can wait in line while the rest of us become legally allowed to take beginner quests."
"I refuse to be rank E," Thorne muttered.
"You haven't written your name yet," Cael snapped, now sweating over the 'emergency contact' section. "Who even is our emergency contact? The priest? God?!"
Renna's form was covered in tiny doodles of angry stick people and swords stabbing words like "classification" and "guild rules."
Alaric, meanwhile, had filled out his form with the neatness of someone who took group projects very seriously. "I think I got it! Oh wait—do we sign with our Earth name or our hero name? Because I'm going with Alaric the Dawnslicer from now on."
"You're not even a morning person," Renna grumbled.
Eventually, a stern-looking elf receptionist walked over and stared at their collective disaster of papers. She blinked once, long and slow, then sighed.
"I'll… process these," she said, like she was announcing her own funeral.
As she left, Cael dropped his quill like it had personally betrayed him. "We've survived our first real threat in this world."
"No," Lys said, standing up with a stretch. "We survived the tutorial. The real threat is probably going to breathe fire."
"Or breathe bureaucracy," Cael muttered. "I'm not sure which is worse."
"Let's just hope we don't get sent back here every time we slay a slime," Renna said.
"Or accidentally break the floor again," Alaric added with a sheepish smile.
Thorne smirked. "Speak for yourselves. I'm already imagining the poster they'll make of me—'Thorne: Hero, Heartbreaker, Rank-S'."
A silence followed.
Then Cael leaned toward Lys and whispered, "If he actually gets Rank-S, I'm starting a conspiracy board."
"You already have one," Lys replied.
"Not about this world. Yet."
With registration out of the way—more or less—the group took their first step as adventurers.
Straight into whatever weird, magical nonsense awaited them next.
The elf receptionist returned like a ghost of bureaucracy past—tall, elegant, and holding a neat stack of papers that practically judged the group as she approached. Her expression was so neutral it circled all the way back to deeply disappointed.
"Four of your registrations have been approved," she announced with a calm, monotone voice. "One has… not."
Everyone slowly turned to Thorne, who was still leaning smugly in his chair, arms behind his head like a human statue of arrogance.
Thorne blinked. "What?"
The elf gently placed a single paper in front of him, tapping a line with one manicured finger. "You filled out the 'Name' field with: 'Thorne, God Amongst Men, Slayer of Bosses, Champion of Ranked PvP.' That is not a legal name."
"But it's TRUE."
"And," she continued, undeterred, "under 'Magic Affinity,' you wrote: 'yes.' Just yes. That's not a category. It's a confirmation of existence."
"It is a yes! I definitely have magic affinity."
"Magic school?"
"Cool."
The elf closed her eyes. A vein might have twitched.
Cael whispered to Lys, "Is she going to cast a silence spell or just go straight to murder?"
"I'm placing bets on ice magic," Lys whispered back.
Alaric snorted. "Wait, what did he put for emergency contact?"
Renna leaned over and read aloud, "'My adoring fans.'"
"Oh my God, Thorne," Cael muttered, slapping his face.
"You're welcome," Thorne said, entirely unrepentant.
"It's going to take me two hours to redo your form," the elf said, with the weight of a thousand admin tasks on her shoulders. "Please sit still. Don't talk to anyone. Don't breathe weirdly."
Then she walked off with Thorne's mangled paperwork like it was a cursed object that needed cleansing.
Cael threw his hands up. "We're going to lose daylight and probably miss the slime-swatting quest because Mr. PvP here couldn't just write his real name."
"My name is Thorne. All the rest is just extra detail!"
"You filled out your height as 'taller than lesser mortals.'"
"I am!"
Lys, already pulling out a book she had borrowed from the church library, sighed and settled in a chair. "We might as well relax. Bureaucracy is the true boss battle."
Alaric had wandered off to examine a nearby sword display labeled 'Not for Sale.'
Renna raided the snack table, muttering something about emotional support apples.
Cael paced. "Okay. Okay, this is fine. Just two more hours. It's not like anything horrible is going to happen because we delayed a day, right?"
A loud crash came from the hallway.
Alaric's voice echoed: "I SWEAR I didn't touch it that hard!"
Cael froze. "I take that back."
Thorne, still leaning back, grinned. "This party's going to make history."
"No," Cael muttered. "We're going to make wanted posters."
And thus began their second delay in becoming official adventurers of Koneu.
About an hour and fifty-five minutes into the Thorne Registration Crisis™, the group was this close to freedom.
The elf receptionist returned again, her expression as blank as a loading screen, holding a revised paper—Thorne's. It was pristine, freshly inked, and most importantly: legible.
"Please verify the information and sign," she said, presenting it like it was some ancient relic.
Thorne glanced at it, smirked, and nodded. "Looks good."
He grabbed the quill and dramatically flourished his signature at the bottom.
It was unreadable. It looked like a chicken had tried to write in cursive mid-tornado.
The elf blinked. "No."
"What?"
"You cannot symbolically sign the name 'Thorne.' This must be written clearly."
"But that is my signature!"
"It resembles a magical curse in progress."
"I've literally signed that way since high school!"
"I'm beginning to understand why this took so long," Cael mumbled, clenching the edges of his chair.
Lys leaned over to Renna. "He's going to snap."
"I already snapped twenty minutes ago," Cael hissed from the side, pointing to the ceiling. "The chandelier above the guild desk has exactly 47 individual candles, and one of them is out. Do you know what that means? I don't. And that terrifies me."
Meanwhile, Thorne was arguing with the elf like he was on trial for artistic freedom.
"You're oppressing my expression."
"You are delaying guild registration protocol."
"I AM A WARRIOR OF TRUTH."
"You are wasting my lunch break."
In the background, Alaric had discovered a bulletin board full of beginner quests and was reading them aloud.
"'Retrieve a lost cat.' 'Clean sewer pipes.' 'Catch ten slimes.'" He paused. "Wow, being a hero sounds suspiciously like being a janitor."
"I wanted to be a vet," Lys muttered.
Renna sat cross-legged on the floor chewing an apple like it was popcorn. "This is better than the isekai shows I watch."
Eventually, after three more signature attempts, one of which included a tiny sketch of Thorne himself giving a thumbs-up, the elf forged the signature herself with a deadpan "I'll allow it."
"Welcome to the Adventurer's Guild, Thorne," she said without emotion, as if saying it one more time would cause her to dissolve into dust.
"We did it," Thorne grinned.
"We barely did it," Cael corrected. "We almost got kicked out of the building. Twice. I think one of the ceiling birds is still watching us."
"There are ceiling birds?" Lys asked, looking up.
"There aren't," Renna said.
"There might be," Cael insisted.
The elf clapped her hands once, summoning a small orb of glowing light. "Congratulations. All five of you are now registered as Bronze Rank adventurers in Koneu."
"Bronze?" Thorne looked offended. "Is that the best they've got?"
"It's the worst we've got," the elf replied.
Cael slumped over. "This is our legacy now."
And with that, the official journey of Overmorrowland's most questionable hero party had actually begun. Somehow. Against all odds. And paperwork.
Probably paperwork.
The group slowly gathered around the Adventurer's Guild quest board like it was a cursed menu in a fast-food restaurant where all the food was sadness.
Alaric had already plucked off the first slip. "Says here we're cleaning sewers."
Thorne froze.
"You mean, like… metaphorically?" he asked, hopeful.
"Nope," Lys replied, peeking over his shoulder. "Literal sewer. Gunk, slime, possibly rats with swords."
"Rats with swords? That sounds cooler than this quest," Thorne snapped.
"Technically, it's marked as a Level E quest," Cael added, eyeing the board. "That's one level below 'please water my cactus.'"
"Unbelievable," Thorne muttered, arms crossed, glaring at the board like it owed him money. "I was this close to winning an international PvP tournament. Top 3 on the leaderboard. Fame. Glory. Sponsors."
"And now you're sewer-boy number five," Renna grinned, clapping him on the back.
"Sewer hero," Lys corrected. "Let's respect the class."
"Is there a respectable way to scrub poop off dungeon bricks?" Thorne shot back.
The elf receptionist—who was absolutely not paid enough to deal with this—leaned from the counter with the enthusiasm of a dried raisin. "You're lucky it's a sewer and not a griffin's nest. Last week's rookies got eaten by a broom."
"A broom?" Alaric blinked. "Like… a sentient one?"
"No, just a really aggressive janitor."
There was a pause.
"…I'm in," Alaric said, placing the quest slip on the counter. "I like my enemies easily step-on-able."
Lys turned to Cael. "Should we expect magical diseases?"
"Oh absolutely," Cael replied. "At least seventeen. I can smell the tetanus already."
"Guys," Renna said cheerfully, "let's be real—if this world's following isekai logic, this quest is definitely going to end in some ridiculous twist. Like a secret boss, or ancient prophecy buried in poop."
"That better happen," Thorne muttered, dragging his spear along like a sulky janitor. "Because if I touch one slime and it's just a gooey sneeze-ball with teeth, I'm rage-quitting this fantasy dimension."
"You can't rage-quit reality," Cael murmured.
"You can if you believe hard enough."
And with that, Overmorrowland's most legendary heroes-to-be—armed with divine weapons, high expectations, and zero relevant skills—set out on their first ever quest.
Cleaning literal poop.
Before the group descended into the murky depths of Koneu's sewer system, they gathered just outside the Adventurer's Guild to prepare.
It was a spectacle.
"Alright," Alaric declared, standing tall, the afternoon sun glinting off his freshly polished sword. "Let us ready ourselves for battle."
"For poop," Cael reminded.
"For glory!" Alaric countered, dramatically tying a red bandana around his forehead like he was about to raid a demon fortress, not a city drainage system.
Lys had strapped her magical bow across her back with a look of determination—and several pouches full of what she confidently called "status-effect salves" but were actually just spices from the inn's kitchen. "If we encounter hostile bacteria, I'm ready."
Renna, wearing her long coat like a war general, had fingerless gloves and narrowed eyes. "This is our first step toward greatness. Many heroes start from the bottom."
She paused.
"…We're just starting a bit lower than that."
Cael stood at the edge of the group, muttering to himself as he checked and rechecked his floating sigil, which had yet to do anything remotely helpful. "What if the sewer gas is enchanted? What if the slime isn't just a monster but a sentient ecosystem? What if stepping on the wrong tile triggers an ancient flush trap that—"
"Cael," Lys said gently, placing a hand on his shoulder. "Breathe."
Cael nodded. "Right. Right. Just… keep your eyes peeled for anything glowing. Or blinking. Or pulsating. Or talking. Or if the walls start sweating."
Meanwhile, Thorne had gone full warlord.
He wore a makeshift cape fashioned from a velvet curtain he "borrowed" from the church. His divine spear rested across his shoulders like a king surveying his kingdom. Underneath, he had layered two leather chest plates—neither of which matched—and wore his sunglasses from the modern world.
"Why do you have sunglasses in a medieval world?" Renna asked.
"They came with me," Thorne replied smugly. "I'm not just a warrior. I'm an icon."
"You're gonna fog those up the moment we step in sewer steam," Cael muttered.
Thorne grinned. "Let them fog. That way the enemies can't read my eyes."
"…Enemies like rats."
"Epic rats."
They stopped before a rusted metal grate. The sewer entrance yawned open, emitting a foul mist that smelled like betrayal and damp regrets.
Alaric raised his sword. "Team Heroic Flush, move out!"
"I am not calling us that," Renna muttered as they descended into darkness.
But it was too late.
Team Heroic Flush was already knee-deep in their destiny.
And probably sludge.