The heavy, metallic scent of the guild hall was thick enough to taste. As Armen stepped deeper into the room, the conversations didn't stop, but they changed frequency. The air grew sharp with judgment. Adventurers in polished leather, mercenaries with scarred faces, and tamers with their small, exotic companions all turned to look at him. Their confusion was absolute and extreme. He was a walking skeleton, a malnourished beggar draped in nothing but rugged, dirt-stained rags that looked like they had been stripped from a shallow grave.
Armen felt the weight of their stares like physical blows. He quickly distanced himself from the main groups, keeping his head low and his shoulders hunched. He didn't want to agitate anyone; in a place like this, a single wrong look could lead to a fist in the face or a beast's teeth in his throat.
He drifted toward the far wall, where a massive wooden board stretched across the stone. It was covered in hundreds of pinned parchments. Armen scanned the lists, he is truly thankful that he could read the script. Whether it was a gift from the transmigration or a residual memory of the boy whose body he now inhabited, he understood every word.
The board was a chaotic map of the region's problems. Most of the listings were categorized by rank, with Rank F and Rank E making up the bulk of the board. Near the top, a prominent notice caught his eye: The rank of your quest must match the rank of your beast, or your beast must be of a higher rank than the quest.
Armen's eyes darted across the F-Rank section. The variety was staggering. One parchment called for the harvesting of a Rank F beast core with a steel element. Another requested a psychic element core. There were listings for magma, water, wind, and lightning. It seemed the guild acted as a massive clearinghouse for elemental components.
"Harvesting is the most straightforward," Armen whispered to himself, his eyes scanning further down.
Not all the quests were elemental. He saw a request for ten logs of iron-oak wood, a bounty for a man wanted for cattle rustling in a nearby village, and several escort missions for merchant caravans heading to the coastal cities.
He took a mental note. If he went out into the wild, killed a beast, and brought back its core, he could simply match it to an existing request. It was the perfect loophole for someone with no standing and no money.
He turned away from the board and approached a counter that happened to be empty. The clerk behind it was a middle aged man with thinning hair and a face that looked like it had been carved from a sour apple. As Armen approached, the man's expression shifted into one of blatant, undisguised annoyances.
"What do you want, boy?" the clerk asked, his voice flat. "The soup kitchen is three streets over near the temple. This is a place of business."
Armen swallowed his pride, trying to keep his voice steady. "I have a question about the harvest quests. If I happened to kill a plant element beast and get its core, then come back and see a quest requiring that specific core... can I complete the quest immediately?"
The clerk sighed, leaning back in his chair and tapping a quill against the desk. "Yes, obviously... If you have the materials the client wants, we take them, verify the quality, and pay you. It's a standard transaction, peasant."
Armen nodded, ignoring the insult. "And do I have to be registered with the guild to do that?"
The clerk's eyes narrowed, his annoyance growing more noticeable by the second. "Yes and no. Registration is only and a must for those who have a beast. The country needs to know how many people are walking around with living weapons, and we need to track the rank of those beasts for tax and security purposes. It's the law."
He leaned forward, his voice dropping an octave. "To register, you simply write your name, age, and sex on the ledger, and then provide a drop of blood every six months. The blood is for the tracking. If you ever commit a crime, the guild can detect your signature through a beast. Now, for the harvesting... if you aren't registered, we will still buy the cores, but you'll only receive eighty percent of the original reward. The other twenty percent goes to the guild's administrative tax for non-members... Are we done? I have actual hunters waiting."
Armen hesitated. He looked at the ledger on the desk, a heavy book bound in dark leather. A drop of blood. In a world of magic and soul-sucking beasts, giving his blood to a government organization felt like a death sentence. Especially since this body belonged to a criminal, a thief who was supposed to be dead. If they tracked his blood back to the boy on the wagon, he'd be executed before he could even summon his creature.
Around him, the atmosphere was souring. Other adventurers were starting to look at him like he was a waste of time, a desperate beggar clinging to a dream of gold. They didn't raise their hands against him, he looked too frail to even be worth the effort of a punch but their silent contempt was stifling.
"Thank you for the information," Armen said, backing away from the counter.
"Hmph. Don't let the door hit you on the way out," the clerk muttered, already turning his attention to a man in chainmail.
Armen turned and walked out of the building, the cool air of the plaza hitting his face. "Hunting cores is definitely the way," he muttered. "I can't risk that registration. Not yet, maybe only when I'm in another town. I need to explore what my beast can actually do and learn how this world works before I put my blood on any papers."
As he walked away from the guild, a sharp, agonizing cramp twisted his stomach. The hunger was no longer a dull ache; it was a screaming void. He hadn't eaten since he had "woken up," and the body of the boy was reaching its limit. He needed food, and he needed it now.
He didn't have a copper to his name, so the market was out of the question. He turned toward the massive stone walls that guarded the city. The guards at the gate barely looked at him as he shuffled past, likely assuming he was just another wretch going out to die in the woods or forage for scraps.
Once he cleared the gates, the landscape changed rapidly. The manicured roads gave way to overgrown paths, and soon he was standing at the edge of a dense, ancient forest. The trees were massive, their bark dark and mossy, their canopies blocking out much of the late afternoon sun.
Armen rushed into the shadows of the woods. "There has to be fruit," he gasped, his eyes searching the low-hanging branches. "Berries, nuts, anything."
He pushed through a thicket of thorns, ignoring the way they tore at his already ruined clothes. He was deep into the trees now, the silence of the forest broken only by his own frantic breathing and the distant, unsettling shrieks of creatures he couldn't see. He needed to eat fast, or he wouldn't even have the strength to command his beast.
Armen then rushed out of the town walls and guards and then to the woods to maybe get some fruits to eat.