Portal 07-D dropped them back into the transit wing a little after nine that evening. They walked to the Endless Tavern together, and it took them nearly fifteen minutes.
[MISSION COMPLETE: BURROW CLEARANCE — PORTAL 07-D]
[Total Reward: 3,600 Experience / 1,000 Gold]
[Distribution: Equal Split — 600 Experience / 166 Gold per member]
[Experience Gained: 600]
[Experience: 8,600 / 10,000 — Level 4]
[Gold Received: 166]
"That's it," Storm said, looking at his own panel. "That's it. I'm finished."
"You say that every day," Light said.
"No, listen to me. It’s Friday. Do you understand what I’m telling you? We closed out the week with a boss. I demand a restful weekend..."
"What are you gonna do this weekend?" Steel said.
"Good, because here's the plan. I sleep until noon. I eat something. Then I sleep again."
"What a wasteful weekend."
"That is what a weekend is for." Storm pointed at him with the hand that still had a glove on it. "And don't use that voice with me. You do the same thing. You sit in that chair and play video games for two days."
"Come over," Steel said. "We’ll play at my place."
Storm made a funny face. "No, thanks. I’m good."
“It’s been a long week,” Light said. “We deserve a rest.”
"I agree," Shadow agreed.
"Sit down before you fall down," Fire said. "You look terrible."
He did sit down, on the low stone lip that ran along the base of the Mission Board, and it was an enormous relief, and he tried not to let it show on his face.
[HP: 25 / 125]
He opened his inventory.
[Skarn Metal Feather Bundle (x9) — Rare — Shield Material]
The loot window in the ash had opened for the party, not for him, and the party had four things in it. He had asked for one.
Nine feathers, each one about as long as his forearm and grey as a knife left out in the rain. When he'd first picked one up in the burrow his shield had said something at him and he'd been too busy bleeding to read it.
He read it now.
[Adaptive Shield: compatible material detected]
[Skarn Metal Feather Bundle can be integrated as a new Shield Form.]
[Warning: integration consumes all 9 Skarn Metal Feathers. This process cannot be reversed.]
[Integrate? Y / N]
He closed the panel for now.
"What you looking at?" said Fire.
"Nothing. Inventory."
She looked at him a second longer than was comfortable, and then let it go.
A new panel appeared.
[Incoming transfer: 100 Gold — from Fire]
[Gold: 373]
"No, no, no," Boran said.
"It's already sent."
"Then take it back." His voice had gone up slightly and he could hear it going up. "Look — I don't need it. I didn't want a bigger cut. I wanted everyone to get the same. Equal split was fine by me."
"I know," Fire said. "That's exactly why I sent it."
"That doesn't make sense."
“It’s my share. I can do whatever I want with it.” She shrugged one shoulder. “And really, we couldn’t have done any of this without you.”
"That's the job."
"Sure," Fire said. "But I want to give you a fair share, not an equal one."
Boran didn’t have an answer for that.
The others were getting up around him, slowly. And then they were walking away toward the great doors.
"Boran."
Fire hadn't gone. She was standing in front of him with her hands pushed into her sleeves, and when he looked up she pulled her hood down, which she hadn't done all day, not once in eleven hours inside that ashy place.
She was younger than he'd assumed. Somewhere in her twenties, with dark hair pulled back badly and a burn mark healing on her jaw.
"Noemi," she said.
Boran blinked at her.
"That’s my name. Noemi." She said it a little defensively, as if she expected to be laughed at.
“Noemi,” Boran said. “That’s a beautiful name.”
Her panel opened. She did something with two fingers and his own panel chimed, which it had never done before.
[FRIEND REQUEST — Noemi]
[Accepting allows direct messaging across gate boundaries and displays online status. Accept? Y / N]
"You don't have to," she said. "But you seem genuinely like a good guy. That's all."
He pressed Y.
[Friend added: Noemi]
[Friends: 2 / 20 — Noemi, William Bennet]
"Get healed," Noemi said, pulling her hood back up.
She went after the others, and got about four steps before stopping.
"And Boran?"
"Yeah?"
She looked back just enough to smile. "Maybe you'll buy me something later."
And then she turned around and winked at him.
He watched until the crowd took her.
He got up off the stone lip eventually and let the Endless Tavern heal him for fifty gold, which was robbery, and worth it. He sat in the chair with the runes around the base and a woman with tired eyes pressed two fingers to his sternum and something warm went through him like a swallow of soup.
[Standard Restoration applied. HP: 85 / 125]
Standard Restoration was the cheapest proper healing they offered, and it did not even fill the bar.
[Bone Exoskeleton III: broken. Regeneration in progress — 14h 20m remaining.]
[Note: calcium intake accelerates regeneration.]
So he bought a jug of milk for two gold and drank the entire thing at a corner table like a man taking medicine, and the regeneration timer dropped by three hours while he watched, which was the single most satisfying thing that had happened to him all week.
Mateo—the old man from the dormitory—found him there.
"You look like something the culvert coughed up," he said, and sat down across from Boran without being invited, and took a chip off his plate without being offered one.
He was somewhere in his late fifties, with a short grey beard and forearms thickened by years of lifting things, a bad knee he announced to the room every time he sat down, a pencil behind his ear that had been chewed at the end, and a jam jar of tea he carried everywhere like other men carried a weapon.
"So how's it going," he said. "Are you getting anything done?"
"Some. Enough to keep moving, not enough to feel like it’s really going anywhere."
Mateo drank some of his tea. "Making money?"
"Yeah," he said. "I’ve made a decent amount." He turned the empty milk jug slowly between his hands.
Mateo pointed the chewed pencil at him. “There it is. You’ve figured it out. Some people take a year to realize it. Some never do—and I’ll say this for them: they’re the happiest men in the hall.”
Mateo turned his jar around on the table once, the way a man does when he's deciding whether to say a thing out loud.
"Can I ask you something? You're allowed to tell me to shut up. I'm told regularly."
"Go on."
"You're still in the dorm."
Boran waited for the rest of it, and the rest of it didn't come. "Is that a problem?"
"It's the opposite of a problem. It's that nobody your age stays for long. Four years I've been sleeping in that hall, and I've watched a great many of them come through it. The young ones all start in the bunks, every single one of them, because a bunk is what you can afford in your first week. And then they're gone."
"Gone where?"
Mateo held up a hand and folded a finger down for each point.
“Three options,” he said. "They find a few people from the same intake they can actually trust, pool their money, and rent a small apartment or a room together—four to a place if they have to. Most districts have blocks like that if you know where to look.”
“Or they snowballed, leveled up super fast, got noticed by guild recruiters, and got taken in—where they’d get their own rooms.”
“Or they realize this place is not for them and go home.”
“Those are the three doors. Most young ones I’ve watched come through that hall go out of one of them by the first week. Near all of them.” He looked at Boran properly. “You haven’t gone near any of them. You keep coming back to a five‑gold bunk in a hall full of men my age, and you’re the only one in there who doesn’t have back pains.”
Mateo took another chip. “So what is it? Are you saving up for something? Or is it worse than that?”
"It's the second one."
“Thought so.” He didn’t sound pleased to be right. “Go on, then. I’ve got a jar of tea and no better plans.”
Boran thought about lying to him, and then couldn't come up with a single reason to bother.
"There’s nobody to split a room with," he said. "That’s the whole of it. It isn’t discipline, and it isn’t a plan. I haven’t got a proper team yet." He shrugged. "I’ve got a shield, but almost nobody wants to use it except me."
"Right," said Mateo, not pleased. "But, you've lasted in that hall longer than anybody your age I've ever seen in it, so I've decided you're my business now, and there's nothing whatsoever you can do about that." He drank. "What are you doing this weekend?"
"Nothing."
"You know what I'm doing this weekend? Same as last weekend. Same as the one before that."
"Which is what?"
"Six in the morning at the grey scrub past Portal 11-B, with Viktor and Lin and Uncle Koji. We dig up ash-bark and rootling sinew and those little glands out of the culvert crawlers, put them in crates, and a man from Meridian comes and collects them. Ten gold a day. That’s if we have no Guild Contracts."
"And the rest of the week?"
"There's no weekend for us. All week."
"That’s bad," he said.
"It is."
"No, I mean it's actually bad. Ten gold a day, every day of the week, and you're still counting coins at the end of it. That’s not fair."
"Now you're getting it." Mateo pointed the chewed pencil at him, pleased, like a teacher. "Say it out loud, go on. Say the whole thing out loud, it's good for you."
So Boran said it out loud, and it was not good for him at all.
"A bed is five a night," Boran said, and his voice sharpened as he heard himself say it. "And that’s the cheap one."
He held up a hand, counting on his fingers.
"Food is one to five, depending on whether you want a proper meal. Drinks start at two."
Mateo opened his mouth, but Boran was already rolling.
"And then there’s the stuff you don’t think about until you need it." He pointed at his own chest with his empty hand. "Fifty gold for a heal, for example. If you don’t want to rest for two or three days, you have to pay for your health."
He took a breath, and it came out like steam.
"Clothes? Twenty-five for a shirt and pants*.* Shoes are thirty. Thirty gold for shoes—like shoes are a luxury item. Bandages, soap, a lantern, oil… none of it is cheap."
His fingers closed into a fist, and he looked down at it like he wanted to crush the numbers inside his palm.
"So how does anybody live?"
“They don’t, particularly. You share. You have to share—you can’t go solo here. You need people you can trust.” He shrugged. “Or you get lucky. Or you go home, if home will still have you. Most go home. Nobody writes about that part.”
Boran was quiet for a second. "How long have you been here?"
"Four years and a bit."
"Four years?"
"Don't do that with your face, it's rude." Mateo took another chip. "I came through in the second month. I am level four, if you can believe it."
"What happened?"
"My knee happened, and then my crew happened." He said it lightly, and then didn't say anything for a moment, and the lightness stayed on his face without going all the way in. "Four of us. One's dead, one's home in Valencia, one's up in the eight hundreds now and doesn't answer when I write to him. Which is fine. That's what happens. When a man's number gets big enough, the small numbers around him stop being people."
"That's a horrible thing to say."
“It is.” Mateo drank. “Anyway, I've got a few people I can count on, and I’m still here.” He shrugged. “This place can be fun, if you find the right ones. And I haven’t given up yet—not even close. I’m alive, my knee mostly works, and I’m not drinking alone. That’s more than I can say for some weeks.”
“All right,” Boran said. “My turn, then. You know this place better than the man who pays you—I'd put money on it. So why are you still earning so little?”
“If I asked for twelve, there’d be forty men at the Board willing to do the job for eight. Thirty of them are younger than me.”
"I think you're worth more than eight."
"That's the thing you want to understand about people like me, and you'd best learn it quickly, because at the minute you're people like me too. We are the easiest thing in this world to give up on. And the easiest thing to replace."
"That's horrible."
"It is." Mateo drank his tea. "Have you been to the Adventurer's Guild?"
"I've seen the arch," Boran said. "I thought it was for actual guild members."
Mateo put the jar down slowly.
"That's what half the new ones think. The sign does it no favors." He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Two blocks back behind this building. You’ll know it by the stone arch with the two swords above it. And it’s not a regular guild, whatever the name says. It’s independent. You go to the desk, you fill in a form, they read you with a crystal, and about half an hour later you walk out with a Guild Card.”
"What does it cost?"
"Nothing. It's free." Mateo turned the jar around. "It's also not optional. Everybody who uses that place gets read, and the card is the only way into any of it."
"So what's in there?"
“The Quest Board—for the guild’s posts and private jobs that adventurers post themselves. The Team Board, where you pin a notice with your class on it if you’re looking for a group. You can pin a notice in this tavern too, but the Adventurer’s Guild board is the best place for it. That’s where crews go when they’re short a hand, and where the guilds go looking for anyone worth taking. Training halls are free too, if you don't mind being watched by men who think shouting counts as teaching.”
"So what does everybody actually go in there for?"
"Aside from finding recruits and teammates? The ranking hall." Mateo tipped his head back at the ceiling. "Big slate board, and panels down the wall where you can look up any ranked adventurer in the world. Their level, what they carry, and what guild they are from. Hundreds of thousands of ranked names, and the board shows the top fifty."
“That sounds incredible,” Boran said. “I want to see it for myself. Is there anything useful for the first few levels?”
"It’s mostly wrong, and it’s always written by someone trying to recruit you into a guild."
"...Always?"
“Always. Always, always. Nobody helps at the start, kid. Nobody does. And I’ve watched too many young ones die chasing something nobody would help them carry. There was a boy last spring—seventeen, French, wouldn’t stop talking about his sister. He bought a spear he couldn’t even lift because the man selling it told him spears were good against wolves. I told him to go with someone. He went in on the third day with two others he’d met that morning.” He rubbed his knee. “His bag’s still in the drawer at the foot of my bunk. There are four in that drawer. I keep them to remember them.”
Boran didn't say anything for a moment. He turned the empty milk jug around once on the table.
“Nobody told me anything either,” he said. “Not really. Everything I know, I learned by nearly dying for it.”
"That's how it's done here."
“Is there a guild like that?” Boran asked. “Not one of the big ones—one that takes people in their first week and actually teaches them something.”
"Not that I've ever heard of."
"Not even one?"
“Kid, I’ve been in New World for four years, and I’ve worked for every guild. I’ve never heard of anything like that.” Mateo shrugged. “And even if someone did open one—what would it have?”
Mateo put his jar down.
"Can I tell you something?"
"Go on."
"You sat here for an hour and let an old man talk at you. You’ve no idea how rare that is. I’ve sat down at tables like this plenty of times. Most people tell me to fuck off before the tea’s gone cold, and the polite ones keep looking over my shoulder until I leave. You asked me questions." He shrugged, and it wasn’t a comfortable shrug. "So whatever it is you’re putting together in that head of yours—anything you need, we’ll come. Labor, digging, standing in a queue on your behalf, whatever it is. You won’t have to ask twice."
"Why?" Boran said. "You barely know me."
"Because you’re one of us, kid—and you know it. You’ve been coming back to that five‑gold bunk long enough with the rest of us ruined old men. When I told you we’re the easiest thing in this world to give up on, you didn’t argue. You got angry." Mateo picked the last chip off Boran’s plate. "There isn’t a name on that board who understands a word of what I said tonight, I don’t think."
Boran opened his mouth, and nothing at all came out of it.
After Mateo left, Boran paid at reception on his way past, and the number dropped by five.
The night air of the Hub was cooler than the Tavern, and cleaner only by comparison. It still carried smoke from food carts, wet stone, metal, sweat, and the strange mineral smell that seemed to cling to every portal district. The streets were not empty. They never seemed to be empty. Adventurers moved in clusters under hanging lamps. Some laughed too loudly. Some walked in silence.
Boran followed the back street behind the Endless Tavern.
Then the street widened.
It sat broad and heavy at the end of the block, built from pale stone that had darkened with age and weather. The front was all weight: thick columns, a high arched entrance, and two crossed swords carved above it, each one longer than Boran was tall. Gold letters ran across the stone lintel.
ADVENTURER’S GUILD.
He had seen it before.
He had walked past the side street twice, maybe three times, and looked at the arch from a distance, then looked away because it had felt like a place for people who already belonged somewhere.
Then he went inside.
The first thing he noticed was the ceiling.
It was high enough that sound climbed into it and came back softened. The hall was huge, but not chaotic like the Tavern. Long counters ran along the right wall, each with a small hanging sign above it. REGISTRATION. QUESTS. DISPUTES. TEAM SERVICES. ARCHIVE. A broad stone floor opened in the middle, worn smooth by thousands of boots.
Boards covered the far wall.
The Quest Board was a massive slate panel banded with brass, its surface filled with glowing notices that arranged and rearranged themselves while people watched. Beside it stood a lower board made of dark cork and old wood, covered in paper notices, wax seals, scratched handwriting, and System-printed slips. That one had TEAM BOARD written above it.
There were smaller boards too. HEALERS AVAILABLE. RAID RECRUITMENT. TRAINING PARTNERS. MATERIAL REQUESTS. WARNINGS.
The left side of the hall held tables. Adventurers sat there in groups, filling forms, comparing cards, arguing over maps, or eating small meals from wrapped paper. A training entrance stood beyond them, marked by a pair of open doors and the dull thud of weapons striking padded targets somewhere inside.
The ranking hall was straight ahead through a second arch.
Boran could see part of it from where he stood: a vertical black slate stretching up two stories, covered with names in lines of gold and silver light. People stood below it with their heads tilted back. Some looked inspired. Some looked sick.
He wanted to go there immediately.
Instead he turned right, toward REGISTRATION.
A woman behind the desk looked up before he reached it. She had short gray hair, square glasses, and the expression of someone who had watched thousands of people.
“Registration?”
“Yes,” Boran said.
She pulled a thin form from a stack and slid it across the counter. “Name, where you came from, current residence if any, class, level, visible aliases, emergency contact if you have one, and whether you are already contracted to a guild, party, noble house, merchant house, military force, research institution, or deity.”
Boran stared at the last line.
“Deity?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “People are weird.”
“Right.”
He picked up the pen.
The form looked simple until he started filling it out.
Name: Boran Apaydın.
Origin: Türkiye.
Current residence: Endless Tavern
Class: Tank.
Level: 4.
Visible aliases: Tank.
Emergency contact.
His hand stopped there.
He left the line blank.
The woman did not comment when he pushed the form back.
She read it quickly. “Pure Tank?”
“Yes.”
“No subclass?”
“No.”
“Secondary class?”
“No.”
The woman made a sound that was not quite approval. “Put your left hand on the crystal.”
A clear crystal sat in a brass frame on the counter. It was larger than William’s affinity crystal, about the size of Boran’s fist, and full of tiny bubbles that did not move until he touched it.
The moment his palm met the surface, the bubbles rose.
Blue light filled the crystal first.
Then nothing.
The light stayed there, flat and stubborn, like the crystal had found the first answer and refused to look for the rest.
The woman frowned.
“Do not pull your hand away.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
The crystal remained blue.
A few people moved behind him. Someone laughed at one of the tables. A pen scratched at the next counter.
After half a minute, the woman tapped the brass frame twice.
The blue light flickered, tried to deepen, then faded back to the same unreadable glow.
“Hm.”
“Hm bad?” Boran asked.
“Hm hm.” She pulled a second crystal from under the counter, smaller and darker, with a purple tint inside the glass. “Try this one.”
Boran put his hand on it.
The purple crystal glowed blue.
The woman waited.
The crystal did not change.
Boran stared at it. “Is it supposed to do something else?”
“Yes.”
She took the crystal back and looked at it from two angles, as if the answer might be hiding on the other side. Then she set it down beside the first one.
“The registry cannot read you properly.”
“So can I still register?”
“Yes. Manual registration exists.”
Boran liked her a little for that.
She opened a drawer and removed a flat silver card. It was blank except for faint lines running through it like veins. Then she took out a smaller black stylus.
“I’ll copy the verified parts from your form and mark the rest as manual,” she said.
“That’s it?”
“That is the point of the form.” She touched the stylus to the card. “One thing missing. Do you have a class affinity reading?”
“Yes,” Boran said. “Sixty-eight percent.”
She placed the card flat on the counter and drew one line across it with the stylus.
The silver surface caught the mark and held it.
Then she wrote his name.
Not with ink. The letters burned into the card as she moved, thin and blue-white, each one settling into the metal like it had always been there. She added the class, the level, the alias, and a small mark beside the corner that looked like a square cut in half.
“What is that?” Boran asked.
“Manual verification mark. It tells the system a person registered you.”
“Is that bad?”
“It means some advanced services may ask for a second check.” She kept writing. “Most people will not care.”
The last line settled into place.
[ADVENTURER GUILD CARD ISSUED]
[Boran Apaydın]
[Level 4 — Tank]
[Class Affinity: 68%]
[Registered Alias: Tank]
[Status: Independent]
[Registry Note: Manual registration. Crystal reading unavailable.]
The woman handed it to him.
It felt heavier than it should have.
Not physically. The card was thin and cold and almost weightless between his fingers. But it had his name on it. His class. His level. Independent.
“You are now a member of the Adventurer’s Guild,” the woman said. “Membership does not mean you belong to a guild organization. This is an independent registry and service hall. You may use the Quest Board, Team Board, training rooms, archive, dispute desk, and public ranking hall. Private services may require fees, recommendations, rank, or common sense.”
“I have some of those.”
“Fees?”
“Common sense.”
“Debatable,” she said, looking at his bandages.
Boran put the card into his inventory and watched the icon settle there.
[Guild Card added to inventory]
A smaller notification followed.
[Adventurer’s Guild systems unlocked]
[Team Board access granted]
[Quest Board access granted]
[Public Ranking Hall access granted]
[Training Hall access granted]
The woman pointed toward the far wall. “Team Board is there. Quest Board beside it. Ranking hall through the central arch. Archive is left rear. Do not believe everything in the archive. Do not believe everything on the Team Board.”
“Thanks for the advice.”
Boran looked toward the central arch.
The black slate of the ranking hall waited beyond it, names moving in gold and silver light. He was tired enough that every step felt like a negotiation, but not tired enough to walk away from it.
Not after getting the card.
He took one breath and moved toward the ranking hall.