Selector Outpost

"Do you have anything else left to do? If not we will leave now.", he told her.

"I have already prepared everything beforehand, so we can leave whenever you want."

The two of them said goodbye to Miss. Lucia and then left the villa.

Jenny led the way back to the gate, where she said goodbye to the guards on duty before leaving the areal together with him.

"So where are we going?", she then asked Ivan. Her attitude towards him was unlike what he expected from all the data he had on slaves. She treated him more like a friend or comrade than a master. Not that he had a problem with it.

"First I planned to look for somewhere to stay. Initially, I had looked up some places but with you around, most of them won't work."

During the last week, he had spent some time looking up places where he could stay after leaving the orphanage. He had selected some cheap single rooms in the slums since they were very cheap and he would only need a place to stay. Hopefully, he would be able to get his adventurer rank up and then move to a better place.

"Oh, I'm sorry about that, but I can't help you there."

"It's not your fault. Besides, it isn't like there is no left. But I think we should first go to the Adventurers Guild."

After saying that, he took the lead and walked towards the station. Jenny silently followed him, staying exactly one step behind him.

They silently made their way to the station and the platform where the right train would leave from. The whole time they both were deep in thought. Ivan was thinking about how he had to modify his plans, while Jenny was thinking who knew what.

For now, Ivan decided to continue as before but he would lay a stronger focus on crafting. Not only would crafting help him fulfill the contracts he had just signed, but it was also a good way to make money. With many people starting as adventurers each day all over the country, there were never enough crafters that could craft the items required for them to progress.

Many items could be mass-produced by machines but there was a limit to their quality. It was enough for low ranked adventures, who didn't plan, or couldn't, progress. But everyone else depended on the crafters to handcraft specialized, perfectly fitted, equipment. Not to mention that many materials couldn't be used for mass-producing since it was impossible to make exact recipes for them. A crafter had to carefully adapt the recipe to the material available.

For his start, Ivan had selected the Selector Outpost of the Adventurers Guild. It was a smaller outpost, that was located on the outskirts of the city and was mostly serving low ranked adventurers. But like all outposts of the guild, it contained an adventurer node, which made it possible for it to offer the full service.

A node was a complex machine that served as a more complete interface to the System. The adventurer's version of it allowed for taking quests, issuing quests, and returning finished quests. It could accept the required items for the quest and dispense the rewards, something the normal System interface wasn't capable of.

After taking the train, they arrived directly at the station which was located in the basement of the Selector Outpost. By taking the stairs upwards they arrived in a large hall. On one side was a row of counters which were staffed by the personal of the guild and where one could go to get information, ask questions, or to register.

Since Ivan had researched before he directly went to one of the counters which were staffed by a middle-aged woman.

"Hello, how may I help you?", the woman greeted them friendly.

"Hello, we are here to register as adventurers.", Ivan responded in a friendly tone. Behind him, Jenny greeted the woman as well.

"Ok.", the woman said while pulling out a stack of documents. For her, this was already routine.

Seeing her pulling out the stack of paper, Ivan had to sigh. It seemed like today he would have to sign a lot of documents. Why did there have to be so much paperwork?

"Do you need an introduction to the adventurer job or are you already informed? If you have any questions just ask them now. You can of course also read this information on our help page after connecting to the node."

"We have already looked into it."

"Great. Then you only have to sign here and you will get your adventurers card. You can then use them to access the node in each outpost of our Adventurer Guild."

Both Ivan and Jenny signed the required documents.

When the middle-aged woman took Jenny's documents she looked up in surprise.

"You are a slave?"

"Yes. Is there a problem?"

"No, you just need the signature of your master as well."

"Ok, where do I have to sign?"

"Here.", the woman gave him another document for him to sign. By signing it he allowed his slave Jenny Falk to become an adventurer. Besides that, there were also some choices he had to make.

For example, it was possible for all quests Jenny finished to count towards his rank as well. There was also the option that only he could take the rewards from the quests she finished. It even went so far that he could choose which quests she could do.

He didn't even have to think about and selected the options that gave her the most freedom. Then he signed the document and gave it back to the staff member.

The woman scanned the documents and then collected two cards from another slot.

"Here you go. These are your membership cards. Both of you start at rank H which is indicated by the H on your card. Good luck."

After taking their cards, they said thank you and goodbye and then left the counter. Although the woman had acted polite and even friendly, she had also made clear that she was unwilling to waste any time.

"So what now?", Jenny asked.

"Let's first go look for somewhere to live.", Ivan responded to her. The reason he had gotten the adventure card first was that there are many landlords that would only rent to people who had such a card. At least that was the case for the cheap places around here.

"When I looked for somewhere to stay I have found two apartment complexes, that are looking for tenants and that have low prices.", he said.

"Then let's check them out." It seemed like Jenny too wanted to find a place to stay. She was similar to Ivan. She too had just lost her former life and started a completely new one.

First, they went to another counter. There they could exchange money. While in the town center everyone used cards to pay, these required small nodes integrated into the electric grid. But currently, they were in a sector that didn't have an electric grid installed yet. There had been many plans to do this but because of low tax income from the sector, it had always had a low priority and had been delayed on time after another.

In areas where it wasn't possible to use bank cards, instead, coins were used. With copper being the lowest denomination. 1000 copper was worth one silver, which was equal to one CP. Thus it was possible to split up CP even further with those coins, making them suitable for the low-income areas. Here it was possible to live for a month on only 20 CP or 20 silver.

Of course, there were also higher denominations such as gold, being worth 1000 silver, and platin above it. Those coins had the additional advantage that they were universally usable, unlike bank cards which required the banks of the two cards participating in the transaction to have a contract with each other.

They only exchanged 20 CP into coins, since this should be enough for their needs and it wasn't good to be caught with too much money in the bag. With pickpockets running around one could lose it. Not to mention that law enforcement wasn't that prevalent here, so getting robbed wasn't unlikely if the payoff seemed high enough.

Having now gotten some money ready, they were prepared to leave the guild. The step over the threshold would be like the first step into a new life.

"Ready to go?", Ivan asked the woman, standing slightly behind him.

"Yes.", he got a short answer.

"Oh wait.", he suddenly thought of something. He didn't dare to use his storage ring in public since he feared, that he would be robbed, so he had placed a money bag on his hip. He now took out half of the money and filled it into another one. Those were readily available on the exchange counter and were made of cheap materials.

"Here you go.", he then gave the bag to Jenny and pointed at her to place it on her hip as well.

She threw him a surprised look, but silently placed the bag on her hip.