“Oh, hello you!” thus greeted with a cheer that same main counter receptionist, standing right where she usually was, sipping a small teacup of what was most likely a caffeinated beverage made from ground beans distilled through water—‘coffee’.

  “I greet you too!” the foreigner so greeted in kind. Being carried over her shoulders with both hands was quite the heavy and stuffed sack, piercing through which was an evident crystallish magenta glow though with some…added wild flavor. “The…last items…stuffs… Collected I have…finally…” Her breaths were…somewhat atypically fatigued.

  Indeed, the muscles of her arms were burning in ways she had never thought they could burn; in ways they were not supposed to burn. These crystals, while not necessarily large, were certainly dense and therefore…heavy.

  Nevertheless, having essentially kicked open the Guild hall’s entry door, the foreigner rapidly made her way to the main counter with rather the speed, whereafter she so promptly plopped that heavy sack of glowing crystals right over and onto the other side.

  The receptionist…stared at that glowing sack now suddenly next to her heels… “You are…a lot stronger than you…look… You know that, rightly?” she so remarked… “That does not seem nice to carry at all…”

  “You said…this same thing…the last time.” the foreigner frankly stated, still panting even if only barely now.

  “Oh, I know, I know… Just saying it again…” the receptionist so replied. “Though, I see you are here at the…earliest of mornings, again…” Indeed, it was fairly early in the morning; the world outside was still filled with that dawning fog, the bleak sky not even properly blue.

  Such was the tendency throughout…however long…the foreigner had been at this quest of hers. She always seemed to arrive at the earliest operating hours, well before any adventurers or…staff really…arrived and always departed well before they could arrive.

  However, this time around, she had simply…and completely…lost track of time. Indeed, as it turned out, she had spent far more time within that sunny-cave than anticipated; by the time she had exited, it was beyond deep into the night despite having entered during evening, the cusp of morning’s twilight having become apparent during the return journey.

  Consequently, she had to make her way straight thence all the way straight hither and at a pace that ensured she would arrive before others infested this hall with their endless…ceaseless noises and denizen mouths; it was not as though the distances were short, either… Not at all, in truth…

  Frankly, the fact she had been able to carry that stuffed sack for as far as she had, for as long as she had, and at the speed she had been so striding was only due to the automated augmentations and commands encoded within her essence, which enhanced her muscles’ durability, facilitated rapid repair, and amplified her nervous system’s general strength capabilities in a given circumstance. Essentially, her strength and endurance were situationally adaptive to her present activities and actions, even if her exact muscle mass tended to remain relatively uniform and static.

  Indeed… She could only be glad that both her clothing and the natural faintness of essence particulates obfuscated the wisp-dusty cyanic sparkles that were no doubt flaking off from the skin of her seething limbs during her rapid stride.

  Regardless, the receptionist placed her small and now mostly empty cup onto its equally sized plate-thing, before promptly opening the sack. “Gods’ sacred toilet, wow! Bright!” Her eyes, squinting, were immediately greeted with quite the shine, though they gradually adjusted… “But they sure are pretty… I can see why they are in such demand…” she remarked; “Though, they are also packed full of magical energy, so that could be the reason too… That is…certainly it…”

  “Uhuh.” Frankly, the foreigner just wanted to be finished with this quest already.

  The receptionist ahemed and kneeled down, shoving her gloved hand into it to sort into the sack… “And now it is ruined…” She immediately regretted doing that, however, for these glowing masses still had particulates of crystalline dust and…arachnid goop-blood. “Hm…” Nevertheless, she continued doing her job, evaluating the contents; “I see a wild glow-stone is in here, and… Hm…”

  The foreigner silently stood there whilst the receptionist seemingly cogitated, her muscles having recuperated…at least in feeling.

  “Whelp,” the receptionist’s head came springing up as she stood herself back up, taking off that now…dirtied glove, “considering there should only be twenty-nine magenta glow-stones, I am just going do go a manual confirmation count like I did before…” she thus stated; “No need to waste my time weighing one then multiplying by the expected blah blah and comparing with the actual weighted blah blah subtracted by the added weight of extra blah blah blahs…and doing maths.” Her voice made it clear that she did not seem to fancy mathematics, despite such being essential to her job—never mind rudimentary statistics all done by hand.

  Aheming, the receptionist returned her attention to that sack, staring at it with…certain glaring eyes.

  “Do you need the help with carrying?” Considering what the foreigner had observed after turning in the prior batch of turquoise glow-crystals, she knew what this stare meant.

  “No, no… I got it!” Yet the receptionist, smiling, brushed the offer off. She promptly tried to…pick up the sack, only to… “Wow! These are…even heavier than the last ones! Haha…” Indeed, her arms were failing. “Yeah, wow… Gods’ sacred… Seriously, how did you even… You are so much smaller than me!” Such remarks were levied with gentle panting breaths whilst she just opted to…painstakingly drag the sack.

  ? … ? Technically, the height difference between the two was not necessarily that profound even if…evidently evident…

  “Hugh! Alrightly!” The receptionist took a moment of respite, the sack having been successfully dragged all the way to the corner edge of a certain door needing to be opened, yet she did not open that certain door… “I will just…wait until she is here, and then do the confirmation count…” She decided… “Or maybe have someone else do it, but do not tell any that I said that…” Aheming, she promptly returned to her proper stationing; “Anyway! Considering that your prior collected items had no incongruencies between expected count, actual count, and your own reported count…or any other issues, I will just trust you and mark the quest as completed right now.”

  The receptionist’s hand promptly gestured…as if demanding something, to which the foreigner stared rather…blankly at, slightly tilting… ? ?ch, rect?… ? Oh, right… Same procedure as the last two times she had turned in a batch of collected items. She thus withdrew from her principal carry-satchel…that now perhaps somewhat crumbled up but still in fine enough condition…quest sheet, which she swiftly handed over.

  “Oh, hey! You brought it with you this time!” the receptionist teased, accepting the quest sheet into hand.

  Indeed… The last time the foreigner was here, when she had turned in those turquoise glow-stones, she had forgotten…her quest sheet at home and had to…make the journey to retrieve it. Consequently, she ensured to bring it with her everywhere thereafter.

  Rather automatically, the receptionist flipped the sheet to its penultimate page. Yet she raised an eyebrow as she evaluated that specific page, her eyes becoming less sweetened and more stale as they relooked at the foreigner… “Where is your reported count?” she thus asked, gently yet frankly.

  ? … ? The foreigner was silent… Ah. It appeared every exchange came with a cost; for as much as she remembered one thing, she had forgotten…another thing.

  “Nilia…” The receptionist’s warm voice only further blunted; “Did you forget? Or have you already become lazy?” She smiled with closed eyes, a menacing combination.

  This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  Indeed… These kind of so-called ‘collection quests’ typically required the quest-holding adventurer to keep proper record and to tally their count of how many items they had collected throughout each so-called ‘collection session’. This necessity was largely a holdover to an era when the Guild had…less mathematically sophisticated methods of streamlining their confirmation and item-count procedures. Although such had been mostly rendered redundant, it nevertheless persisted primarily as a measure or…insurance of…honesty and trust.

  Incongruencies between the Guild’s actual count and the adventurer’s reported count could result in…problems, as one could say… Indeed, especially if it was determined to be no mere honest mistake. However, considering the ultimate redundancy, it was not necessarily mandatory to always fulfill, even if it was helpful to those who had to process it all.

  The receptionist ahemed; “No, but more seriously, you recorded your collection tally with the other items… What happened here?”

  The foreigner’s posture became slightly more awkward as she donned more…embarrassed affect; “Well, uhm… So…” she thus began to…reply, “It might be so that…I had finished collecting those…things… Uhm…recently… And that is to say, before this morning, and thus after I finished, I came immediately to…here… And I did not stop to write or anything.”

  “Wait…” The receptionist immediately flung her sight to that sack of glowing crystals, before flinging it back to the foreigner, before flinging it back to the crystals and then back the foreigner… “…wait, so you are saying… You ran…all the way…”—her finger dumbfoundedly pointed astray—“from…there, all the…way…”—that same finger pointed down— “to here? While…carrying that?”

  “Yes… Basically.” The foreigner confirmed; “So, I did not forget, but it did not…enter the head…” Not that she even had anything to write with on her anyway… Usually, she kept accurate count in her head and then just wrote it down well after she was done; keeping track of numbers was easier for her, seemingly.

  “Uhuh…” The receptionist nodded her head gently, the heaviness of that sack still in recent memory… “Alrightly, but…how?” she more blurted than asked, before promptly aheming with a light shake to her head; “Anyway! Sorry!”—she ahemed again—“It is not the biggest deal, since…honest mistakes happen, but… Please try to be on top of it, even if, you know, it is slightly redundant. But it can help with our maths sometimes, especially for items-in-excess.” Her voice was sincere and frank. “Most Coppers do not keep consistent tally record, no matter many how many times I remind them…”

  “I will try to be not…like that, then. I give sorry!” the foreigner, donning her charm, thus apologized with a smiling bow.

  “Goodly heard!” The receptionist smiled in kind, before redirecting her attention.

  Placing the quest sheet back onto the counter-top, she retrieved her unique receptionist stamp from one of the many drawers on her side of the counter, stamping a square at the bottom of sheet’s back page for completion. The receptionist then took out that…ever-girthy quest registrar as if retrieved from an abyss of nothingness even though it clearly came from somewhere, plomping that monstrous book onto the counter with a banging force that levitated the very sheet up as if in panicked shudder. Rapidly flipping page after page, she arrived to that page where she had inscribed that quest’s identifier, signing it off as completed next to the foreigner’s written name.

  “Alrightly! Done!” with a breath, the receptionist enthusiastically announced, slamming shut that book… In truth, such was only the beginning of the bureaucratic work ahead; however, such was a condemnation for those lower in the hierarchy, for her job ended largely here. “Now to finally dispense your long-awaited reward!”

  ? Finalmente… ? The foreigner’s own breaths quietly expunged… Finally, she was going to be paid for all of this… She had to endure being coinless for too long, frankly, and this month was certainly reaching its end point… Truly, she now understood the value of having a surplus, and why her former associate had been so stern regarding maintaining such…

  Nevertheless, with a smile, the receptionist so cheeringly unlocked…a special drawer of sorts with one of her many-many keys, within which were contained dozens of stacked columns of wrapped coins prepackaged within a brown papering of sorts, organized and labeled depending on the type of coin. “So… Uhm…” She tapped her fingers, thinking… “Seven-hundred and ninety…three? That was the total, rightly? You had no excesses, rightly right?”

  ? … ? Was it not the receptionist’s job to know this? Whatever… “Yes. I believe that is so!” the foreigner so replied; “And I only did what was instructed. Nothing in the excess.”

  “Goodly heard!” The receptionist smiled; “So, seven and a ninety-three… You want that…in golds, rightly?” she promptly asked… “I am asking because there are those who…prefer only silver, no matter how cumbersome…”

  The foreigner slightly titled her head, cogitating… Her coin pouch most certainly did not have the capacity for seven hundred of those forsaken trinkets—a hundred was already weighty enough… “Yes.” thus she promptly answered; “I want it in the golds, I give grace…”

  The receptionist nodded with a smile, before taking out one stack of one-hundred silvers, tearing the paper as she…very quickly and very efficiently…sorted out ninety-three silvers, before suddenly pausing… Cogitating… Deciding, she deducted forty-five silvers, tossing them into another drawer—one full of unpackaged coins—before placing the seven leftover silvers of the once one-hundred stack into yet another drawer of unpackaged coins; thus, left on the countertop were only forty-eight silvers, organized evenly.

  The foreigner observed this…extremely swift speed of accountant labor as the receptionist repeated this entire process even faster with the seven golds… Concurrently, she promptly detached her…very empty coin pouch, having long disposed of those worthless coppers and bronzes taking up space.

  “Oh! I was just about to…” The receptionist noticed the foreigner place her empty pouch onto the counter, although her focus remained…too attentive. “Hm… Let me double count quickly, so…”—she began to re-sort— “Ten, twenty, thirty… Tit-tit-duhm…” She counted and verified that there were, indeed, “Seven golds and forty-eight silvers! Alrightly!” Her eyes sprung sight to the foreigner; “I took the liberty of deducting the forty-five silvers you owed, so you do not have to worry about that anymore!”

  “Oh. I see! I give the thanks!” Not that she had been worried, frankly.

  “Not a problem!” The receptionist quickly placed the organized columns of coins into the foreigner’s own coin pouch, taking the liberty of tying it up all neat and pretty before handing it back; “And there you go! Your first Guild payout!” She smiled with delight… “Now I have to…calculate the experience points and allocate the… Ahaha…” She was still smiling, though it was no longer as delighted…

  Nevertheless, the foreigner stared at her now filled coin pouch… Seven golds and ninety-three silvers… Even though it had taken quite longer than she would have preferred to get to this moment, she doubted working an equivalent amount of time at that tavern would have resulted in this payout of coin…

  She felt strange, indeed, though could not comprehend. “I give thanks….” She bowed graciously, before picking up her now…heavier coin pouch, reaffixing it to her belt; she needed to become reaccustomed to the added...weight.

  “Always a pleasure!” the receptionist enthusiastically replied; “Anyway now, you are free to select another quest from the board… I have to now begin processing this and adding to your profile, so…” Her eyes nudged at the large wall of a quest-board.

  The foreigner nodded; “Oh. I will take the leave, then…” With another gracious bow, she thus departed off and headed for that very quest-board, the receptionist being left to attend to her duties.

  Seven hundred and ninety-three silvers; that number continued to ring in her head as she walked… Such was enough to cover her rent for the next several months, with plenty left over even when accounting the constant spontaneous increases of her rent experienced every month. However, such was the reward for doing…all of that.

  And…

  That so-called ‘quest’ she had finally completed… The objectives were clear; the priorities, the requirements, the specifics, they were all laid out and explicitly declared; yet, nevertheless, that had to have to been amongst the most mundane, tedious, and most essence-devouring anything she had ever had to do so far. To do that quest was…genuinely an almost suffocatingly repetitive endeavor, one far too lengthy…

  And the thought of doing it all over again…

  Indeed, as she halted before for that very quest-board pinned with many quests and many options, her decision could not have been any clearer. Faster than the first time, she immediately sorted, identified, and plucked her next quest, promptly returning to the main counter.

  “Oh, wow, that was…fast” the receptionist, having been…doing her doings, immediately remarked as the foreigner so reappeared before the counter, who promptly tossed her next chosen quest onto the counter. “Alrightly, let me see…” The receptionist slid the quest sheet closer, inspecting… And, in an almost instant moment, her eyes blanked completely and so utterly… “Same…quest?” Her eyes slowed shifting to the foreigner… “You…picked the same…exact collection quest?”

  “Yes… Is that the problem?” the foreigner inquired.

  “No, no…” The receptionist shook her head; “It is just, you know… Usually after one’s first collection quest, they prefer to…try to move on to something else, but…” She ahemed; “Seriously, though, just how many copies of this are even on that board?” she pondered to herself.

  “I counted nine.” yet the foreigner answered, assuming the receptionist was genuinely asking; “I thought that, since I just did it, that I would do it faster and gooder this time again.”

  Indeed. She knew the reward; she knew the objectives and how to execute them. Repetitive and tedious, most certainly, and she was ready to do it all again; but this time better, faster, and more efficient.