Content Warning: Mentions of slavery and implied murder of minors
I woke up to sunlight beaming in from the window, I sat up and scratched my new, short brown hair.
“Good morning, Haru~!” Sonia hums, already awake, and eating breakfast. The inn probably served it.
It seems I fell asleep last night.
“… Good morning, Sonia,” I mumble.
“Here’s your plate, Haru,” Sonia says, smiling as she hands me a ham and lettuce sandwich.
“Thank you,” I say as I take it. “Thank you for the food.”
Perhaps it was because I hadn’t eaten dinner yesterday, but even this plain sandwich tasted so good.
“Hey, Haru, I’m going to head to the guild to look for quests today,” Sonia said as I ate and she attached a sword sheath to her waist. “What your plans?”
What are my plans? What else, but–“Please take me with you on your quests!” I say.
“Ee?!” Sonia says, surprised. “But Haru, you don’t have combat experience, right?”
“I do!” I counter.
I’m pretty small and my physique isn’t suitable for fighting. But, I have years’ worth of strategy and tactics from online games!
“Eh… but it’ll be dangerous~,” Sonia hums.
“Please take me with you!” I cry. “I want to go on quests with you, Sonia!”
What else are you supposed to do in another world but take on quests?
“Uh…” Sonia goes.
“I’m begging you!” I say.
Ultimately, Sonia was the first to give and took me with her to the guild.
We leave the inn and walk for about 10 minutes, ending up at a large building that was starkly different from the mostly uniform shopfronts on the streets surrounding it.
“There’s a lot of suspicious people in the guild, so don’t leave my side,” Sonia said. “Promise me?”
So this is the guild. I nodded and quickly stuck behind her.
“Alright, let’s go!” Sonia said as she opened the door.
We step into a place that resembles a noisy bar. Suddenly, things quiet down. “Oh, Sonia, welcome back,” an employee dressed like a maid says. “Who’s this young girl with you?”
Sonia glanced at me, looked back at the maid, and smiles as says, “My partner.”
“I see,” the maid says. “Well, we sure are glad you’re here right now…” she says before she begins to talk to Sonia about something. I can’t hear them, but it seems to have to do with why this place suddenly got quiet.
Eventually, that conversation ended and Sonia said, “By the way, Haru here says she wants to join me on my quests.”
“Oh~?” the maid hums. “You’re taking her with you… well, I suppose if it’s you, there’s no need to worry?”
“That’s right, I’ll take care of any problems myself,” Sonia said before she takes my hand and says, “Let’s go to the counter, Haru.”
“Good day to you,” the man standing behind it says to Sonia. “How may we help you?”
“Good day,” Sonia says. “Can we register this little girl as an adventurer?”
“’Register’…?” I thought—wait, adventurers have to get registered?!
Even if I begged her to take me with her on quests, it must be so boring for Sonia to have to deal with getting me registered!
“Understood, we’ll attempt it shortly,” said the clerk before he went off somewhere.
Is he getting the necessary paperwork? I was nervously fidgeting as we waited.
The clerk comes back with an extremely thick and heavy book. “Young miss, please place your hand on this book,” he says.
Oh, so this is how adventurers register. I put my right hand on the book as instructed.
Suddenly, it floats up and radiates a dazzling light. I have to shut my eyes against it and soon it fills the entire guild, blinding everyone. The book continued to glow for almost a minute then disappeared as the light began to fade.
Sonia scoops me up into her arms and yells, “Haru, we’ve gotta run!”
At the same time, adventurers all over the guild start standing up one after the other.
“… Huh?” I say.
Sonia busts back out through the guild’s doors with me in a princess carry and a panicked expression on her face. Soon after, adventurers start spilling out after us.
“Oi, hold up, little girl…!”
“Miss, let me talk to you for a moment!”
“She’s going to be working for meeeee…!”
Everyone, young and old, regardless of gender, is chasing after Sonia as she carries me off. It’s like the guild is hell and the demons are escaping, the adventurers look at me with such terrifying eyes as they push through the crowds at the market district. They were all probably angry from that blinding flash.
Cradled in Sonia’s caring arms, I shake and tremble.
“This is going to be a squeeze!” Sonia says as we duck into a back alley.
Behind us, a few adventurers are still chasing us.
“Sonia, why are they all so angry at that light?!” I ask.
These don’t look angry. They seem more “desperate”…
“I’ll explain later,” Sonia replied, “for now, let’s shake ‘em off!”
“Okay…” I whisper.
The chase continues through the back alleys of the city until we finally lose them.
“Huff… huff…” Sonia pants, exhausted from having carried me and running.
Earlier this morning, a kind lady from the inn gave me something called a “waterskin”1 which was a kind of container for liquids, so I pull it out of my dress’s pocket and hand it to Sonia.
Sonia drinks from it then said, “Thank you very much!” with her usual confident smile.
“Sonia, why were the adventurers chasing us for so long?” I asked.
“It’s because they saw your light,” Sonia replied.
“My light?” I asked.
Sonia explained it to me from the very basics. The light emitted when you touch the book depends on the person. The brighter it is, the higher the combat capability of that person, and such a glow like mine usually only happened once in a year.
“So, those adventurers were desperate to get you into their party, Haru,” Sonia finished.
“Heh…” I sigh. “But was that escape necessary since I could have just refused their invitations?”
“Nope~!” Sophia hums. “I’m afraid it’s not that easy.”
She explained to me that those who refuse party invites from more experienced adventurers are likely to get killed by other newbies to cut down on the competition for future jobs—this world is terrifying!
“If they caught you, Haru, they’d either have killed or enslaved you~,” Sophia said, laughing.
It seemed than in this world, murders and other such crimes are so commonplace people can make light of it like this. Once again, I was reminded of just how dangerous and different the status quo here was from earth.
- A waterskin is a container often made of animal leather, used for carrying water and other liquids such as wine.
ruff Translations 
thank you
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How, just how, does the adventurer’s guild even operate with a system like that?!
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