Chapter 153   - Guild hall

The two kids and Ray walked through town to the Guildhall. It was a unique view for Ray, unlike Avrion the town was filled with ordinary citizens, merchants and adventures who wore all different levels of equipment. Just like Tuffy had said, nearly all of them had their tag out on display.

There were a few adventures Ray noticed that didn't have their tag out on display but those ones generally had worse equipment than others. Most likely they were wearing a red tag which was the lowest Rank of F class, so they didn't want to have it out for embarrassment.

At last, they had finally reached the Guildhall. It was the biggest building in town and stood right in the centre. Upon entering the Guildhall there were many long tables with groups of adventures sat down on them.

Then to the right there was a huge bulletin board that was split up into different sections, above each section was a letter then went from F to S. The further down you went the fewer quest they were as they got harder.

Ray looked at the bulletin board and noticed there actually wasn't any quest past B class on the board, in fact, there was only one on there and that was to defeat the Mud crab.

"Aren't they any harder quest?" Ray asked.

"In a small town like this?" Tuffy replied, "The quests are paid by the town's taxes, that's how the Guildhall make their money. Because this is a small town, they probably wouldn't be able to afford anything too expensive. Besides, there's nothing around this area that would warrant anything above B class in the first place."

As Ray carried on moving along, he noticed there was a separate bulletin board which was a fraction of the size, on top was written the word "Guild quests".

Tuffy noticed that Ray was looking at the bulletin board strangely up and down.

"Oh, you must have never seen one of these before," Tuffy said, "It would make sense if you come from a big guild. You see this Guildhall is owned by the government and its part of the town, so it doesn't belong to a specific guild. Some quest they receive will be too much for one person to handle so they put up guild quests. These quests are based on your guild Rank though which is separate to an individual Rank."

Ray continued to ask Tuffy questions as he was suddenly interested in these sorts of things. His Red Wings needed to gain influence not just at Avrion but around the whole world and what better way to do it then to create his own guild.

Tuffy explained to Ray that for each quest someone completed you would get two types of points, Guild points and Ranking points. You were only allowed to take quests of your rank and once you reached enough points you would be upgraded to the next rank.

Ray also learnt that there were two types of Guildhalls. Depending on what town or city you were in there might be more than one Guildhall. One was a government-run Guildhall that was owned and funded by several merchants around the continent. This meant that the Guildhall didn't belong to any Kingdom or empire but the system was recognized no matter where you went.

In these Guildhalls, you were allowed to, accept quests, accept guild quests, trade-in beast crystals and weapons and rank up you or your guild ranks.

The second type of Guildhall would be owned by a Guild itself. This building would usually have the mark of the Guild held proudly on top of the building. The building was owned by the guild itself and quests could only be completed by the guild members.

Some big cities would a have a few guilds while some smaller towns would be completely run by a single Guild. It was advantageous for a Guild to have their own Guildhall, as they would keep all the profits from completing a quest, regularly collect taxes and have a good trade on beast crystals. The only problem was there was a huge start-up cost involved and you needed a big reputation for people to ask you to complete quests.

After Tuffy finished explain the three of them went to the Guildhall counter to tell them of the quest they completed.

"We're here for the reward on the Mud Crab quest!" Tuffy said excitedly.

As soon as Tuffy said those words many of the people inside the Guildhall had turned their head. Many of them had tried to take on the Mud crab but failed, so they were wondering just who on earth was able to defeat it?

The women behind the desk working for the Guildhall couldn't believe it either.

"I can't just give you the reward, do you have any proof?"

Tuffy looked towards Ray. Ray knew this would be a problem. Right now, the only thing Ray had on him to prove he had defeated the Crab was the Advanced crystal. Although Ray was able to show them the Crystal by taking it out from the system, the crystal wasn't able to leave his hand otherwise it would disappear back to the system.

The Guild would definitely want to examine the crystal before handing out any type of reward.

"Don't worry about it, I don't need the money," Ray said to Tuffy.

The Guild members in the room started to laugh.

"I knew someone couldn't defeat that beast, dam little brat was just making up fairy tales, as usual."

"Did the kid really think they would just believe him if they said they beat the thing, and solo at that!"

Tuffy and Candy could overhear the people speaking badly about them and Ray. Tuffy was actually known amongst the adventures in town for exaggerating tales and thought this was just him being him, but Tuffy wasn't lying this time but he was too embarrassed to say anything back.

That's when suddenly.

"He's not lying!" Candy shouted, "Me and my brother saw it with our own eyes, go out into the swamp and check if you want!"

"Oh, like that time when he saw a phoenix on the north side of the lake, or when he found a treasure at the edge of the swamp but a creature had taken it or let's all talk about that time he saw a dragon."

Tuffy was shaking more and more as he heard the man's words, sure he exaggerated from time to time but this wasn't one of those times. Tuffy let his anger take control of him and had enough, he took out his Dagger and lashed out at the man.

But it was useless, the man grabbed Tuffy by the wrist and held Tuffy around the neck in a headlock, placing Tuffy's own dagger across his neck.

Suddenly, the man then felt a hand on his shoulder.

"Let go of him!" Ray said.

***

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