Chapter 134: Pointed Ears and Tusks

’Thousand Echoes Guild, huh...’

The name sounded impressive, but then again, everything in Cyrune liked having names that sounded as if someone had spent three days trying to make them mysterious.

He followed Ernest toward the entrance while Ollie remained on his shoulders, although the boy had finally stopped asking for food after eating enough during their walk. Zishan, one time, was even beginning to question where all of it was going.

The heavy wooden doors were already open. Once they crossed through them, Zishan slowed his steps.

The inside was much larger than he expected. The main hall stretched across two floors, with a wide open space at the center and wooden walkways running along the upper level. Several staircases led upward from different sides, while large boards had been mounted along the walls with notices, maps, and pieces of parchment attached to them.

People crowded around some of those boards, while others occupied the circular tables spread throughout the hall.

Zishan saw weapons leaning against chairs, backpacks placed underneath tables, pieces of Beast armor, crates filled with materials, and several things he could easily identify.

The ’people’ inside were more varied than the weapons they were holding. They looked too different from one another, so his attention kept moving from one ’person’ to ’another’ before he could properly look at anything else.

Some looked like soldiers who had decided uniforms were optional. Others wore robes, leather armor, traveling clothes, or equipment covered in so many pockets that Zishan assumed they had prepared for every possible emergency except fashion.

What caught him more, however, were the people he had heard about long before reaching the capital but somehow had yet to properly encounter since arriving.

There were Elves.

Zishan’s eyes followed one of them for several seconds. The man’s pointed ears were impossible to miss beneath his tied-back pale hair. Honestly, he imagined elves more than what he could see at the moment. This pointed-ears man was sitting at one of the tables arguing loudly with another guild member over a map while drinking something from a wooden mug.

’Oh. So they really are here.’

Elinox had told him there were thousands of Elves living in and around the capital, along with Dwarves, Beastfolk, Orcs, and several other races. Zishan had expected to see them the moment he started walking around Olmost, yet most of the streets they had passed over the past few days had been filled with Humans. The Guild was entirely different, he guessed.

A short, broad man with a thick brown beard was examining the edge of a damaged shield near one of the counters. Zishan assumed he was a Dwarf until he remembered Elinox’s warning about making assumptions based entirely on Race, although the beard was doing an excellent job supporting his case.

Farther away, a Beastfolk woman with dark animal ears rising through her hair was leaning over one of the mission boards while her tail moved behind her whenever somebody passed too close. An Orc sat at a nearby table reading through several sheets of parchment, one large hand supporting his chin while the small tusks protruding from his lower jaw made his bored expression look much more threatening.

Zishan looked around again. And there were actually quite a few of them.

’Where the hell were all of you hiding?’ he thought.

But again, Olmost was enormous. He had barely seen a fraction of the capital since coming here, and most of the places he had visited were connected to the military and the Holmes Family. Well, he had also been to the Registry, but he did not notice anything different there. Or there might be. He was just not paying attention, because the event on that day was something stimulating to the senses. Now, he wondered again what happened to that guy and whether the latter would chase him to death to avenge himself.

Shrugging his shoulders, he thought, ’Going back, a guild probably attracted a much wider collection of people...’

His gaze was still moving through the hall when one particularly large man carrying an axe across his back walked past them, and something bright near the man’s chest caught his attention.

A metal badge had been attached to his clothes.

Zishan stared at it while they passed.

The crest of the Thousand Echoes Guild was engraved across the center, surrounded by several overlapping circles similar to the one above the entrance. Beneath the crest was a single word.

STEEL.

Zishan’s gaze followed the man for another few seconds. Then, he noticed another badge on a woman standing near one of the boards. Hers had IRON. Another person walking toward the stairs had SPARK engraved underneath the crest.

Zishan looked toward Ernest. "Old man."

Ernest continued walking. "What?"

"Why does everyone have metal stuck to their clothes?"

Ernest turned his head slightly.

Zishan pointed toward the man with the axe. "That guy’s got some sort of metallic badge that says Steel. The woman over there says Iron, and I saw another one that said Spark. Is that some kind of job classification?"

"Those are Guild Ranks, but kind of job classifications as well."

Zishan’s attention went back toward the badges. "Guild Rank?"

Elinox walked beside them while Ollie leaned over Zishan’s head to look around as well.

Ernest slowed enough that the four of them were no longer weaving between people so much. "Most major Guilds use the same general ranking structure, even if their internal rules are different."

"How many classified ranks are within this general structure that you’re saying?" he asked.

"There are nine exactly," Ernest replied.

Zishan looked surprised. "That’s quite a lot."

Ernest started counting them while they walked. "Mote, Spark, Iron, Steel, Crown, Star, Nova, Zenith and Apex. Mote is the lowest, while Apex is the highest."

Zishan repeated the names inside his head. ’Mote. Spark. Iron. Steel. Crown. Star. Nova. Zenith. Apex.’

"To make them easier to remember, especially for newbies like you, they’re usually divided into three clusters," Ernest continued. "The Lower Ranks are MSI, the Middle Ranks are SCS, and the Peak Ranks are NZA."

"Wow. Very complicated," Zishan remarked.

Ernest did not talk and just looked at him weirdly, while Zishan’s eyes moved toward another badge passing nearby.

MOTE.

The young man wearing it looked like a boring teenager, and he was quite busy calculating something using his fingers.

Zishan pointed at him. "So that one’s the lowest?"

"Yes."

The young man glanced toward Zishan after realizing someone had pointed at him.

Zishan lowered his hand. "Sorry..."

The young man gave him a strange look before continuing on his way.

Ernest glanced at Zishan. "Try not to point at people while discussing their Rank."

Zishan ignored his remark and looked around again. "So what actually decides the Rank? Level?"

"Level matters, although it isn’t the only thing considered. Guilds look at ability, experience, completed work, reliability, contribution, and whether they trust you with more difficult assignments. Requirements can differ depending on the Guild."

"So someone could be high-Level and have a low Guild Rank?"