Chapter 39 (Patreon)

The guard at the end of the corridor straightened when Harold turned the corner.

Two more fell in behind him, boots silent on stone. Armor moved in sync—leather straps tightened under practiced hands, cloth whispering against cloth. As Harold approached, one guard extended his arm and shoved the door open.

Voices carried through the gap.

"…if we planned on building it here at the apex of the river falling from the mountains?" Bethel asked.

Harold stepped inside.

Mark stood on the far side of a broad oak desk scarred by compass points and knife tips. Papers lay in ordered stacks, each bound with thin cord. Ink bottles sat stoppered and clean—a miracle, given the state of Mark's fingers. A tall shelf behind him held rolled maps labeled in Margaret's careful hand.

Evan sat opposite Bethel with his forearms planted on the table, shoulders set like he expected the furniture to argue with him.

All three turned. Mark straightened first.

"My Lord," Mark said. His mouth twitched with the effort of keeping it formal.

Evan rose slower, gathering the loose pages in front of him into a neat square before standing. "My Lord."

Bethel remained seated. She inclined her head instead, one hand resting on the cane leaned against her chair.

Harold waved them down. "Relax. If I wanted ceremony, I would have stayed in the keep."

The guards spread along the wall without instruction. One took the space near the door. Another moved to the window slit, half-turned to watch both the room and the courtyard below.

Harold motioned toward them, the gesture heavy. "Sorry about them." His eyes lingered on the guards, then dropped. "Carter's orders."

Bethel snorted, tapped her cane on the floor, and stood. She walked to Harold and met his gaze directly, then lifted her hand and cupped his cheek. The callused palm scraped gently against his stubble.

His shoulders dropped before he meant to let them. The tension in his jaw—he hadn't noticed it until it loosened.

"Hmm," Bethel said. "You are getting better. The meditation and physical effort are helping you process your memories. Keep doing them."

He hated that she spent herself like this. But his head went quiet—not empty, just quiet—and he didn't pull away.

Harold placed his hand over hers. "Thank you, Bethel. But I'm ready to carry these myself."

She smiled and stepped toward the door. "Everyone needs help sometimes, child. Accept it and just say thank you."

He watched her go with warmth he didn't bother hiding, then turned to Mark and Evan.

Mark looked at him incredulously. "She was just tearing strips off us in here. Why do you get the gentle treatment while we got run roughshod over?"

Harold grunted and stepped to the desk, hooking his thumb beneath a ledger and dragging it closer. "Alright. Give me the rundown."

Mark exchanged a quick look with Evan—here we go—and reached for the top book.

Before he could explain, the door at the far end creaked. An adventurer with a torn sleeve and a red band at his shoulder slipped inside, scanning the room with hope and wariness, fighting for control of his face. He held a battered copper token, running his thumb over its edges.

Mark looked up. The man hesitated, then drew a breath.

"Sir, do you have the new lists yet?" His voice was rough from long days and little sleep. "My team took a river quest last week. I wanted to know if that's enough to get priority for the potion queue. We've heard second-tier can request it now."

Evan motioned for patience. The man waited, jaw set.

"Give us a couple of days," Mark said. "We'll let you know."

Harold raised an eyebrow as the adventurer left. Mark opened the ledger—pages flat, columns of figures marching down the parchment in semi-disciplined rows. The ink was blotched and spotty. The trick of writing with a quill still eluded most of them.

"Adventurer rank structure," Mark said, leaning forward like he was selling it. "The perks and responsibilities that come with it. We're making it formal."

Evan grunted. "He means we stop letting them make up ranks in their heads."

Mark shot him a look. "That's not—okay, fine, yes. But the point is—"

"The point is we give them a ladder they can see," Evan said. Mark's jaw worked, but he didn't argue. "If they stall at the bottom, they get left behind when better contracts, supplies, or influence pass them by. If they reach the top, they earn a place in the quests that matter. More power. No one can afford to stand still in a world like this."

He hesitated, then added, "Most guilds right now keep things loose—ranks are unofficial, advancement is more rumor than rule. What we're building here is stricter, but people will know exactly where they stand. We want ours to be different."

Evan slid a separate sheet across the desk toward Harold. His handwriting was tighter, letters compressed like space was precious.

"They earn points through quests and items recovered. Like your potion ingredients." Evan tapped the page. "We measure their work and assign values. Proof is required. Distance from safe settlements increases value. Higher monster tiers increase value. Strategic impact multiplies it."

Harold rested his palms on the desk and read. "This makes sense, and it’s a familiar scheme. What if they game it?"

Mark smiled. "They'll try."

"Repeat contracts lose weight," Evan said. "First clear pays full. The second pays half. Third barely covers rations."

"Which means if they want advancement, they move outward into risk," Mark added. "Makes them more useful. We'll need offices with steles for this to work properly, but I see that as a benefit."

Evan tapped the page again. "Rank gives privilege. Access to better quests. Priority at potion reserves. Authority to buy the better potions you keep locked up. Authority to command larger teams. Eventually, command eligibility for campaign assignments."

He paused. "And rank demands response. Iron tier answers muster calls. Steel tier deploys when designated. Refusal freezes advancement. Continued refusal erodes standing."

Harold turned the page. The parchment rasped under his fingers. "What stops point inflation?"

Evan didn't hesitate. "Mana tier requirement."

Mark nodded, already pulling another ledger forward. "Points alone never promote. Otherwise we'd have Iron-tier idiots running campaign assignments. Bronze. Iron. Steel. Silver. Gold. Each threshold requires verified mana capacity with requisite control."

Harold looked up. "How are you going to verify mana standards?"

Mark's jaw shifted. "We can observe. Combat tempo. Perk sustain. Recovery cycles—"

"We can guess," Evan said.

Silence. A guard adjusted his stance, leather creaking as his gauntlet gripped the shield strap.

Harold reached for a stone paperweight and rolled it beneath his palm, feeling the faint grit trapped between wood and parchment.

"There is a way," he said.

Evan's eyes narrowed. "I figured, alright, give us more of your Lordly world wisdom."

Harold rolled his eyes. "The smiths had a way to make a tool that could measure mana, but it took a special material. There are a couple of other natural items we could use if we can find them. I'll send over descriptions, and you can make them open tasks—reward them if they're found. Informal quest."

Mark turned and rummaged through his other books, flipping pages.

"I'll tell Lira to keep an eye out too," Harold continued. "She's close to establishing the second mine near the north village. The mountains probably have some of the ore we need." He gestured toward the ledger. "This list is light on the privileges column. I'll send over additions—access to Landing Smiths and Alchemists for special items. More money for rewards. Special quests. Eventually, we can create categories locked behind their tier. The biggest reward will be dungeon totems, when we get them."

Evan gave a single nod.

"Found it!" Mark pulled a book free and spun it around so Harold could see, pointing to an item and its description. "This was a reward from the goblin dungeon. It describes what can be found in there after your changes from the dungeon totem. Can we use this?"

"Dungeon crystal." Harold leaned in. "Yeah, that would work. Adventurers push all their mana into the stone, and based on the light that shines, you judge them. It's subjective, but it works for now."

He scratched the stubble on his chin. "After that, the crystal is infused. Alchemists would want it—dungeon crystal is a fantastic ingredient."

Mark was already reaching for fresh parchment. "Good. Because once we publish rank thresholds, adventurers will push against them—especially since we plan on resetting everyone. If we can't give them enough incentive, we'll lose standing."

Harold closed the ledger. "You have approval. Draft the structure. Points scaling. Privilege access. Mana verification clause. I'll send over the incentives before you publish."

Mark's hand had already found the quill. "Yes, my Lord."

Evan gathered his notes into a tight stack. "Yes, my Lord."

Harold straightened and let his posture shift from business to something lighter. "So. Show me the guild."

Mark blinked. "What?"

Harold smiled. "Yeah. I haven't been in here since it was built. Show me around."

They moved into the corridor. Guards flowed with them—one on point, another covering the rear. Boots struck stone in cadence as voices, steel, and the thud of bodies drifted from the guild hall ahead.

The doors stood open. They looked down into the hall and the massive common area below.

Air rolled out—sweat, leather oil, fresh timber shavings. Harold breathed it in and found himself grinning before he'd made it down the first step.

Long contract tables filled the center, parchment notices pinned beneath daggers and tankards. A clerk hunched over a massive ledger while adventurers crowded the edge, arguing about credit distribution and risk. The noise held both the chaos of guild life and something sharper underneath—the edge that came when too many armed people shared too little space.

Harold paused on the upper landing. The railing felt solid beneath his hand.

Below, fighters broke from a clinch and reset their footing in a scatter of sawdust. A runner pushed through the press with a sealed message raised high. Voices dipped as recognition spread outward in uneven waves.

Mark watched the floor with barely contained pride. "They're a rough lot. But they're passionate about what you're building."

Evan watched how the groups formed, who deferred, and who challenged. "We'll get them into shape."

Harold pushed off the railing. "Nonsense." He strode down into the chaos with a grin. "It looks like fun."

The first thing that changed was the sound—arguments thinning mid-sentence, a blade that had been ringing against another slowing, then stopping altogether. Someone laughed once and swallowed the rest when they realized what they were laughing at. Boots scraped and shifted.

Harold didn't slow.

His guards came with him down the stairs in a loose wedge that never quite closed. Mark and Evan stayed at his shoulders for three steps, then five, then fell half a pace behind when he lengthened his stride.

The guild floor opened around him like water around a prow.

A long table stood abandoned near the sparring ring. Tankards sat in uneven ranks along its edge, some still sweating from hands that had just let them go. Harold reached out without looking and took the nearest one.

The wood felt tacky. He brought it to his nose.

The smell hit like rot soaked in smoke. Harsh grain mash and something bitter that had burned on the bottom of a kettle too long. It clawed up the back of his throat before he even drank.

He tipped the tankard back anyway.

Liquid fire scraped down his throat and punched into his chest. He swallowed through it, finished the whole thing in one long pull, and set the empty cup down with a solid crack.

Half a heartbeat. No one moved.

Then the room exploded.

Cheers rolled up from every corner. Someone slammed a fist against the table hard enough to rattle the knives pinning down contracts. A pair of fighters who had been circling each other whooped like they'd just won something.

Harold wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "Terrible," he gasped.

Laughter broke like a storm. The noise came back all at once—voices climbing over each other, wooden weapons clashing, a clerk shouting numbers like the interruption had only reset his lungs.

Harold moved toward the closest group of adventurers.

"I think I remember you from our trip into the Verdant Forest," he said to a woman tightening the strap on a dented greave.

She turned with a wide smile. "Um—yes, sir." The formality came out awkward.

"Na, none of that now." He waved it off. "Are things improving for you lot? I see you have better equipment."

Her companion jumped in. "Oh, things have gotten a lot better since building this hall. We all actually have rooms now—a little privacy. Real weapons. We're good, sir."

Harold smacked the woman's shoulder and moved on. "Good! Let me know if there's anything you're missing."

The horrible liquid sat in the back of his throat, making him warm.

"What contracts are those?" he asked a man hunched over a parchment.

"Scouting southwest of Haven." The man blinked. "Sir," he added as an afterthought.

"Do you have some kind of perception perk? That one's important."

"No, but we all have endurance perks. We can move fast."

"Not faster than a centaur in open plains. You'd need sprint and endurance." Harold shook his head. "Look at gaining a perception perk—the value is immeasurable."

The man protested. "We've tried! The monsters with good perception perks are hard to find, and even harder to fight. They always sense us before we can find them and escape."

"The trick is luring them somewhere they can't escape. The alchemists offer products to hide your scent." Harold was already moving on.

Mark tried to follow. He lasted maybe thirty seconds before he lost Harold in the press of bodies, forced to elbow his way through a knot of laughing veterans who insisted on clapping him on the back for designing something they hadn't even seen yet.

Evan did better. He tracked by pattern—where arguments stopped, where heads turned, where the noise shifted shape. Even so, Harold slipped him twice before a guard finally caught his sleeve and pointed.

The guards stopped trying. They spread instead, took pillars and doorways, watched hands instead of faces while their Lord became motion itself.

"How's the food?" Harold asked a cook with ground grain on her forearms.

"It'll be better when we have real ingredients," she shot back.

"A couple more weeks to the harvest. Then you will."

"What do you miss?" he asked an older adventurer cleaning blood from a blade.

"Hmph. My grandkids."

Harold paused. "Do you have a line on them?"

The man halted his cleaning and gave Harold a proper look. "They're across the ocean, from what I've been able to determine. I keep in contact through the forum. Their lord hasn't prospered as we have, though they've managed to hold on. I've passed what guidance I can."

He set the blade down. "In time, I intend to bring them here. I've watched what you're building. I mean to stand behind it."

Harold squeezed his shoulder. "Let me know if we can help. Have Mark and Evan send me the details on their lord. I’ll reach out over the forum and send your grandkids supplies."

He kept moving. Questions. Answers. Half-answers. Promises that sounded like jokes until people realized he meant them. He shook hands. He took a slap on the shoulder from someone drunk enough to forget titles. He stepped between two men before their argument turned into something with teeth.

Then he stopped.

It happened so abruptly that the sound seemed to overshoot him.

Mark nearly walked into his back. Evan turned a fraction too late and had to plant his boot hard to keep from colliding with a passing runner.

Harold stood facing a narrow office carved into the far wall. The door hung open.

Inside, a desk sat buried under a stack of ledgers. Candles burned low in iron holders, wax pooled and hardened along their bases. A woman bent over the work, dark hair pulled tight at the nape of her neck. Her sleeve was rolled past the elbow. Ink marked the side of her hand where she had wiped it without thinking.

She did not look up. Her lips moved as she counted. One finger traced a column down the page. She paused, scratched something out, and began again.

He knew those shoulders. The set of her spine.

His feet stopped moving before the rest of him caught up, and for a moment, he stood there trying to place her. The name rose in his throat. He stepped into the doorway.

One of his guards shifted closer without being told. Evan stopped two paces back. Mark went very still.

The woman finished the column. Dipped her pen. Only then did she look up.

Harold stepped over the threshold slowly, boots louder here where the guild noise dulled to a thick murmur behind the wall.

The office held heat from the candles and the press of bodies passing outside. Ink, old parchment, a faint trace of soap. The desk itself had been reinforced with a second plank nailed across the front where the first had split.

She watched him approach. Her eyes moved first to the guards, then to Mark, then Evan—then settled on Harold and stayed there.

She didn't look away. Didn't blink. Harold had seen that particular stillness in people who'd decided whether to forgive you and weren't going to tell you which way it went.

"I didn't realize Margaret had placed you here," Harold said softly.

Adeline's mouth tightened. She set the quill down with care, aligning it beside the inkwell before answering.

"I never went to Margaret."

The words carried no heat. That hit Harold harder than anger would have.

"Max loved serving under you." Her pen had stopped moving. "It got him killed."

She put the quill down with more care than it needed.

"I didn't come here for handouts. Not from you, not from Margaret, not from anyone wearing your colors. My son is going to learn what earning something looks like—now that Max isn't here to show him."

For an instant, Harold saw Max's chuckle as he enjoyed his part in a little misdirection.

He let the silence sit. Then: "I liked Max."

He shifted his weight. The leather at his hip creaked.

"I promised him—I promised all of them—their families would be cared for. This isn't charity. It's what I owe."

He studied her. She had lost weight since he'd last seen her. The bones of her wrists showed when she moved. Ink stained the side of her thumb. Her shoulders still held themselves square, like she expected the world to try something.

"What do you do here?" he asked.

Adeline reached for the ledger again, turned a page, and made a quick note before answering. "I handle contract details. Postings. I help Mark and Evan keep track of who's suited for what." She nodded toward them without looking. "I write cleaner than they do."

Mark gave an offended huff. "She does more than write. Adeline reviews team composition before we approve higher-risk quests. She catches gaps. Suggests perk pairings. We've lost fewer people since she started—" he made air quotes, "—interfering. The respawn timer is becoming a real problem for some people. Our worst is now spending over fifteen hours before he can respawn. If that keeps up, in a couple of years, people will be spending weeks."

Adeline rolled her eyes. "Axel spends seventeen hours respawning right now, and his team is only allowed to take the lowest-risk quests. Axel has horrible luck, though. This last death was from a lucky goblin arrow."

Harold watched her movements as she spoke—still writing, still working. 

"What does your son do while you work?" he asked.

She finished the line before answering. The scratch of the pen seemed deliberate.

"He goes to lessons in the morning. Afternoons, he helps a friend with the tatanka herd. He likes the animals. They listen to him."

Harold nodded. "Hm."

He stood there longer than anyone felt comfortable with.

"I wish you had gone to Margaret for work," he said. "I understand why you didn't. I'm offering you something now anyway."

That pulled her full attention. He continued before she could refuse.

"Margaret has outgrown the role she once filled for me. She's too busy with her department now. I need someone else to filter what reaches my desk. Someone who speaks plainly and who doesn't shrink from title or armor. Who understands cost and gives insight on how to mitigate risk." He glanced at the ledgers. "Someone who's clearly already doing the work."

He paused. "The pay is better."

Adeline looked up at him squarely for the first time.

"I won't take charity," she said.

Harold turned his head slightly. "Is she competent?" he asked.

Evan didn't hesitate. "She is, my Lord."

Mark folded his arms. "I'd rather you didn't poach my people, though."

Harold looked back at her. "Then come work for me. I need your perspective. I've looked. No one else fits."

Adeline stared at him. For a moment, she looked genuinely lost. Then the expression shifted into something Caldwell would have recognized—the look of someone about to make a deal.

"Fine." The word came fast. "But my son works with your falconer. Properly, mind you—not just mucking stalls. And he gets a real tutor. Someone who teaches more than letters."

Harold smiled and stepped forward, offering his hand.

She looked at it and did not take it.

"Deal," she said instead.

"But you take the oath," Harold replied.