Reborn as an Adventurer: I Gain a Skill From Every Monster I Eat

Chapter 17: Chapter 17 — Names and Faces

The days after the wolf pack incident settled back into their usual rhythm, though Arlen noticed, in small ways, that something about his own place in the guild hall had shifted — not dramatically, but perceptibly, the way a room feels different once you’ve spent enough time in it that people stop glancing at your badge to remember who you are.

"Arlen," Brakka Ironbeard called out one evening, without looking up from the scale he was weighing a customer’s ore against, in the corner of the guild hall he’d more or less claimed as his own trading post. "Got something for me, or just wasting an old dwarf’s evening?"

"Just passing through," Arlen admitted, pausing at the merchant’s table anyway. "Though I did want to ask about Emberroot prices, if you’ve got a minute. Guild’s paying well for it lately."

"Healing hall’s still working through burn cases from that workshop accident. Demand’ll stay high another week, maybe two." Brakka set down his scale and studied Arlen with the frank, appraising look of a man who’d spent decades sizing up everything from ore to adventurers. "You’ve been steady, these past weeks. Reliable. I like reliable. Means I don’t have to wonder whether what you bring me is worth the coin before I’ve even looked at it properly."

"I’ll take that as a compliment."

"It is one. Dwarves don’t waste flattery." Brakka waved a thick hand toward the trading counter behind him, laden with neatly organized bins of monster materials — hides, claws, small vials of something faintly luminescent that Arlen didn’t recognize. "You bring me good Emberroot, I’ll pay a silver above guild rate. Standing offer, long as the shortage holds."

Arlen filed that away with the same careful attention he gave most useful information these days. A silver above rate wasn’t a fortune, but it was the kind of small, compounding advantage that added up over dozens of quests — exactly the sort of connection Reya had mentioned, weeks ago, when she’d talked about tips reaching adventurers before the board ever posted them.

He was still turning that thought over when the guild hall’s side door opened and a man Arlen didn’t recognize strode in with the brisk, faintly harried energy of someone perpetually a little behind schedule.

He was older, perhaps in his fifties, dressed in traveling clothes of decent but well-worn quality, a satchel stuffed with what looked like rolled maps and loose parchment slung across one shoulder. He made straight for the quest board, pinned a new notice with quick, practiced motions, and then turned to survey the tavern floor with the air of a man taking inventory of potential resources rather than people.

"That’s Professor Eldrin," Brakka said, following Arlen’s gaze. "Historian. Comes through every month or two, looking for escorts willing to haul him out to whatever ruin’s caught his interest that season. Pays well, if you don’t mind him talking your ear off about pottery shards the whole way there."

"What’s he looking for now?"

"No idea. Go read the posting, if you’re curious. Just don’t sign up for it — you’re not ready for whatever’s out past the middle forest boundary, and I’d rather sell you Emberroot for another year than watch you get yourself in over your head chasing an old man’s curiosity."

Arlen wandered over to the board anyway, more out of habit than genuine intention to accept, and found the posting exactly where Eldrin had pinned it.

Escort Requested — Investigation of minor ruin site, Middle Forest boundary (northeast). 4–5 days estimated. Rank D preferred, minimum two escorts. Reward: 20 Silver each, plus first-viewing rights to any recovered texts. Inquire directly — Professor E. Vale.

Rank D preferred. Arlen read the line twice, an old, familiar disappointment settling in his chest — not sharp, not bitter, just the quiet acknowledgment of a door not quite open to him yet.

"You’re staring at that like it owes you something," said a voice behind him, and Arlen turned to find Eldrin himself, closer than he’d expected, peering at Arlen over a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles with open curiosity.

"Just reading," Arlen said. "Ruins interest me. I’m not ready for this one, though."

"No," Eldrin agreed, not unkindly, his gaze flicking briefly to the badge at Arlen’s collar. "Rank F, if I’m reading that correctly. You’d be more liability than help, out past the boundary — not through any fault of your own, mind you, simply a matter of experience. The middle forest doesn’t forgive inexperience the way the outer trails do." He said it plainly, without cruelty, the way Torv had explained gear or Mina had explained the quest board — practical fact rather than judgment. "What draws you to ruins, if you don’t mind my asking? Most young adventurers your rank are chasing coin, not history."

"Both, I suppose," Arlen admitted. "I want to see everything, eventually. Ruins are part of that. Old things somebody else forgot, that maybe I could find again."

Something shifted in Eldrin’s expression — a flicker of genuine interest, sharper than the polite curiosity he’d shown a moment before. "That’s a rarer answer than you’d think. Most people want the treasure and skip the history attached to it." He adjusted his spectacles, studying Arlen a moment longer. "Tell you what. I don’t need you for this expedition — you’re not equipped for it, and I mean that as simple fact, not insult. But I run these escorts fairly often, and ruins nearer the outer boundary do occasionally turn up postings suited to lower ranks. Keep your eye on the board. When something appropriate comes along, I’d be glad of an escort who’s actually curious about what we find, rather than just counting the silver."

"I’d like that," Arlen said, and meant it more than the polite exchange probably conveyed.

Eldrin nodded, satisfied, and moved off toward the tavern counter to recruit properly among the Rank D adventurers gathered there, leaving Arlen standing at the board with a small, useful seed planted — not a quest he could take today, but a door left deliberately ajar for whenever he grew into it.

He returned to his usual table that evening, where Cobb and Sil had already claimed seats, and recounted the exchange over bowls of stew — 3 copper each, same as always, though Arlen noticed he no longer felt the need to remark on the small pleasure of a hot meal quite as often as he once had. It had simply become part of his life now, ordinary in the best possible way.

"Eldrin’s decent," Cobb said, around a mouthful of bread. "Pays fair, doesn’t cut corners on danger pay when a site turns out worse than expected. Half the veterans around here have escorted him at least once."

"Told me to watch the board," Arlen said. "For something suited to lower ranks."

"He does that." Sil spoke up for once, quieter than Cobb but no less certain. "Remembers people. Good thing, in a guild this size."

Arlen thought about that as he finished his stew — Brakka’s standing offer on Emberroot, Eldrin’s door left open, the growing familiarity of faces around the tavern that had once been strangers behind a counter. None of it was dramatic. None of it would fill a single line in the kind of stories Bram used to tell him, tavern tales grown taller with each retelling.

But it was, he thought, exactly the kind of quiet foundation those stories were probably built on in the first place — connections made one evening at a time, doors left open for whenever a person finally grew large enough to walk through them.

He wrote it all down carefully in his journal that night, the way he wrote down everything now, and fell asleep with the small, steady satisfaction of a life slowly, deliberately, taking proper shape around him.