He was not pretending, which infuriated Frank even more.
"There were no casualties? That's true but we almost died there all of us. It's only thanks to Altunan that we walked out alive. You find that funny?"
"No, no, excuse me. I remembered something funny from a long time ago." Varth calmed down and wiped his mouth with handkerchief, "now back to business. I understand that you are upset, I really do."
"But let me be clear, what happens on a quest is out of our hands. We do our best to provide all sorts of support but ultimately we may not be able to account for everything."
The guild obviously couldn't have known about what really was happening in Ebrict, no to mention them even the Lord of Ebrict himself didn't know.
"I understand that of course. But this was not a regular quest, it was part of the exam which as far as I know was supposed to have only grade zero quest. How could such a suspiciously lacking quest be allowed in the quest pool for the exam."
Aldrich felt like he swallowed a fly. Obviously he knew the reason why, he made it so that this kind of lacking quest was added for his own convenience.
Varth didn't look so good himself, "I can tell you that our screening process for the exam is meticulous." Suddenly Varth shot a brief glance at Aldrich, "but the answer to your questions may be closer to you thank you think."
"What?" Frank asked back, confused.
But Aldrich's mind was reeling, this bastard, he knew. Somehow he knew Aldrich was behind it. Maybe it was just a coincidence, maybe he looked his way for no reason.
It could be but he knew it was not a coincidence.
"Anyway, here's your guild badges. You should have them with you when you're out adventuring."
Varth took out six badges that had two wings and the number one. He didn't say that they had to wear them to have it with them. Hmm, interesting.
"This is considered your first grade one quest so it counts, here's your reward." Varth put a coin pouch on the table. "I took your membership fees myself, so next month don't forget to pay."
"Membership fees? We have to pay you?" Cole asked like he was suddenly asked to donate his kidney.
Aldrich couldn't stop himself from facepalming, Nathan had the right of it from the start. He opted out and cut off his losses but Aldrich had to sit here and suffer.
He should have known, Cole wasn't the type to do any research or ask around. His thought process was probably something like this, "I will become an adventurer but which guild? Aha! That one! Because people say it the strongest!"
"It looks like not everyone is informed, let me give you a basic summery and then you can ask someone else about the details." Varth didn't look too surprised but Aldrich could see the disappointment in his eyes.
'Great, instead of impressing a higher-up I ended up looking like a fool.'
"Well, I said some of this in my speech from before but I will be clearer this time around. By being members of our guild you can get access to wondrous items and alchemy agents that ordinary people can't."
"You can also get a discount in some shops that are affiliated with us, finally you can get the opportunity to enter our dungeons and reap riches and gain dungeon delving experiences in a relatively safer environment."
"When you go on quests wherever that maybe there you will always have the support of the guild assistance team. They collect useful information, they clean up the scene after a battle. They take care of the bodies of huge monsters and can even sell them for you."
"Do you understand what I mean? Our job is to make sure that you leave the logistics side of things to us and you guys focus on adventuring and subjugating monster."
"Oh, wow, I didn't realize all of that was important…" Hellen mumbled.
"Yeah, why do they have to make everything so complicated?" Cole, of course agreed with her.
"This is only the obvious things, there's even more that you can find out later. Like transportation and whatnot." Varth continued on undisturbed by the two of them.
"Ah, I have a question, " Aldrich gathered his courage to ask even though he wanted to leave at once, "when can we have a go at the Silver Leaf dungeon?"
The Silver Leaf dungeon was one of the most famous dungeons owned by the Sustar knights guild. This is because it was filled with expensive medical herbs and mystical fruits like the Stone fruit that Aldrich gave to Gazeff.
"You, as members can of course have a go at it, but only after completing five grade one quests in succession. If you fail one you have to do two more to make up for it."
So there was still that kind of limitation even after becoming official members.
"This dungeon takes a week to be restored we can't just send people in wherever we want."
Perhaps sensing their complaints Varth explained without being prompted.
Aldrich and the others left the guild feeling happy, he didn't care how Varth knew of the underhanded methods used to add that quest but he will leave that to Ayemon.
Varth Elmer wasn't just a Ringed knight, that was already an impressive identity but he was also the advisor of lord Garrett from Uthgar. Lord Garret was a member of the Lord's Assembly.
Lord Garrett was also Varth's father in law, their story started when a grey orc war-chief crossed the Drought desert and attacked everything in his path. He brought with him an army of a thousand grey orcs and twenty warriors.
The so called warriors of the orcs are all grade one beings.
Their luck came to and end when they attacked lord Garrett's lands. At first because of the sudden attack there was no resistance but then the forces moved.
But at that time the orcs had captured Deeprock keep, and made it into an impenetrable fortress.
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