Somewhere Someplace

“Oh, hello you! Arriving right in the earliest of mornings…again, I see?” so greeted and remarked with a cheer that same receptionist, sipping a small teacup of coffee as she observed the foreigner awkwardly barge on in, both arms preoccupied in carrying over her shoulders…a rather heavy sack which glowed in crystalline magenta…along with some wild glowing flare.

“I greet you…the last items…stuffs…collected I have…finally” the foreigner greeted in kind with somewhat atypically tired breaths, making way to the main counter in haste…her sleeves obscuring any faint and hard-to-see cyanic peculiarities no doubt dust-wisping from her burning arms.

It was the early…early…morning, morning’s twilight only recent fading as the sun had only barely risen; the hall was largely empty of anyone besides a handful of early-arriving receptionists, most of whom were located in other…more administrative…areas of this facility.

This had been a reoccurring pattern for the last…however long…the foreigner had been at this quest of hers, always arriving as soon as the Guild had barely opened in order to turn in her quest-items, always departing away well before the other adventurers could arrive and fill this entire Hall with their endless…noises.

The foreigner halted before the main counter and promptly plopped the heavy sack of glow-crystals onto its countertop.

The receptionist glared and stared at the glowing sack now suddenly before her eyes; “…you are…a lot stronger…than you look to be…you know that? That does not seem…nice to carry at all…” she remarked.

“You said this same thing…the last time” the foreigner replied.

“Oh, I know…I am just saying it again” the receptionist replied in kind, placing her teacup down onto its small little…plate-thing of sorts, before opening the sack, inspecting and peering; “Wow bright! Gods’ sacred toilet!…but they sure are pretty…I can see why they are with such demand” she remarked, squinting her eyes as they gradually adjusted.

She evaluated the contents; “Well…considering that there should only be…twenty-nine of these things…and…oh, I see the…wild glow-stone is in here…so…thirty…I will just do a manual confirmation count like before…no need to waste my time weighing one, multiplying by the expected blah blah comparing with the actual weighed blah blah subtracted by the more blah blah blah blahs…and doing maths” she stated, her voice making it rather clear that she did not seem to fancy mathematics despite…her job being one that…very much made…extensive usage of mathematics…never mind rudimentary primitive statistics all done by hand.

The receptionist ahemed as she closed the sack…staring at it once again…oh goodness, how was she even going to…hmm. She attempted to carry the sack herself, yet struggled to do so somewhat…for these magenta glow-stones were…far heavier than those turquoise ones…that wild glow-stone most especially.

Unable to carry it far…or rather unwilling to take such a thing far…this early in the morning, the receptionist simply plopped…very gently…the heavy sack onto the corner of her counter area, next to one of the doors behind; “Yeah…Gods’ sacred…how…did you even…?? You are so much smaller than me! How did you even…? Huh…you are something…alright” she remarked, her breaths panting somewhat.

“…” the foreigner did not reply, silence being her response; though…the height difference between the two was not…that profound even if evident, pfft.

“Anyway” the receptionist began to say as she returned, taking one last conclusive sip of her coffee, “…I will do the confirmation count later…or preferably maybe have…someone else do it…but do not tell that I said…I am not her after all” she said and remarked, before aheming again; “and…considering that your prior turned in collected items…had no incongruencies in count or any other...issues…I will just trust you and assume that…you did everything as told and mark this quest as completed right now” she added, before her hand began to gesture…requesting something.

The foreigner stared, tilting her head…oh right, of course, the receptionist had asked for this the last two times she had turned in a batch of collected items.

She immediately attempted to take out her quest-sheet from her………oh right…she had left her handbag in that…wagoneer’s…well…wagon, having used said wagon to transport the heavy sack all the way here…instead of carrying it the entire way herself…which she could have perhaps theoretically had done, for she had the tolerance, but tolerance was not an immunity to nor an absence of suffering…even with her essence’s many encoded doings.

She donned embarrassed affect, looking down and away; “…I left it in…uhm…I will…return in short time” she said before…swiftly departing off and away, exiting the Guild hall with rather the speed, the receptionist staring, resisting the urge to…giggle, humored by this.

The foreigner returned not long after, now with handbag in hand, and swiftly made away for the main counter, halting before it; “I give the apologies…” she apologized as she quickly retrieved her quest-sheet, and handing it over.

The receptionist ahemed, still resisting the urge to giggle; “At least you did not leave your handbag at home…this time” she remarked cordially, taking the quest-sheet in hand and immediately flipping to the third page, evaluating the foreigner’s own collected item count and tally.

Indeed, these quests required adventurers to keep proper records and count of how many items they had collected throughout each ‘collection session’, mostly to ensure…honesty—incongruences between the Guild’s actual count and the adventurer’s recorded count…could result in…problems, though…relative to intent, for honest mistakes were…not uncommon.

“You are one of the few Coppers I have seen who actually consistently kept recording their collection tally and count for each quest target during each collection session; no matter how many times I remind, most still end up forgetting…or just become…lazy” the receptionist remarked as she inspected.

She placed the quest-sheet back onto the counter, before taking out a special stamp from a drawer and stamping the sheet for completion. She then took out that same…girthy quest log registrar…flipping all the way to this quest’s unique identifier with the foreigner’s name written next…and signed it off as completed. Though, this was only the beginning of the bureaucratic work ahead of her and those like her; but, for now, her job was done.

“Alrightly! Done! Now then, time to finally dispense that long awaited award for you!” the receptionist announced enthusiastically.

She immediately unlocked with one of her many…many keys a special drawer...within which were contained dozens of stacked columns of coins wrapped in a brown paper of sorts, labeled depending on…the type of coin.

“So…seven fifty-eight…was the reward total…uhm…want any of that in golds? Surely…you do… right?” she inquired.

The foreigner tilted her head…contemplating…before nodding “Yes” she began to reply, “I want it in the golds…” Indeed, a hundred silver coins were already…rather weighty enough, let alone seven hundreds.

The receptionist simply nodded before she took out one paper-stored stack of 100 silver coins…tearing it open as she…very quickly and very efficiently…sorted out and organized 58 silvers in almost even columns onto the counter, placing the remainder into a different special drawer filled with loose coins. She then repeated this process…even faster…with the seven remaining golds.

The foreigner, observing this rather…anomalous speed of accountant labor, quickly detached her…very much vacant…coin-pouch from her waist-belt, placing it onto the counter.

“Oh thanks…I was just about…to ask…hmm…double count quickly hmm…ten, twenty, thirty…” the receptionist, noticing, remarked before…her attention quickly drifted back to her priorities at hand. 7 golds and 58 silvers confirmed and verified, she quickly placed the columns of coins into the foreigner’s coin-pouch, quickly tying it up before handing it back; “And there you go! Your first Guild payout! Now…I just to have…calculate the experience and allocate the…aha…” she said with a cheer before…remarking…not so cheery.

The foreigner promptly took her coin-pouch and affixed it back onto her waist-belt; “I give big thanks to you…” she said in thanks, bowing graciously.

The receptionist simply smiled; “Always a pleasure!” she replied enthusiastically; “anyway…now…you are free to select another quest from quest-board…I have to now…process all of this and…calculate and add to your profile” she said further, eyes nudging at the large wall of a quest-board to the right.

The foreigner nodded, bowing graciously again; “I will take the leave, then” she said, before departing off and away, making way for that very quest-board.

758 silvers…she had done all of that…for such a pay. Certainly, it had taken quite a large chunk of the remainder of this month to complete…but she had made far more than she would have had, had she spent the same amount of time working in that tavern.

Though…she owed almost half of it, if not more, to that one wagoneer who…had very much carried her—literally—throughout this entire process, without whom…this would have taken significantly longer. Yet, regardless, even with that being the case…she would still have enough left over to cover her rent for the next couple months or so…provided that…it did not keep spontaneously rising every…due date.

Though, pay and coin aside, so far these ‘quests’ of theirs…were rather…interesting to do. Albeit, she had only done one…and thus had hardly any the sample for adequate comparison at all. Certainly, the one she had just completed was rather mundane, tedious, and essence-devouring, but…quite frankly…those very such kinds of directives and mandates…were exactly the sorts that were rather…nostalgically…familiar to her deep down within.

She halted before the quest-board, her mask-obscured eyes staring and evaluating once again; she was ready to start this entire process anew. She selected her next quest…and quite quickly at that, before returning to the main counter in equally quick haste.

“Oh…wow that was…fast, let me see” the receptionist remarked as the foreigner reappeared before the counter, new quest in hand.

The foreigner immediately placed the new quest-sheet onto the countertop and right before the receptionist’s eyes.

“…” the receptionist’s eyes instantly shifted from that cheerful enthusiasm to utter affective blankness as they inspected the quest-sheet now before them; “…wow you picked…the same…exact collection quest…uhuh…so, just how many copies of this…are even…on that board?” she commented and rhetorically inquired to herself.

The foreigner tilted her head; “Oh. I counted nine, including this one…” she replied, assuming the receptionist was asking her directly; “I thought that since I just did it that I would do it more fast and more good this time again” she added.

The receptionist…blankly nodded away; “Alrightly then…well the quest you pick is the quest you picked…and at least someone is doing these jobs” she remarked…stamping the quest without any protest.

Indeed, the foreigner was ready to start this entire process anew…in a rather…literal sense.