The mission board was bigger than Nathan had imagined. An entire wall of the guild covered in papers pinned with tacks in an organizational system that clearly only the person in charge of maintaining it understood—if that person even existed.

Nathan stood in front of it for a moment.

*Alright. That’s more missions than I thought existed in a single city. Where do you even start with this?*

The papers were color-coded along the edges. Red at the top, orange below that, yellow in the middle, and an entire section at the bottom right with green borders that looked like they’d been there longer than the rest.

A voice spoke to his left.

"Green for F-Rank. If you touch any of the other colors, they’ll kick you out before you finish reading the title."

Nathan turned his head.

The speaker was a man in his thirties, broad-shouldered, with a scruffy beard and leather armor that had lived well past one lifetime. He held a mug of beer in one hand and rested the other on his belt, studying the board with the familiarity of someone who’d made that gesture a thousand times.

"Thanks," Nathan said.

"First timer, huh?"

"That obvious?"

"You were staring at the red section like it was an option."

*Fair point. I’ve been in this guild for an hour, and I’ve already got a veteran giving me advice. This could go well, or it could go very badly.*

"Anything I should know before I take my first mission?" Nathan asked.

The man scratched his beard and looked at the board thoughtfully.

"Don’t take night missions until you’ve ranked up. Half the things that hunt at night were specifically designed to hunt at night, and you aren’t designed for anything yet."

"Noted."

"Don’t take private jobs from nobles, even if they pay triple. There’s always a reason they’re paying triple, and they never tell you until after you’ve signed."

"Noted."

"And if the mission mentions the word ’cave,’ read the fine print twice."

"Why twice?"

"Because the first time, you’ll think you know what it says."

The man took a swig of his beer, nodded at Nathan, and walked off to sit at a table in the back without waiting for a response. Nathan watched him go for a second.

*Helpful people in this world. Who’d have thought.*

He turned back to the board and focused on the green section.

Most of the F-Rank missions were exactly what he expected. Gathering herbs in the nearby fields. Fixing a fence for a farmer south of the city. Escorting a merchant to the next town over. Cleaning out a basement that had a rat problem—rats that weren’t exactly rats but technically still counted as rats for contract purposes.

His eyes stopped on a paper toward the bottom left.

> **SLIME ELIMINATION**

> Hollen family farm, two kilometers southeast of Greywall.

> Estimated population: six to ten specimens.

> No confirmed threat to humans. Limited crop damage.

> Reward: 8 silver coins.

> Difficulty: Minimal.

Nathan read it twice.

*Slimes. The lowest of the low. The weakest creatures documented in any monster registry in Nathara. The mission they give Hunters so they can learn where the field is and what a field looks like. Eight silver coins for an afternoon’s work.*

*Perfect.*

He pulled the paper off the board.

A voice behind him said, "Slimes? Really?"

Nathan turned.

The man was tall, young, dressed in gear that clearly cost more than everything Nathan had ever owned in his life. A longsword at his belt, a cloak with an embroidered emblem of some guild Nathan didn’t recognize, and the specific expression of someone who had looked in enough mirrors to know his best angle and never abandoned it.

Behind him were two companions with similar gear, both watching Nathan with the polite boredom of people waiting for a joke to end so they could laugh.

"Is there a problem with slimes?" Nathan asked.

"None," the man said, with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. "It’s just that most new Hunters at least try for something with a bit more... pride. Wolves. Goblins. Something people can talk about in a tavern afterward."

"I don’t plan on talking about anything in any tavern."

"That’s obvious."

One of the companions laughed under his breath.

*Alright. Here it is. The protagonist hasn’t even killed anything yet, and he’s already got his first generic guild rival. Right on time.*

"And you are?" Nathan asked, in the most polite tone possible.

"Cael Aldermoor," the man replied, as if the name were supposed to mean something. Then, seeing that it clearly didn’t: "Third son of House Aldermoor. Seal of Solrath. Fire Fencer class. C-Rank."

"Congratulations."

"It’s not a—"

"No, really. Congratulations. That sounds impressive."

Cael looked at him for a second, trying to decide whether he was being mocked or not. Nathan kept his face perfectly neutral. It was a skill he’d developed over years of dealing with difficult clients in the business he’d come from, and it turned out to translate very well to this context.

"Your card is F," Cael said, looking at Nathan’s hand where he still held the mission paper.

"It is."

"What Seal do you have?"

"A recent one."

"That’s not a Seal, that’s an evasive answer."

"Yeah. It’s very recent."

Cael glanced down at Nathan’s wrist. Without thinking too much about it, Nathan pulled his sleeve down a little further to cover it. It was an automatic movement, small, but enough. Cael’s eyes noticed it and came back up to his face with renewed interest.

"Why are you hiding it?"

"Because it’s ugly," Nathan said. "I’m not used to it yet."

"Divine marks aren’t ugly."

"Mine is. Personal taste."

Cael looked at him a moment longer. Then he smiled—that same smile that still didn’t reach his eyes, but now had something else in it, something closer to the curiosity of someone who’d decided it was worth following up on this later.

"Enjoy your slime mission, Hunter," he said, and walked off toward the counter with his two companions behind him.

Nathan watched them leave.

*That guy is going to be a problem. Not today. Maybe not this week. But that guy is going to be a problem.*

He folded the mission paper and tucked it into his jacket’s inner pocket.

---

When Nathan approached the counter with the paper to register the accepted mission, the receptionist didn’t even look up from her newspaper this time. She just held out her hand. Nathan handed over the paper. She stamped it, noted something in a ledger, and returned the paper along with a small wooden token with a number carved into it.

"Proof of delivery upon return," she said. "If you don’t come back, we assume death by natural causes."

"Does ’natural causes’ include slimes?"

"It includes anything that doesn’t require additional paperwork."

"Comforting."

"Have a good day, Mr. Voss."

Nathan took the token and headed for the door. Before leaving, he glanced over his shoulder at the table in the back of the guild.

Cael Aldermoor was staring at him.

He didn’t try to hide it. He held the gaze for a full second before turning back to his companions and saying something that made them laugh.

*Yeah. Definitely going to be a problem.*

Nathan walked out of the guild.

---

The sun was already descending toward afternoon when he reached the dirt road leading southeast from Greywall toward the Hollen family farm. The landscape on the outskirts of the city was open, with cultivated fields separated by low stone walls and, beyond that, the dark line of the Gray Forest marking the edge of civilized lands.

Nathan walked with his hands in his pockets.

*Soul Sense. Let’s see what this actually does outside of an alleyway.*

He focused on the skill, the same way he’d focused on the System menu that morning. The skill responded instantly, as if it had been waiting for him to use it with a specific purpose rather than just testing it out.

The world around him filled with information.

Not lights, not overlaid images. Something closer to an internal map. He could feel every living creature within a thirty-meter radius as heat points in a dark room. A herd of cows in a field to his right. A shepherd with his dog much further ahead. Birds in the treetops lining the road. A fox hiding in a bush about ten meters away, completely still, evidently waiting for him to pass before continuing whatever it was doing.

And in the distance, toward where the farm should be, the other things.

Non-living things felt different. They didn’t have the warmth of living creatures. They had something closer to a cold echo—a presence he could register but didn’t radiate heat. Nathan counted mentally. One. Two. Three. Five. Seven. Eight.

*Eight slimes. Right in the middle of the mission estimate.*

He allowed himself a small smile.

*This is going to be ridiculously easy.*

He kept walking. The farm appeared around a bend in the road a few minutes later—a modest structure of wood and stone with a sloped roof, a larger barn in the back, and fields stretching in all directions as far as the eye could see.

An older man stood at the entrance to the nearest field, leaning on a shovel, staring at something on the ground with the face of someone who had made a philosophical decision not to get angry even though he had plenty of reasons to.

Nathan approached.

"Hollen farm?" he asked.

The man looked up. He was about sixty, with weathered skin and hands like the roots of an old tree.

"Hunter?"

"Nathan Voss. F-Rank. I got assigned the slime mission."

"F?"

"F."

The man stared at him for a full second.

"Didn’t they have anyone with more experience?"

"Apparently the mission didn’t require it."

"Mmh." The man scratched his chin. "Well. There they are."

He pointed with the shovel toward the field behind him.

Nathan looked.

And kept looking for a bit longer.

"That..." he started.

"Yeah."

"Those aren’t normal slimes."

"No."

"The paper said slimes."

"The paper said slimes three days ago, when the paper was written."

Nathan looked at the eight slimes in the middle of the wheat field.

Each one was roughly half the size of a full-grown man.

They were a dark green, almost black, with a texture that seemed to absorb light rather than reflect it, and in the center of each was something that clearly wasn’t just liquid. Something more solid. Something that moved when the slime moved and had defined edges.

Each one had two red dots where a more polite creature would have had eyes.

Soul Sense was still active. And Soul Sense was registering every single one of the eight slimes with the same cold signature of non-living things he’d felt in the alleyway when the hooded man had appeared.

Dead slimes.

Undead slimes.

*Ah*, Nathan thought, with the specific calmness of someone who had just realized why the mission only paid eight silver coins and why it had been left on the board long enough for an F-Rank to take it.

*Shit.*