“So Liam, before we start talking business, there are just a few things I’m curious about…”
“I’m sure you are,” Liam laughed out loud as we exited the arrival building into the city proper. “New travelers always do.”
I wanted to immediately launch into the litany of questions I had, but was distracted by the city around us. From inside the domed building, all I’d been able to see was the skyscraper opposite it, but now that we were outside, I could take a proper look around. From what I’d seen so far, I had assumed that the traveler hub was some sort of hyper-futuristic city with crazy technology around every corner. And while that was obviously true to some extent, it was also wrong.
As I looked around, I couldn’t help but feel like the city had been planned by an insane posse of monkeys with ADHD. Aside from skyscrapers sticking out every now and again, everything in between them was filled with a literal potpourri of buildings from different times and cultures. Right next to the skyscraper was a cozy hut with a carefully tended garden. Next to that, a collection of large tents, followed by what was labeled as a robotic limb repair shop. Closer to the dome, I spotted a three-story office building, entirely made out of some strange green wood, a floating island with a large home that for some reason only floated a few centimeters above the ground, and a cave-like opening in the ground, from which I could hear laughter and music.
I vaguely registered Liam watching me with a small smile on his face as I took it all in. The further I looked, the more varied the buildings became, a true hodgepodge of everything imaginable. And in between all the strange and wondrous buildings, walked an equally strange and wondrous people. Even more varied than the people in the arrival building, tons of different races were milling about, interspersed with monsters of all shapes and sizes. Occasionally, a sort of flying car rushed by overhead, leaving the ground level of the city free for the pedestrians.
Then, among all the crazy things I could see, sanity went out the window. What I’d previously believed to be a mountain visible in the distance started moving. The damn thing was towering over even the tallest of skyscrapers and was currently in the process of turning around, presumably to go somewhere.
“What the fuck is that?” I asked, pointing a tentacle in the direction of the moving mountain. It felt as prudent a first question as any.
“Ah, that,” Liam looked at what I was pointing at and put his hands on his hips like I’d asked him about the weather or something. “That’s just Awotwi. He’s one of the Nineteen, just make sure you’re nowhere near the big open spaces close to him, or you might actually get stepped on.”
“What do you mean, “just Awotwi”? I asked incredulously. “He’s massive!”
“Well, seeing how physically large he is, you get used to him being there pretty quickly, the novelty wears off after a while…” Liam stroked his chin in thought. “It’s weirder when he isn’t here, honestly. Feels like something missing from the skyline, you know?”
“And what are the Nineteen anyway? Some other guild?”
“That’s a whole other thing, and not too important right now,” Liam waved away the question to my annoyance. “But hey, if you join, you could ask the guildmaster, I’m sure he’d be happy to answer all of your more in-depth questions. Let’s keep things surface level, for now, yes? I’m not about to fork over tons of free information, no matter how valuable you are.”
“I suppose that’s fair,” I relented, realizing for the first time that I wasn’t entitled to have literally all of my questions answered by some guy I just met. But there was still something that felt vitally important, and I wasn’t willing to compromise on an answer. “Alright then. But! I’m telling you right now that if you don’t answer my next question truthfully, I’m walking away immediately, no second chances.”
“Alright,” Liam leveled a slightly unsettled gaze at me. “What is it?”
“Why is everyone seemingly obsessed with recruiting me to their guild?” I asked, finally voicing the question that had been burning holes into my mind.
“It’s because you’re a voidling, one that hasn’t already signed up with a guild,” Liam let out a relieved breath. Apparently, that question was not among the taboo topics. “Evolving into a voidling is not easy at all, and as such, they are quite rare among travelers. They’re usually decently powerful, but that’s not enough to start a commotion around these parts, really. What everyone is after is the voidlings' attribute trading skill. It is exclusive to their race and is unfathomably valuable since it is the only skill in existence that allows the trading of attribute points. You can potentially fix somebody’s completely messed-up attribute distribution with close to no effort.”
You, my friend, will be disgustingly rich in the future, if you play things right.”
“I see…” I thought back to my various experiences in the void and the transactions I had made there. It didn’t feel too out of place at the time, but if what Liam said was true and the voidlings were literally the only ones in the whole expanse that could do something like that, I could see the value in it. “And I suppose that if I joined a guild, they’d be able to profit from my ability for cheap?”
“You got it,” Liam confirmed. “No matter what guild you join, their ulterior motive will always be controlling access to your skill in some way or another.”
“Even your guild?” I asked, with barely concealed suspicion.
“Absolutely,” Liam nodded without missing a beat. “As you might have guessed from our guild name, we usually only accept monsters that started out at tier zero, but for someone like you, the master is sure to make an exception.”
“Don’t get ahead of yourself on that front,” this time it was my turn to smirk. “I started out at tier zero as well, which is the whole reason I picked you to get the others off my back.”
Liam focused on me with redoubled interest. “Well, maybe you are a better match than I originally thought…”
“Maybe I am, maybe I am not,” I looked around again, marveling at the odd mixture of buildings around us. “Why don’t we walk and talk? How far away is your guild?”
“Right, I’m supposed to guide you,” Liam snapped back to reality and pointed to the right. “This way. It’s not terribly far, maybe a ten-minute walk.”
“Plenty of time to get some questions in,” I commented as I fell into step with Liam. “I suppose I should ask this first… What are the rules I need to follow here? With this many different species living here, I’d wager there are some things I need to consider.”
“The first rule, above all else, is that the system is king here,” Liam said with a serious voice. “The traveler initiative is first and foremost a system-led program, and the rules it has set into place are ironclad and unviolable. Should you find yourself breaking a rule, you’ll be expelled from the program immediately, if you’re lucky. If you’re unlucky, your story will come to an end right then and there. It all depends on the gravity of the violation you’ve committed, and the system is judge, jury, and executioner.”
“That… seems a bit overkill…” All the times I had doubted the system as a semi-evil entity came rushing back to me, and I couldn’t help but ask for clarification. “Can the system really just… kill anybody it doesn’t like?”
“Just the travelers,” Liam corrected. “We are intrinsically connected to the system, on a much deeper level than the rest of the expanse. I’m sure you remember, but before you became a traveler, you died. The system is what reconstructed you from the ground up, so it has a lot more influence over you than you’d think.”
“Yeah, I think I figured that one out myself…” I shuddered as I remembered the times I wondered about how the system handed out skills and such. “Or at least suspected something along the lines… So, everybody I see here, every single traveler, has died?”
“At least once, yes,” Liam nodded, probably remembering his own death. “The regular people of the expanse are still connected to the system, but in a less intricate way. They get fewer options when tiering up, less assistance when using their skills, and overall have access to fewer functions and opportunities the system can provide.”
“If that’s the case, what is the purpose of having us around? What is the system trying to achieve?”
“Our main directive is quite simple: Serve and Protect,” Liam guided me to the side of the road, out of the way of a hulking mass of plants that was leisurely rolling down the street. The archive identified it as a tier nine vine colony. “We are the guardians of the expanse. Sort of. Depending on who you ask, they’ll give you a different answer. Guards, Police, Mercenaries, Vigilantes, Super Heroes. None of them are completely wrong, but not entirely accurate either. At the end of the day, all you need to know is that when things go out of control somewhere, we’re the last line of defense. And when the system calls, we answer, no matter what the mission is.”
“That sounds like the system is a dictator, and we either obey or die…” I said after digesting Liam's words for a bit. “I’m not entirely certain I’m comfortable with that.”
“I may have presented things a bit harshly, sorry about that,” Liam shot me an apologetic smile. “It’s important to know that we have to follow the system's orders, but you should also know that it is incredibly rare for the system to directly assign a mission to you. For the most part, all you have to do is meet a yearly quota, and aside from that, you are free to do as you please. The quota is assigned on an individual level by an algorithm nobody understands, and can vary greatly.”
“So this is just a job?” I couldn’t help but scrunch up my face at the absurdity.
“That’s one way to look at it,” Liam chuckled. “A pretty cushy one too, if you follow the rules.”
“Right, the rules,” I was suddenly a lot more interested in what those were. “What are they?”
“Fairly simple, really,” Liam shrugged as we walked past a slimy ooze the size of a cow that was running a smithy. “Make sure you fulfill your quota. No fighting in the hubs, unless you’re in a system-sanctioned arena. And don’t maliciously interfere with another traveler's quests, should you encounter one out in the expanse… Unless your own quest puts you on a direct collision path with them.”
“That can happen?” I asked, wondering why the system would pit travelers against each other.
“More often than you’d think,” Liam said in a tone of voice that signaled he’d had to deal with this several times. “While we are the ones called upon by the system when things really go sideways, these things don’t happen often enough to keep all of us busy all the time. Which is why the people of the expanse can hire us through the system. Let’s say some country is embroiled in war and decides to bolster its forces by hiring some travelers. Nothing is stopping the other side from doing the same thing, putting us on directly opposing sides.”
“I see…” I vaguely remembered some of the main quests from my initial selection mentioning participating in wars, so that made sense. “The system seems fairly hands-off then, if those are all the rules.”
“It definitely is,” Liam confirmed. “It’s quite rare that somebody violates a rule. After all, we enjoy a ton of benefits as travelers; nobody wants to give all of that up by breaking a very lenient set of rules. Don’t think it’s all fun and games, though. Just because we’re not allowed to have direct conflict in the hubs doesn’t mean there isn’t any. The battlefield simply shifted to bureaucracy and backroom dealings.”
I took a few moments to digest everything I’d learned so far. I was getting a bit of a crash course in traveler culture and norms, and things were quite a bit different from how I imagined them. Instead of asking more questions, I spent some more time observing the buildings we passed. Only occasionally was there any cohesion between buildings, presumably because the lots were bought by the same people. Aside from those rare instances, the norm seemed to be that there wasn’t one. Considering that the travelers were recruited across the entire expanse, it was no wonder that a plethora of building styles were gathered. Everybody would have a different style they preferred. And, thinking about it a bit further, people probably wanted to show off their own heritage.
“We’re here,” Liam suddenly announced, pulling me out of my thoughts.
I followed his eyes toward the building in front of us. Judging by its size, the building took up a whopping four lots, which showcased quite a bit of wealth. By observing all the buildings we passed by, I realized quite quickly that there was some sort of standardized grid system in place, since most buildings took up the same amount of space, while sporting a differing number of floors. While I wasn’t certain, the building seemed to be constructed from some kind of sandstone, accented by some decorative pillars that went up the entire three floors of the building and were half-fused into the wall, instead of supporting a roof.
Like a lot of other buildings I’d seen, the main goal of the building wasn’t aesthetics, but maximising efficiency, most likely due to space costing a premium. As such, the building was essentially a massive cube. Windows were set into the wall in equal spacing, providing the interior with lots of natural sunlight. And, right in front of us, sat a massive double door which was currently closed, a big “0” painted above it in black.
“Why is the door this big?” I asked dumbly, noticing that the floors seemed unusually tall as well. I came to my own conclusion almost immediately after, and almost regretted asking.
“We’re a guild for monsters,” Liam stated the obvious. “Some of us are quite large.”
“Yeah, okay, that was a dumb question…” I said, trying to hide my embarrassment.
“Don’t worry about it, I won’t fault you for not knowing how things work around here,” Liam waved my concerns away. “Well then, shall we head in? You can talk details with the guildmaster.”
========================================================================
Hamlan nervously rubbed his hands as he neared the office of his boss. As a low-tiered member, he usually didn’t have much contact with the head of the guild, but if he failed to report this issue immediately, he’d get killed off without question. As it was bad news, everybody else in the chain of command had refused to tell the boss, which was how Hamlan found himself walking down the carpeted hallway toward a fancy door made out of ice.
Now, the boss usually wasn’t unreasonable, except for a select few concerns. Chief among them, the fact that nobody had managed to reel in a voidling to join the guild yet. With his obsession over creating and maintaining one of the top guilds, a voidlings services were invaluable, and the guild had been bleeding money for centuries to rent out their services. As such, there was a standing order to do everything in their power to recruit one.
And as luck would have it, today of all days, an unaffiliated voidling showed up on their hub world.
And Hamlan let him slip through his fingers.
He almost didn’t dare to knock, but eventually managed to do so after pumping himself up for a bit. There was still a chance of him walking out of the office alive, unless he ran away from the responsibility. Failing to report such a monumental fuck up while it was still potentially salvageable would get him hunted like a dog. The door slowly opened by itself, a frigid wind flowing out of the office and freezing the carpet below him.
“Hamlan, tier six, reporting with urgent news,” Hamlan said while taking a few steps into the office. He didn’t dare to go further in, as the overwhelming cold was already threatening to kill him, merely by getting too close.
Everything in the office was either made out of ice or had completely frozen over. A large desk sat in front of a wall entirely made out of windows, overlooking the hub world from the eightieth floor of the guild's skyscraper. The seat behind it was empty, the guild master instead sitting on the floor in front of the window, looking out.
“What is it?” The voice itself carried a chill, somehow managing to sound hollow, echoing off the walls in a magical fashion.
The guildmaster was one of the Nineteen, a wight that was so intrinsically connected to the elements of ice and death, and was a terrifying existence to Hamlan. His skin was taut and lacked flesh, as it was for most undead, yet the frostbite had colored it completely black. He was wearing a nice set of loose clothes, the pure white accented with an ice-like blue, which complemented his unique skin coloration. But what really freaked Hamlan out were the empty eye-sockets. He couldn’t help but shudder, half from fear, and half due to the incredible cold in the room.
“An unaffiliated voidling just arrived, unfortunately, they were snatched away before I could get to them…”
A loud snap echoed through the room as the previously unseen glass held by the guildmaster exploded. “Who did the voidling go with?”
“I do believe that they went with a representative from Tier 0, boss.”
“Polly…” The wight uttered with malice. “Once again, he is trying to get in my way. I won’t let this stand…”
The guildmaster got up from his seated position, wiped some glass shards off his clothes, and made his way over to his desk to make a call.
“There’s a voidling that went with a Tier 0 representative, assemble all of the lawyers and do everything in your power to get me that voidling,” he tapped his bony finger on his desk, deep in thought, gaze casually wandering past a human in the doorway, frozen solid. “And get somebody to collect this frozen asshole from my office, he’s spoiling my view.”