Aria stared aimlessly at the walls of her wooden cage. They were tall, two stories high, with wooden supports supporting the structure. A set of wooden bars accompanied her right, while many mean looking people talked amongst themselves, oblivious to her plight.
In truth, this cage of hers was self-imposed. The wooden desk in front of her was not herding her in but keeping the rude people out, the 'wooden bars' being nothing more than a banister.
You see, Aria is a clerk.
She registers adventurers, processes quests, and does more tedious paperwork. However, oftentimes she would be left like this, gazing listlessly at nothing.
Sometimes her gaze would wander longingly to the backs of parties, discussing and debating their next quests and rewards. Truthfully, she would rather be paid to sit here, but she would fantasize about the journeys they must have, the dangers they face. The strength in unparalleled adversity.
Many adventurers are doomed to never come back, and that she knew well. Relatives would barge in, demanding of her where their friend, their comrade, their son was. But she was always powerless. She could only reply, as per guild procedure, that they could post a search quest.
That was the part of the job she liked the least.
The best parts were when the Adamantite adventurers came in. In a world full of low rank coppers and silvers, Adamantite adventurers would come once in a blue moon, a rarity even among high ranking members. All the heads in the room would turn and stare in awe and envy at what most people could never achieve. They seemed to surpass the limits of the world, transcending the realm of humanity.
She wondered what her peak would have been. Would she have been gold? Platinum? No, the people like her with no Talents or skills were usually consigned to silver. Maybe if she worked long enough she could afford a piece of gear that, when used effectively, would propel her to gold.
Suddenly, the door opened in an odd, mechanical way, as if a sudden and constant force was put on it and immediately stopped when the door became perpendicular to the wall.
What came in was likely one of the weirdest things she had ever seen.
It was covered, head to toe, in strange looking clothes- a full body suit even, made with muted blues and grays.
Patches and symbols she didn't recognize decorated its upper arms.
Its face was covered with some sort of strange mask, with several large straps securing it. It had two large reflective circles where its eyes should have been, no nose, and a cylinder where its mouth should have been. Another cylinder jutted out grotesquely from the side of it, lined with blue.
The only skin she could see on it was its fingers. The skin it did show was quickly cut off at the knuckle by a set of intricately designed brown gloves.
One of these hands held a knife as dark as night, clearly worn out from intensive use. Its other hand was also held out, as if it was constantly ready to engage an enemy.
As it moved its head to take in the environment, its arms seemed to follow. It looked around in weird, unnatural movements, as if its body was so perfectly coordinated that motion would simply continue. Or as if it had no parts at all, merely dragged by an unseen force.
It's back looked just as odd, but it became clearer that it was wearing a vest on top of its clothing. More weird contraptions jutted out of it, nothing that she could make sense of.
It turned towards her as if finally noticing her, and she shrank under the seeming gaze of those two orbs.
Aria began to sweat a little. She had dealt with a whole manner of people, but to describe this thing as a person didn't feel right. Its movements lacked soul. Everything felt too… crisp, too uniform, in the way it moved. Its feet seemed to glide over the floorboards the more that she watched, as if it was merely a poorly done illusion.
It stopped in front of her booth, mere inches from the counter, its blade neatly pressed up into her personal space.
She smiled like she had done so many times before and noted it didn't have an adventurer plate. Of course it didn't, she would have heard about it otherwise.
"Hello! Are you interested in becoming an adventurer?" Her facade nearly cracked as she stared into its eyes, or at the least what were supposed to be eyes. Two large, round, reflective spheres gazed back at her, a complex mask merely reflecting herself in its image.
It nodded with its entire body as if it was a child, shaking its arm knife viciously along with it up and down several times in quick succession.
She pulled out a piece of paper from under the desk. "Well then, please sign here to register."
It stared at her as she placed it down, moving side to side with seemingly effortless velocity control as if excited or impatient.
As soon as her hand was off the paper it teleported in front of the thing and then back to the table, signature neatly imprinted on the line.
She blinked once. Twice.
She pulled the paper back, reading it over. The signature was made with what looked like painstakingly descriptive writing, but the words failed to mean anything to her.
None of this made any sense, but it wasn't her place to question things. That was something best left up to the people in charge.
She blindly smiled and nodded at it. "It'll take a second to process your request. Please wait."
It stayed stock still.
After waiting an inappropriate amount of time for a response, she got up and started to turn arou-
"Affirmative." A rough voice emanated from the… man?
She whipped her head around to find it still staring her down. The response only unnerved her further, and she nodded politely before darting to the back room.
Not wanting to anger the man, she whipped around until emerging with the desired copper plate. She placed it down on the table only for it to disappear and reappear around its neck.
"Best of luck!"
She sat back down and prayed it would leave her alone. She was just a clerk, a desk woman. Not someone prepared to handle living abominations.
She was finally able to relax somewhat as it turned to the quest board. Unfortunately for her, there was one right next to the front desk.
She couldn't keep her eyes off of it as it looked over all the quests, its gaze scanning the littered board. It jerked its body up and down, left and right as it looked over everything.
After staying stock still for some time, it seemingly made a quest disappear and then reappear on her desk like it had done earlier with the necklace.
She took the quest and read over it, only to find…?
"Sir, you can't take this quest. It's for Gold ranked adventurers or higher." She pushed the quest back to him and pointed it out.
"Affirmative." It blared back at her, the same monotone voice emanating from its mask.
It took the quest, deposited it back onto the board. It just as quickly pulled another one, seemingly at random, and dropped it onto the desk.
A stray thought entered her mind:
Could he not read?
She stifled a chuckle at his expense as she pushed the quest back, repeating her earlier denial.
As weird as the man was, he was starting to grow on her. It was as if he was a lost child exploring the world. He would get bored of trying to find a quest and often stare off into the distance, or crouch to inspect some small detail in some seemingly mundane object. Everywhere he went, he would run to it at high speeds, crossing the distance to take a look at whatever caught his attention.
He eventually continued looking for a suitable quest until he wound up finding one that matched his beginner ranking, seemingly by luck. For someone as seemingly dumb as this man, a monster subjugation quest was probably right up his alley.
Aria repeated the quest out loud, just in case he in fact was unable to read as she accepted it. Ten goblins, south of the city walls.
He nodded viciously at its contents, emitting a loud "Nice." before running out of the establishment, his body moving to the door before he even fully turned around.
What a strange man.