100X Returns: Starting with 1,000,000 System Points

Chapter 21: Chapter 21: Registration Day

Two weeks passed before Brightwood felt like itself again — or rather, before it settled into whatever new shape it was going to hold after everything that had happened.

The graves had been properly tended, small markers carved by Harlan’s own hand standing alongside the older stones at the village’s edge. Rebuilding progressed steadily, the barricade timber repurposed into fence repairs and new shelving, the silo chokepoint slowly losing its grim significance as ordinary village life reclaimed the space.

I’d changed too, in ways the village couldn’t help but notice. Nobody called me the unlucky orphan anymore, not even in the careful, pitying tones I’d first arrived to. Children waved when I passed. Old Farmer Dobbs insisted on refusing payment for tools I borrowed, muttering something about debts that didn’t need repaying twice. I wore the attention uncomfortably, still unused to being seen rather than overlooked, but I’d stopped flinching from it, mostly.

Word had also reached us, through the usual chain of traveling merchants and gossip, about Aldous’s fate. Hiring an adventurer to deliberately drive a monster horde toward a settled village wasn’t merely poor sportsmanship — it was, apparently, a serious crime under Guild and Baronial law alike, carrying penalties considerably steeper than anything the original hearing had threatened me with. The miller’s business was under formal investigation, his standing with the merchant’s council reportedly in ruins.

"Poetic," Thorne observed dryly, when the news reached us properly. "Man spent a fortune trying to destroy you and ended up destroying himself instead."

I didn’t feel much satisfaction in it, honestly — just a tired, distant relief that the whole ugly business had finally run its course.

We set out for the nearest Guild Chapter house on a clear, cool morning, the journey feeling entirely different from the tense, secretive road to the hearing weeks earlier. Nothing to hide anymore, not from Thorne at least, and the lighter weight of that showed in easier conversation, fewer careful silences.

"Registration process is straightforward enough," Thorne explained, as the Chapter house’s modest stone building came into view — smaller than the estate town’s post, but properly staffed, a genuine Guild presence rather than a temporary field tent. "Basic assessment — combat demonstration, some questions about background, then classification based on demonstrated capability. You’ll be assigned an initial rank, which adjusts over time as your record grows."

"And if I don’t show the examiner everything I can actually do?"

"Then you register lower than your true capability," he said. "Which, given our earlier conversation, is exactly what we agreed made sense. Rank climbs naturally through documented fieldwork after that. Nobody questions someone who tests modest and then performs well in the field — that’s just talent developing normally. It’s the reverse that draws uncomfortable questions."

The examiner, a broad-shouldered woman with the weathered look of a retired field adventurer rather than a career administrator, ran me through a series of practical tests in the Chapter house’s small training yard — basic swordsmanship forms, a controlled demonstration of Qi circulation, simple strength and endurance benchmarks.

I performed exactly as planned — competent, clearly above an absolute beginner, but carefully, deliberately short of what Focused Qi Detonation or Controlled Berserker had actually shown me capable of. My swordsmanship forms stayed clean but unremarkable. My Qi output stayed modest, controlled, nothing that would draw the kind of attention a genuine display would invite.

"Solid fundamentals," the examiner said, jotting notes onto a standard intake form. "Better than most fresh registrants your age, honestly. I’d place you at F-rank, with a note recommending early reassessment given the quality of your form."

"F-rank," I repeated, keeping my tone carefully neutral despite the internal irony of it — the absolute lowest tier a technically-Level-31 transmigrant with a stabilized dungeon core in his Inventory could occupy.

"Everyone starts there," she said, not unkindly. "Climbs fast enough if the talent’s real. Given what I’ve just seen, I wouldn’t be surprised if you’re out of F-rank within the season."

She paused, studying the intake form a moment longer, something flickering behind her professional expression. "Says here you were involved in the Shadowfang Ruins matter. Core extraction, personally credited."

"That’s correct," I said carefully.

"That’s an unusual credential for someone testing at your demonstrated level," she said slowly, the same recalculating tone I’d already heard from the town clerk weeks earlier. "Extractions like that don’t usually pair with F-rank fundamentals."

"I got lucky," I said, the excuse worn thin from overuse but still, somehow, functional. "Desperate circumstances. Won’t claim I could repeat it reliably."

She studied me a moment longer, clearly unconvinced but equally clearly unwilling to push further without cause, and finally set the form aside with a small, official stamp. "Well. However it happened, it’s on your record now. Guild will likely want to speak with you about it properly, sooner rather than later, given the rarity of a clean extraction. Don’t be surprised if a Chapter official reaches out within the month."

I accepted the small, official Guild token that came with my new F-rank status, feeling the weight of it settle strangely — a tangible, physical marker of legitimacy in a world that had, until recently, only known me as an unlucky orphan and then, briefly, a village legend.

"Congratulations," Thorne said, once we’d left the Chapter house behind. "Officially the least impressive F-rank adventurer to ever extract a dungeon core clean on the first attempt."

"High praise," I said dryly, and felt something like genuine amusement break through the day’s careful tension for the first time.

The walk back to Brightwood gave me space to think, and that evening, alone in the familiar quiet of my hut, I finally opened my Status and let myself properly take stock of everything that had changed since that first, disbelieving night.

[Name: Zayne Ailfos]

[Rank: Mortal] [Level: 31]

[System Points: 1,319,900]

[Advanced Qi Foundation Art — 8% to Master]

[Intermediate Swordsmanship Foundation — 61% to Advanced]

[Sharp Soul Perception — 74% to Advanced]

[Controlled Berserker State]

[Focused Qi Detonation]

A month ago, nearly to the day, I’d woken up as a broken orphan in a hut that smelled like mildew, holding a title I’d assumed was some kind of cosmic joke. Now I held a Guild token, a stabilized dungeon core, an unspecified debt owed to a Baron’s daughter, and skills that had genuinely saved a village from something that should have overwhelmed it entirely.

Not bad, I thought, allowing myself a rare moment of unguarded satisfaction, for a rebate king who started with nothing but bad luck and a dead boy’s body.

Thorne found me the next morning, settling onto the bench outside my hut with the same unhurried patience he’d always carried.

"You’ve been thinking," he observed. "About the city."

"About what comes next," I corrected, though the distinction felt thin even as I made it. "Village this size, like you said — I’ve learned what it can teach me. Rennick’s a fine hunter, but he’s not a swordmaster. There’s no proper alchemist here, no one who actually understands mana theory beyond old wives’ rumors."

"So you’re leaving."

"Soon," I said, the word carrying more weight than I expected, some part of me already mourning a departure I hadn’t fully committed to yet. "Not today. Maybe not even this week. But soon. I need real teachers, real resources — things this village genuinely can’t offer, however much I’ve come to care about it."

Thorne nodded slowly, unsurprised. "The nearest proper city with a full Guild Chapter house is about a week’s travel from here. Larger, better resourced, considerably more opportunity for someone with your particular growth curve." He glanced sideways at me. "I could travel with you that far, if you wanted the company. Guild business takes me that direction eventually regardless."

I felt a genuine warmth at the offer, more grateful for it than I probably let show. "I’d like that."

"Then start your goodbyes," he said, rising from the bench. "Villages like this one don’t forget quickly, kid. Better to give them proper time to say what needs saying, before you go."

I sat there a while longer after he’d gone, watching Brightwood settle into its ordinary morning rhythm — smoke curling from familiar chimneys, Aunt Mira’s voice carrying faintly from somewhere nearby, the whole modest, hard-won shape of the place that had somehow, impossibly, become the closest thing to home I’d found since waking in this borrowed life.

Time to go, I thought, feeling the weight of the decision finally, fully settle. Time to see how far a hundred times nothing can actually stretch, out there in a world bigger than one small village at the edge of a forest.

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