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

Chapter 28: Chapter 28: Guildmaster Jones

The summons arrived two days later, delivered by a runner in Guild colors who informed me, with the flat efficiency of someone used to delivering unwelcome news, that Guildmaster Jones requested my presence at the Chapter house that afternoon.

Requested apparently meant something closer to required, given the tone.

I arrived to find myself waved past the usual registration counters and up a narrow flight of stairs to a private office on the Chapter house’s upper floor — considerably quieter than the bustling main hall, walls lined with maps, campaign records, and what looked like decades of accumulated Guild paperwork.

Jones himself sat behind a heavy oak desk, a broad-shouldered man well past middle age, gray threading thick through a close-cropped beard, a scar running pale across one weathered cheek that spoke of considerably more field experience than his current administrative post suggested. He didn’t rise when I entered, simply gestured to the chair across from him with the economy of a man who’d conducted this exact kind of interview more times than he cared to count.

"Zayne Ailfos," he said, not quite a question, studying me over steepled fingers. "Sit."

I sat, keeping my posture carefully unremarkable, the same measured caution I’d learned in a Baron’s court weeks earlier.

"I’ve been Guildmaster of this Chapter for eleven years," Jones said, without preamble. "Before that, I spent twenty-three years in the field, most of it well above Elite rank, before a dungeon collapse took my knee and put me behind a desk instead." He tapped a thin folder resting on the desk between us. "In that time, I’ve read a great many adventurer files. Yours is the strangest I’ve come across in a decade."

"I couldn’t say why," I offered, keeping my tone level.

"Couldn’t, or won’t." Jones opened the folder, though I suspected he had its contents memorized well before I’d walked in. "F-rank registration, four weeks ago, out of a village post. Fundamentals assessed as solid but unremarkable. And yet." He tapped the page. "A clean core extraction at Shadowfang Ruins, credited jointly with an Elite adventurer who vouched for your character to a Baron’s own court. And now, three Ironhide Tuskboars, solo, without so much as a serious injury to show for it."

He looked up, gray eyes steady, unhurried. "That’s not an F-rank record, son. That’s not even a consistent record. I’ve seen prodigies before. I’ve seen adventurers with unusual titles or rare bloodline gifts. What I haven’t seen, in eleven years behind this desk, is someone whose demonstrated capability shifts this dramatically depending on which encounter I happen to be reading about."

I held his gaze, weighing the careful, partial-truth strategy that had served me well enough with Thorne, with Vale, with the Shadowfang clerk. Jones felt different, though — sharper, more deliberately probing, a man who’d clearly built a career on reading exactly the kind of careful evasions I specialized in.

"I have a gift," I said finally. "Something that lets me learn and grow faster than ordinary training would suggest. I don’t fully understand the mechanics of it myself, and I’m not comfortable explaining more than that, even here."

"Most people with genuine gifts are eager to explain them," Jones observed. "Talent tends to want recognition. You seem considerably more interested in staying unremarkable than the results would suggest is warranted."

"Recognition’s gotten complicated for me," I said. "A miller back in my home village tried to have me conscripted, then hired an adventurer to drive a monster horde at my whole village, out of pure spite over losing a hearing. I’ve learned to be careful about who knows what I’m actually capable of."

Something shifted behind Jones’s steady expression — not full satisfaction, but a measure of genuine consideration. "That’s a more honest answer than most give me," he said. "Caution born from real consequence, rather than simple secrecy for its own sake. I can respect that, even if it doesn’t fully satisfy my curiosity."

"I appreciate that."

"Don’t mistake respect for the matter being closed," he added, closing the folder with deliberate finality. "I’ll be keeping an eye on your record regardless. Talent like yours, however you came by it, tends to attract attention whether you seek it or not. Better I understand the shape of you now than be caught flat-footed later, if something bigger than a Tuskboar comes looking for you."

"Now," Jones said, shifting the conversation’s weight with the ease of a man accustomed to steering interviews exactly where he wanted them, "your account of the Tuskboar encounter is relevant to something considerably larger than your own unusual record."

"The migration anomaly."

"You’ve heard the term, then." He unrolled a rough map across the desk, the eastern boundary forest marked with a scatter of red ink notations. "Three villages along this stretch have reported unusual creature movement over the past two months. Wolves, boars, low-tier magical beasts, all converging in patterns that don’t match seasonal migration or fear-driven flight."

"Something’s drawing them," I said, echoing Alphina’s theory without directly attributing it, curious whether the Guild’s own findings would confirm it independently.

Jones’s eyebrows rose slightly. "That’s precisely the working theory, yes. You’ve done some reading, or someone’s shared their own research with you."

"An Arcanum mage," I admitted. "The one I rescued from the Tuskboars. She’d been investigating independently."

"Alphina Baewick," Jones said, and I felt a brief flicker of surprise at how readily the name came to him. "Talented, reckless researcher. Her professors have complained about her fieldwork before." He returned his attention to the map. "Her theory tracks with what our own scouts have gathered, for what it’s worth. Something’s actively pulling creatures toward a central point deeper in that forest — no registered dungeon in the area, which makes the source considerably harder to identify or contain."

"Have any scouting parties gotten close?"

"Two, both Elite-rank," Jones said grimly. "Both turned back before reaching whatever’s actually causing the disturbance. Reported increasingly dense, aggressive creature concentration the deeper they pushed, without ever laying eyes on a clear source."

I felt the familiar cold weight of Shadowfang’s memory stir again, the sealed chamber, the dying core bleeding unstable energy into everything around it. Whatever waited in that forest, I suspected it wasn’t entirely dissimilar.

Jones studied me a long moment, something calculating settling behind his weathered expression. "Given your unusual demonstrated capability," he said slowly, "and your apparent instinct for exactly this kind of anomaly, I’d like to extend a semi-official role in the investigation. Not a formal Guild rank increase — that would draw more attention than either of us apparently wants — but access to scouting reports, coordination with the assigned investigation team, and Guild resources to support your own inquiry if you’re willing to pursue it."

I weighed the offer carefully, turning Thorne’s old advice over — control the narrative, don’t hide entirely, don’t overexpose either. Formal involvement risked drawing exactly the kind of scrutiny I’d spent a month carefully managing. But staying entirely uninvolved meant losing access to information that could matter considerably, especially if the forest’s source turned out to be another unstable core.

"I’ll help," I said finally, "quietly. I’d rather not have my name formally attached to the investigation’s public record, if that’s something you can accommodate."

Jones nodded slowly, apparently unsurprised by the condition. "I can manage that. Consider yourself an informal consultant, then — reports come through me directly, nothing filed under your name unless you choose otherwise." He extended a weathered hand across the desk. "Welcome to a rather more complicated arrangement than most F-rank adventurers find themselves in, Master Ailfos."

I shook his hand, feeling the weight of one more thread added to the growing tangle of obligations I now carried through Tula. "Complicated seems to be the pattern with me lately."

"So I’ve noticed," Jones said, something almost like dry humor flickering behind his weathered composure. "Go on, then. I’ll send word when the scouting team has something concrete to report."

I left the Chapter house with the afternoon sun sliding toward evening, the investigation now formally — if quietly — mine to follow, alongside everything else I was already juggling.

I turned Alphina’s carved token over in my pocket as I walked, considering the other unfinished business Jones’s interview had briefly crowded out of my thoughts. My dormant elemental affinity still sat untouched, theoretical, exactly the kind of gap between knowledge and ability that had cost me weeks of clumsy practice to close with Qi alone.

The Arcanum, Jones had mentioned, in passing — Alphina’s academy, presumably the most obvious place in a city this size to actually find someone capable of teaching real mana control rather than leaving me to fumble through it alone the way I had with my first sword.

I turned her token over once more, decision settling clear and simple.

Time to see what an Academy actually looks like, I thought, adjusting course toward the city’s more academic district, and whether they’re willing to teach someone who apparently has affinity for everything and control over absolutely none of it.

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