Void System: Every Heroine Makes Me Stronger

"He broke the measuring cabinet."

The porter dropped 2 rolls of notices onto the service counter. The upper roll bounced against the clerk’s open ledger and nearly knocked her stamp pad onto the floor.

She caught it with her left hand. Fresh ink already marked the tips of her right fingers.

"Which cabinet?" she asked.

"The appraisal cabinet. Brass face, big needle. The unbadged claimant put his sword on it and—" The porter spread his hands. "Crack. Done."

A client waiting behind him leaned around his shoulder. "I heard it exploded."

"You heard wrong."

The voice came from the appraisal corridor to the clerk’s right.

The grey-aproned assistant stepped into the hall with a paper strip pinched between 2 fingers. Warm metal and oil followed her from the corridor. Somewhere behind her, a cabinet gave a hard click, then settled into a low hum.

The porter glanced toward the sound. "Different cabinet."

"No." She stopped at the public side of the counter. "Same cabinet. Same needle. Still working."

The clerk pulled the nearest blank service sheet away from the porter’s elbow. "What happened?"

"The weapon made valid contact. We ran 3 procedures. The needle returned to 0 after each procedure. No lead burned, no cutout failed, and the blade left without a new mark."

"So why’s everyone saying it broke?" the waiting client asked.

"Because ’the apparatus reached its certified ceiling’ takes longer to shout across a tavern."

A few people laughed. The assistant didn’t.

The clerk turned her pen between her fingers. "Exact result?"

"Maximum Core Essence: Indeterminate. Weapon Grade: Unclassifiable."

The porter’s eyebrows rose. "There. Unclassifiable. Means the thing’s beyond every Grade."

"It means our protected test didn’t find a finite maximum before this branch ran out of load." The assistant slapped the paper strip flat on the counter. "It doesn’t mean infinite. It doesn’t mean indestructible. It doesn’t create a new letter because you want a better story."

The porter looked at the strip, then toward the corridor. "Still sounds expensive."

"That part may be true."

The clerk wrote the 2 recorded terms and left the rest of the line blank. The assistant took her strip back and returned to the corridor before the porter could touch it.

The queue moved again, though the story didn’t. By midday, the cabinet had broken 2 more times in the mouths of people who hadn’t entered the chamber. In the newest version, the needle had punched through the wall.

The clerk refused to write any of those.

A little after the noon bell, a broad man beside the client board said, "If Morcant’s sword sits above the Guild scale, he’s above the Guild’s Rank B Hunters too."

"That isn’t how a weapon record works," the clerk said.

"It’s how the yard worked." The man grinned toward someone reading a cull notice. "1 blow, wasn’t it? Nearly killed the poor bastard."

The Rank B Hunter lowered the notice.

He walked across the hall without help. His badge carried the stamped B in plain view. When he reached the counter, he pressed his palm against the upper-left side of his chest, then let the hand fall.

"Poor bastard?" he asked.

The broad man’s grin weakened. "You’re standing."

"A sharp observation."

Someone at the back gave a dry laugh.

The Hunter looked at the clerk. "What’s being written?"

"Nothing yet. Was it an official Rank assessment?"

"No."

"Did Morcant take your Rank?"

"No."

"Were you unable to continue?"

His jaw tightened before he answered.

"I lost before that mattered."

The broad man leaned closer. "So the hit could’ve killed you."

"The damned story grows every hour." The Hunter turned enough for the queue to hear him. "Private yard. Bare hands. A witness gave the start call. Morcant put a palm into my chest. My lead boot crossed the chalk. The other followed. The witness stopped it, and Morcant didn’t."

"You coughed," someone said.

"Yes. People do that after getting hit in the chest."

"Could you have kept fighting?" the clerk asked.

The Hunter looked at her pen instead of the people behind him.

"The wager ended when my boots crossed the line. Write that."

She did.

"And his Rank?"

"He didn’t take a Rank." The Hunter glanced toward the empty badge field on the sheet. Pride caught in the pause, but he finished the answer. "He beat me under the terms we signed. That tells you who won. It doesn’t give you his ceiling."

The broad man folded his arms. "Still 1 blow."

The Hunter took the cull notice he’d left on the board. "Keep that part. You seem attached to it."

He tucked the notice under his arm and left the counter. The next client pushed a fee slip across the wood before anyone could answer.

"Can I pay for a route copy now," she asked, "or do I need to knock a Hunter out first?"

The clerk dragged the slip toward herself. "Route copy?"

The hall returned to work.

For a while.

By midafternoon, Severin Morcant had apparently acquired Mereford, the road north of it, and every stream touching them.

The claim arrived with a porter carrying registry trays.

"He took the whole place," the porter said. "Man, records, road. Probably taxes them now."

"He doesn’t."

A narrow-faced registry clerk had entered behind him with a packet ledger tucked against her side. Ink stained the edge of her middle finger. She stopped without setting the ledger down.

The porter sighed. "Another correction."

"You’re welcome."

The service clerk shifted her weight behind the counter. Her feet had begun to ache, and her right shoulder tightened whenever she reached for the stamp. "What can I put in the public entry?"

The registry clerk answered without looking at the listeners gathering again.

"Severin Morcant produced Oren Halst under restraint. Selected pages, seals, and signatures were compared before witnesses. The sale settlement was counted. Mereford received sealed settlement packets."

"And the road?" the porter asked.

"Not transferred."

"The watercourse?"

"Not transferred."

"Mereford itself?"

The registry clerk stared at him.

He raised his hands. "Fine. Not transferred."

"Nothing we marked was a title deed." She placed the packet ledger on the counter and opened it to the line she needed. "We recorded what appeared before us. We didn’t prove every accusation in Halst’s papers, and we didn’t hand a village to the claimant who brought him in."

The service clerk opened Morcant’s existing entry. The 30-day fee carried its paid mark. Beneath it, the independent claimant filing linked to an appraisal, a witnessed yard result, and a completed cull.

The badge line remained empty.

A man waiting with a purse slapped 1 coin onto the wood. "Are you all finished building a legend? I need to know why this fee went up."

The service clerk pulled his paper forward. "Because you requested a same-day copy after the noon cut."

"It was cheaper last month."

"Last month you requested it 2 days early."

"That shouldn’t matter."

"It matters to the clerk who has to make it."

The registry clerk closed her ledger. "I’ll leave you to your uprising."

"It’s a fee question."

"Those last longer."

She walked toward the registry corridor before the man could recruit her.

The light through the Guild’s front windows had turned gold when the next visitor asked, "Where do I find the man without a badge?"

The service clerk looked up.

The visitor wore a dark traveling coat without a Guild mark. He stood on the public side of the counter with a gloved hand resting on a narrow leather packet case. Nothing about him invited the queue closer, though several people found reasons not to leave.

"Do you want a Hunter," she asked, "an independent claimant, or Severin Morcant?"

"Morcant."

"What service?"

"A private meeting."

"With whom?"

"My principal."

She waited.

He didn’t add a name.

"The public board is there." She pointed past him. "If your principal wants contractors, the notice needs terms."

"No board."

The clerk unhooked the short chain beside the counter. "Alcove."

It had no door, only a waist-high rail separating it from the hall. The visitor stepped inside. She shifted along her side of the counter until the blank delivery sheet lay between them.

"Now," she said. "What can I write outside the seal?"

The man lowered his voice. "My principal owns a stable dungeon. Morcant is being asked to meet privately. The rest is sealed."

A porter beyond the rail slowed his sorting without quite stopping.

The clerk kept her eyes on the visitor. "Do you require a Guild Hunter?"

"No."

"A recorded Rank?"

"No."

"A Guild recommendation?"

"No." His gloved thumb pressed against the packet case. "We require Morcant."

She opened a fresh delivery line. "The Guild won’t list him as a member, assign him Rank B, or claim authority over his answer."

"That would defeat the point."

Her pen stopped.

"Which point?"

The visitor glanced at the listening hall, then unfastened the case. "Private meeting requested. That’s enough for the outer line."

It wasn’t an answer. It was enough to write.

He removed a folded packet from the case, set it on the narrow ledge inside the rail, wound the cord around it, and pressed dark wax over the knot. The seal carried the client mark from the outer account, not a personal name.

She checked that the wax was whole. She didn’t turn the packet again or hold it toward the window.

"Destination?" she asked.

"His registered address."

"The warehouse-house?"

"Yes."

She wrote Severin Morcant, followed by the registered property address and Private meeting requested. The Rank and membership spaces stayed blank. She added the dispatch time, accepted the packet from the visitor, and placed it in the box beneath the counter.

The last delivery run had already been called in the corridor.

She rang the small brass bell beside the wicket.

A runner appeared with his coat fastened against the evening damp. He read the outer line, signed beneath the time, and held out his hand.

The clerk removed the same sealed packet from the dispatch box.

"Registered warehouse-house," she said. "Hand delivery. No public-board copy."

The runner checked the address, slid the packet under his weather flap, and buttoned it shut.

Behind him, another client raised a receipt and called, "Is this the line for contract fees?"

"It is now," the clerk said.

The runner crossed the front hall and went out through the Guild doors.

The clerk’s pen stayed above the ledger until the doors shut. Then she pulled the next receipt toward her.

Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!