I kept walking, maintaining a steady, rhythmic pace, until I reached a massive building bearing the sign: Adventurer's Guild. The scent of aged paper, worn wood, and cold sweat greeted me.
The hall was bustling, but the ambient chatter died the instant I stepped through the doors.
THUD.
I dropped the burden onto the thick wooden floorboards. The ground shuddered, sending plumes of fine dust puffing up from the cracks.
I stood upright and rolled my stiff neck. The sharp crack of my joints echoed clearly in the sudden, dead silence of the room.
I approached the reception desk. A woman in a pristine uniform stared back at me. Her professional smile fractured; her eyes darted to the monolithic bundle behind me, then snapped back to my face, which was still caked in desert grime.
"Welcome to the Adventurer's Guild of the Sun Child Kingdom," she said, her voice wavering slightly. She shot a glance at the gate guard who had trailed me inside, silently pleading for context.
"He's a hunter," the guard interjected quickly, clearly eager to put distance between us. "Fresh out of the desert. Needs to be registered."
I didn't waste time. My calloused hands yanked the gut-cord knot loose.
The worm hide fell open.
Pitch-black carapace, a massive telson still seeping the dried remnants of venom, and dark purple crystals clinging stubbornly to the shell.
The sharp, desiccated stench of desert death wafted out, instantly silencing the lingering whispers behind me.
"I want to exchange this for a fair price."
The receptionist swallowed hard. She wasn't a fool; she knew exactly what she was looking at. Materials from a desert apex predator.
"O-Of course... It appears you are a... highly capable hunter." Her demeanor shifted drastically. Fear mingled with respect—the specific kind of respect one reserves for an unexploded bomb. "Please fill out this form for your identification."
I took the pen. Hands accustomed to gripping a spear felt deeply awkward holding something so delicate.
Name: ...
Race: Human
Age: 22
Primary Class: Hunter
I paused at the Name column.
Azisa...
The name felt distant. That name belonged to a man who drank coffee in peace within an elven village. That man was asleep, or perhaps already dead, buried deep within a forest of memories. The thing standing here was nothing more than a hollow shell, simply trying to survive.
I wrote: Nothing.
The woman accepted the parchment, her brow furrowing deeply. She looked up at me, searching my eyes for some hint of a joke, but found only emptiness.
"Nothing? Sir... why would you go by 'Nothing'?"
"Because I've discarded my old name," I replied flatly. My voice was hoarse from disuse.
The receptionist looked visibly disturbed. Identity was everything in a city like this, and a nameless man was a deeply unsettling anomaly. Her gaze drifted back to the pile of scorpion carapace on the floor. Pitch-black, hardened, lethal, solitary.
"What if we use... Scorpion? After the beast you just conquered."
I stared at the carapace. A creature that survived the hellish sands entirely on its own, living by a simple rule: kill or be killed.
"Fine. That will do."
The identification card was printed.
Name: Scorpion.
Class: A.
"Class A?"
"Based on the value of your hunt. Desert monsters are no ordinary foes. A crystal scorpion usually requires a veteran team to subdue," she explained, her fingers dancing across an abacus. "Total estimated material... 500 kilograms of high-quality carapace and pure crystal cores."
She opened the safe drawer, counting carefully.
"Twenty-five gold coins."
She handed over the heavy pouch. The clanking of precious metal broke the silence.
Twenty-five gold coins.
In this world, one gold coin equated to a hundred silver coins. A farmer needed three years of successful harvests just to see a single gold coin. And I had just earned twenty-five in a few days of slaughter.
"Thank you."
I turned around. The coin pouch was heavy, but somehow, it felt emptier than the 500-kilogram burden I had just cast off.