The city of Varundal smelled of roasted spices, hot metal, and ambition. For most adventurers, it was a city of opportunity, a place where legends were forged in the heat of dungeon battles and monster subjugations. For Arjun Nath, it smelled mostly of failure, with a faint, lingering aroma of despair.
He stared at the notice in his hand, the cheap parchment already wilting from the sweat on his palms.
[ FINAL WARNING - ADVENTURER ID #734 - ARJUN NATH ]
Rank: F (Provisional)
Status: On Probation for Gross Incompetence.
Requirement: Complete one (1) successful subjugation quest of any rank by sundown.
Failure to comply will result in permanent revocation of your Adventurer License.
- Guildmaster Rudraksh Vora
Arjun sighed, a sound so full of weary resignation it could have wilted flowers. "Gross incompetence," he muttered, crumpling the notice into a ball. "They could have just put 'Being Arjun'."
He was, by all accounts, the worst adventurer in Varundal. Not just bad, but catastrophically, almost impressively, bad. His title in the guild barracks wasn't 'The Valiant' or 'The Swift'. It was 'The Cursed Coward'. He'd once tried to hunt a Horned Rabbit and ended up getting chased by it for three city blocks before tripping into a fountain. He'd accepted a quest to deliver a letter and somehow lost it to a gust of wind that carried it directly into a griffin's nest.
His only goal in becoming an adventurer hadn't been glory or gold. It had been to find a monster strong enough to grant him a quick, dignified end. A quiet death, no fuss, no mess. Unfortunately, he was too weak to even reach a monster capable of killing him. It was the ultimate cosmic joke.
"One subjugation," he mumbled to himself, his dull grey eyes scanning the bustling street. "Any rank."
He clutched the hilt of his dagger. It was a pathetic thing, rusty and chipped, purchased for a handful of copper rupaya from a merchant who had laughed openly at him. His armor was a patchwork of dented leather and mismatched plates he'd scavenged. He looked less like an adventurer and more like a beggar who had lost a fight with a scrap heap.
His gaze fell upon a dark, narrow gali wedged between a boisterous tavern and a laundry. It stank of stale beer and something vaguely foul. And there, shimmering weakly in the gloom, was his target.
A slime.
It was a small, pathetic specimen, a translucent green blob no bigger than a large mango. It quivered occasionally, the picture of harmlessness.
Perfect, Arjun thought with a profound lack of enthusiasm. A monster with the combat prowess of a puddle.
This was it. His last chance. Kill the slime, report to the guild, and keep his license long enough to find a slightly more impressive way to die.
He took a deep breath, trying to summon a sliver of courage. "Alright, Arjun. You can do this. It's just a gelatinous blob. It can't hurt you."
He drew his dagger, the screech of metal on worn leather grating on the ears. He tiptoed into the alley, his worn-out boots making soft, squelching sounds on the grimy cobblestones. The slime remained motionless, seemingly unaware of the fearsome F-Rank adventurer preparing to end its miserable existence.
"Here I come, you... you wobbly menace," he whispered, feeling ridiculous.
He lunged.
Or rather, he tried to lunge. His foot caught on a loose cobblestone, sending him stumbling forward with a yelp. His dagger flew from his sweaty grasp, clattering uselessly against the far wall. He landed face-first in a pile of stinking refuse, his cheek pressed against something unpleasantly squishy.
The slime jiggled, as if in amusement.
'Of course,' Arjun's internal monologue screamed. 'Even the slime is mocking me. I bet it's telling its slime friends about the human who tried to attack it and ended up eating garbage.'
He pushed himself up, spitting out a piece of rotten cabbage. Humiliation burned hotter than any dragon's fire. This was it. The absolute nadir of his existence. Beaten by an inanimate blob and a loose rock.
"Fine," he snarled, a rare spark of anger cutting through his apathy. "No more weapons."
He scrambled to his feet, grabbed the rogue cobblestone that had betrayed him, and stomped toward the slime. "You are going to die!"
He didn't see the faint, almost invisible lines etched around the cobblestone's original resting place. He didn't notice the dim, violet glow that pulsed from a symbol on the brick wall, a symbol that had been hidden under grime and moss for years.
The slime was nesting directly on top of it.
With a final, desperate roar of frustration, Arjun hurled the cobblestone at the wall just above the slime, hoping to crush it.
It was a terrible throw. He missed the slime entirely.
The cobblestone struck the hidden arcane rune with a sharp crack.
For a split second, nothing happened. Arjun stood there, panting, his moment of fury already fizzling out into his usual state of tired disappointment.
Then, the world went white.
The rune on the wall erupted in a blinding flash of amethyst light. The slime, caught at the epicenter of the activation, began to vibrate violently. It expanded like a balloon, its green form shot through with crackling purple energy. Arjun barely had time to shield his eyes before it detonated.
It wasn't a normal explosion. There was no fire, no shrapnel. Instead, there was a deafening sound like a thousand panes of glass shattering at once, and a pressure wave that felt like reality itself was being torn apart. The brick wall behind the alley didn't crumble; it disintegrated, dissolving into shimmering particles of light.
The dimensional ward hiding what lay behind it had been breached.
The shockwave threw Arjun backward, his head slamming against the tavern wall. His vision swam, his ears ringing with a high-pitched whine. He could hear screams—not from the street, but from inside the space that had just been revealed.
He lay there for a long moment, dazed, the world a blurry mess of light and noise. When his senses finally started to return, the first thing he registered was the smell. The alley's stench was gone, replaced by the acrid smell of ozone, spilled ink, and something metallic he recognized as blood.
Groaning, he pushed himself to his feet, swaying unsteadily. The alley was gone. In its place was a crater of fractured cobblestones and smoking rubble. The wall that had hidden this place was now a gaping maw, revealing a scene of utter devastation.
It was a large, opulent hall that shouldn't have fit in the space. Ornate tables were overturned, shelves of strange potions and illegal artifacts were shattered, and dark-robed figures lay scattered across the floor, either dead or unconscious. It was a black market auction house. A secret guild hall.
And Arjun was standing right at the entrance of its freshly-made ruin.
He blinked, his mind struggling to process what had just happened. "Did... did the slime do that?"
He felt a strange weight on his right foot. Looking down, he saw a dagger, half-embedded in the thick sole of his boot. It was nothing like his own pathetic blade. This one was crafted from a metal as black as a starless night, its hilt shaped like a coiled serpent with ruby eyes that seemed to pulse with a malevolent light. A faint, dark purple aura wisped off it like smoke. It had clearly been blown out of the hidden room by the explosion, and by sheer, absurd luck, had speared his boot instead of his foot. For years, the legendary syndicate had been using it as a doorstop.
Arjun just thought, 'Great. Now my favorite boot is ruined.'
He limped out of the smoking crater, back toward the main street, pulling at the ridiculously fancy dagger stuck to his foot. He was covered head-to-toe in shimmering green slime goo, his hair a mess, his eyes wide with confusion.
He didn't realize the picture he made.
To the people of Varundal, who were now crowding the street, their mouths agape, he was a figure of absolute terror and awe. They saw a man, silhouetted against the smoldering ruins of the most feared and untouchable organization in the city—the Nightfire Syndicate. He was drenched in the remains of his vanquished foes, wielding a cursed weapon that radiated an aura of pure dread, and he didn't have a single scratch on him.
A hushed whisper rippled through the crowd.
"The Nightfire Syndicate's headquarters... it's gone..." a merchant stammered, dropping his crate of mangoes.
"Who is that man?" a young adventurer asked, his eyes wide with hero-worship. "He walked out of the smoke... he must have done it!"
"Look at that dagger!" another hissed, pointing a trembling finger. "That's the aura of a demon-class weapon! He's wielding the Demon King's Cursed Dagger, 'Vritra's Fang'!"
Arjun, oblivious, finally managed to yank the dagger free from his boot with a grunt of effort. He held it up, inspecting the damage to his footwear with a frown.
The crowd collectively gasped. He was showcasing his prize. What a display of dominance!
Among the onlookers was a young woman with fiery red hair pulled into a high ponytail. She was clad in gleaming crimson armor, a magnificent spear strapped to her back. This was Kavya Deshmukh, an A-Rank adventurer known as the 'Crimson Spear Valkyrie'. She had been tracking a bounty connected to the Nightfire Syndicate for weeks, trying to find a way into their impenetrable fortress.
And this man... this unknown, unassuming man... had just walked in and destroyed it all by himself.
Her sharp, analytical eyes narrowed. She hadn't seen a fight. There were no signs of a large-scale battle. It was just... annihilation. What kind of strategy was this? What kind of overwhelming, instantaneous power could achieve such a thing? He hadn't used brute force. This was something else entirely. Something terrifyingly efficient.
"He soloed an entire assassination syndicate," she breathed, her voice a mix of disbelief and profound respect. "Who the hell is he?"
Just then, two figures from the Adventurer's Guild pushed through the crowd. One was a burly guard. The other was the severe-looking receptionist who had handed Arjun his final warning. She took in the scene—the crater, the legendary dark guild in ruins, and the slime-covered F-Rank adventurer standing in the middle of it all, holding a demonic weapon.
Her jaw dropped. Her professional composure, forged over years of dealing with arrogant S-Rankers and drunken brawlers, shattered into a million pieces.
She stared at Arjun, her eyes wide with a dawning horror and a terrible, world-altering misunderstanding. She looked at the crumpled notice she still held in her hand, the one that threatened to revoke his license for being too weak to kill a slime.
Her trembling voice was barely a whisper, yet in the stunned silence, it carried across the street.
"That... that F-Rank... he's a monster."