The Adventurer's Guild smelled different in the morning.
Not of steel or sweat—but of parchment and ink. Dozens of adventurers crowded the contract boards, jostling for jobs, murmuring about coin and monsters and which noble house had paid for protection this week.
Thane stood silently near the edge, gray cloak pulled close, hood down just enough to let others know he wasn't hiding—but not quite inviting conversation either.
The guild clerk from the arena exam spotted him first.
"You looking for your first assignment, B-rank?"
Thane nodded.
She thumbed through a metal-bound folder and held out a sealed scroll.
"Patrol detail outside the northern farms. Minor goblin activity. Two scouts already disappeared. Ranked B because of territory risk and rumor of organized nests."
He took the scroll without comment.
She hesitated.
"Careful, Thane. This job's under contract with House Belric. Nobles don't like when adventurers come back with the wrong kind of truth."
"I don't serve nobility."
"No," she said, "but your pay does."
The northern farmlands looked calm on the surface—gentle hills, harvested fields, fences half-mended from last season's raids. But Thane had learned the scent of rot hiding beneath soil.
He traveled on foot. No horses. No backup.
And he was glad for it.
Because no one could argue with what he saw.
Blood in the irrigation trench.
Not recent.
Flies clustered around shredded fabric—a leather pauldron, stained and pierced through the shoulder. Near it, broken arrows. Goblin fletching. Too clean.
Too placed.
He didn't follow the blood trail.
He circled wide—boots silent in the tilled earth, eyes low.
That's how he found the prints.
Human.
Boots. At least six pairs.
Heading east.
Opposite direction of the goblin markers.
This isn't a scouting job.
He walked another quarter mile before the land dipped into a ravine. From the rim, he saw them.
A pit.
Goblins. Real ones. Maybe a dozen—starving, chained, wounded. Tossed into the earth like garbage.
A man in armor stood nearby with a clipboard and a sword at his hip.
Not a guard.
A cleaner.
Thane didn't speak.
He simply dropped into the pit.
The cleaner never saw the Firebolt coming.
The spell hit him dead in the chest, knocking him flat. His armor took the worst of it—but the impact rattled him enough that he didn't stand before Thane landed beside him.
"You were baiting the farms," Thane said.
The man spat blood.
"Orders... from the house. Just needed a few heads for panic. Guild pays more when it's a threat."
Thane didn't reply.
The goblins in the pit stared up at him—confused, blinking in the sunlight, too weak to snarl.
Not raiders.
Just scapegoats.
He looked down at the cleaner, still wheezing.
And cast Scorch Zone.
The spell flared beneath the man's body, searing the dirt and armor alike.
He screamed once.
Then was silent.
Thane didn't take the goblins with him.
He walked back to the city alone, scroll in hand.
He turned it in at the Guild desk with no expression.
The clerk raised an eyebrow.
"Report?"
Thane simply said:
"Problem resolved."
She frowned. "No details?"
He met her gaze.
"No survivors."
That night, the Guild board posted the contract as completed.
But word spread quietly through the inn halls and weapon shops and potion stalls.
That B-rank?
The one who fought the Vice?
He didn't just complete his first mission.
He burned the lies out of it.