Tessa Fairwind was halfway through alphabetizing her stack of enchanted mushroom samples when the wall exploded.

  “Not again,” she muttered, brushing off a puff of glowing spore-dust from her blouse.

  From the gaping hole in her office wall—her third this month—tumbled a heavily armored man screaming at the top of his lungs. He landed in her potted fern, sword out, eyes wild.

  “BEGONE, SPAWN OF THE ABYSS!” he roared, then paused, blinking at her desk. “Oh. Uh. Sorry. Wrong building?”

  Tessa sighed. “Second door on the left. The abyss spawn went into Records and Archives.”

  “Right! Thanks!” He scrambled up, tripping over her broom, then vanished back into the hallway with an echoing war cry and a trail of splinters.

  Tessa plucked a mushroom from her hair and turned back to her work. “Jeff?” she called.

  Her backpack—currently lounging on a nearby chair—stretched, yawned, and grumbled, “What.”

  “Add ‘repair wall’ to the expense report. Again.”

  A long pause. “Guild’s gonna say it’s an act of god. Again.”

  “I am going to staple something to a deity one day, I swear.”

  Before Jeff could offer one of his usual legally inadvisable suggestions, the office door creaked open.

  A short goblin in courier robes poked his head in. “Are you Tessa Fairwind?”

  Tessa blinked. “That depends. Are you delivering cake or paperwork?”

  “Uh... both?”

  “Then yes.”

  The goblin handed her a silver envelope and a dense packet of forms. “Urgent guild dispatch. You’ve been reclassified. Reassigned. And possibly promoted? Hard to say. Good luck!” He saluted and vanished in a flash of green smoke and glitter.

  Tessa stared down at the envelope. It had one word printed in ominous calligraphy:

  "Congratulations!"

  Jeff groaned. “Every time they use glitter in a dispatch, someone ends up cursed or married.”

  Tessa tore the envelope open.

  Dear Tessa Fairwind,

  We are delighted to inform you that you have been reclassified as a Level C- Adventurer due to a clerical error in the Death-by-Paperwork Subdivision. As such, your probationary Adventurer License has been activated! Your first quest begins immediately.

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Objective: Stop the rampaging gelatinous titan currently destroying the lower districts.

  Deadline: 6 hours.

  Compensation: 37 silver. And cake.

  Sincerely,

  The Adventurer’s Guild HR & Fungal Investigations Branch

  P.S. We apologize for the confusion. Your previous role as “Mushroom Classification Specialist (Non-Combat)” has been permanently deactivated.

  Tessa blinked. “I’m going to scream.”

  “You want the cake first?” Jeff asked.

  “I want a fireball spell and a lawyer.”

  But before she could protest to anyone who’d listen (which was, admittedly, just Jeff), another explosion shook the building. This time, it came with a wet squelch and the unmistakable sound of a giant slime monster oozing its way through city streets.

  Tessa grabbed her clipboard, her satchel, and her dignity.

  “Well,” she muttered, tying her hair back, “guess it’s my problem now.”

  She stepped outside—and immediately got slapped in the face by a giant jelly-like tentacle made entirely of peppermint pudding.

  “...I hate promotions.”

  The tentacle, having fulfilled its mysterious vendetta, slurped away across the cobbled street. Tessa staggered, wiped mint goo from her glasses, and surveyed the carnage: wagons overturned, buildings dripping with dessert slime, townsfolk running and slipping as the Slime Titan gurgled its pudding manifesto from atop the crumbling bell tower.

  “Citizens of Puddlewick!” the monster bellowed, voice squishy and self-important. “Prepare yourselves for the Era of Dessert! The Spoon Reckoning is nigh!”

  “Oh gods,” Tessa groaned. “It talks.”

  Jeff wobbled up behind her, trailing scrolls. “According to Guild law subsection 3-B, talking gelatinous entities require immediate neutralization, or at least a strongly worded debriefing.”

  “Do I look like someone who brought a debriefing wand to work today?”

  “No,” Jeff replied helpfully, “you look like a disgruntled government botanist who just got slimed by sentient pudding.”

  The Slime Titan jiggled ominously and let out a deep, gassy belch that shattered a row of windows.

  Tessa dodged a flying roof tile and gritted her teeth. She didn’t have armor. She didn’t have a wand. All she had was an enchanted clipboard, a backup thermos of cinnamon chamomile, and a very deep-seated grudge against paperwork.

  From her satchel, she pulled out a spellbound ink pen—the kind normally used to annotate hazardous plant samples—and muttered, “Alright. Let’s try diplomacy.”

  She marched to the edge of the square and cupped her hands.

  “HELLO. EXCUSE ME. PUDDING.”

  The titan paused mid-rampage. A slow, wobbly eye turned in her direction.

  “You are currently in violation of Guild Code 7-C: Unauthorized Urban Dessertification,” she called out. “Do you have a permit for this nonsense?”

  There was a long silence.

  Then, slowly, it gurgled: “...Permit?”

  “Yes. You need a Category G-Slime Event License, subsection ‘Deliberate Edible Chaos.’”

  The titan visibly rippled. “That... does not exist.”

  “Exactly,” she said, flipping her clipboard open with a snap. “Which means this entire tantrum is illegal. I could fine you. I could file a formal complaint. I could—”

  She was cut off as the pudding beast let out a furious squelch and launched another tentacle of mint goo at her.

  Tessa ducked just in time, rolled behind an overturned fruit stand, and shouted, “Jeff! I’m open to less diplomatic suggestions!”

  “Okay! Okay!” Jeff shouted from beneath a pile of apples. “I think if you overload the clipboard’s enchantment rune, you could reverse-channel its administrative field and turn it into a weaponized audit.”

  Tessa blinked. “You mean weaponize... bureaucracy?”

  Jeff made a smug little flap-wiggle. “You said it yourself. Nobody survives the paperwork.”

  She flipped over the clipboard, exposing the rune etched into the back—normally used to create magical log entries and hazard reports.

  Now? It was glowing red.

  The Slime Titan let out a roar that shook the cobbles.

  Tessa held the clipboard like a shield and stepped out from behind the stall. “You’ve been warned.”

  Then she stabbed the pen into the rune.

  There was a flash of light, a sound like someone crumpling tax forms in an echo chamber, and a pulse of pure bureaucratic fury shot outward in a wide arc.

  A spectral voice boomed overhead:

  > “ERROR. COMPLIANCE LEVEL: ZERO.

  INITIATING AUDIT SMITE PROTOCOL.”

  A glowing summons—filed in triplicate—blasted across the square and struck the Slime Titan square in its wobbly chest.

  The creature let out a horrified blorp and staggered backward, rapidly hardening into stale jelly as ghostly paper chains wrapped around it.

  It gave one last burp of mint—and collapsed with a moist squish.

  Silence fell.

  Tessa stood panting in the middle of the square, clipboard smoking, shoes sticky.

  Jeff crawled out from the fruit stand and surveyed the scene. “Well. That’s one way to do it.”

  A small crowd emerged from the alleyways, wide-eyed. Someone started clapping. Then someone else joined in. A child threw a pastry in the air.

  Within moments, the crowd was cheering.

  Tessa blinked. “They’re applauding?”

  Jeff puffed up proudly. “Of course. You just administratively obliterated a mid-tier gelatinous monster in under ten minutes. That’s got to be a Guild record.”

  Before she could argue, a voice from above rang out.

  “Well done, rookie! And with no party support! That’s gutsy.”

  Tessa turned—and saw three figures descending the hill toward her. One carried a lute. One carried an axe. One was sneezing into his sleeve.

  Her clipboard buzzed and issued a chirpy ding:

  > PARTY ASSEMBLING...

  Tessa slumped against the broken fruit stand.

  “…It’s going to be a very long week.”