“Yeah...but I think I prefer gaming and fooling around in the VR world to having to fight a bunch of monsters.”
“Fair point. I’ll try to make this quick.” B Rank jobs mostly involved clearing out monster dens. A Rank jobs, for now, would be more of the same, only they involved the more major dens known of that contained a few thousand monsters or more. Once the Monster Lord woke up, many more A Rank jobs would appear, involving beating back frenzied hordes from towns and villages.
For the first time as well, the Floor contained a wide variety of monsters, though there was usually only one type in a den. The first job we had taken had us up against goblins, and the second, some kind of fast cat-like creatures. Both were in a forest near the southern part of the kingdom. The former I simply burned out, using my Power of Imagination to restore the forest from the damage of my flames afterward. The second more genuinely put our teamwork as a duo to the test, but we barely let any attacks through to ourselves, and even when one did get through, it did hardly any damage. “See Mewi? It’s not as bad as all that, for now at least.”
“Yeah. It’s a little hard to remember how strong we really are,” he said, “I think there’s enough daylight left for one more.”
“Let’s have a look, then.” The closest mission available was aways further south. This time, there was a catch—the monster den was underwater, a couple miles off the southern coast.
The existence of such missions was why Bruzigan had assigned Mewi and I to head this direction in the first place. Most of his personal preparation had been training to fight underwater. He could definitely handle it, but I still insisted he take an Agility potion before heading out.
After about 10 minutes, I spotted him swimming back to shore, over 100 creatures that, once I got a good look at them, reminded me a lot of Murlocs hot on his tail. Even with Mewi’s strength and speed, he was only slightly faster than them. Of course, he wasn’t trying to escape.
By the time Mewi reached my position, all of them had at least reached the shore. I popped my AoE’s, first a Firestorm to break their charge, then Lesser Rain of Fire obliterated over half of the entire group. The ones in the back looked like they were going to flee, so I said some Provocative Words to keep them coming at us. About 30 seconds after that, all of the “Tureels” were dead.
“We done?”
Mewi shook his head. “A small number stayed behind in the underwater cave.” He looked like he didn’t want to go back, probably because if a monster stayed behind in this situation they were the den’s old and young. But the Cradine Adventurer’s Guild was entirely inflexible on missions like this: every monster in a den had to be eliminated, or at the very least driven far away from where they had set up, or it would be marked incomplete. Their System had a tool to keep track of the number of remaining targets, which was handy enough.
We headed further east after that, where there was a fairly large port town—the main source of fish and other seafood for the kingdom. By the time we arrived, the sun was well into setting. The attendant at the local Adventurer’s Guild was rather shocked when she saw what we were turning in.
“The two of you have only been adventurers for one day, and you’ve completed three B Rank requests?! Well, the System doesn’t lie. That’s 5 gold for the Goblins, 15 for the Malka nest, and 20 for the Tureel den. You even cleared out so many underwater monsters so quickly...I’m speechless.”
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
40 gold made for a nicely fat purse, at least by the Cradine kingdom’s standards. Based on the reports of people who had gained achievements on the Floor for gaining a large amount of money, which rewarded them by converting the money they’d gained to Area 1 currency, a Cradine gold piece was equal to roughly 95% of a Wasnacht. Here though, a sumptuous meal for both of us at the classiest eatery in the fishing town, and a room at a reasonably nice inn, barely set us back 2 pieces, with 3 silvers (out of 20 per gold piece) left over.
“That was really nice,” I said, as we were settling in for the nice, “it’s been too long since I’ve had much seafood.”
“Yeah,” said Mewi, smiling at me, “I guess today was pretty good.”
Compared to the next day, it was. Bruzigan had set us an ambitious target to clear all 20 required missions in just 2 days. All three pairs had cleared 3 yesterday, so we were on track, but today we’d need to start at the crack of dawn and finish four requests, then head back to Cradine City to meet up with the others.
We weren’t the only team taking on B Rank requests, either. Between the nine we’d cleared yesterday and what the others had done, there were almost none left near to the civilized parts of the Floor. So, we moved westward, into the dangerous wilderness. Thankfully, if we cleared out a monster nest that wasn’t previously being tracked by the Guild, it still counted as a B rank mission.
Well past noon, we finished off the fourth den, a herd of sinewy, thuggish creatures with no visible eyes on a barren plain from which the range of mountains the Monster Lord called home was visible. We both popped another Agility potion, which made it easier to maintain full speed on the way to the capital—which right now was over 100MPH for both of us. Even so, it took us slightly over 3 hours to get back.
The eyeless thugs turned out to be worth a whopping 50 gold—I thought it fit, they’d been pretty challenging compared to the others. The total for all four came to exactly 100 gold coins. Bruzigan had also informed us through the kingdom System that we were the first to arrive, though both of the other pairs were on their way, and Anna and Ri’legh had already passed a Cradine border town. We’d both completed 4 requests in the time Bruzigan and Arvallei had done 3.
“I should have paired with Ri’legh,” Bruzigan grumbled, when he arrived, “Anna and Arvallei get along better together anyway. Now my Contribution Rating will take a hit.”
“Eh, I doubt we’ll lose rating for something so minor,” said Arvallei, “besides, it isn’t as though we’re going to slack off now.”
That wasn’t exactly true—the central branch of the Adventurer’s Guild wouldn’t be able to hold our promotion hearing for A Rank until tomorrow, and there wasn’t time to do any more B Rank requests even if it wasn’t pointless. Okay maybe we could have cleared even more of them at night, but in spite of our high stats, our bodies hadn’t evolved beyond the usual need for rest and sleep or something.
The next morning, we stood together before a panel of guild officials. They started by querying Bruzigan about a number of things, both related to himself and the team as a whole, then moved on to questioning each of us individually. When it came to me, they mostly asked about what I’d done in the forest requests. I answered truthfully while skirting around the fact that I could use Imagination to fix damage to the forest, making it seem like I was simply careful and that one reason I was with Mewi is that he could correct minor mistakes of that nature, since he literally was the water element to my fire element.
Mewi’s questions were mostly in regard to the two Tureel dens we’d cleared. Finally, the ranking official of the tribunal spoke. “Well, you certainly have the strength for S Rank or even SS Rank, let alone A Rank. And just as clearly, you’re no novices, working well not just individually or as a team, but in split units as well. And with your youth, I’d say you’d probably have a chance to reach Legend rank someday.
Obviously, your promotion to A Rank is granted. As for the rest...I’m inclined to take some time to make absolutely sure of you. Let’s say we’ll hold another hearing for you in 5 more days. Keep working hard for Cradine, and keep delivering successful results, and I don’t think there will be much issue with elevating you to the special force.”
After that, it was time for one of the most difficult and harrowing parts of the entire Floor’s mission: a task that, in our training, had threatened to tear the team apart...
As an A Rank adventurer team, we had to decide on a team name for our party.