Igni stands in the fighting circle. Arms crossed. Completely still, no motion whatsoever.
Her fighting partner, Charles, charges at her. With a real weapon. A sharp-edged iron sword. Not a sparring staff or a wooden sword. Just a sword. A real, honest-to-god sword.
Clang.
The sword is deflected off of her chest. Completely unscathed. Not even a scratch.
Well, her top would've suffered if it got hit, but it didn't. Charles has some semblance of decency, and wouldn't render a girl his own age nude for no good reason.
"You can't be serious! I thought she was just messing with me standing still like that, but she's invincible? Give me a break!"
"What did I say, Charles? Drake-kin have armored skin. You can't slash through it. So don't hold back. And Igni, please do something. It's no use havin' ya help out if you don't parry or strike back." Leo barks from the sidelines.
"Ugh!"
Charles grunts in frustration and goes in for another attack. Igni punches him in the stomach, flinging his body out from the fighting ring and across the grass, writhing in pain.
"Can I sit back down now?"
Leo shakes his head. This is stupid. He's stupid. Why did he think this was a good idea.
"Fine. Go ahead. Not like you're being graded."
On the other side of the courtyard, pushups. In the far corner, magic practice. And so goes on the last day of physical training before the end of the semester.
That afternoon, once everything wraps up, Leo gathers everyone around the courtyard into a single group.
"As y'know, today was the last day of training. You've got the book smarts, you've got some basic training, you're pretty much half way to being real adventurers. But you're not the real thing till you've gone and done some real work. Find some bandits, guard a convoy, hunt some monsters, that sorta thing."
Jane raises her hand.
"Yes, Jane."
"What about me?"
"Oh, you can ignore this part."
She nods in understanding, and Leo continues his speech.
"Anyways, that's the deal. You go out, do a job, do it right, and come back here. Pull through and you've got the assembly's recommendations for future jobs. Fail, or get yourselves killed, and you don't. But no debts. That's all it boils down to. Any objections?"
Nobody raises any objections.
"Very good. I'm going to go talk to the record keeper and figure out what jobs we can give to you guys as tests. While I'm gone, formalize your parties. Remember, good parties are three to six people. Two's dangerous and seven's hard to coordinate. And it's not permanent, you can break up if you can't stand eachother."
And he leaves, leaving the class behind to split itself into parties all on its own.
The first two groups to form are all-boys and all-girls, three and five each, gotten together so quickly that they had obviously fully decided on it in advance. This leaves a clean dozen people left. But before Shauna has time to walk around and talk to everyone, four whole parties have formed, leaving her, Max, Zero, Igni, and Jane behind.
"I guess this is us. It's weird that no one wanted to party with you, you're cute," Max says to Shauna.
"Cute carries no luggage and slays no demons, only the spirits and hearts of the bereaved and lonely."
"Zero. You're being annoying," Igni snaps.
"Okay, okay."
"Jane, why aren't you in a party? You were good at everything, the whole time."
"I, uh, hahaha..."
"Jane's not here to be an adventurer, Shauna. It's part of her education. Let's leave it at that for now, okay?"
"Okay..."
"Hmph."
"Igni, relax. Us four have just gotta get through this one job and then you can go on your own, okay?"
"I get it."
Max shakes his head. This chemistry isn't going to work.
----------------------------------------
The five jobs Leo had were all pretty simple, except for one. And the first four went like candy, all being very simple tasks like standing guard outside a manor during a party or helping a delivery of produce to a nearby town.
The only job left for Shauna's party is odd. Leo puts it kindly.
"To be honest, I really don't want to give you guys this job. But I checked, and I had our guy check, and there's nothing else we can possibly give you. I could make you tag along with one of the other parties, but we might get accused of favoritism. So there's no other way about it. This is all we've got. Sorry."
"Don't worry about it. We'll figure it out. It can't be that bad," Max replies.
"There is nothing more fit for true heroes than—"
"Zero," says Igni.
"Yes."
"Rein yourself in."
"...Okay. What I want to say is, I'm sure we'll be fine."
"I'm serious about this," says Leo. "This might be a messed up job. It might actually be extremely dangerous. Come back at the first sight of real danger. We should have a better job for you in, like, a week, if this one turns out to be bad. Okay?"
The party nods.
"Okay then. Here you go. The roads to Foxmere are safe, so I'm not worried about the journey, just the job. Happy trails."
Leo hands Max a piece of parchment with all the job's details on it—who's hiring, where, what for, why, how much the job is worth, and so on. Of course, they already went down all of this and are somewhat familiar with it, but there's no reason for them to not take the full copy with them. The assembly's already made their extra copies for bookkeeping purposes, of course.
"Thanks, Leo. We'll make sure we don't leave until we're ready. Right, guys?"
The rest of the party nods.
"Let's go."
Quest Accepted—Journey to Foxmere
Duchess Moria Sensis seeks closure concerning the disappearance of her son Rudimore Sensis, last known of in the town of Foxmere, south of Westbridge. This is but one of many disappearances pointing to Foxmere, and it is thought that certain local legends may be somehow connected. Go forth, brave ones, and unravel the superstitions of the cowardly...or prove their fables true.
Minimum level: 2
Recommended level: 8
Reward:
8,000 Gold
25 Fame
Skill Experience (Various; See Details)
Failure Condition:
Loss of Essential Characters, Time Limit (3 months)
Shauna tilts her head to the side. Just now, when her eyes passed over the parchment, something funny passed though her mind. It didn't do this before, when Leo had it on the desk. This strikes her as uncanny. And what are these things, anyway? Is she dreaming?
...Oh well. Not much point in overthinking it. They need to gather up supplies.
"What's our camping budget?"
"Three hundred."
"That's a lot! Really, a lot!"
"Leo felt bad for us. Let's make it count."
----------------------------------------
A two-compartment tent with a magical self-assembly, check. A big pouch of preserved foods, check. A water purifier—no, Zero has drinking water covered. Warm blankets and, in case they can't find soft ground at night, plenty of padding, check. Magical storage bags—inventories, as it goes—for each of them, capable of holding up to two dozen pounds a pop, and only draining the barest of magic from the wearer, check. Various small tools and other usefuls like knives, rope, tape, and...
This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.
"We, uh, probably want some way to cook meat without having to find flint and steel on the road. And some way to disinfect our tools after we use them. You don't want to get worms."
Shauna speaks up about a gap in their assortment of things. They have no kindling, nothing to contain camp fires, nothing to make small, temporary fires, no soap, no...
And so on.
The rest of the party looks at her in surprise.
"How careful are you?"
"I grew up in the middle of nowhere, and I was taught to be real, real careful with this kind of stuff."
Zero nods.
"Understood. Alas, firestarting equipment is unnecessary to me."
"And if you run out of out of magic? Or get incapacitated, or sick?"
"That couldn't happen, we shan't leave far from the road—"
"What if everything spoils, so we have to go out hunting, but get lost? I can make my way back to civilization, but what about you guys? Are you okay with eating berries and bugs for half a week?"
Silence.
"Isn't that going a bit too—"
"No. You never know how bad things are going to go. The whole point of making these kinds of preparations is to save yourself from the worst case scenario."
The party quickly re-prioritizes their money towards survival equipment, making absolutely positive not to skip out on even a single potentially life-saving thing, regardless of how unlikely it is for them to need it. It gets to the point that they buy bombs, in case they get caved in on, and climbing equipment, in case they get caught up in a landslide, despite both situations being absurdly unlikely. It's not like they have to worry about every single extra pound of carrying weight, and their coin is going a long way.
"Wait—"
"What?"
"Why don't we charter a carriage? Or join a convoy?"
"We don't have that kind of money. I mean, convoys to Foxmere aren't happening right now. We'd have to wait a couple weeks. And we can't afford to charter our own carriage," Max responds.
"Ah..."
It would've been a waste to have to return all this gear after realizing they could just ride their way to Foxmere, but it seems like travel by foot, camping along the way, is how it's going to be.
----------------------------------------
The party's journey goes mostly without issue, taking only a few days by the main road, camping out beside it until their final evening on the road. They find out that there's a campsite set up by Great Lake Foxmere, and decide to set up camp there instead of by the roadside.
"Lady Igni, please allow me to borrow your angling implement."
"Zero."
"Yes."
"Talk normally."
"But—"
"Zero."
"Y-yes. Igni, can I borrow your fishing rod?"
"Why?"
"I want to see what going fishing is like. My dad always talked about going fishing at dinner, but I never went with him."
She produces a fishing rod from her inventory and hands it to him.
"Be careful with the hook."
"Hook?"
"Have you ever gone fishing before?"
"No."
"..."
"What?"
"Do you know what this crank does?"
"Crank? I thought it was a lever."
"Okay, look, just follow me."
She takes the fishing rod back from him and marches off towards the river. He follows her.
Zero pricks his finger trying to hook a worm, and Igni scolds him.
It takes a great deal of patience on Igni's part, and a few pricks of Zero's fingers, but they manage to get down to fishing for real by the lakeside.
And Zero sits there, bait cast into the water, and waits.
And waits.
And waits.
His dad always talked about this part. Fishing is ten percent timing, ten percent luck, and eighty percent patience, or something like that. It was kind of hard for little young Zero to understand him through his thickly-affected manner of speaking, but the ideas got through, so Zero knows how much patience is involved.
So he waits.
Igni sits back against a tree and watches the distant horizon across the lake, past a bend in the shoreline. She can just barely see the furthest-away parts of the town of Foxmere. The main parts are around the bend, so she can't see them from here.
The inlet they're in isn't much to go by, and makes the Great Lake look like an oversized pond. But she knows just how big it is, and how many towns dot the distant shores.
Considering where the sun's at, it's almost dusk. They should head out to town in about an hour. She leaves to go pack up.
"I think I got a bite!"
----------------------------------------
Past one oversized mossy wood building to another, they make their way up to what they figure is town hall. One of the front window shutters is messed up, but that seems to fit in with the atmosphere the rest of the town gives off. It's not out of place.
"This is the place, right?"
"Oughta be."
The party heads on in. They find themselves in a single massive reddish-brown room, fully furnished, with a small library off in one corner, cabinets and storage in another, and a personed desk right in front of them.
The person at the desk speaks out to them.
"New to town? I can point you around. This is a small and well-connected community, so don't cause any trouble."
"Yeah. We took a job to investigate a disappearance. Give me a second, need to double check the details... Duchess Moria Sensis's son. Any idea who we should talk to or where we should go?" replies Max.
"The Duchess's...? Mmm. I think I heard the rumors about that. He went out sport fishing with some commoner friends, but their boat vanished in a sudden fog, and they never came back, or so it went."
"Really? This is a good start. What do you say, guys?"
Max looks back at the rest of the party. Shauna nods on their behalf.
"I guess we'll set up shop here for a while until we figure stuff out. Can you recommend an inn?"
"Well, if you head off down South Street—"
They head off to the only inn in town that accepts adventurers and book a room for a few days. The townsfolk want to keep the travelers and traders separate from the rowdy folk, since it's a quiet town.
"We should get to know the area before we poke around too much," Shauna says.
Igni nods. Zero is distracted by a bulletin board. Max is busy talking to the innkeeper.
"Igni, I'm going to look around town, do you want to come?"
Igni sighs. She approves of the idea, but she doesn't actually want to do anything.
"I need to make sure the boys don't get themselves in trouble."
"Okay. Tell Max I'll be back in a jiffy. Later!"
"Bye."
Shauna skips off out the door and down the road.
Igni is worried, but not too worried. If the single week of training they shared together is anything to go by, Shauna is good at running away from trouble.
----------------------------------------
While Foxmere is a small valley town, being able to trade by boat has kept it going through thick and thin. So it makes sense that Shauna ends up by the beach and docks when trying to explore town.
Being autumn, it's not exactly swimming season, so the beaches are empty. Even so, it's a warm day, and she can't help but to take off her socks and boots by the docks and run up and down the beach's sands. She takes the time to give thanks to the fact that the beach here is sandy, not rocky.
"It's just like the ocean!"
She's only been to the ocean once or twice, as a very young kid, when her parents had to travel to visit family. But the warm sands and distant horizon still linger in her memory, cutting through the... rest of her memories.
Bored of running through the sand, she turns to the water. Does she have to worry about her clothes getting wet? She decides that it's sunny enough that they'll dry out quickly when she gets out, and she can always change into spares from her inventory if she has to. So in she goes, wading out to waist level dipping into backstroke position.
A little water gets in her mouth.
"...It's salty?!"
Shauna's never heard of saltwater lakes before, but apparently it's possible? It's not as salty as the ocean, but it's still salty. Brackish.
She ducks under the surface and looks around. No seaweed, but there's a few muscles on the lakebed. Wow, it drops off fast out here.
Your Swimming level has increased to 36
Surprised, her head comes back above water. She remembers her mother telling her that, if you're swimming and something unexpected happens, it's a bad idea to keep your head underwater. Man, can't these things give her a little warning before they pop into her head? They freak her out.
"Heeey!"
She hears someone call out to her from shore. She turns around and looks up to them.
"Uh, hi!"
"It's not swimming season, aren't you cold?"
"I'm fine, thank you!"
"Really? You seem cold just looking at you!"
"No, really, I'm fine!"
"Are you sure? Hey, I don't recognize you, where you from?"
Shauna swims back to shore. When she stands up in the shallow, she shakes her head and upper body to fling off excess water like a dog, and then starts wringing out her clothes.
Taking a better look at the person who called out to her earlier, she sees an old fisherman in a tweed hat, sitting on a log bench all the way back at the top of the beach.
"My name's Shauna. I came from Westbridge with a party of four. Er, I'm one of the four. We're investigating a disappearance."
"Mine's Tule. What's a girl with such serious business doing swimming in the lake?"
"I, uh, hahaha..."
"Got lost?"
"More like sidetracked. I started exploring town to get to know the layout, but I ended up here, and before I knew it I was in over my head."
"These waters be like that. If you're not careful, you'll be bewitched."
"Bewitched?"
He nods.
"The legend goes back long before I was born. The widowed fisherman goes out onto the lake, and the ghost of his long-lost loved one beckons him out into the mist, never to return."
"That's awfully specific. How does the story know what happens out on the lake if they never return?"
"I reckon it started when some poor sap's boat keeled over and he washed back up on shore."
"So a hallucination from almost dying?"
"Just what I reckon."
"So the danger's not real?"
"Well, you can't explain away the disappearances."
"Mmm."
"Say, lass. The traders are coming to town tonight, and it's our custom to throw a party with them this time of year. How about you folks come? Gonna be right up there. I'll be there too."
He points up behind him at a large building. Or, more specifically, the big yard next to it, overlooking the beach.
"Gladly! I'll let everyone know as soon as I get back!"
"That's the spirit."
Shauna can't shake the excitement of back-to-back celebration. It was just the other week when she was dragged around Westbridge's harvest festival, but she fell asleep part way through and didn't get to see it through to the end. This time'll be different.
She skips off to get her socks and boots back on and start exploring again, leaving Tule behind.
He watches her leave with a forlorn gaze.
"There I go running my mouth again. Ever since I got dragged out to sea, I've—"
----------------------------------------
Shauna continues to explore the rest of the town, and once she has a good mental map of the areas nearby, she heads back to the inn.
"Where did you go?!"
Max is mad. Very, very mad.
"I was just—"
"No 'just's! Where were you! We were worried sick, you can't go off on your own like that! Just like neither can anyone else!"
"Igni wouldn't—"
"Shauna."
He places his hands on her shoulders and puts his forehead against hers. A 'listen up' type of cultural mannerism that stems from several hundred years ago.
"If you're going off somewhere, bring someone with you. Yes, Igni said you went off on your own, and we scrambled looking for you. We don't know this place, it could be very, very dangerous. Yes, we're adventurers, or something close, but you three are still basically kids. Do you want to get kidnapped? Do you want to die?"
Shauna holds her breath. This is uncomfortably close. It's making her heart race. She's not sure what kind of heart-race, but it's making it hard for her to think.
"...I'm sorry."
"That's step one. Step two?"
She gulps.
"I won't go off on my own like that without everyone knowing."
He nods. "That goes for you two too," he says to Igni and Zero. Particularly Igni. He stares at her the hardest.
She looks awkwardly to the side, not the kind to react outwardly to this kind of energy. But it's not her usual aloof, detached look. She's really taking in what's going on.
Max moves on from Shauna and scolds Igni. A lot. Don't let anyone go out on their own, not Shauna, not Zero, not yourself. But at some point, he realizes he's starting to confuse her, and lets up. Maybe he went a bit too hard.
"So, Shauna, what did you learn?" Zero asks.
"I ended up down at the beach, and—"
She recounts swimming, meeting Tule, and getting invited to the party on the boat.
"That's one of our leads, you know. The lake."
"Of course."
"Tule will be there too!"
"This is an interesting opportunity. It descends from the sky, encased in golden foil, directly onto our—"
"Zero."
"Yes."
"But it's like Shauna said. This is a good lead. We can talk to the traders all we want under the pretense of good fun—maybe the kid ran away on a boat or something?—and if not, we'll still have made some friends. Friends are good. Friends are safety."
Max speaks good reason. That's their leader alright. Wait, did they ever really decide on a leader, or did it just, like, happen? Shauna can't remember.
"...It's getting late. Let's go to bed."
Nods all around.