A week later…
Adventure’s guild
______________
Eva: (with a smile, handed over a folder) Congrats, 5 adventurers applied to join your team to dive into the dungeon. (Note: Smaller teams usually temporary join with other teams when dealing with challenging quest)
Emyrs: (flipped through the folder, handed it over to Alice) Here, have a look.
Recruitment
__________
Name: Russell
Race: human(male)
level: 46
Rank: B
Class: swordsman(warrior)
__________
Recruitment
__________
Name: Sarah
Race: human(female)
level: 38
Rank: C
Class: swordsman(dualist)
__________
Recruitment
__________
Name: Faelyn
Race: Elf(male)
level: 45
Rank: B
Class: ranger(sniper)
__________
Recruitment
__________
Name: Natsumi
Race: beastmen(female)
level: 42
Rank: C
Class: fighter(berserker)
__________
Recruitment
__________
Name: Gaviel
Race: dwarf(male)
level: 39
Rank: C
Class: tanker(paladin)
__________
Emyrs: How many recruiters can I recruit?
Eva: You are only able to have a maximum of 12 members in a team.
Emyrs: (turned towards Alice) Alice, I’ll let you be the judge.
Alice: If that’s the case then… (giggled) All of them!
Emyrs: (turned towards Eva with a smile) You heard her.
Eva: (nodded) Alright.
Eva conveniently sorted everything for them.
Afterward, Emyrs, as the leader of the team, filled up a sheet of notice paper that will convey the specific gathering time to everyone in the team. (That time was tomorrow midday at a specific corner of the “adventure’s guild”.)
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Famous adventurers present adventuring as fun, thrilling and heroic, the reality is far from it.
Adventurers, unlike how one would imagine to be spending most of their time hunting monsters and explore forbidden lands, were usually occupied by long and boring waits for quest, recovery, and recruitment.
Most adventurers are only able to complete at most 15 quests per year accounting that everything went smoothly without any external issues like delays in a quest, recruitment, false information and many more.
Quest, especially high rank monster hunt type quest, is very time consuming because it is crucial to plan, track down and understand the abilities and habits of the target you are exterminating. All monsters has their own unique personalities, habits, and abilities, without proper planning, research and observation a team would usually be wiped out with surprises from the target; for example a quirky fighting style or more commonly, when a monster enters its enraged state (also called berserk state).
Every high-rank monster and some mid-rank monster has an enraged state that is unique to themselves, not even the same species could have a standard enrage state; this is also the reason why higher rank monster are a pain to deal with and full team wipes in the first few tries are common. However, if you were the lucky few to pull it off, your fame would skyrocket and you would become the center of attention for a few days, even if you were just a minor character in the team.
The next day, Emyrs and Alice were waiting, early, on the designated area of the gathering. It was not long before someone came to greet them, that person clearly had the same idea as them.
He has a battle scar that runs through one of his uncomfortably sharp pair of red eyes. His bushy and long beard that smelled rich in alcohol, swayed side by side like a pendulum as he proceeded to close in on them.
His beard was extended till his torso, it wasn’t because his beard was long but instead he was shot. His surprisingly proportional buffed short figure made Emyrs realize that someone from the dwarf race was standing in front of him, maybe he’s one of their teammates.
However, there was just one slight problem and that was the fact that the dwarf in front of him has a battle scar. In this world, scars rarely exist because they could be easily healed by a low-rank healing potion that is accessible to even the poorest peasants (low-rank potion has a dead cheap price of about 10 copper, as long as someone skip one or two full cheap meals, they would have already saved more than 10 copper).
If someone has a scar on them, then there are only two reasons why, they are slaves and their master doesn’t allow them to heal the scar or because they hold a deep grudge against the person who inflicted the scar to them, it was to signify eternal resentment against someone; at the same time, it also indicates that you are someone who is unable to let go of the past and move on. Someone who is deemed as unforgiving, violent and unfriendly, definitely not someone you want to get to close to or offend.
Gaviel: (towards Emyrs and Alice, lacking a friendly smile) Name’s Gaviel, a paladin, a pleasure to meet both of you.
Emyrs: You too, just call me Emyrs, I’m a weapon master(due to Emyrs showing that he could use both a melee and ranged weapon, the “adventure’s guild” decided to change his class to weapon master).
Alice: It’s Alice, a mage, nice to meet you too!
Although it was early, they did not have a nice long chat about experiences, like how normal adventurers usually do in a team.
Gaviel was pressing his face against the table like a depressed child, Emyrs found it amusing watching him (you weirdo MC!), it was a good way to kill time for him.
As time begins to pass, more members came in one after another one.
All of them gathered around a table and started to introduce themselves. Introducing themselves only after everyone was gathered is an unwritten law for adventurers (Emyrs, Gaviel and Alice kind of broke this law…); this is to reduce the chance of discrimination on a certain member. If everyone were to introduce themselves once everyone was gathered,it would make others have less rash decision in the eyes of everyone, afterall, no one likes others to have a bad opinion of them the moment they met and it would also make it seems like they are working as a whole team and not as an individual (It only says reduce, some of the time it doesn’t work. Since there would always exist some idiots who believe that they are the best and detest on others from different social class or race)[fact: everyone, no matter who you are, judges people instinctively as it is part of our nature to do so. To be able to judge something the moment you met it would allow you to make a quick decision on what to do and increase survivability].
Emyrs: Let’s start our introduction. My name is Emyrs and my class is a weapon master(unless it is a trusted person, no one would usually tell others their occupation as it would show of their weakness and also “adventure’s guild” keep personal information a secret). Who’s next?
Natsumi: (excitedly) Me! Me! My name’s Natsumi, my class is a berserker. Happy to meet every one of you!
One might imagine Natsumi as a muscle-bound woman, however, she is far from it. More like an adorable bright social cat with cat ears, a matching sleek raven pigtail (twin-tail) and a pair of magical royal purple eyes rather than a wild berserker.
Alice: I’m next! My name is Alice, my class is a mage, nice to meet you.
Faelyn: I’ll go next, my name is Faelyn, my class is a sniper.
Faelyn, a handsome, robust and charming perfect young man with fair white skin, a sharp face, a pair of pointy ears, a long illuminating golden hair that is comparable to a woman, a set of profound sapphire eyes and a long wooden bow on his back.
Sarah: (hesitant) I guess I’ll go next, my name is Sarah, my class is a dualist.
Sarah, a sweetly sophisticated young woman, with a crystal clear azure blue eyes, a long sun-kissed ponytail laced by twine that matched her eyes.
Natsumi: (nudging Gaviel, with a puffed-up face) Wake up sleepy head! Introduce yourself!
Gaviel: (crawled up from his sleep, most frowned when they saw his scar but the next thing he does make them have the urge to curse at him) Huh? Oh… My name is Gaviel and my class is a… erm... paladin, goodnight. (dropped back to sleep)
Everyone: (absolutely speechless)
Natsumi: (pointing at Gaviel)Team leader, are you sure that we are able to rely on him?
Emyrs: Hmm… I wonder…
Everyone: (even more speechless)
Natsumi then sat back down with a fed-up face.
Emyrs: (suddenly) Hmm? Aren’t we missing a member?
Natsumi: (questioning suspiciously) Are we?
Alice: Yeah, I think he was called Rusty? (rusty brains don’t work, so they arrive late, get it? Get it? Nvm)
Emyrs: (Retorted) Don’t butcher people’s name, it’s Russell!
Faelyn seemed a bit annoyed, maybe it was from their blathering or maybe it was something else.
10 minutes later…
Natsumi: (agonising, scratching her hair) I’m so bored! I can’t take it anymore! I’m going to have a walk to pass time.
Another 20 minutes later… (guys, don’t ever take a walk more than 10-15 mins it’s disrespectful to let others wait)
Natsumi: (returned, with enthusiasm) I’m back! Has he arrived?
Faelyn: (very frustrated) No!
Natsumi: (instantly turned dejected) Alright…
Natsumi then left afterwards.
Emyrs: (thought to himself) Does this girl have bipolar disorder or something?
While Alice was walking around the “adventure’s guild” fiddling with things and getting stopped by the receptionist, Emyrs was scrolling through his endless list of skills and functions of his mysterious tower; on the other hand, Sarah was waiting patiently and awkwardly as she is sandwich between a slumbering old man and a clearly very irritated ticking time bomb.
Little do they know there was still a long journey ahead of them…