"Phew..." - Says a blond young man.

"Ah... Why did you get this quest again, Cass?" - Complains a young woman with pointed ears, as an elf, her real age is unknown.

"Please, don't start this again... Elijah, you good there, pal?" - The blond young man skillfully changes the subject, avoiding the girl's complaints.

"I-I guess so... My arm is a bit sore..." - Answers a young wolf beastman with black and white fur.

"Your arm is BLEEDING! Cass, go heal him!"

"Stop screaming, will you?! No one is dying!"

The elf girl gives up on complaining and stands up, looking into the distance while the young man heals the beastman.

"You two saw that, right? One giant died all the way over there while we were fighting."

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

With the elf girl's statement, the blond boy gets anxious.

"The strong beings in the Barren Lands are loners, there's something strong enough to take a giant down on its own. We shouldn't investigate." - The beastman says.

All three lack words to continue the conversation. Finally, the blond boy breaks the silence.

"Either way we still have a mission, two more to go, if we separate them it shouldn't be much troub-"

"Ayla, you've studied a lot about the Barren Lands, what things here can defeat a giant?"

The girl hesitates to answer right away, but gives in - "Giants are pretty high on the food chain, if some trolls teamed up, they could do it, guess that with the right conditions an ogre could pull it off too, still..."

Thinking hard and trying to maintain her composure, she continues - "A small group of wyrms could do it, a wyvern also could, but we'd have heard their screams. aside from that... A demon can do it quite easily."

"Ahahaha! So there might be a demon close to us! Ahah-"

"Shut up! We can't have the hero falling into despair, Casimir."

The boy stops his tantrum, he knows it is a bad idea to continue whatever he's doing after Ayliannette calls him by his name.

"You two... Mind to stop? Can we get going or still need to fill the daily petty fight quota?"

"Humpf" - The elf girl starts walking in front of them.

The two boys look at each other, the blond boy has a face as if to ask for forgiveness, the beastman holds an unsurprised look. Both get up and start walking.