42

“A party quest?”

Lara questioned.

I directly went to the union as I couldn’t find the man who attacked me.

I’ve been thinking about parties a lot lately. Especially after the whole attack on the troll’s mine situation.

Having a party seems useful but that is only if I trust the people I party up with. But since the only people I know are Lara and Rachael, both of whom aren’t volunteers I cannot expect them to join my party.

So, with no other choice, I came to the only solution that I could find. Meet other people.

I thought if I could do some party quests, maybe I could meet some people. Who knows, I might even find some people that would want to party up with me.

So I came to Lara and told her my predicament, thinking she could help me with this. But the answer I got, I wasn’t really expecting.

“That would be a little bit difficult…”

“Why?” I asked with a puzzled look.

Why would it be difficult? There are many dangerous places here and the main source of all the major requests are hunting, which are usually taken by parties, so why?

“Already established parties don’t really take new members. And if you want to take a group quest, then it would all be low level quests. Like being porter for a merchant and stuff like that.”

“Didn’t you say that merchants and the like hire parties to protect their carriages?”

“Yeah, they do. But only to protect them. You won’t see these people picking up or helping the merchant move his goods around, they hire porters for that.”

Looks like I won’t be able to go on a proper quest.

Just as my hopes were about to be crushed.

“Oh yeah! There was that one request!”

She looked around in her drawer and pulled out a fairly new looking request.

“This one came in just yesterday, we didn’t even have the time to put it on the board yet. This one requires a porter as well, but the party they’re going with is a fairly new one and hasn’t been formally established.”

Saying that, she passed me the paper.

“This is…”

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…

Leaving the Union building, I carried the request form and went towards the location to meet the requester.

The place wasn’t that far and I had already been here before. So I was able to find my way fairly quickly.

[The Glowing Blade]

The sign said. I walked in and in there saw a familiar face. It was the spectacled old man, whom I bought shoes from.

He was still in the back of the shop doing something. This time I didn’t call out to him abruptly, I walked to the counter and gently knocked on it.

The old man came out a few seconds later and his gaze lingered on my face for a few seconds before he said.

“You’re the guy who killed the silver wolf right outside the gate, aren’t you?”

I was surprised. And seeing my face he quickly explained.

“Oh, I was there too, I saw with my own eyes how a blood artist fight, it was quite the scene. I haven’t actually seen a blood artist fight before, so it was quite educational as well. So, how can I help you today?”

Oh right, they were using that side of town to secure the people.

I took out the request form and gave it to him, seeing it he was a little taken aback.

“You really want to take this request? You’ll only be carrying stuff around you know?”

“Don’t worry about it, I’ll be happy with a little less action for a few days. Haha…”

“I hope that is the case, the party I hired is fairly new and they haven’t been on too many different hunting quests together, but their individual levels were good. Because of their inexperience as a party I was able to hire them for cheap and them being new and all, they were eager as well. Well thanks to that I was able to hire you as well, otherwise I would’ve had to carry this stuff myself.”

If an experienced party took this quest then he wouldn’t be able to hire a porter, making this trip hard on him.

Well, I don’t really care. I have my own reasons for taking this job.

The main reason for this is not actually looking for party members but because I actually want to get away from East Green for a few days.

The guy that came to hunt me knew where I was, I don’t know if they know me or they came just because someone tipped them off about me, but I need to stay careful.

The only person who knows about my weird status is Rachael and as much as I don’t want to, I need to consider the fact that she may be the one who ratted me out. So, I’ll stay out of town and let the dust in the city settle down.

There’s also the stuff and the guy tracking Lara, but that’s none of my concern. At most, I’ll warn her about it, but I need to look after myself first, I don’t have the luxury of taking care of another.

“You can find me near the west gate in two days early at dawn, we’ll leave for more than a week hopefully we’ll be back just before the festival.”

I nodded.

“Anything else I’ll need? This is my first party mission.”

He thought about it for a while and just shrugged.

“I don’t know much but other than food, everything else will be on you guys. And do you mind if I ask you few questions?”

?

“Um, sure?”

“Ah, don’t worry, I was just, I haven’t actually introduced myself well, my name’s Rogard. I am a blacksmith as well as a magic craftsman. I was kind of working on something and I wanted an opinion of a blood artist. So, if you’re able to, will you come to my shop tomorrow evening?”

Well, I’m not doing anything…

“Sure, see you tomorrow then.”

I thanked him and turned to leave. I already had a few things in my mind that I wanted to do and buy before the trip in two days.

I was still in my head as I left the store so I didn’t the person who was right in front of me as I bumped into them.

I didn’t actually feel anything but I heard a small scream from the person who just fell ass first on the stone pavement. It was a delicate but a fairly familiar scream, so I looked down and saw…