Mia looked at Felix rushing the lizard with a worried expression. Felix and Ross were her closest childhood friends. So close, in fact, she felt comfortable with calling them, family.

Back when Mia was much younger around 12 or so, she constantly used to get into trouble as a result of her bad temper. She would easily start arguments with anyone she disagreed with. Having always been very smart for her age, her arguments were just as good if not better than the other side’s. This generally easily caused adults to get angry and tell her to leave. Despite being smart she would refuse to do so in most cases and continue arguing. This stubbornness of hers caused her to get into trouble many times. It wasn’t rare for her to return home with bruises.

Mai had been born an only child in a relatively poor family that struggled to make ends meet. Her mother would, in fact, skip meals multiple times a week so that she could eat. As for her father she rarely saw him. He worked extremely long hours that lead him to come home and leave while Mia was still sleeping. Mia was rather unsure as of what his work was, but she felt grateful that he was still there for her mother and herself.

As for her mother, she worked as a clerk at the local butcher during the day. If they were lucky, she would even get leftover cuts to bring home for the evening. Sadly, in most cases they would be either taken by the owner or they would have sold out that day.

Mia also tried her best to provide income for her family. She would roam the street in search of fallen change. She even stole money on a couple of occasions. When she wasn’t roaming the streets in search of money, she was busy doing chores at home. Her parents were far too busy to do any at it was the least she could do considering she did not have a job.

However, one day she got into an argument with a fruit seller on the main street. The reason being that the products he sold at his stall were mostly rotten. Those products were fruits only found on the wild continent. They were pink and spherical with a green stem shooting out of it. On the inside of the fruit was a very sweet liquid protected by the pink shell. The shell in itself was edible as well as rather soft and elastic.

“What do you mean ‘they smell like shit’?” a visibly angry man spoke out. “My jorbs are perfectly fresh!”

“That one’s clearly growing mold on it, how could you call it fresh and sell it at a high price?” She replied.

“I don’t need a kid to tell me how to manage my stall. Get out of my face!”

“Fine take it back!” Mia said as she threw the fruit back at him. Unexpectedly she threw the fruit rather strongly and aimed it at his face.

The man put his hand out to catch it, but the fruit was so rotten that it broke upon contact. The momentum caused all of the gooey fragments and the fermented liquid within to slip through his fingers and splatter on his face.

The fruit normally would shatter under such stress. That one though wasn’t fresh.

“See it’s rotten.” She said with a sly smile on her face.

“I’ll make you pay for this you little piece of shit!” The man yelled out as his face grew even redder than it previously was.

Seeing this Mia tried to run away. Unfortunately, she wasn’t quick enough, and the man had grabbed onto her arm. His grip was extremely powerful and cased Mia to wince in pain. The man raised his fist and was about to lower it when a small rock hit him straight in the right eye. He instantly let go of Mia to cover it.

“OOOWWW!! My fucking eye!” He yelled out in pain.

Suddenly a smaller hand reached out to grab Mia’s wrist and called out.

“Quick let’s get out of here.”

Mia let herself be pulled along and followed the short person. Once they had put some distance between them and the stall the person turned around to reveal a young man in his very early teens. He had blonde hairs and blue eyes as well as a charming face fitted with a confident smile. He immediately presented himself as Felix and said that he and his brother had seen that she was in trouble and decided to help her.

Soon enough indeed they were joined by another young man. This one had brown hairs and blue eyes, as well as an evident resemblance to Felix. He was Felix’s twin brother Ross, more specifically, fraternal twin. Although they looked similar, they were nowhere near identical. He, on the other hand, had a more timid smile and tended to look down instead of looking at Mia when talking to her.

After a short conversation, she found out that Ross was the one who had thrown the rock. He was surprisingly good at throwing things and could even accurately hit a target from over 10m away. Mia was fascinated by his talent as any kid of her age would be.

After this, they quickly became friends and began to meet up every day. The brothers would always be there to protect Mia whenever she got in trouble. Due to this she only rarely got injured. If they were lucky, they would even be able to stop here before she started an argument. This generally wasn’t an easy task as she would start them without any signs. They would still try their best to teach her to stop these unprovoked arguments. Although they were unsuccessful in convincing her at first, progress slowly became evident. This was troublesome, yet the brothers didn’t mind, they were friends after all. The days they spent together were the happiest ones of her life.

A year went by like this until one day Mia woke up to terrible news. Her father had died. It was a work incident, that killed him on the spot. She tried to ask her mother for more details, but she wouldn’t budge. Although she hadn’t seen much of her father, he was a man she deeply respected and cared about. The news had shaken her to her core and lead her to isolate herself in her room for over two days.

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The day she came out she saw her mother crying and mumbling to herself about a tremendous debt. Talking about how worried she was regarding the future and how afraid she was of not being able to take care of Mia anymore. This scene in itself had a larger impact on Mia than the news of her father’s death. If there was one person, she loved the most that would be her mother. The mother that had sacrificed so much for her.

That day Mia took a resolution. She would no longer stand by and be a burden on her mother. That day she left the house and met up with Ross and Felix to tell them what happened and what she would do from now on.

“What your father died so you’re going to register at the Hunter Federation to help you mother without even telling her!?!” Felix exclaimed absolutely flabbergasted. He was already expecting some bad news, after all, he hadn’t seen her for a few days, but this completely exceeded his expectations.

“You know that if you join the Hunter Federation you’re not even guaranteed to succeed right? And no matter what you won’t be able to leave them once you join them.” Ross said.

“I know. But I’ve made my decision. You guys know how stubborn I am. There’s no point trying to convince me against.”

“You’re right,” Felix said. “Therefore, I’ll go with you.”

“What? You can’t do that. There’s no reason for you to go.” She said.

“I’ll go as well.” Ross said.

“You guys can’t do that!”

“If we don’t go with you, how will we make sure you won’t get in trouble again?” Felix asked.

Seeing that she could not convince them either she reluctantly agreed. They decided to go there the following day in order to allow them to say farewells to their family.

The next day after meeting up again, they discussed how their families had taken the news. I turned out none of them had actually told their parents! They knew that if they did so they would be prevented from going, therefore, they had resorted to using different measures. The twins had told their other brother whereas Mia had decided to draw the symbol of the Hunter federation on her desk using dirt. Since she couldn’t read and didn’t have anyone to give a message to her mother she had resorted to this method.

After this Mia and the brothers proceeded to make their way towards the Hunter Federation’s building. The building itself was located near the center of Largen, far away from the outskirts where all of the poor people lived.

After having walked for about an hour through the densely packed city they had finally arrived at their destination.

In front of them stood a gigantic building that was easily as tall as twenty people and about twice as long. It was the highest structure they had seen in their lives. The building was made of pure white stone that had been chiseled in patterns depicting monsters. Large grandiose pillars supported the entrance on each side of which were crystal braziers burning with intense purple flames. The building had a tremendously intimidating aura that was both terrifying and awe-inspiring. Atop the entrance was a large black hexagonal symbol depicting two dragons other one purple one white coiling around each as part of an intense fight. This was the hunter’s logo, the white dragon represented humanity and the other one was supposed to represent monsters.

“Whoa…” The brothers let out in unison.

On the other hand, Mia gulped nervously as she looked at the building. She proceeded to take a step forward, soon followed by another and another. Soon enough she found herself walking through the imposing entrance along with the brothers in tow.

Looking around she found that there was a ton of people. Most of which were wearing white gear, she could even spot some with some purple on theirs. Those were hunters. The white of their armor was a status of their strength. Hunters were extremely respected individuals that held superior strength. This caused them to be very wealthy and essentially almost above the law. However, once one became a hunter there was no going back, you had to obey the federation until you were old enough to retire.

Mia quickly spotted the admission desk and began to head there with a hurried pace. By doing so she attracted many gazes, most of which expressed curiosity or even mockery. It’s not every day you get to see a kid signing up for such a dangerous job.

She arrived at the desk and declared.

“I want to be a hunter, as well as those guys behind me.”

“Sure.” The attendant said giving her only a quick glance, it wasn’t the first time she had seen this scenario before it seemed.

She pointed at an orb on her desk and said in a monotonous voice.

“Put your hand on it, it’s an aptitude ob. Depending on which color and how strongly it glows you’ll be able to know what you’re good at. If you’re not able to make it glow, then you have no potential as a hunter. Depending on what you get you’ll be assigned to different sections.”

“I’ll go first.” said Felix.

“Name?”

“Felix Berg.”

“Go ahead.” She said after scribbling the name down on a piece of paper.

Felix anxiously placed his hand on the orb and waited. Within a couple of seconds, a dim red light appeared inside the orb.

“It seems you have a talent in strength. You’ll be assigned to the fighter unit.”

“Yes! I passed! You saw that! I have talent! Woo!” Felix exclaimed drawing some more looks to them.

“Good job boy, having talent is pretty rare.” A booming deep voice sounded it out. It was a person in heavy white armor with two purple stripes on it. “Did you know that only one in ten people have a talent? And yours is pretty decent! Most people that pass only manage to draw a flickering light, but you actually managed to make a stable one inside it. You have a good future ahead of you!” This caused even more eyes to be drawn towards what was happening.

“Thank you, sir!” Felix replied with his back as straight as a ruler.

“I’ll go next.” Said Ross.

“Name?”

“Ross Berg.”

“Oh, brothers?” The armored man said with a curious expression on his face.

Ross then proceeded to place his hand on the orb. And just like for his brother a light shone out after a few seconds. The light inside the orb was green and at least three times brighter than his brother’s.

“This is some exceptional talent you have here boy.” The man spoke out. “You are easily one of the best I’ve ever seen!” The man proclaimed.

“Your strength lies in agility. You’ll be part of the ranger squad.” The lady said.

She then proceeded to look at Mia who took a large gulp. At this point, there were easily thirty people crowding the area to look at what was going on. Two people had been admitted at once, both of which were kids, one of them even had an exceptional talent! This was enough to have piqued everybody’s interest. They now had all shifted their curious gazes to the young girl walking up to the orb.

“Mia Mendel.” She said before placing her hand on the orb. She closed her eyes and looked away, afraid of the possibility of failing.

A few seconds passed and nobody had said anything yet. Mia feared the worst.

‘I don’t have a talent, do I?’ She thought, feeling extremely ashamed at the idea of failing her mother.

She slowly opened her eyes to see a bright blue light glowing within the orb. Looking around she could tell that everybody around here was in absolute shock. Just staring at the orb, as if not believing their own eyes.

“We have an arcanist.” The lady said, breaking the deathly silent.