The next day Seras was in the stables attached to the caravansary when Petra came looking for her.

Heidels required a hundred little things to stay healthy and strong. From scale scrubbing, claw trimming, teeth cleaning, to peeling off dead skin so it didn’t develop infections.

Seras could have left that to the staff of the caravansary, but Dustin had told her that doing this herself was important for forming a bond with Buck. And given that he had to constantly deal with her heavier than average body it was especially important for her to form a bond so he’d stop bucking her off his back.

Seriously if she wasn’t made of metal she might have died by now. No wonder they had gotten him for cheap despite his size and strength.

“Seras?” Petra called from the entrance.

“I’m back here.” Seras called back, the sudden outburst caused Buck to pull away from getting his teeth brushed. But Seras was stronger and held him in place.

Petra walked into the stables to Buck little stall in the back of the building. “There you are. I’ve been looking everywhere.”

“Been here all morning. What’s up?” Seras said as she dipped the brush back into the bucket.

“I took some jobs from the adventuring hall. Basic ones that shouldn’t be too dangerous with me around. The guys and I were going to go out and handle them, wanna join?”

“Isn’t the adventurer society like ‘full essence users only’, wouldn’t you get in trouble for bringing us along?”

“Nah, I went in and asked for jobs best suited to people training to be adventurers. It’s a common enough practice for two-star adventurers to take rookies out with them to get experience. I’m liable for the jobs getting done in a timely manner, but as long as its done they don’t care.”

“Two star?” Seras asked.

Petra pulled out a badge with a iron colored Adventurer society seal. There were two stars on the badge. “It’s a sort of ranking system. I’m iron rank, but I’m known to be good at actually doing my job, so I got an extra star. It means they have faith in my skills as an iron rank adventurer.”

“So it's like street cred, but you can actually measure it with these stars? How many are there?”

“Three for each rank. And every time you go up a rank you lose a star. Because the expectation for higher ranked adventurers is higher.”

“What do you need to do to get a third star?”

“Anything that proves I’ve got good judgement and political sense. I don’t think I’ll ever earn a third, at least not at iron. We move around too much for any one branch to accurately judge me. Anyways, are you in?”

Seras frowned “What kind of jobs? Not sure if my weapon skills are at a place where I feel good facing off against people.”

“Nothing like that. That’s three-star work. Just a bunch of iron rank monsters infesting some farmer's fields.”

Seras thought about it. “Would I get a cut of the pay out?”

Petra smirked “Of course your worried about the money. If you help on a job you’ll get a share of the reward, and you’ll get the loot of any monsters you kill.”

“Alright, I’m in. I haven’t faced iron rank monsters since those Cavern Lurkers. Let me just finish up.” She said as she moved to the other head. With Heidels both heads were considered one part of the same animal, and were somehow linked so that decision making wasn’t hindered. But Seras had learned that the two heads often had subtle differences in their personalities. The right side was stubborn, but obedient once she took charge. The left side however was a glutton and needed to be bribed before it would do anything. She kept a crunchy root vegetable on her for this very purpose.

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The head opened up and Seras began to vigorously brush its teeth.

~~~*~~~

They left the city out its southern gate and followed the river on a well-maintained road. They continued to travel south via Heidel until they reached the start of the delta’s wetland area. They moved much faster than normal since they didn’t need to worry about staying with heavy wagons.

Buck seemed pleased to finally let loose, and Seras whooped with joy as he got up to a rumbling gallop.

It wasn’t like riding her old bike, but it was still a lot of fun.

The first stop on their little tour was a sort of fish farm on the edge of the wetlands. Though instead of fish they grew these weird pink and yellow salamander things that grew to the size of a large dog. Some eel monsters had broken through the net that separated the farm from the wetland and had slaughtered the farmers whole batch of salamanders.

Rohan and Chase took charge on this one. Rohan had a swift essence and a bow essence, with his Heidel he charged along the bank of the pond fired several conjured arrows into the water and dashed away when the Heidel sized eels charged at him. When they reached the bank Chase used his plant and water essences to drag the eels on land.

From there it was up to Seras and Dallas to handle the up close and personal. On land the eels were slow and uncoordinated. But they had a stinger on their tails that they needed to watch out for.

Dallas conjured his own Scimitars and hacked into the eels, each successive slash cutting deeper into its flesh.

Seras had a scimitar Dustin had lent her, and she used her strength to hack into the monster’s flesh. It was like trying to cut rubber.

She got some way into its neck, but her inexperience with the scimitar got her blade stuck. She had tried to free it, but the monster’s barbed tail came for her face.

She abandoned the blade and instead pulled her new knife out.

She back peddled hard until she was face to ugly eel face with the monster. Its black beady eyes glared at her with hate, so Seras stabbed for its eyes.

It hissed like an enraged crocodile, and it tried to bash her with its bulbous head. But her reflexes were good enough to sidestep the attempt and stab for the other eye.

Seras missed the eye but still slashed its face up good.

Seras heard a call from behind and she dashed back to give Rohan the room he needed to loose half a dozen arrows into the eels face.

It lurched back, and now riddled with arrows it tried to flee back into the pond. But a wall of earth from Petra cut it off. It slammed into the wall and was stunned from the impact.

Seras took this opportunity to sprint forward, leap up, and come down on its head with her knife blade. It thrashed about, and she took a beating, but she kept her knife firmly in its head until it stopped struggling.

Dallas had also finished decapitating his monster. And was huffing in deep breaths.

Petra stood with her hands on her hips. “Not bad, good teamwork Seras, the Shadow Eel would have gotten you if you hadn’t let Rohan in to pepper its face with arrows, but you need to work on your blade work if you still want to work from the front lines. Can’t have you losing your weapon every time you cut something tough. Dallas, good work cutting its head off, but I can’t help but feel that it may have been excessive. It would have bled out from your couple attacks, and Chase could have kept it out of the water.”

Dallas looked crestfallen at the chastisement, but Chase still patted his back.

“Its okay little buddy, we just need to work on that tunnel vision, need to always be aware of your situation.” He consoled.

There wasn’t much else to say after their fight. So Seras assisted Garret in drawing the looting ritual with a bag of salt she had purchased. Petra and Dallas then dragged the two eels over and activated the ritual.

Twenty iron spirit coins got divided equally between the people who had done the fighting, and Garret checked them over for injuries.

Then they told the farmer the problem had been handled and rode off for their next job.

~~~*~~~

The next job was for a pack of humanoid/dog like monsters called Margols. They had manifested nearby and attacked a farmers heard of creepy goat things. The farmer had then fled and sent word to the city.

They were lucky to get the notice the same day it went up, otherwise they might need to track the Margol pack.

For this one Dallas rode out on his Heidel to draw the pack of five away from the corpses they had been feasting on. His Heidel, Springer, was the fastest in the group and got the whole pack chasing after her. They charged past Rohan and Frank who rode up on Springer’s flanks and loosed arrows and stone bullets into the Margols until they dropped.

Margols weren’t particularly smart, or durable, so it was easy to kite them with the Heidels until they dropped dead. Any time they tried to go after Rohan or Frank, Dallas wheeled around and slashed at the Margol’s backs.

Five minutes later they had five dead Margol’s to loot.

Fifty iron coins were divided four ways between Dallas, Frank, Rohan, and Petra the contract holder.

“That seems a little unfair.” Seras said. “Those eels were way bigger than the Margols, but we only get about ten coins per monster. It seems more economical to fight a bunch of weaker monsters.”

“It would make sense” Petra said, “If money was all we were after, those Eels would have wiped out more of the Salamander farmers and ruined plenty of lives. We stopped them before they could hurt anyone.” She chided.

“Besides” Rohan said. “Bigger, stronger monsters have higher chances at bonus loot besides coins. These Margols are so weak you could only really get coins out of them. Those eels could have given us an awakening stone, or crafting materials from their barbs.”

“He’s right. We would have at least gotten some dammed quintessence if we had a looting power.” Frank said. “I heard Margols have dog quintessence.”

“What would you even use a dog quintessence for?” Chase asked.

“No idea.”

“Why didn’t we get any of that?” Seras asked.

Garret looked sheepish, “Well, that might be my bad. Looting rituals can get the same loot as a looting power, but unless you get all the smaller aspects right your only likely to get the coins and big things like awakening stones or essences. I’m not familiar enough with this region to get the circles right. If Flint was here he’d flatten out the ambient magic to make a really good circle. I can’t do that, and figuring out the specifics is hard.”

“Aw come on Garret” Chase moaned “Can’t you figure out all the hundred different little differences in the local magic to make sure we get our dog quintessence.” He complained sarcastically.

“Yeah” Frank joined in “Don’t you know how useful dog quintessence is?”

Garret hadn’t noticed their shit eating grins and thought they were serious. “No, and you just said you didn’t.” he said with a pointed tone.

Frank threw his hands into the air “And now we’ll never know.” He said loudly.

They laughed.