Chapter 25 - Missions & Apostles

What did she mean by 'they'? Who are they? It did not sound good. And Wrel confirmed my suspicion.

"Normally, that cave contains only small spiders, like the ones we found at the start, except way less than that, and maybe a wild [Spider Fiend] here and there. This time around, there were far more small spiders, a lot more [Spider Fiends] apparently, and that [Mini Boss] was not even supposed to exist. This all happened because of that guy."

"The webbed man?"

"Exactly. The one who killed that enormous spider like it was nothing. His name is Jahul. Jahul, the king of spiders, is one of the twelve Apostles, a group of maleficent creatures that serve under Bastildon, the Demon K—"

"The Demon King!" I shouted as I slammed my fist on the table. Everyone stopped what they were doing and looked at me for a second before returning back to their drinking tendencies.

"I'm going to make him pay."

Guen punched me in the head once again.

"You? You are going to make Bastildon pay? You can't even make a boar pay, you idiot!" she said.

"I can make a boar pay! I am stronger than you now!"

"Stronger? I don't think so. Dumber? Definitely," she replied.

"Oh I do think so!"

"Do you wanna find out? Idiot?"

"Maybe I do!"

At this point we were both standing up and facing each other, our foreheads touching and pushing each other like we were wild bulls.

"Hey! Relax-o! Both-o of-o you!" Jack said. "Jinden-o, I appreciate the feeling-o but-o you don't-o have to go fight-o Bastildon-o for-o this-o"

"It's not just this... He's done more..."

"More? What-o do you mean-o?"

"Keep going, Wrel."

"So, as I was saying, this man is Jahul, the king of spiders and one of the twelve Apostles of the Demon King. The Apostles are the Demon King's strongest servants and are the ones closest to him. They go from dungeon to dungeon under Bastildon's command to kill any luring dungeon crawlers like us. Sometimes, they have even been reported searching for victims outside dungeons. They get the chance to do that whenever guilds slow down their rate of dungeon clearing"

"They go out and kill people? Just for the fun of it!?" I said.

"No, it's not just for the fun of it, although, based on the Demon King's sick, twisted personality, it could partially be a reason, too. The overworld, which is us, everything you see around you, has been in war with the underworld, meaning the dungeons, for ages. The overworld wants to exterminate all the dungeons and all the bosses that live inside them. Make everything part of the overworld. While the underworld wants to exterminate every being of the overworld, or at the very least make them join the dungeons. Their goal is to make the whole world a dungeon itself."

"Okay, so we are not mindlessly going into the dungeons for the fun of it?" I asked.

"Some of us are," Wrel giggled and glanced at Sanor.

"But Jahul was not supposed to be here," Wrel continued. "None of th Apostles come close to the City of Prosper. And the fact that he called that dungeon his 'home', makes me believe he was dethroned and another beast took his place. He had always been one of the weakest Apostles, after all."

"That was one of the weakest? Fuck, I still have a lot of work to do."

"So do we," Jack said after biting the last piece of his breakfast and drinking the remaining ale in his tankard. He lightly hit the table twice with his hands. "Come on-o, everybody! We have work-o to do! Just-o because yesterday was-o hard-o, doesn't-o mean-o today can-o be easy!"

He got up, took his plate and utensils with him, and went to wash them before starting whatever he was going to do that day.

Not knowing what to do, I got up and followed him. I had yet to spend a proper day in the City of Prosper, let alone in the Peacemakers' guild. I decided to see what everyone else would do and join whatever I thought would yield the most [Exp]. I still needed to gain way more levels before I was able to go head to head with the Demon King, apparently. I did not like that whatsoever.

After Jack was done washing his utensils—which he took an exceptionally long time, since he was trying to get rid of every single tiny speck of dust from everything he used—I washed mine, put them back on the cupboard and turned around, ready to find out what today's options were.

Most of the guild was still having their constant party, ale coming and going, and it did not seem like this was about to change anytime soon. At least this reduced my options by a lot and it would be easier for me to find out what I wanted to do that day.

Sanor, unexpectedly, was already outside, by himself, shadow boxing. From what I understood, training always started early in the morning, after breakfast, for him and stopped late at night, with the exception for lunch and dinner breaks. Maybe I could join him, but I didn't really fight with my bare hands, so shadow boxing would not be beneficial for me. And if I asked him to spar with me, I would be knocked out really quickly, especially since I would not be able to use my sword.

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Tim was outside, practicing with his bow-thingy, on a target he had painted on a tree next to the guild. This sounded much more appealing, since I could improve my [Item Throw] skill. But was it really that worth it?

I decided to go ahead and ask Guen what she would do, and I would go with her; help her. After all, she did help me back in the forest. I should pay her back sometime soon.

Looking around, I could not see her anywhere, though. I searched outside, but still no luck.

Maybe she is in her room?

I went to check. I knocked the door and patiently waited, but there was no response. She had already left. But where to?

No point in waiting for her, I guess

I walked back down the stairs to the guild's main area and checked what else I could potentially do. There, in one of the room's corners, I saw Wrel looking skeptical, in front of a wooden plank that was nailed into the wall.

I approached to see what she was doing. There were numerous pieces of paper nailed on the plank, all of them having a bunch of letters and weird symbols on them. Wrel had taken one out of the plank and seemed to be lost deep into her own thoughts while looking at it.

"Hey, what are you doing? Can I help?" I touched her shoulder as I approached the female Goblin. She was thinking so hard she had closed out the rest of the world and was startled when I interrupted her, to the point of making a tiny jump of surprise.

"Oh, hey Jinden, I didn't notice you. I am checking out this month's missions, trying to find something interesting to do today."

"Missions?"

"Yeah."

"Uhhm... what are those?"

"Oh, that's right! You are new here!" she said as if she was forgetting the most obvious thing in the world. At the same time, her eyes were shining with excitement. "Let me show you, they are really fun. Doing them is important too, but they are also really really fun!"

A rather new-looking piece of paper, with a big letter 'E' was the one she picked up from the wooden board. She pushed it to my chest and I had to catch it so that it did not fall to the ground.

"Look at this," she said. "What does it look like?"

My eyes skipped over the page once and then I read it one more time, paying more attention this time.

"Seems like someone is hungry."

The writing on the piece of paper consisted of a few separate parts.

First of all, there was what I assumed to be a title, since it was written with bigger letter and did not make too much sense by itself. In this case, it said, "FOX MEAT FOX MEAT FOX MEAT"

Then, there was a requester name on the left side of the paper, right under the title. "Requester: FoxMeatLover39." Not the best name one could think of, definitely far worse than "XxDemonSlayerxX" but it was not too horrible. The requester's name could also remain blank if the requester was too shy to enter their name—usually because of odd, sometimes weirdly sexual requests—or because they just wanted to remain anonymous for some reason.

At the exact opposite side of the paper—also know as the right side—but at the same height as the requester's name, there was a request date, where you could see when this mission was posted. It did not serve much purpose other than guilt trip guild members into taking on the mission because it was left forgotten for a while, or warn members to not take this mission on because it was posted three years ago and the requester was probably dead or stoic by now. "Date: 04/04/512." Yesterday. This was more fresh than the loaf of bread we had for breakfast.

Underneath these two less useful entries, there finally was the actual request. Now we were getting into the good stuff. "I NEED FOX MEAT" was all that it said.

Next to the request was the name of the dungeon where we would need to crawl into in order to do what the client wanted. That is if there was a specific dungeon that applied and if the client knew which dungeon that was. Thankfully, in this case, they did. "[Tiny Forest]"

The next part was optional, but in reality, it was the most important part of the whole mission. The description. Missions that were lacking one would rarely ever get picked up. And from the ones that did, more than half of them were dropped because of how vague the whole mission was. "I need fox meat! At least six thighs, two shoulders, and three underbellies. Raw and in good condition, don't go chap chap chap with your sword and ruin the meat. Is all. Many thank!" It was not a huge description, but it was precise and to the point. Exactly what guild members liked to see.

And, finally, on the bottom right of the page and right above the requester's signature, was the best part of them all. The reward. There were all sorts of rewards that could be offered, depending on the mission and the client. The most common was offering coins. Bronze, silver, or gold ones. But some clients preferred offering products that they were already producing. Blacksmiths would offer shields and weapons. Clothiers would offer shirts, pants, and boots. Farmers would offer animals or products they got from them, like cheese. Irresponsible guys would offer their spare children. "Two gold coins and a great meal." I was not sure if the two gold coins were worth the trouble. I did not know how the economy worked there. But I was definitely down for some well-cooked fox meat. Even when Guen half-cooked, half-burnt it, it was still delicious. In the case of anonymous requesters, the reward would come to the guild at the same time with the mission request, since there was no way to find the requester after the mission. That would ruin the whole point of being anonymous.

"Yeah, it seems like someone is hungry," Wrel said. "But you know what else it means? Easy money! And you know what else it means? Whoever gets this mission gets to go for a walk in the [Tiny Forest]. Carefree walks like that have become a luxury nowadays."

While I didn't exactly think of the [Tiny Forest] as a carefree walk, I did feel a bit nostalgic and wanted to come back and see how I would fare against the forest's beasts now that I had leveled up and was holding a real weapon.

"Maybe you should take it on, then," I said to the excited Goblin. "By the way, what does this part mean?"

I pointed at the big, thick 'E' letter that was on the top left, over the mission's title.

"Oh, right. This is the mission's difficulty level. They range from E to S rank, with E being the easiest and S being, you guessed it, an urban legend. I have never seen an S rank mission so far. The E in E missions stands for 'Extremely Easy', though a lot of them are not as easy as you may think. A lot of dungeon crawlers have died trying to complete E leveled missions. As for me, I am not sure if I want this mission right now. Maybe you could take it on. What do you think?"

Looking back at the piece of paper, it did not seem too bad of a mission. There was gold, there was food and there was a chance to prove myself and mess up some boars while I was there. The only issue was that the [Exp] would be low and I would not level up as fast as I potentially could. The faster I could level up, the faster I could get my revenge. But then again, I would surely get lots of [Exp] if I slaughtered every living being on that forest. Maybe that was what I should do.

"Yeah, sounds good. Maybe I will take this mission on."

"Maybe you won't-o," said Jack who came behind me and put his hand on my left shoulder. "You don't-o have time for-o a mission-o today. You are coming-o with me. It's-o time to get-o you a class-o!"