Chapter 32 - Indecisiveness

I woke up by the sun's warm rays caressing my face, feeling a gentle sensation of comfort. Just kidding, I was woken up by the sound of Kiril, puking his liver out next door. It sounded painful and was definitely loud. I wondered how a [Spider Fiend] pukes, but it was not something I really wanted to find out. I tried to delete that mental image from my memory.

Opening the door, there was again a bunch of people running up and down and left and right. There was probably going to be another expedition today. How did they not feel messed up after all that drinking they did yesterday? They seemed to have trained themselves to endure absurd quantities.

I should not be slacking either. After having my breakfast, I would go check the mission board and see if the mission I checked with Wrel yesterday was still available. Yesterday was fun but I could not really waste much more time. I should be getting stronger, there was still a goal that had to be accomplished.

Before attacking the day, I attacked the plate of stale bread and badly cooked [Horned Owl] that was in front of me. Jack was having the same thing as me and Wrel was still taking sips of ale, this time every five minutes or so, making the transition to an ale-free Wrel as smooth as possible and with the least amount of consequences.

It was an odd occurrence for most of us to have water to go with our breakfast, but after hearing the concerning sounds that Kiril was making—which could faintly be heard all the way to the ground floor—we were not really in the mood.

We ate quickly while we still had an appetite and everyone went their merry way. For most of the guild members, that meant going for another expedition in a dungeon near the City of Prosper, the name of which I could not remember at that point.

As per tradition, one of the guild members was the last one to get ready and was awarded the title of 'the scoundrel' for that day. This normally came along with a full set of black clothes, like the ones they gave me back then. They actually did not have a second pair and I was supposed to hand them back to the guild so that the new scoundrel could wear them, but they looked really cool and I did not want to let them go. So, I refused.

They could not leave me clothesless—they actually could, but thankfully they did not do that—and thus the unlucky guild member had to wear their own clothes during the expedition and just pretend they were black. But what stuck with me was how they only had a single scoundrel uniform. What if Jack happened to be the scoundrel? The shirt could not even cover half his back.

After everyone left, I went on to check the available missions too. A few guild members were still here, but I had not talked to them even while drunk. Except for Wrel. Wrel also stayed back, partly to keep her ale consumptions stable, partly because she wasn't invited.

She saw me checking out the bulletin board and came over to help me choose on an appropriate mission.

"So? Have you found any interesting missions yet?" she asked as she playfully bumped into my shoulder.

"No, not yet," I replied, skeptical. "I just started looking at them and they are just so many I did not have time to look through them all."

"Well, how about this one?" she said as she picked up a piece of paper that was pinned right in front of her. "It's an E rank mission. Extremely Easy. You should not have any trouble completing this one," she said.

I took the piece of paper from her hands and looked at it.

"There's no way I'm doing this one," I said.

It was a mission posted by an old lady that lived somewhere in the City of Prosper. She had trouble going out and walking distances longer than her living room due to her severe arthritis. She needed someone to go around the city, run her errands, and stop by a bunch of specific shops to buy her groceries for the week.

"Why not? It's an easy job and she is paying a hefty amount for your services," Wrel replied.

"This mission won't benefit me in any way. I won't get any [Exp], I won't grow stronger, I won't practice my fighting skill or even my new class, I won't do anything that would get me closer to my goal. I will only make my pockets heavier."

"Come on," she said. "Do it for the poor grandma"

"The grandma will be fine even if I don't personally deliver her groceries."

"You don't know that. Maybe she won't. Maybe she'll die!"

"Or maybe she won't die," I replied. "We will find out next week."

"You are heartless," Wrel said.

"No, I am not heartless. The Demon King is heartless. I am heartfull actually. That's why I am doing this in the first place."

I looked around and checked all sorts of missions. Some of them more interesting than others, but again, most of them either had to do with a job inside the city or they required me to go get something from the [Tiny Forest]. Apparently was no such thing as 'enough fox meat.'

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"How about this one?" I asked Wrel, giving her another piece of paper.

It said that there was a crop field somewhere outside the city. A huge one that produced a good chunk of the city's rice and corn needs.

Unfortunately it had run into some issues lately. Flying, lion-looking issues. [Flions] had discovered the field and were having feasts every few nights, eating huge amounts of the crops and destroying an equally big amount in the process.

The mission required to defeat 10 [Flions] so they get reduced in numbers and thus the farmer would probably have less of them ravaging his field. I would also have to bring the heads of those 10 [Flions] to the farmer as proof that I did complete the mission indeed.

"Do you even know what a [Flion] is? They are big and scary," she said. "They look like lions!"

"I actually do," I replied. "Guen and I killed one on the way back from the dungeon. Kiril was also there as a guest star, but he did not do much other than lose his legs."

"Poor guy," Wrel said while thinking about that scene.

"Poor guy," I agreed, thinking about what Kiril was currently going through in his room.

"I'm impressed, though. I did not expect you to be able to handle a [Flion]. They are vicious!"

"Guen did most of the work, actually. The [Flion] was too busy dodging Guen's spells and I was able to close the distance and slice its belly open."

"Still, I don't think you should take this mission on," she said, going back on topic. "For a start, this is a D rank mission. As in 'Difficult'. You should probably start with an easier one. There are so many Es here to choose from. Just go with one of them. Also, searching for [Flions] is not an easy task. They don't just appear out of nowhere. In this context, 10 is a lot. It will take you a long time to find and kill all of them, while you won't really get that much [Exp] since you'll only defeat 10 enemies."

"I don't care about the mission rank," I replied. "I sure I would have no problem completing most D rank missions. But I agree with your other point. Maybe it's not the most time-efficient mission after all."

"What's up, idiots?" Guen randomly entered the Peacemakers' guild. "Is the idiot geezer gone? I feel like having some free ale," she said.

"I thought you were an Elf, not an Anthir freeloader," the innkeeper said. "and honestly, I would give you a tankard if you asked for it, but you are not getting one with that attitude."

Guen stuck her tongue out to the innkeeper and walked up to the bulletin board.

"So, what are you up to?" she asked us.

"We are looking for a mission for myself," I replied. "Do you want to help?"

Guen walked closer to the board and squinted her eyes, reading carefully over the multiple missions.

"Aha!" she said and quickly picked a job from the board. "Here, you should be able to handle this one. I know it will be hard, but I believe in you. You can come out victorious."

I took the mission from her hands and looked at it. It was the one with the old lady that needed someone to go shopping for her.

"Very funny," I said. "We already looked at this one and decided that I am not going to do it. We will find out next week if the old lady will eventually die because of this or not."

"Wow, you have a big heart, don't you?" she said.

"I am heartfull!!"

Looking back at the bulletin board, we all had trouble finding a mission that I would actually want to do. Maybe I was being too picky?

"Wait? What about this one?" I said, picking out another one from the board.

"Let me see," Wrel said.

It was a mission that required someone to go out and retrieve ice. But apparently it wasn't just any kind of ice. This ice could only be found at the deepest part of a specific dungeon. Now, all I had to do was find out how do I actually go there. After that, I would have to leave immediately because it seemed urgent, the way the description was written.

"Are you blind or something?" Wrel said.

"What's wrong?"

"This is a D rank! I told you to only pick E missions! It's too early for us to pick a D mission and complete it ourselves."

"I think it suits him," Guen replied. "D stands for 'Dumbass', right?"

I gave her a mean look and then turned back to Wrel.

"Come on, it will be alright," I told her. "All I have to do is go get some ice. How hard could it be?"

"Very hard. Did you not see the location you pick that ice from? It's from the peak of the [Mauve Mountains]!"

"Yeah, I read that. I don't know where this is, which is the biggest reason I gave it to you; to give me directions."

Wrel rolled her eyes.

"Remember the dungeon we crawled in, where Jack almost died?" she said.

"Yeah, I do."

"Well, it's there. Except above."

"There? Wait, where? I don't remember seeing it."

Guen punched me on the head for that one.

"What do you mean you didn't see it, you idiot? You even walked on it! And you tried to push me down from it," she said.

Oh so that was the one. It was the mountain next to the spider cave. The one where we ended up after Kiril lead us out of the dungeon through their [Spider Fiend]-made lairs.

"But, yeah," Guen said. "If it's there, I don't think you should go there either. You are too weak and stupid for it."

"I am perfectly fine for it!" I replied.

"Said the guy who tried to fight the web idiot"

"You tried to fight the guy!? Are you stupid!?" Wrel was shocked.

"Isn't this what I've been saying all this time?" Guen complained.

"You are saying this for everyone. This time it seems that it's true though," Wrel said looking at me angrily.

"You are not going!" Both of them said at the same time.

"I am! You are not my moms! I don't even have a mom! I was just created out of blue dust."

"Then I'm coming with you," Guen said and took the piece of paper from my hands.

"You are not," I told her. "It's dangerous. What if the webbed man appears again?"

"That's what we've been saying all this time!" Wrel said.

"True. But I am stronger than both of you, so if one person can go, it's me."

They both burst into a laugher and I could not understand why.

Guen tried to answer a few times but was unable to stop laughing. The answers came from Wrel, instead, who had almost calmed back down.

"There is no way you are stronger than any of us," she said. "even if you have a level close to ours, you are lacking in other areas"

"Like the brain," Guen added.

"I was going to say 'experience'," Wrel said, "but this one fits too," she giggled.

"There is only one way to find out," I said. "Guen, let's fight! If you win, I won't go to the mission. But if I win, I will go alone. What do you think?"

"I'm in!" Guen replied immediately. "Time to finally put some sense into that thick skull of yours."

"Wait, no," Wrel stepped in. "We can't allow him any chances to go by himself!"

"Are you scared?" I mocked her.

"I'm not scared," she replied, annoyed. "I'm just making sense."

"Well, it's decided now," I said.

I turned to Guen.

"We're doing this now, right?"

"Right," she said.

I then turned back to Wrel.

"You can either come out with us and enjoy the show, or stay here and cry about it," I told her.

"I'm not going to cry, you idiot!" Wrel was now mad. It was Guen's responsibility to call me an idiot, not hers. "Fine, I'll come watch you get your butt kicked."

"Alright! Let's do this!"