The day slowly began, the sound of the well was lovely, all of the flowers were blooming with a bright natural color, there were no clouds in sight, many children were playing on the road, some people walked to their job, and others had a horse carrying them but all of them had one thing in common, all of them seemed happy, living in a free from danger city like this was a blessing for all of them, the only thing that ruined the image of the town was a group of unhappy children with lack of sleep, exiting the city, this group of people was Orion, Teras and his friends were exhausted because they had little to no sleep since all of them were excited to go on their first quest

"Teras! Why did we have to wake up so early?"

Lia whined, She was rubbing her eyes so she could wake up

"Before I went to my room I found a farmer on my way, I told him all about us and he offered to take us to the quest's spot for free, this man had to leave early so we couldn't have done anything else"

Teras tried to explain, the group continued to walk and after some time they reached the city's bridge, a sweet old man was waiting for them near a carriage, it seemed like it was his

"You really did wake up boy I'm glad"

the man told Teras as they shook hands

"Good morning to all of you, you can call me Uncle Jem"

the man introduced himself, and the others introduced their names too and got up to Jem's carriage

"We are about to leave so if you forgot something make sure you go get it now, or if you need to take a leak do it now because there will be no stops"

Jem announced to them, everyone seemed to be okay so Jem quickly whipped his horses and the carriage started moving, Lia and Cara slept on one another's shoulder as soon as they got out of town, Har was practicing his earth powers, after the fight he had with Tokkou he wanted to get better and stronger, everyone was doing something so Teras decided to train his mana control but it wasn't so easy since Jem kept on disturbing him with small talks

"Hey, kid where did you come from?"

Jem asked Teras

"I come from Thrisk"

"Oh! Thrisk is a nice place, I have been there once to watch a fight in this huge arena, it was quite nice! and as for me, I come from Yuka, it's a nice village, actually, that's where I'm heading right now, if you have a hard time finding shelter you can come to Yuka and tell to the guy that runs the inn that "Uncle sent us" and he will give you a discount"

Jem told Teras

'I appreciate his help but he is really annoying, I can't concentrate on my mana flow'

Teras thought, after this valuable tip Jem then started telling tales of the past that sounded completely fake and obscure, apparently, he was an ex-adventurer that stopped once he got injured, but Teras was concentrated on his mana control so he didn't hear him

"The job was too dangerous"

He said, Teras tried to ignore him as much as he can, Har was trying to do the same thing but a single thing he said caught the attention of Teras

"Some weird-looking guys are abusing the village lately, they keep on taxing us and the funny thing is that if we refuse they will send free a weird monster they have captured to attack us, we are too weak to win against it and if we somehow managed to kill the damn monster those suckers will simply just attack us themselves, to sum it up we are slaves to those criminals!"

Jem said with a look that was full of hatred

"Uncle, is this true, do these people really do all this to you?"

"If you don't believe me you can come with me and I can show you!"

Jem told him, a silence then followed

'How can this happen to a village and nobody bats an eye?'

Teras wondered

"Don't get any weird ideas friend, we can not help these people right now, we don't know how strong those bandits are!"

Har whispered to Teras, Har saw the expression Teras made when Jem told him about his village's situation and didn't want Teras to give false hope to the old man

"Don't worry kid, I'm not telling you this to help us, I just wanted to get this out of my chest because I have been holding this hatred in me for a long time!"

Jem told Har, it seemed that Jem overheard Har

"Uncle, how many bandits are terrorizing your village?"

Teras asked as he stood up

"As I said before I don't expect you to help us, we are beyond help now, only a silver-ranked group can take care of them, and judging from your wealth and knowledge that you are newbies so there is no way you can win against them"

Jem told him in order to calm him down, but Teras was D E T E R M I N E D to help him but Jem kept on refusing his help, the 3 of them then stopped talking and continued doing whatever they were doing, after some hours the carriage arrived at the place ORION wanted to go, it was a big open field that was full of slimes, Har gently woke up the girls and all of them got off the carriage so Jem could leave

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"Make sure you don't get hurt kids!"

Jem said before leaving

"I PROMISE THAT ONCE WE BECOME STRONGER WE ARE GOING TO HELP YOU!!!"

Teras yelled to him as he was leaving, the man then nodded with a smile on his face and left

"So this is a slime?"

Lia asked as she was pointing at a green slime

"Seems like! this is a weak one, I know that because Recka taught me about slimes, they are 6 kinds of slime, white, green, blue, purple, golden, and red, and they are ranked the same way I told them, which means white is the weakest and the red is the strongest, red slimes can also be called 'King slime' since they have the ability to control lowered ranked slimes"

Teras explained to them

"Augh, can you explain that again"

said Cara while yawning, she still hadn't woke up completely, Lia then smacked her on the head

"Wake up you sleepyhead we are about to begin our first quest!"

Lia told her, Cara then made some water with the power of cards and threw it on her face so she could wake up faster, after some time of preparation everyone got ready to attack the green slime

"On my mark, we will initiate combat"

Teras told them, Teras then signaled them and they all charged at the slime, Lia landed the first hit with a lightning attack, and the slime took massive damage from the attack, Teras then landed the finishing blow with a slash of his sword, the slime was sliced in half and the mana it had inside disappeared

"That was easier than I expected..."

Teras thought out-loud

"If I understood correctly this is the second weakest form of slime so it isn't supposed to be hard, right?"

Cara asked

"You are right but it still feels a bit easy, but if it's like that then it will be quicker and easier if we separate, Lia and I will be on our own, and you and Har will be together!"

"Don't you trust me to fight alone?"

Cara asked with a sad expression

"No it's not like that, slimes are immune to physical attacks so I need you to support Har since he hasn't fully mastered mana control on his fists"

Teras told her in a hurry, he didn't want Cara to misunderstand him, the 4 of them then agreed to split up and they all went to a different spot on the field, their quest was to bring back 500 slime samples, by a sample that means roughly 1 kg of slime, it was a considerably long quest but it paid very much for a bronze quest, it paid even better than a silver quest but parties declined, the reason the adventurers' guild wanted 500 slime samples was for food, people can cook and eat slime samples, the higher the rank the tastier the slime was, so the slime samples were counted in this way:

1 kg of white slime counts as 1 sample

1 kg of green slime counts as 10 sample

1 kg of blue slime counts as 18 sample

1 kg of purple slime counts as 25 sample

1 kg of gold slime counts as 50 sample

1 kg of red/king slime counts as 100 sample

the reason was that a slime sample can produce a large amount of a soup-like liquid that can be eaten by humans, so the optional thing to do was to take down a king slime but it was way too hard for the bronze-ranked adventurers to kill it, Lia had come up with a tactic before coming to the field, they would only kill green slimes and above so they could finish faster, but when they saw the difficulty they decided to hunt blue slimes too if they saw one, of course, it wasn't very common to find high ranked slimes just roaming around a random field, a few hours have passed and Teras was a bit tired, it was easy to kill them but he had killed so many that his body felt weak, Teras had moved far away from the original spot the group was before they separated

'I probably have to go back, I have at least 10kg of green slime, the others must have the same amount if not more'

Teras thought as he was laying down on the field, but before he could pack his things to leave Teras spotted something different

'I-is that a purple slime?'

Teras wondered when he saw a purple light flicker upon his face, when he quickly got up he saw it, a large purple slime hopping around the field, Teras didn't waste a second, he quickly launched himself at the slime with his sword

"Huh?"

Teras's blade couldn't slice the slime, in fact, it didn't even inflict any damage on the slime, Teras was launched back from the bouncy texture of the slime, and the slime then bunched at Teras, he dodged the attack of the slime, and he was thankful for that because the attack of the slime ended up shattering the ground

'what is this power? I didn't know slimes were that strong!'

Teras thought when he looked at the impact of its attack, the slime then attacked once again but this time it channeled a magic attack, before Teras could realize what the slime was doing he was struck by a purple beam of mana, the beam penetrated Teras's armor and clothing and burned through his skin, Teras left a scream of pain

"I had enough! I will get serious now!"

Teras said with a smile, he then enhanced his legs and jumped towards the slime, the slime then tried to launch another mana beam but Teras blocked it with a mana shield, he then created another mana shield so he can redirect himself toward the slime, he then charged his sword with mana and sliced through the slime with an incredible force, the slice created a huge wave of air and dust

"Woah! I don't remember this attack to pack this much of a punch, did I improve?"

Teras said, he couldn't keep his thoughts inside his head

'This is huge slime, it must weigh around 10kg so that means that I single-handedly gathered 50% of our quest!'

Teras thought as he was picking all the slime from the ground a sudden voice scared him

"TERAS WHAT HAPPENED!!! ARE YOU ALRIGHT?"

It was Cara and Har, they were running at Teras to check up on him, once they saw the color of the slime he was picking up their eyes lit up

"You found a purple slime? That's pretty impressive my friend!"

Har told him, he then started to help him pick up the slime

"Did you kill it on your own? isn't it supposed to be a high-ranked slime?"

Cara asked confused

"It is but thanks to my sword I easily slice through it, but to be honest if I didn't have this sword I would probably have lost against it since this slime had a great physical and magical defense, I really can't imagine how hard is to kill even higher ranked slimes"

Teras told her, Cara started to help too, eventually, all the slime was cleared and the 3 of them started to walk to the place they had been separated, when they arrived there they saw Lia waiting for them, she had already set up a campfire, it was about 1 P.M and nobody had eaten anything

"Hey guys it seems like you found a rare one, I only managed to kill green and a couple of blue slimes but they are more than enough, so I suggest we eat some green slimes and set up a camp here"

Lia suggested to them

"It's a great idea, I saw some beautiful flowers down the hill that I wanted to pick up so I will probably go there, but before I go I have to heal Teras's wound, you see purple slimes can use magic abilities"

Cara explained to Lia, she then sat Teras down and started to heal him with water powers

"ouch, OUCH! why does it hurt so much when you heal me?"

Teras whined

"Shut up, that's how it works, water healing is faster than regular healing but puts up stress on your body, you will slowly get used to it"

Cara scold him, but she wasn't wrong, Teras's wound had already been healed

"Huh? It already healed, it really is faster than regular healing, much faster!"

Teras said as he looked at his treated wound, Cara then left to pick up some flowers, Har and Lia started to make the meal together

'They seem to be closer now, I'm glad!'

Teras thought, he then decided to lie down on the field, the view of the beautiful blue sky made him sleepy, so Teras closed his eyes and slept through this beautiful sunny day without a worry in the world