Seeing the rude gesture, Alissa stopped performing for Belle's attention and crouched down beside the near unconscious Adrest. She tenderly held onto his hand while quietly whispering in his ear, “Would you like to lose both arms today Ady?”

Even in his state, Adrest still managed to go colder hearing the words. Seeing his expression change, Alissa giggled and patted the hand she still held before adjusting to be closer to his head.

“That’s enough teasing I guess. Take this so I don’t have to fly you back to the house.” She put a small bottle about the size of her palm against Adrest’s lips.

As he slowly sipped the viscous liquid as to not choke on it in his weakened state, he noticed that the chalky white elixir tasted spicy, like peppercorns and allspice. Not only was the taste good, so were the effects.

Before Adrest even finished drinking, small cuts and gashes sewed themselves together, bruises faded, and most amazingly his arm started to regrow. It was actually quite a gruesome sight, especially compared to the Lodestone’s shadow healing that was more like reversing time around the injury.

First to regrow were the bones, from the remaining bits jutting out at the elbow, slowly his radius and ulna pushed out, like long white flowers emerging from the soil. After his skeleton down to the fingers were regrown came the muscle. Quickly muscle wrapped around the limb like a spider wrapping a web. Finally came flawless and soft white skin, with a noticeable line where the old flesh started and his new flesh began.

Adrest went from feeling like he was at death’s door, to feeling like he’d just woken up from a great nights rest. He sat and tested the new arm, squeezing it into a fist and wriggling the fingers.

Satisfied, Adrest accepted Alissa’s outstretched hand and pulled himself back to his feet. “Thanks Ali. I feel brand new.”

Belle made sure to go up and inspect the new arm in curiosity, meanwhile Alissa gave Adrest’s shoulder a hard pat. While Adrest was pretending it didn’t hurt, she spoke.

“I’m taking points off for begging me for help at the end, but good job going for it’s eye. In a life or death fight you wouldn’t have been able to run away from it normally, so if you have to sacrifice a limb for chance it’s worthwhile.”

"Wow Big sis Ali, you talk like that's happened to you before.” Belle seemed to have overcome her feelings on the new side of Alissa and her curiosity took over.

Alissa out of habit gave Belle a piece of candy, nodding her head. “I’ve had to a few times, one time I lost a wing, leg, and half my ribs were just splinters. Father tossed me into a very territorial A rank Iron Titan when I’d just advanced to B rank.”

Belle and Adrest had no idea what an Iron Titan was But as Alissa told the story they understood just what a horror it was.

“Even after transforming back to my real body, from its perspective I was still just a slightly bigger ant. It was only a little smaller than the mountain ahead of us.”

Alissa gave the two time to turn around and stare at the huge mountain ahead, while not reaching the clouds, it was still at least 10,000 feet tall, the two made audible gulps imaging being in Alissa’s place.

“I tried running as soon as it woke up, but I was too late. Arms extended from every inch of the mountain around me, and before I could fly, one grabbed my leg, a second one swung it’s giant metal fist in my side and sent me flying. That’s how my ribs cracked. Then, I managed to fly away for a bit, but the mountain cracked open and screeched. The sound felt like my head would break in two and it made me crash into the ground. Giant iron golems surrounded me, and I had to do something quickly to get away. I picked one and charged right at it to push through and escape, but at the last moment it managed to grab my wing. I couldn’t stop to break free. Running as fast as my legs would carry me, I made it a few hundred more meters, almost off the mountain body. My last hurdle was when my front right claw sunk halfway into a pool of liquid metal, I did what was necessary and bit the leg off at the joint. It was a bad day, but I made it out alive at least!”

Hearing the horror story that was Alissa’s training, Adrest felt like giving his saint of a teacher a hug. When he did so though, the purple haired maiden stiffened up like a startled cat and was even more confused when she looked down to see an outright bawling Belle hugging her other side.

“What are you two doing!? Belle can hug me whenever she wants, but why are you doing it Adrest? Knock it off!” The dragon blushed and became increasingly flustered under the affection of her two family members. It was a precious sight that was completely incongruous with the blood bath just minutes ago.

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Letting go of the furiously blushing dragon, Adrest laughed, ‘Let’s go back to the Home and Hearth, I’ve had enough of you adventures for one day, and we can take our time to make it back just in time for dinner.”

As they made their way through the forest, by luck they also ran into a C rank Poison Crawler. Adrest thought it looked like an oversized dark grey weasel with glowing green eyes and long sharp fangs, dripping with a purple gooey poison.

Belle got to fight this time, and expertly dodged each bite and lunge. Belle was being extra careful as she had to look out flying drops of the venom, splashing everywhere as they fought.

Belle relied on her incredible speed to always be slightly faster than the Crawler and eventually tired it out, which was moving noticeably slower than at the start of the fight.

To end it, Belle shot forward faster than she’d been the entire fight, throwing the Crawler off by the shocking movement. She managed to close in on the side on the weasel’s side, and sank one of her blades into it’s organs, slipping right through the ribs.

Knowing how tenacious monsters are, Belle didn’t let her guard down as she used the stabbed blade as a step, leaping directly on the back of the weasel that was only just yowling in pain.

As the beast tried to angle it’s head to bite the unwelcome passenger on it’s back, Belle used her other blade to stab directly into the back of the head, right above the neck. It instantly fell silent and slumped to the ground.

Maybe Belle was trying to understand or embrace the side of her sister she’d seen today, but Belle seemed especially excited as she sat on top of her kill, smiling at her siblings. Her pure snow white hair, that was growing in nicely now that it’s had many months to grow, contrasted beautifully with the blood that marred her face her top.

Alissa helped collect the body by storing it as she’d done with the drake and they moved onward, the only sound was Alissa giving tips to Belle on how to move mana more efficiently when shifting directions constantly like she’d been, or how else she could’ve fought the Dark Crawler, ending the fight faster if she’d needed to hurry.

Before getting to the gate in the late afternoon sun of the forest, the three cleaned themselves as best they could, Adrest thankful Alissa had some spare outfits for everyone as his was shredded and covered in blood.

In fact, Alissa was the only one who didn’t need to change as she’d just gotten a few drops of blood on her face.

Clean enough, they waved to the guard in greeting and walked inside with no obstructions. As they meandered down the streets they found themselves in front of the Adventurer’s Guildhall.

Adrest led the way, opening the thick wooden double doors with an obnoxious creak. Inside, it was the same as ever. All kinds of men and women sitting around tables, each dressed in different styles of armor and most had intimidating weapons strewn across their back or side.

Even though Adrest and Alissa had joined the guild many months ago and were C rank certified, everyone in the crowd was a stranger to the two of them as they didn't spend much time here socializing outside of turning in contracts.

The strangers stared at the family for a few breaths before losing interest and going back to what they had been doing before. As they lost interest, the three got into the line for the guild clerk.

Today it was just a smartly dressed young man, around Adrest’s age with a tucked in black tailored shirt, glasses, and slicked back hair.

“Hi there, I’m Reed. How can I help you today?”

Adrest did the talking about handed the fangs of the Dark Crawler Belle had killed earlier.

“Hi Reed, the name’s Adrest. We were looking for rare ingredients by the mountain today and we ran into a Dark Crawler. We handled it fine but we definitely weren’t expecting to run into a C rank, especially one so vicious.”

Reed was shocked to hear where they’d decided to travel today, as a clerk for the guild he’d naturally been warned about the wyvern presence reported. He was also surprised to see fangs from a Dark Crawler.

The guild ranked Dark Crawlers as one of the top 5 most dangerous creatures to new parties. It wasn’t that they were overwhelmingly powerful, but their underwhelming appearance for a C rank combined with their fast acting and lethal poison was a deadly combination for inexperienced groups of adventurers.

Seeing the unassuming young group was able to kill one with seemingly no injuries, Reed was impressed.

“I’m sorry for the trouble Adrest and companions, but lately the monsters in the nearby forest have been unpredictable. These days, C ranks are springing up everywhere with no rhyme nor reason. Even B ranks have been spotted, though thankfully they’re far more rare. Speaking of, may I ask while you were out today, did you see anything unusual in the sky? Maybe hear something strange?”

Adrest didn’t realize how bad the problem with monsters has become for the isolated outpost town. The last questions however, Adrest was prepared for.

"Then i guess we can count ourselves lucky to say that other than the Crawler, it was an ordinary day. Did either of you notice anything?”

Adrest turned his head towards his companions who were mirrors of each other with neutral expressions, shaking their heads and answering, “No” “Nope”

Reed shrugged, “Well, since you’re all here and fine I didn’t think you’d ran into it, but thought I’d better be safe. Let’s see, normally a dark crawler kill and fangs are worth about 2 Gold Trevil, but the boss recently sent down the order to incentivize kills for C and above. Let’s call it an even 3 gold since this guy can be tricky for rookie C ranks.”

Adrest and Alissa’s eyes shot up at the number. While a single gold difference wasn’t anything to either of them at this point, it was about what it represented. It was a fifty percent hike from what one’d normally get, the so called “boss” was serious about keeping the new monster problem in check.

With bright smiles, the team took the offered gold, and while they were there, handed in some random herbs they had found while out today.