The two first floors are cleared all by my lonesome, but having to take care of everything myself I overuse read and end up with only around a third of my mana pool left.

"Very well then" Bosir says, "Time for us to do our coaching job. Have you ever fought alongside other people before?"

"Not really, old man Jorgen was just there to either show or observe, we never really hunted together..."

"Okay, Bern, join up with him. The most common way to fight is sword-and-shield with spear in pairs. It is difficult at first because for the formation to become efficient, you gotta be close together and move while staying close. The basic tactic is for throwables to draw monster aggro, for spear users to attack and shield users to defend."

He scratches his chin a little. Ah there is some stubble I hadn't noticed before.

"There is a bunch of things you only can learn through experience, though. Like, how much do you have to advance to take a charge without crashing into the spear-user? How much you can move without disrupting him? or later, those besides you without disrupting the entire formation? and so on. We usually find the best way is just to practice little by little till it becomes natural."

And so, Bern and I advance together. I try to be conscious of it, but it is really hard. The third monster have something that looks like a small rhino. One portruding horn in the center of it's face, dark brown skin and the height of a large dog. I have my habit of deflecting charges while moving myself to the other and stabbing them, but that movement both disrupts and exposes Bern behind me.

By the time we're done with the fourth floor, I have a sense of how far I can move, but it feels really constricted and I end up being really passive. I guess it is time for me to explore what moves I can do while in such a position. But Bosir stops me. "All right, that's quite enough, we've gone farther than we had to, and I don't want to end up arriving home too late, or we will get another slow start tomorrow."

So he says. We have been dismantling stuff along the way, but now on the way back, I see all of them at the same time and I can't see anything.

"Where are all the stuff we gathered?" I ask

"Oh, right, I forgot to mention it. That's Asger's gift, a storage type! Our little golden goose" Bosir says while furiously rubbing Asger's head. He bashes the hand away.

"Storage type?"

"Yeah, like your self-healing gift, it is a group that comes with many different capabilities and restrictions. Luckily for us, those not suited for transportation of goods often end up with us hunters."

"So, what kind of restrictions does it have?"

Asger answers: "I can basically have a very large amount, enough that I have never reached the limit... But it kinda stops working after a few hours, and if I don't take it out myself, it just launches incredibly fast in every direction and hurts like hell, so... But I have a good idea of the time now, and I even think it is slowly improving, so it is pretty good still."

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"You wouldn't believe the amount of animal parts we had launched at us in the first six months after Asger joined" Bern adds.

I half-stifle a chuckle at the picture of everyone being bombarded by slabs of meat.

We quickly exit the labyrinth as we didn't have to fight, and Asger unloads the loot to the cart, and I start pulling it.

"You can still go, even with the extra weight?" Boris asks in a mildly surprised voice.

"Yeah, should be fine" I have confidence in my stamina.

"Amazing what self-healers can do" Bern mutters, but I correct him.

"Ah, my power doesn't work like that. It just cures me of all wounds and fatigue and fills up my mana every time I sleep"

"Did you say it "just cures you of all wounds", geez people with gifts don't know how good they have it, really" Bern complains.

"Still, amazing for you to have so much stamina though, what kinda training did you do?" Bosir asks.

"Ehm, ever since I could, I have running for hours each day. When old man Jorgen took me in, it was dungeon crawling till noon, then sparring or... special training for a few hours and then I exercised till I couldn't move. Then when lady Hannah came, ah that's my magic teacher, it was magic lessons till noon, sparring or dungeon crawling for a few hours, then exercise until sleep time"

There is a bit of a pause.

"When did Jorgen take you in?" He asked.

"Just after my 6th festival, if I remember correctly" Not entire sure, now that I think about it, could be the 5th or 7th.

Bosir laughs all of a sudden "Haha, well, aren't you diligent. Keep it up, work on teamwork and learn your throwables and you will be second rank as soon as one year is up".

"Yes sir, I will do my best"

The rest of the trip home turns to chats of a more mindless variety.

We easily gain admission into the city since it seems the guards know Bosir and the others. We all go to the association.

"What of all the loot, what do we do with it?" I inquire earnestly.

"Ah, you have surely seen the marketplace. Most of those are the assocation's. They don't haggle and buy quite low, but it is nice and easy to sell everything to them instead of going around, haggling with merchants and only selling what each think they can move."

We enter the association, a middle-aged lady confirms our cart and pays us the quest fee along a sum for the goods. Bosir hands me half, saying I practically did all the work, so I should get a half of the entire fee, instead of half of a fourth. Nice, this basically pays for the boots I got earlier, maybe he didn't ask for much. And here I was afraid I had been scammed once again. Speaking of scammed, something comes to mind.

"How do they know we actually completed the request? Couldn't we just have told them we did it and leave it be?"

Bosir laughs heartily again, before answering "Kid, it takes at least a year of low income work to become a hunter. If you are ever caught doing that, you will lose your tag and be shamed out of town"

"License?"

Bosir and Bern pull up a piece of metal from under their clothes. I can't tell what they say, but Bosir's shines like gold and has a single, thick line at the right-most end, while Bern's is matte blue and has two of those same thick lines in the same place.

"These are what authoritates you to take quests. It doesn't matter much when everybody in the local association knows you, but if you ever work together with another branch, or you change your city, it is nice to have."

I nod, and we soon return home. I feel quite exhausted and forget to pay attention to the route.

Larn and Mynie are enjoying some roast meat and alcohol when we arrive. I join in for the meat, the rest join for both meat and alcohol.

"I'm beat for today, so I guess I'll just turn in for tonight. Where do I sleep?"

"In my bed of course" Mynie says and winks, which makes me a little uncomfortable.

"Uhh, right, we're actually full occupancy at the moment, will have to do something about that, but you can sleep in the room second-farthest from the staircase on your left. It is Kamas', one of those out on a big mission right now, but he basically doesn't own very much, so there should be little chance for you to mess something up."

"Thanks" I say and retire for the day.