I hear Arnold calling me, we are both still in my bed.

“Lucia, Lucia, wake up.” He says while poking me.

“What?” I say still a little drowsy and without opening my eyes.

“I need to pee. Can you please let me go?” Looks like I am hugging him really tightly even when I was sleeping.

“Go ahead, I will close my eyes.” I say without thinking. I am still really drowsy.

“Lucia!” He says in a little more louder.

“I am not looking, go ahea…” I realize what I am saying and fully wake up. Before I can say anything he just sprint out of the room and start to hear laughs from the room to my right. Also the sun is up, I probably slept more than normal. It’s kinda strange to sleep and wake up in command after some time.

As I stand up I walk to the room to my side to see the Boss and Aria laughing.

“Haha, did you sleep well? Or was it too wet?” The Boss jokes.

You know, there is a good side of not feeling emotions like normal. You can be an asshole on command.

“Don’t worry Boss, I am sure one day you will be able to sleep near something wet you like too, just give it some time.” I say with an evil smile.

The Boss stops and Aria starts to laugh harder.

“Who taught you those things.” The Boss asks trying to revert the situation while making an obviously fake worried face.

“I can tell who didn’t.” I say while I look him in the eyes.

After that Boss just admits defeat.

“Just go get your things and find me outside, we are going to have breakfast at the meeting.” And he leaves along with Aria who is still laughing.

A few minutes later Arnold comes back, I also go to the bathroom, drink some water and we go after the Boss.

We walk back to the castle and this time we enter the gates. All the way until now the Boss didn’t say a word to me and Aria can’t look at me or Arnold or she begins to laugh, so we just walked here in silence.

As the gates open we see a big courtyard between the walls of the castle and the castle itself that is full of grass, trees and some flowers outside the dirt path.

As we walk through the stone path that leads to the castle itself, Boss begins to walk in the dirt path.

“This way, the castle is not our destination today.”

“I was kinda looking forward to entering the castle.” Arnold says in a sad tone.

“Maybe later.” Aria responds.

And then we just walk a little until we reach a hut of all things. It’s pretty big. Bigger than most houses I've seen, but it’s made out of iron, not stone which is used on every building in this city.

As we reach it the Boss gives a signal to two armored knights with spears guarding the entrance and they open the door so we can enter.

Inside there are a lot of tables and chairs and there are some people here already. Even that bald guy that was important.

As I look around I don’t see any food.

“Where is the food?”

“Yeah where is the food?” The Boss shouts.

“Sit down, it’s coming, and stop shouting.” The bald guy replies.

The Boss just gives him a stare and sits on the nearest chair he finds. We do the same. Most people here are using masks but I can identify three men and one woman. All of the men are using heavy armor and the woman is using light metal armor.

A little later some guys that look like adventurers enter. One of them is blond, kinda short, probably around 170 cm and not really that handsome, something around a 5 or 6 in the beauty scale for men. He has two swords with him one on each side of his hips and he is wearing light-metal armor along with leather armor under it. The others in that group don’t particularly stand out. They all use different weapons, spear, bow and a sword, but they are using what looks like civilian clothes and their faces don’t have anything that gets your attention. They are all caucasian with brown hair, I would say they are brothers by how much alike they look to each other.

A few more minutes later a Monk and a Priest from the church enter the room along with what I think is the staff of the castle bringing food and drinks.

As the animals we are, everyone begins to fight over the food, luckily no one wants the milk so I have a full bottle for me. Arnold gets one too and we share some bread.

As we begin to fill our bellies and the fighting is dying down, the bald guy starts to talk.

“Well, now that the beasts have been fed, I think I can address our problems.” he puts a bunch of wanted posters in a wall behind him as he begins to explain things. “Every single one of these people are in this city and I can 100% guarantee that they won’t be able to leave. All of you are the only ones that can actually reach the situation where you would be able to even get near those people and win in a fight.”

“Hey, then why are there little kids here? The great Boss is running a daycare now and can’t leave them alone?” the blonde guy says.

Like I said before, it’s really good to not be tied down by things like emotions or conscience, so you can just be an asshole to the people that deserve it.

The Boss tries to say something but I am faster.

“He has to keep an eye on me or your mom would be coming looking for me everyday.” I say while looking at the armored guy who said that.

“What did you say?” He stands up angry.

Everyone else is just stunned.

“I am sorry. I meant your dad. He said he liked a good finger in his ass and said that it runs in the family. I can free my schedule later if you want.” I say with a smile on my face.

Now even that guy stopped.

“Hey, what are you teaching that girl?” The bald guy asks the Boss.

“Trust me, if it was me who taught her how to do this, she would be on that guy's throat right now.” He says while pointing to the guy who started this.

“Number 3, just stop, both of the kids are here because of their skills, they defeated the same enemy your group did but just with the two of them. Can you do it?”

The armored guy just sits down and resumes eating. I do the same.

“Continuing, each of you will have at least one target. Kill them and you get the prizes.”

“May I ask what are the rewards?” Arnold asks.

“A variable amount of money, some of the targets have larger bounties than the other so that is one thing. The second thing is you can have anything in possession of the target you can get as long it’s not stolen and/or can’t be easily returned to the owner. The last thing is a letter of introduction to the King.”

Both me and Arnold nod as it looks like we were the only ones not aware of the rewards as the bald guy continues.

“We have a total of 10 Rank-S bounties in this city and before the end of the year they need to be taken care of. I will now start to name them and who should go after them. This isn’t optional and if any of you interfere with another person trying to get his bounty on purpose you will get nothing even if you finish the job.”

The adventurers' expressions got a bit more serious.

“Knight number one is in charge of The Butcher. I don’t think anyone’s path will cross on this bounty so I will stop here.”

“Knight number two is in charge of The Crazy Sorcerer. Again, this bounty is isolated so no more information will be given.”

“Knight number three, you are in charge of the Guardsmith. Everyone here at some point will probably have to talk with a guard around the city, so if you somehow find this one and kill him before number three, you will only get part of the bounty as this one will require a lot of investigation on number three part.”

“The lady in armor. You are in charge of the Stick Fingers. You have permission to focus on rescue instead of killing the target. This does not apply to anyone else.”

“Flash, you are in charge of the Brute. He will love to fight you. Just be sure to not die before him.”

“The Zero Brothers are in charge of the Beast Hunter. This bounty will increase if you are able to capture the monsters he uses, but they are not necessary.”

“The Priest and the Monk Here are in charge of The Ghost. Don’t think any of you will be able to even sense that thing but be careful at night.”

“Aria, you are in charge of The Nurse. You already have the highest permission we could get to you so you can work anywhere.”

“Boss, you are in charge of the Chimera. He is still sleeping so you probably will fight him at full power.”

“And lastly, Lucia and Arnold, due to your circumstances you both are in charge of the Doll Maker.”

He then proceeds to give each of us a folder with some documents that also contain the photos of the target.

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

“in those documents you will find everything you need. Only you can read that, so trying to steal the folder of another will do nothing. That is all, dismissed. Except the Dragons. You four stay here.”

Everyone begins to leave and I give the folder to Arnold as I am curious about what is going to happen. Few moments later we are alone in the room with the Bald guy.

“I didn’t say this in front of the others to save yours faces a little, but the two of you need to pass a test before I let you officially be in charge of your target.”

“What kind of test?” Both me and Arnold ask.

Aria is visibly worried but she doesn’t say anything.

“Neither one of you actually killed anyone, let alone fight to the death with someone. If you want this job you both need to prove you can do it.” The Boss says in a serious voice.

Me and Arnold are not really surprised. It’s fair they think that. Monsters and People are two very different things.

--//--

We were guided to a coliseum inside the castle dungeon. As expected, everything is made of stone. Besides that, everything looks... fine? Nothing is broken, there is no blood, the seats are clean. My guess is that this place isn’t really used. Aria, the Boss and the baldy are all in the seats along with some armored soldiers. We were put in the arena and told to wait a little.

“They probably will make us fight someone to the death.” I say to Arnold.

“That is kinda obvious, but I am still nervous.”

“Well, at least they aren’t making us kill each other.” I say jokingly.

“You know, you seem like a different person ever since yesterday.”

“Don’t worry, I will probably go back to the way you love in a few days. That spell really did a number on my head.” I say dodging what he said.

“But I have to say. It’s really amusing seeing you swear at the adults and them being unable to do anything back. I just wonder where you learned all that.” He says, holding back a laugh.

“You have no idea what people say at night when they think you are not hearing. Too many people forgot that one of the tents in the kid’s area was occupied by me at night.”

“Well…it’s kind of amazing that you never did something like that before.”

“I was never angry as I am now.” Which is true. I am pissed in more ways than one.

“... Remember me to never piss you off to the point of violence. Your words hurt enough as of now.”

“...Ok?”

After our little exchange we hear the gates on the other side of the colosseum open.

This place is a circular arena with a gate that leads to a waiting room on both sides.

“Oh! Look at it. He has a girlfriend. Isn’t that cute?” We hear a man in chains shouting while being escorted by some knights.

“Guess that is the man.” I say.

“No! It’s obviously the knight on his right” Arnold says in a sarcastic tone.

“You two seem to be really having fun for people who are about to die.” The man shouts again.

This man is taller than both of us, probably around 190 cm tall, and really muscular. Not hyper buffed, but he has really big muscles. He is also bald and has no beard.

The knights remove all his chains and leave the arena. Me and Arnold stay in silence all this time.

“Hey, if I kill those two I will be left alive? Is that right?” He shouts at the bald guy.

“Yes. IF you can.” The bald guy shouts back. I swear I can’t remember his name.

“You heard the man. I will try to make this fast.” The man shouts at us.

There is no signal or anything, he just starts to run towards us. And since no one is doing anything I guess we started.

“Hey Arnold. Can you create a wall between you and me really fast?” I say while looking at the man now running towards us.

“Sure…” He says.

A quick use of a spell later there is a thin wall of stone between us and the man is about 2 meters away from us.

I can see that Arnold is on guard by looking at the sides of his lance appearing after the wall. I on the other hand fake dropped all my weapons on the ground with them still tied to my magic string.

The man does a quick turn so Arnold can no longer see him and goes straight to me. In a mad dash.

Looks like the plan worked, even if I didn’t tell Arnold about it.

You see, I didn’t help create the style that Lucia was using so I could get stronger. I did that so people would not freak out. Don’t get me wrong, that has a lot of potential, but right now doing things my way is better, even if they are cold to the eyes of others.

As the man approaches me he is probably trying to punch me in the face. I use the string to quickly put the greatsword in my hand and charge it with mana. Before that man’s knuckles reached even halfway their intended destination I already sliced him with my sword cutting him in two with a horizontal cut in this hip.. It was quick and less painful than normal I think.

As he falls to the ground and his bowels are leaving his body along with blood he begins to scream.

“AAAHHHHH! My body, My Body!”

“Arnold, you should probably come and finish the job before they send someone else. I don’t think I can use another slash like that until a little later.” I shout to Arnold.

He goes around the wall and I can see that he had to hold back his stomach a little. We killed plenty of animals and monsters but killing another person will always be something hard if you are not used to it. I saw plenty of bodies in my past life, probably even made some myself, this is just another one on the list.

Arnold gets back on his feet, figuratively, and goes to finish the job. He pierces the man's head and chest with his spear while the man is in a panic killing him.

After the man stops screaming and moving I can see that he really isn’t processing this very fast so I decide to speed up the process a little. I stop in front of him.

“Arnold, look at me.”

He looks down at me and before he can do anything I give a kiss in front of everyone. After a few seconds he realizes where we are and starts to panic.

“Lucia!” He shouts at me in panic. The people in the seats are talking.

“Well, you did finish the job, doesn’t that deserve a reward? Aria told me that you would like that.” I say while smiling to him. This is obviously a lie but they can’t really hear us.

“Lucia!” he shouts again.

“What? You don’t want people to know? You don’t like me anymore?” I say teasing him.

“No! No! I am just a little embarrassed, that's all.” He says a little nervous.

“HEY! I AM GOING TO THE WAITING ROOM TO KISS HIM A LITTLE MORE, I WILL BE BACK IN A FEW MINUTES. HE DOESN’T WANT TO BE SEEN YET.” I shout so everyone can hear.

“Lucia!” He says while red with embarrassment.

I can hear some people laughing. It’s like there isn’t a corpse just on our side.

“See, that is better. You even forgot what you just did.” I say to Arnold.

He looks at the body and back to me.

“Yeah, I think that feeling is gone.” He says while calming down.

“Never feel bad for trying to survive. You only have one life. If someone tries to take it you must fight and not let another life below yours in value to hold you back after you did what was necessary.”

“You know Lucia? I don’t want to say on the side of this corpse, let’s leave.”

“Yeah, me too.”

And we both walk towards the seats where Aria is laughing herself to the ground. I never saw this side of her, she probably is one of those people that can only laugh after teasing people.

“Hey, if you two want we can give you some time alone.” Aria says in between her laughs.

“Nah, I am good now.” Arnold answers in a somewhat serious tone.

“Well, that is one way to put it.” The Boss says.

“Anyway, how and what you did apart, you two passed.” The baldy says.

“Hey, what is your name? I forgot it.” I ask the Baldy.

“It’s David.” he says in an annoyed tone. Probably not many people have the courage to forget his name and ask on his face about it later.

“Thanks, I will be sure to remember.”

“I guess that is it. Can we go now? I still have a military group to take care of and unlike you I don’t have the kingdom’s support to help with the boring stuff.” The Boss says while standing up.

“One of these days someone will take your comments the wrong way.” David says to the Boss.

“That is what I am hoping. That way I can see who I can and can’t do business with anymore.”

“That is one way to do things.”

After that they just shake hands and we are guided outside the castle walls. The trip back was made in total silence as both the Boss and Aria are now with their serious faces.

“Let’s go back to the Inn, we need to talk.” The Boss says in a strange tone.

We just follow him as we can’t really do much.

When we reach there, the owner closes the place so only the four of us and some of our soldiers that were eating are here. Everyone else is either kicked out or leaves of their own accord after seeing people being kicked out. We sit at a table as the people around us begin to talk a little louder than normal.

“Good, now no one outside can hear us.” Aria says.

“So, what now?” Arnold asks.

“First, you are not going to need those documents, they will only distract you.”

We just nod our heads in confusion.

“Second, you will only be able to complete your jobs in the month of Aquarius so you two need to find a way to survive by yourselves until then.”

“Wait! What? How do you know that?” I ask the Boss confused.

“Every single one of those documents was made by me. They have lies on them to make the reader find other things along the way and help minimize the damage but in the case of both of you it’s better to go straight to the target.”

“This still doesn’t explain what you just said Boss. Why only in the month of aquarius?” Arnold asks.

“Because that is when the doll maker will appear again. I can’t go into details but every single person you heard about in that meeting were kidnapped and the culprit taunted me into doing all of this.”

“Kinda hard to believe.” I say.

“It’s true. I was there too.” Aria says.

“Anyway, the thing is that you two can’t leave the city until the month of aquarius or your target will be released early.”

“Why would this be bad?” I ask.

“Because if they are released early, they will not be somewhere you can fight them without destroying the city.”

“Everyone else also received the warning that they can’t leave the city under any circumstance inside their documents. The clues there are to keep them occupied until their month comes and also to fix the things those people did before they were kidnapped.” Aria explains.

“And what was that about surviving?” Arnold asks.

“Besides the money we got as a prize from the monster break, we can’t receive money from the outside either. So unless you want to die out of hunger, you two need to work in the city as the money you will receive at best will only cover you for 4 months and only the bare minimum.”

“How much money do we have?” I ask

“Each one of you has about 300 Kir. You could have more but I believe Lucia doesn't want to deal with the church.”

“You are right about that.”

Arnold just goes with it.

The Boss toss each of us a coin bag.

“When the month of aquarius comes, your target will start to appear everyday near the south gate. Look around everyday. Failure isn’t an option.”

“Yes Boss!” We both say.

“Starting today you two are on your own. Neither me nor any of the Dragons can help you two unless you pay them for it. We will outright ignore you two if we see you on the street as to not anger our challenger. And no, I can’t say who this piece of shit is. Now go, the moment you two walk outside you will be on your own. Also don’t come back here anymore.”

We both pick our coins and leave. Then we walk around without any direction until we find a park with a fountain where we can drink free water. After doing that we start talking while sitting on a bench.

“What a day…” he says while stretching himself.

“Well, at least we have money.”

“You are way more optimistic than normal people you know?”

“Until you are left for dead with nothing useful, it is still a win on my book.”

“That doesn’t resolve our situation. We have to survive inside the city until the end of the year pretty much. What can we even do here?”

“The adventurers guild is an option, ain’t it?”

“Yeah, we can probably find jobs inside the city there.”

“In the worst case scenario we can just steal things.”

“What if we get caught?”

“As I said, the worst case.”

“Well. Let’s go to the guild, maybe we can find something.”

“We also need to look for a bath.”

“Your priorities are beyond me.”

“Well, unless you don’t want kisses anymore I suggest you find one.”

“...”

And then we walk to the guild while keeping and eye for places where we can take a bath.