"Can you two explain yourselves right now!?" In the middle of the guildhall, Krys looks quite cross at Stercus and Scitus, who are currently kneeling in front of her while completely drenched in something only god knows what.

"We were just taking a bath," Stercus tries to explain.

"Baths use water, and in case you didn't know water is not yellow, sticky, nor does it smell so awful!"

"Such a closed-minded individual you are," Scitus said, shaking her head disapprovingly. "What you do not understand is that the combination of mud, lazzberry juice, urine, and dead slime corpses create the ultimate washing liquid that eliminates all odors and washes away every dirty spot on the body. Water and soap isn't nearly as effective as this all-natural and wonderful concoction!"

"None of what you said makes any sense," Krys replied. "All I got from that is that you smell like pee because there is actual pee in there. Go take a proper bath."

"You simply do not have the knowledge that would allow you to make that judgment. Smell is subjective after all, so me smelling like pee to you may not be because I have the scent of pee but because your nose is stupid just like you!"

Krys sighed. "Pan!"

"Not now!" Pan yelled back from across the guild, dragging some random woman with him.

"It's important!"

"Fine," Pan sighs, letting the woman escape as he makes his way to Krys. "What is it?"

"They need a bath right now, but Scitus is claiming that this weird fluid is actually making her cleaner."

"But she's right," Stercus said. "We were so clean we saw some people outside fainted from smelling how fresh we were!"

"Exactly," Scitus said as if that statement actually helped prove her point.

"Why did you bother to even call me?" Pan reaches into his pocket and pulls out a pointed brown stick with a few blue and pink lines going up it. He then pointed it at the two and shook it, causing shiny blue sparkles to come out the tip and cover the dirty kids. As the sparkles touched them they started to glow, and once they dimmed out again the kids were erased of any fluid on them as well as any horrible smell being completely eliminated as well.

"Why didn't you just use a Clean-up wand? That would've been much faster," Pan said.

"I ran out," Krys replied. "And I can't afford to spend money on them with all the debt I'm in thanks to these two!" Remember their last arc? She's talking about that.

"Then why don't you just borrow some money from our family? My parents are surprisingly generous and certainly have the funds to help you out."

"I told you before, I don't like being in debt. I especially don't want to be indebted to a family of perverts."

"What's a pervert?" Stercus never heard that word before.

"It's someone who is completely trustworthy in every way shape or form," Scitus said confidently. "If a stranger asks you to follow them, you must only do so if you have confirmed they're a pervert."

"I see," Stercus said, quite intrigued by this.

"That doesn't matter," Pan says, not noticing the kids' pervert talk. "Look at the size of that debt. You're overworking yourself so much just to pay it off."

While 20,000 genty per month was really just around a hundred U.S. each month the main reason Krys worked so hard was for a chance she could bribe the guards. You see, in a perfect world, the guards would be completely just morally and would do anything they could to uphold the law. However, the guards here were known for being quite corrupt. They tended to only get their jobs for the high pay and the great amount of authority they get as well. While this is bad for the law, this does make it quite easy to negotiate with them if you have enough money. Of course, that money has to be bigger than their paychecks to get their attention, and they get far over 20,000 genty a month. So if Krys was going to negotiate the debt away she needed a lot of cash.

Of course, that issue could disappear right away if she accepted the offer from Pan, but she'd rather take the long way there.

"Krys," Stercus called out from the receptionist's booth as if he had teleported there. "We need money!"

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Stercus and Scitus were holding a paper for a quest they wanted to do, which seemed to require cave exploration.

"Let me see the paper for a moment." Krys looked at the quest details, It seemed to be a fetch quest to deliver a rubiginous stone from deep inside one of the caves. Despite the name sounding like some sort of ruby don't get your hopes up. Rubiginous is a word that describes something covered in rust after all.

Okay, some of you might wonder why someone would even want a rusty stone to begin with. Well, thousands of years ago the humans of this world lived in caves and rarely ventured out. There is still evidence of this lifestyle thanks to things like old chests, torches, and rubiginous stones that are basically preserved ancient appliances and tools. The latter are the rarest however and are therefore the most valuable, with archeologists paying millions and even billions for them.

Of course, it also isn't easy to find them. Not only do they tend to be rare they are also deep inside caves. Stercus's brother was killed in a cave after all, and he didn't even go that deep. With the number of dangerous monsters in one, the only way your average adventurer survives is by having a large party of equally powerful teammates, which Stercus's brother didn't have because he was stupid.

And it seemed like Stercus was following in his footsteps by planning to only bring Scitus with him. This is what Krys like to call a big no.

"Please Krys," Stercus cried and Krys held the paper too high to reach.

"Don't you like money?" Scitus also cried trying to grab the quest paper.

"I don't even have the cash to pay the insurance! Not to talk of every other problem with this!"

"Well I got the money for insurance," Pan said, putting some money on the desk. The receptionist's eyes glittered.

"Absolutely not," Krys said, taking money off the desk. The receptionist's eyes dulled.

"Come on," Pan complains. What's the problem?

"Did you even read the quest description!?" Krys then proceeded to repeat the two paragraphs of exposition I placed earlier. Stercus and Scitus almost fell asleep and Pan was bored out of his mind until she finally got to the point.

"Here's a solution," Pan suggests. "Let's just get another party member. With how much money this quest gives anyway we could probably get many allies."

"One step ahead of you," Scitus said, holding some large middle-aged man by the arm who looked like he never moved a day in his life until now. "This is Mark. He said he'd be okay with joining us as long as he got a 99% share of the pay. Good deal right?"

I could just imagine Scitus looking proud of herself with that statement.

"Request declined," Pan said. "Clearly too weak."

"Come on," Mark said, getting the elusive speaking role. "I am really strong! Level 50 in fact!"

"Then prove it by coming back with a dragon skull or something!"

"Done!" Despite his looks, he was able to run out of the guild as if he were the Flash. He ran out as if he were one of the few Sonic would be unable to beat in a race. Pan was starting to think that guy actually was powerful, but he wasn't back just as quickly so at least he didn't have to give up most of the money.

"Well I got another guy," Scitus said, bringing someone else out of nowhere. It was a green-haired girl that looked like your stereotypical witch. "This is May, and she wants 55% of the pay."

"Okay, but are you strong?"

May nodded, not getting the elusive speaking role.

"How strong?"

May stretched her arms out wide as if she were a child expressing how big their love for their mom is.

"Can you speak?"

May shakes her head, being more silent than Komi-san.

"Rejected, we need communication in the heat of the battlefield. Not being able to talk would be more trouble than it's worth."

May nodded, silently walking away as a few tears fell down her cheek.

"Alright, got one more!" Scitus pulls out some other girl as if she was hiding them in her pocket or something. This time it was a girl in military clothes with a sniper rifle. "This is Krys. She wants 30% of the money."

"Okay, but are you related to the stupid frog-loving Krys here?"

"No relation," this Krys said. "Besides, I'm much cooler anyway." If Krys were paying attention during this moment she would've heavily objected, but likely would've definitely lost that battle.

"You're also strong, right?"

"I've got guns, I'm sure that's good enough."

"Okay, you're hired!"

"Thank you," this Krys said, happy to go on this quest.

"Hey, guys!" At that moment Stercus ran towards them with a dark-skinned, blonde dude in tow. "This dude called himself Veritas and said that he would help us for free!"

"Wait," Pan said surprised. "Free!?"

"Yeah," Veritas said. "I really just want a bit of outdoor training."

"Well, you're hired! And Krys's fired!"

"Yes!" Veritas was happy about it, despite the fact he should've known that coming for free should've guaranteed the spot.

"No!" Krys was just fired out of nowhere despite the fact that two high-level helpers would probably be better than one.

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General Info Stats Spells

Name: Stercus Pauls STR 33 Ignis Gloriae Age: 13yrs 36days SPE 31 (+20) Fireball Fire Sniper Rifle HP: 38/38 INT 28 Level: 11 DUR 29 (+20) Exp: 52/2048 LCK 26 Spells Known: 1 MGE 34 Armor: Malice's Heart (+20 DUR, +20 SPD) CHR 7