Alec breathed in slowly and deeply as he stepped into the Zenik branch of the Adventurer’s Guild once more, for the first time in nearly a week.
Of course, it was exactly the same as it had been when he had come here to hand in his last [Copper-rank] mission, it had only been six days after all, but for some reason it just felt different.
Alec wasn’t sure what it was; whether it was his new rank, the days he’d spent in the academy, or something completely unrelated to either of the first two options, he had no idea. What he did know, however, was that it was exhilarating.
Thinking over it for a couple of seconds, he was almost certain this feeling came from his rank-up. An actual, tangible proof of his improvement and growth since leaving Blessed Catalyst that he now got to actually enjoy beyond just a shiny new word on his Adventurer ID.
His ascent up the two sets of stairs, straight past the floor with the [Copper-rank] quests and to the floor above with the [Iron-rank] quests, was rapid and excited. A giddy energy present in everything he did, even as he did his absolute best to try and tamp it down so he didn’t do something to make himself look stupid.
The Iron floor wasn’t that dissimilar to the Copper floor in terms of layout, that Alec could notice on a quick glance at least, but the metallic caps on the corners of the quest boards were now a nice, polished silver instead of the bright copper they had once been a mere floor below.
It was a small difference, one that Alec was certain was of no significance beyond aesthetics, but it was a difference that was nonetheless refreshing. The quantity of quests certainly seemed the same as on the Copper floor as Alec walked into the room, navigating around a few parties and solo Adventurer’s as he did so, but the payouts most certainly weren’t.
Back when the Guild had first been created, allegedly, the rules had been far laxer than they currently were today, especially in terms of quest payouts. In those days there was no minimum or maximum price range for any quest rank, meaning that you could have [Iron-rank] quests paying out 300 gold coins and [Tungsten-rank] quests that paid out that exact same 300 gold coins. This had, of course, led to some situations that the Guild, and many standing countries' governments, would prefer to stay hidden– and so rules had been put in place and strictly enforced since then.
Nowadays, every quest that went through the Guild had a minimum and maximum payment threshold per ranking. Those exact same thresholds were what were now beginning to excite Alec. With the teen going from [Copper-rank] quests with a maximum payment threshold of 100 copper coins, otherwise known as 5 silver coins, to [Iron-rank] quests which had a minimum threshold of 90 copper coins.
The upper threshold of 1000 copper coins, 50 silvers, had him nearly salivating but he knew better than to go after a quest of that calibre at his current skill level. Improved though he may be, any quest that stood at a level requiring a payout that high would chew him up and spit him out, of that he had no doubts.
So, with a small hum, the teen began to look over the quests with a critical eye. His gaze searching for a quest that both paid well, and that he believed he could handle at his current level.
After almost five minutes of searching, the blue-haired swordsman came across a quest that seemed good enough.
Its payout sat at 150 coppers and the quest parameters were fairly simple, he simply had to go out and retrieve an item that lay in the lair of a Criten nearby.
Of course, the death of the Criten was required as well, but Alec hardly found that surprising considering the item in question was an engagement ring. Even in the best-case scenario of the fiancé being totally fine and only the ring having been collateral, the teen hardly imagined any wife-to-be would be too merciful against the furry beast.
So, with a small hum, the teen unclipped the quest and brought it all the way down to the ground-floor to get it assigned to him so that he could go on it officially. Standing silently at the desk as the employee did their job before he felt the gaze of someone else resting on him, turning his head to see a young woman with pearlescent silver hair and dark red eyes, just a few shades lighter than blood, staring right at him as she rested against the counter, much the same as him.
“Can I help you?” He asked, more than a little unnerved by the woman and her intense, nearly unblinking, gaze.
It wasn’t just her gaze that made him so nervous though, and Alec would bet everything he owned on this feeling of tension in his body stemming from a power difference between the two of them.
“Not really, just curious is all.” The woman hummed, grinning lazily at the small twitch in his left eye.
Placing her elbow on the counter, she smooshed her cheek into her palm as she looked him up and down, her gaze pausing on his sword, then his hands, and finally on his face.
Her mid-length waving hair, which seemed to softly curl on itself close to its edges, bobbed a little as she tilted her head this way and that, only making Alec’s eye twitch more and his body tense up in paranoia over what she was thinking to make her react in such a way.
“Curious about…what, exactly?”
“Nothing serious, just a hypothetical, it's like a fun game for me.” She hummed teasingly, looking over as the employee she was dealing with finished processing her own quest and handed it to her.
“Well looks like I should be heading off. Have fun on your quest, Alec.” She giggled, waving at him with her fingers as she left the building.
Leaving behind a frozen, catatonic, Alec Dius as the implications behind her words crashed down on the teen instantly.
He had never told her his name, and as far as he was aware he had never said it when she’d been around him either. So, she knew him from before today, but he didn’t know about her in the slightest. A combination which he knew for a fact never ended well, at least in the rare story that he had read, it’s not like he’d been in this type of situation before this.
“And here we are sir! I wish you a safe quest and a good day!” The receptionist smiled brightly, only blinking owlishly in confusion as Alec robotically grabbed the quest flyer from her, still staring at where the mystery woman had stood with wide eyes.
“Uh, yeah. Thanks. You too.”
Could he train himself to sleep with one eye open? It might be worth a visit to a library when he got back just to check out.
XXXxxxXXX
Alec whistled a small tune to himself as he made his way through the forest of Xyrtah, outside Zenik. A couple clings and clangs coming from his backway as he hopped a protruding root to continue his journey towards the known hunting ground of the Criten in question.
“You’d think the Guild would actually deal with this sort of stuff earlier, right?” He mumbled to himself, ducking under a branch. “Like before it became an issue…”
Though even as he said it, he knew it was a ridiculous thought. The Adventurer’s Guild was created, at least based on the guidebook that all new Adventurer’s were given, to deal with large emergencies and compile quests in a singular organisation and location to streamline the entire process. He highly doubted the Guild had any interest in completely butchering a nearby monster population purely because they could be a threat, and if so they definitely wouldn’t start with a relatively weak creature like the Criten.
Not to mention, a dark, cynical part of his mind whispered in his ear, how were they meant to make profits and hand out pay if there were no more creatures to create quests?
Though those thoughts, while not ignored, were quickly shoved to the wayside in favour of trickling some mana into his legs. The teen crouched low before he launched himself up into the air to grab a thick branch overhead, about 8 or so metres off the ground, and pull himself up. The sun no longer hidden by the thick treetop canopy as much as it had been at ground-level.
It had been quite a few hours since he’d left Zenik, he hadn’t been exactly keeping track but it had been a few hours before midday when he had left, and now he had an hour, maybe two, until sunset based on its position in the horizon.
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“Jeez, I thought I’d at least get there by nightfall, it’s probably going to take me another half a day of travel to get there.” He sighed, scratching the back of his head as he sat down on the branch.
Idly his legs, resting either side of the branch, curled and tensed to wrap around the branch as best they could to stabilise him on the curved surface as he swung his backpack around to his front. The teen rummaged through it for a few moments before he pulled out a map of the area he currently sat in, making sure he was still on track, as best as he reasonably could.
He wasn’t the greatest at reading maps, but he could at least do so well enough to avoid getting lost, and really that’s all that he needed to know- at least for the moment.
“Yeah, I could keep going and get there a little after midnight, but then I’d have to try and fight a Criten in the dark. Not exactly my idea of a ‘safe’ fight.” He sweatdropped at his own words, only able to imagine the absolute disaster that attempting to do that would result in.
So, rather sensibly, the teen chose to set up camp for the night and keep moving in the morning once the sun went down. There was no point setting up camp right now since he still had some time until sunset but there was also no point trying to keep going after nightfall if he was just going to be wandering the wilderness aimlessly either.
XXXxxxXXX
That night, Xyrtahnian Wilderness
A fire crackled softly in the darkness of night, its flames ebbing and flowing this way and that as blue eyes stared directly into it. Alec’s mouth twisted into a pensive expression as he thought over the mission he currently found himself on, and the similarities it had to his last mission as a member of Blessed Catalyst.
Even back then, a little over a month ago, he had been able to take out the average Criten so long as he was patient and willing to take a few superficial wounds. Of course, his last fight with a Criten hadn’t gone quite that well to plan but he was much stronger now, so it shouldn’t be as much of an issue as it previously was.
Despite knowing all this, though, he couldn’t help but feel a bit nervous. His fingers tense as he cupped one hand in the palm of his other and his breath a little unsteady as he slowly let it out, only to quickly suck one back in to fill his lungs with oxygen once more.
A Criten hadn’t been an insurmountable creature in a long, long time for the teen, especially when he had been apart of a party. Logically, it stood to reason that this upcoming fight wouldn’t be anywhere near as difficult, but the teen knew why he was as nervous as he currently was. Or at least, he was fairly certain he knew.
Unlike the sheer, nightmare-inducing terror the Dune Worm had inflicted on the teen that still occasionally woke him even a month after the event, this fear was far less powerful and focused in an entirely different direction.
Alec was scared that even now, with all the improvements he had gone through, he would still be weaker than Peter had been when he had left the party. He was still scared that even with all his improvements he still wouldn’t be able to take out a creature that his best friend had been able to. That he’d only prove to himself that he should have never been around them in the first place, dragging them down…
“This is stupid. I’m being stupid.” He muttered to himself, closing his eyes and shaking his head.
A small laugh escaped his lips as he stood up and slapped both of his cheeks at once with enough force to instantly turn them red and create a small echo through the immediate surroundings.
Alec let out a small breath once more as the pain helped re-center his focus and stop his mental spiral before it could get any worse. His gaze raised to the canopy above him before lowering to the fire at his feet once more, a resolute fire burning in them as he clenched his fists at his side.
‘Tomorrow I’m going to go out there, I’m going to find the Criten’s lair and kill the Criten. That’s all there is to it. I can’t let myself spiral like that just because it’s a creature I’ve fought before.’ His thoughts echoed in his head, his determination only growing.
He was no longer Alec Dius, the [Copper-rank] Adventurer being forced to rely on his friends. It was finally time he proved that, not to someone else, but to himself.
XXXxxxXXX
Next day, Xyrtahnian Wilderness
A loud, low, yawn seemed to echo through the forest as a Criten lumbered out of its lair, its eyes still bleary from its awakening and its movements slow and sluggish. Though Alec knew better than to underestimate it just because of its mammal-like actions and behaviour. He had seen Criten’s twitching and moving with far too much reptilian energy in the past to ever assume that it couldn’t switch on a dime, if so required.
That strange mix of reptile and mammal was one of the things that never failed to confuse new Adventurer’s, pretty much the only exceptions to that rule were people that had experience with the species before becoming Adventurer’s.
That on-a-dime switch was hardly something that worried Alec at the moment though, he knew it would occur and was ready for it when it did. And after that, the only thing he had left to worry about was the actual combat against an enraged creature about three times his size and five times his body weight, and that was underselling it.
There was no point trying to sneak past it, both because Alec didn’t really have much skill or experience in doing so, and because he had to murder the creature; therefore, he’d go for the best middle-ground that he could get away with, a sneak attack.
Scaling a boulder as slowly and quietly as he could, Alec pulled himself up with an arm and perched himself atop the sloped peak in a low crouch, his blade already drawn and held out behind him to stop the sun from reflecting off it and alerting the Criten before he was ready.
Thirty metres back, hidden in a nook of two branches halfway up a tree sat his backpack and the rest of his gear, it would only slow him down and create more noise.
The teen re-adjusted his grip on his blade and licked his lips anxiously as he watched the Criten lumber up to a tree and began rubbing its side against the large, thick trunk. His eyes followed the movement of the bear to find its rhythm so that he could find the best opportunity to strike.
Up. Down. Up. Down. Up. Down.
A lull of calm settled over the forest as Alec’s thoughts died out entirely in his ensuing focus and rhythmic eye movements, his eyes following that exact same motion in time with the Criten.
Up. Down. Up. Down. Up. Down.
Birds tweeted and sang happily in the branches above the two of them, a soft breeze blowing through the forest, ruffling not only the leaves but also the clothes of Alec and the fur of the Criten.
Up. Down. Up. Do-
The boulder chipped and blood flew in the air, the Criten’s roar reaching Alec’s brain at the same moment the adrenaline did. The ground compacting beneath his feet as he ground himself to a halt, only to burst forward once more.
His first attack had been along the Criten’s neck, well executed but poorly aimed, chipping the edge of some hardened scales and leaving a shallow-at-best cut. His second was equally unmerciful, his blade biting into its front right leg much deeper this time.
The teen snapped to a halt once more and ducked sideways beneath a swipe from the creature’s injured paw. His hand slapped on the ground to stop him from falling on his side, a curl of his fingers and a tense of his shoulder throwing him back along the ground to dodge a heavy slam down onto him from the creature’s good paw.
A tuck of Alec’s arm had his elbow touching the ground first to bleed off some of his momentum and bring the rest of his body down into a roll that he could control a bit more. His body bouncing once across the ground before twirling to place his feet back beneath him once more.
Mana filled his body in thin streams as he firmed his blade at his side, the creature’s roar ignored in favour of making sure his deflection was perfectly timed. His blade and the Criten’s paw lashing out at each other in tandem, drops of blood flying through the air once more as both the teen’s blade and the Criten’s paw were flung to the teen’s left.
However, as the monster’s balance was thrown off entirely by the crossing of its paw across its chest and other fore-paw; Alec’s was unbroken and already lined up for a perfect swing.
The sun glinted off the blade of the young [Swordmaster] as both of his arms swung down, his legs carrying him horizontally to bring him out of the landing zone of the charging beast.
Thick, dark red liquid rolled down the edge of his blade and dripped to the ground. The body of the Criten hit the ground in a pained groan and a wet squelch, sliding a few metres until even its momentum died.
Wide, unblinking blue eyes watched the creature as it tried to raise itself to its feet, succeeding a few times only to collapse within seconds as its strength seemed to leave it over and over again; like a car engine trying to cold start.
The puddle of red beneath it continued to grow larger and larger, a direct inverse to the amount of movement and energy coming out of the soon-to-be corpse. Its eyes eventually un-focusing entirely as a breath left its mouth, only to never return. That exact same breath leaving Alec’s lips as his entire body seemed to uncoil, his eyes rolling up slightly as he collapsed to his knees and then back onto his ass.
A long, high-pitched whine left the teen’s mouth as he hung his head back and placed both of his hands behind him to support his weight. His eyes closed and his breath coming and going in quick, heavy bursts as opposed to its regular long, slow repetitions.
“That was so stressful!” He groaned, happy to leave his filter alongside his blade on the ground in the peace and privacy of the forest.
Sure, he’d managed to beat the Criten without taking a hit in return, something that would have been nearly impossible pre-solo, but his memories of their strength comparison had left him in a state of utmost anxiety despite his own logic telling him the fight should have been easy –and it was.
But he’d taken it down! He’d done it all by himself, and with pretty good ease as well. It was a physical, tangible marker of his growth. Not to the Guild, or the Academy, but to himself.
And really, as he got back up to grab his gear and scavenge through the lair for the wedding ring –attached to a singular, lone arm. Maybe the husband was just down a limb?– that was all that mattered to the teen.