Convincing the 3 other Generals to follow his plan was extremely easy. As long as your order made some sense they would just follow it, this helped distinguish natural leaders.

 

But for his plan these people weren’t truly required, he simply told them to take all the troops to attack the bandits when the moon was at its highest point.

 

This wasn’t truly to help in repelling the bandits but instead, preparation for the second mission after all a few extra troops could come in handy later on!

 

There was something that troubled Jay, however. His plan was to convince the mythical monster that was shown on the map to attack the enemies. Normally he wouldn’t be too worried since he knew how to act around most mythical creatures but as this was an illusion all of that info could be marked useless.

 

He did figure that it should be some sort of fire elemental since it was located in the middle of the volcano. But as for how it would act this was still uncertain. 

 

Once he was ready to head out he went to the armory to grab the best axe he could find, after this, he headed to the stabled to grab the 2 fittest horses he could find.

 

After a few hours of utilizing the horses to their fullest potential, switching midway, he arrived at the base of the volcano. A sulfuric smell entered his nostrils making him slightly lightheaded, then he loudly spoke: “Lord of fire, I apologize for trespassing but I have information that might be of use to you!” 

 

A moment later the ground around him started to tremble immensely, the volcano shook looking as if it was about to explode, but just before Jay was going to take his horses and run the shaking stopped and a 3-meter tall creature came out of the volcano’s top.

 

The Lava elemental was slightly over 3 meters tall, it had a humanoid shape and seemed to be made entirely out of a slightly transparent sort of lava, except for a bright red stone which was hidden in the middle of its torso.

 

"Greetings noble Lord of Fire, this lowly peasant has come here to warn you, currently a group of bandits are attacking the nearby town, they are planning to use the town as a base to attack your fiery greatness. This lowly one came to inform you they are currently preparing their assault in the small basin south of here."

 

Jay bowed down slightly and shook if one didn’t pay too much attention to his clothing he really did just look like a lowly peasant that was about to piss his pants.

 

Not daring to look at the elemental before him, he heard a rumbling before him and a moment later the elemental zoomed right past him, heading towards where the bandits were at. It seemed like the elemental with its limited intelligence believed him.

 

Soon after this Jay grabbed his horses and started heading West, yet in the distance he could faintly see the start of the battle… or well… slaughter.

 

Its entire body was extremely hot, able to burn the weapons that touched it. Even if some of the bandits were able to figure out the weak point of the elemental should be the ball within its chest, their weapons simply couldn’t reach there, they would melt as soon as they tried to hit the elemental. Furthermore, whenever the elemental swung one of its arms multiple lives would be lost, horrible burns could be seen on each of the corpses with faces and limbs burned clean off.

 

Yet at this time all Jay could think about was the mission and its potential rewards.

 

He knew that leading a beast to attack the bandits would give a C-rank. If you managed to do this without casualties it would surely be upgraded to B-rank. But then what if you managed to kill the beast as well? In this case, he believed it would surely reach A+.

 

And in order to do this, all the steps had already been taken, the elemental had already joined the enemies within the large basin, all that was left now were a few swings of an axe.

 

The dam to the west of the basin was already quite old and would surely break by itself within just a few more years. He was just going to give it a hand.

 

It only took a couple of swings for water to start leaking out of the reservoir, a few more and the entire dam started collapsing.

 

Some of the bandits in the basin didn’t even notice what was going on before they were hit by a massive wave of water with pieces of the dam scattered within. When being hit by a wave like this you would be directly pushed under. If you were lucky the wave would knock you out, if you were unlucky you would have a slow death trying to find a way back up.

 

Even more terrified than those drowning was the Lava elemental. First, a massive amount of steam erupted as the wave hit him, causing massive amounts of water to evaporate turning into large amounts of steam. But against the seemingly endless onslaught of water, there wasn’t anything it could do. An ear-piercing screech came from it causing all the animals in the nearby forests to run far away, but soon this screech stopped and the elemental died in the newly formed lake

 

| Mission 1: defend the village, has been completed.  |

| Hidden requirement satisfied: No casualties |

| Hidden requirement satisfied: No wounded |

| Hidden requirement satisfied: No escapees |

| Hidden requirement satisfied: Get rid of the Eastern Beast King |

| Hidden requirement satisfied: Get rid of the Western Beast King |

| Hidden requirement satisfied: Get rid of the Northern Mystical creature |

| Gained title: Mass Murderer |

| Gained title: Manipulator |

| Gained title: Savior of a small town |

| Mission 1 ranking: S+++ |

| Mission 2 will start in 3 hours |

 

This extremely long list of achievements brought a wide smile on Jay's face, he recalled all the trouble he had to go through in his past life in order to get the 'Mass Murderer' title. He really struck gold getting it this early in this life.

 

Once the water stopped flowing out of the reservoir, Jay headed towards the lake. Several corpses were floating on top of the water, some of these were badly burnt, some impaled with pieces of wood and others drowned. But there was one corpse, in particular, he was interested in. A large mass of stone floated on top of the lake, it was the corpse of the lava elemental. Even he wasn’t sure why it hadn’t sunk to the surface but there wasn’t much use thinking about this.

 

Once he pushed the large statue towards the shore Jay started hitting the statue in the chest with his axe. After half an hour of hitting the stone corpse, his axe was not much more than a stick with a lump of metal on the top but it had achieved its goal. A fiery red stone was exposed before him, it had a weird oval rune in the middle of it.

 

Even though nothing in here could be taken to the actual world, in the upcoming test this item could come in really handy.

 

As for the contents of the second test, he had no idea. The second test could be very different from person to person since it was derived directly from the results of the first test.

 

In his last life, the enemies he had defeated came back to life as a pack of bloodthirsty zombies. But since he had done things so differently this time around a challenge such as that was unlikely.

 

In the next few hours, Jay repeatedly swam to the bottom of the lake, grabbing the weapons that seemed to be of the best quality.

 

In the end, he settled on 2 of the weapons which seemed significantly better than the others. There was a bow made out of some sort of weird metal and a spear that hadn't taken even the slightest damage despite everything that happened.

 

After taking these he positioned himself between the town and the basin, with his horses closeby in case he needed them. Awaiting the next mission.

 

Yet shortly after he had prepared himself the insects that were still around stopped making their familiar sounds and the corpses that were floating on top of the lake stopped moving entirely. Yet before he could make sense of this phenomenon he felt as if a veil was lifted from him, he felt he once more had a limited amount of stamina, and the area around him seemed crisper then before, he was no longer in an illusion!

 

| Mission 2: Survive. |