“Are you truly confident that you can deal with this creature?” Pait asked.

“As certain as I can be.” I shrugged. “If my only other option is to turn back or become guests of Lord Duran, then I’d rather keep going forward.”

We had finalized the agreement with Lord Duran and were shown to our rooms. Incidentally, if we had refused, we likely would have been permanent guests of Lord Duran, not allowed to leave until this crisis was over.  Well, that is what Pait had stated. Since he and Dav had no intention of risking their lives, they’d remain here in the safety of this castle while I went out to fight.

However, I wasn’t going to go out alone. Even if I wanted to, Lord Duran wouldn’t allow me to wander around Dioshin. Dioshin wasn’t necessarily a place of mystery like Shie Gescar, but it was a territorial place, filled with animalkin that had each cut out their slice of land and didn’t necessarily take well to trespassers. If you entered some areas of Dioshin without doing it properly, you were bound to end up dead. It was truly a wild country. Thus, I was given a small adventuring group of four wolfkins.

These guys were hunters, skilled in tracking. They were also A-class adventurers in a party known as the Wolf Pack. Lord Duran and I had decided it would be best if I didn’t reveal my presence to anyone else, so I would be temporarily joining their party and taking on this request as part of a mission. Thus, we depended on the adventuring guild as well as my ability to disguise myself. I returned to the appearance of an Osterian. Alysia’s presence on me sold my scent to the others, as a former Osterian. Considering these were wolfkin, renowned for their powerful noses, the fact that she smelled like an Osterian rather than something else made her quite happy.

Other than that, Lord Duran and I didn’t discuss much else. He admitted that he knew very little about the soul-sucking creature, other than the direction it was moving. That was only based on the reports from villages and groups that had been wiped out.

The adventuring guild had also been at a loss. Stopping this menace was an S-level mission now, although knowing S-level adventurers had taken the call to complete it. It wasn’t that Dioshin didn’t have any S-level adventurers. It was more that these adventurers were the top people of the nation, and were either reclusive and hard to find, or were busy on more important things, like taking down dungeons or fighting in wars. While completing this mission would net us a lot of adventuring guild credit, since I wasn’t registering under my true identity, it wouldn’t help me level at all.

Pait and I discussed everything he knew about Dioshin deep into the night while I also went over the bets map that the lord could provide. I used my Map ability immediately to copy the details into my skill. Now, if I wanted to, I could redraw this map in just a few minutes if needed. Unfortunately, it was rather incomplete, with entire swaths of land blank except for the label of the tribe in control of that area.

After discussing everything I thought was worth discussing, I took my leave and slept in my prepared room. Come the morning, Pait and Dav arrived to send me off. Dav brought me something to eat. I didn’t tell her that my provisions I had prepared tasted better, and instead took her food appreciatively with a smile.

“Then, there isn’t much else to say other than to be safe.” Pait put out his hand. “I suppose we’ll be parting ways until this is resolved.”

I nodded and grabbed his hand. Although I was taller, it wasn’t like I was bulky. Still, Pait’s hand looked nearly like a child’s in my own. We shook and then let go.

I left the castle with four wolfkin adventurers to defeat an unknown monster. In some ways, this felt like the first true adventure I had gone on in this world.