“Nhnnnngggggg, now this is how humans should be waking up. Right Ailya?”

“Uhmmm…… if you say so then I guess it is……”

“It is. Trust me.”

Right now, it was already a few minutes past eleven, a decent time to wake up in my opinion. Although during summer where I was at my worst and without shame, I used to wake up at two or three, and sometimes even in the evening if I had stayed completely up playing something. Still, waking up at eleven was something that was far more humane and appropriate in my opinion than having to wake up at four fucking thirty in the morning.

Although I’d like to say that the two of us slept an ungodly amount of hours, the truth is while we slept a good amount, it wasn’t as much as waking up at eleven would entail. Charlotte never ended up leaving our room, and instead, ended up forcing us to train with her all night until about two in the morning the second she woke up from her nap. While the time I spent training with her this morning and during the week wasn’t enough to pick up any skills, she did teach me a bit about combat logic and about what type of skills and abilities I should focus on acquiring and how to shape my future fighting style. She also thought the same to Ailya, although the style that she advised Ailya to follow was different from mine.

While staying in bed lazing around with Ailya sounded like a great idea and was very tempting, I thought it would be for the best for me to get up and hurry up on getting to the guild. While if Charlotte got angry at me for wasting a day or not, I couldn’t say the same about Kelvin. Unlike Charlotte, Kelvin never forced me to go along with any of his plans. Instead, he simply expected that people had the right discipline and determination to do what was right. As a result, I felt a lot more pressure from letting him down than the forceful Charlotte, and was already feeling pretty embarrassed about heading at such a late hour and prayed that this news didn’t get to Kelvin somehow. Thus, extracting myself from the clutches of my bed which didn’t want to release me, I got ready alongside Ailya to head over to the guild.

 

---

 

Although the guild had a few people, it was relatively empty at the moment. At least compared to how packed it could normally be. For the most part, it could be expected for the guild to have its highest density during the morning right after opening, due to the nature of quests that were first come first serve. However, since quests could come out at any time, it wasn’t unlikely for higher level adventuring parties leave a member behind to simply loiter about until a good quest appeared. This week however, there has been more quests than usual leading to this scenario. And me and Ailya too would be taking advantage of this situation to find a good quest to complete.

“Hmmm, you see anything good Ailya?”

“What do you think about hunting goblins at the forest nearby? They should pretty easy to deal with.”

“Ehhh, I want to do something more interesting. Plus people are always hunting goblins, so there’s barely any around these parts. We might go all the way to the forest and not find a single one.”

“Then…… What about this one?”

“No, that’s too far from here, I don’t feel like going anywhere that’s more than a few hours from here.”

“Okay then, I’ll try to find something else then.”

Right now, Ailya and I were looking around for a good quest for us to do…… or well, more like Ailya looked for a good quest for us while I entertained myself by reading the quests that were currently out. Regardless, while there seem to be some pretty sweet quests to do, they were all far too dangerous for either Ailya and I too handle, so there was nothing to do but continue searching for something that would give us a good amount of xp while still being relatively easy.

A few minutes of fruitless searching later, one of the guild employees came out placed a new quests up in one of the bulletin boards. Seeing the design of the quest that immediately told me it was a C-Rank quests, as well as seeing it placed on the urgent quests section, my attention was drawn to it as I made my way over to see if it was interesting, although I doubted that it would be something that Ailya or I would be able to handle. 

Even though I immediately head it over to the board, there were already people who were taking a look at the quest. However, in the short time that It took for me to get there, those who had take a look at this quest lost interest, and from the murmurs that I could hear, it seemed to be due to having a low reward.

Let’s see, let’s see. Let me see what the reward is. Oh god…… Checking the reward to see why people had lost interest, I was immediately able to sympathize with them. Although I hadn’t read the contents, the reward was far too low for a regular C-rank quests, not even counting the fact that it was supposed to be an urgent quest. 

Seeing the low reward I decided to check the name of the issuer of the quest. However, upon seeing the name, I felt as though I’d heard of it before.

Palma. Now where have I heard of it…… With the name giving me bad premonition, I decided to read the contents of the quest in order to see understand the source of this uneasiness. 

It didn’t take long for my question to be answered, for as soon as I began reading the quest, I felt cold goosebumps overtake me. 

“Hello?”

“......”

“Uhhh helloo”

“Oh, uhh wha- Oh it’s you.”

Having awoken me from thoughts was the red headed girl I had met yesterday at the library, Elizabeth.

“Yeah it’s me… I… I didn’t know you were an adventurer Alex. And it looks like you’re at least a C-rank.” 

Having noticed the quest I was staring so intently at, Elizabeth must have assumed that I was contemplating on whether to take the quest or not. I was sort of confused at why Elizabeth seemed so surprised at me being an adventurer, as I could see a genuine expression of shock in on her face. 

Deciding to answer her curiosity I told her, “Well yeah, I’m at C-rank. And being an adventurer give quite a few benefits don’t you think?”

“Yeah it does.” Answered Elizabeth with a smile as she had a reminiscent look on her eyes. However, she soon began to act hesitant as she seemed as though she wanted to say something. I didn’t have to tell her anything however, as she soon seemed to have found her confidence as she asked me, “Hey, I’m sorry to ask you about this. But are you over level 100?”

Hearing her question, a smile grew on my face as I thought about the peculiarities of this world. Unlike a game where a high level was something to be flaunted, most people chose to keep their levels a secret in this world, although it was still possible to have a good idea about the range where someone’s level fell in. Still, a person’s level was a personal thing, and outside from a few who liked to flaunder their level, most people kept their levels a secret outside of those they trusted, even the levels of the top adventurers wasn’t truly known. Thus, asking someone about their level was in bad taste, and even something as simple as asking the range of someone’s level was looked down upon. I however, didn’t really mind as I answered, “No, I’m not.”

“Oh, then you must be quite the veteran adventurer.”

At Elizabeth’s response, I let out a chuckle. I knew she was being nice by not commenting about my low level, as I was sure that she expected the answer to her question to have been a yes. It was uncommon for someone lower than level 100 to be at C-rank, unless that person had completed a large amount of quests to warrant their promotion. Deciding to clear up her misconception, I told her, “Actually, I haven’t completed a single quest yet. I just got to rank-C thanks to a connection of mine.

For some reason, Elizabeth didn’t actually seem surprised at my answer, and simply nodded her head in understanding while mumbling something.

Taking another peek at the quest, I actually felt that the contents weren’t really as damning as my initial reaction would have suggested. Actually, they weren’t really damning at all. So long as I took this opportunity before me to deal with possible issues that may arise, nothing should really go wrong.

Deciding that it was in my best interest to take this quest, I faced Elizabeth ready to give her my farewell. Before I could do so however, I was interrupted as a voice called,

“Hey Eli Look! This is the girl I was talking about!”

Excitedly coming up to Elizabeth was a chestnut-haired boy with light green eyes as he pulled on Elizabeth’s arm. However, what was following behind the boy was what a sight that truly surprised me. Behind the boy was a Ailya and a young girl who shared similar features to the boy as the two merrily conversed with one another. While I normally would have been glad to see Ailya make a friend, this little meeting between us was giving another bad premonition.

Answering the boy’s excitement was a flustered Elizabeth who said in a hushed voice, “Hey I'm talking with someone! Don’t embarrass me and act with some proper manners.”

With an honest expression that showed that he was apologetic, the boy rubbed the back of his head with his hand as apologized to Elizabeth before turning to me and saying as he stuck out his hand, “Nice to meet you. I’m Daniel, are you friends with Eli?”

Not knowing exactly how to answer his franc greeting, as I had a few thoughts occupying my mind, I simply stared blankly at the boy before me. Elizabeth however, bailed me out as she quickly intervened and said, “Well, she’s the nobl- I mean girl I met yesterday at the library.”

With Elizabeth’s words once again awakening me from my thoughts, I decided to chime in as I grabbed Daniel’s hand and said, “Yes, the two of us our acquaintances. I’m Alex, nice to meet you too.”

As Daniel gave a simple “Is that so….” while shaking my hand, the thought of whether to use my [Soul Devourer] right then and there crossed my mind. However, considering we were amidst a ton of adventurers of which most could make easy work of me, I only entertained the thought for a second before throwing it away.

As soon as we separated hands, I turned to Ailya and asked, “Do you know them?”

“Mhmm, I helped cure her yesterday at the church.” replied Ailya.

When I turned to look at the girl next to Ailya, she nodded to me excitedly in return as she said, “Yeah! Alice healed me and now I’m completely fine.”

“That’s nice to hear.”

“Ah! so you’re the young lady who healed Rose. Thank you very much”

“No, don’t worry about it.”

“You  really are as young as they said. And so young and capable and well mannered. I think a certain someone could learn from such an incredible young lady like you.”

“Hey!”

“Hey you two, come look at this.”

It seemed that while the four of us were talking among ourselves, Daniel had taken an interest at the urgent quests on the board. And more specifically, the quest I had been looking at.

At Daniel’s urging, both Elizabeth and Rose let out a sigh as they made their way over to see what had caught Daniel’s eye. Appearing to me as if the two were resigning themselves to a fate I was unaware of.

When she made her way next to Daniel and her eyes saw what he was staring at, she felt a sense of deja vu as she said, “Ah, that’s the quest that Alex was looking at earlier.”

Hearing Elizabeth’s statement, Daniel turned to look at me excitedly as he said, “Is that true!? Does that mean you’re a C-rank adventurer?”

Guessing at what it was that was coming up, I replied while giving him a wry smile, “Y-yes, I am…… Why do you ask?”

“You guys are here looking for a quest right? Why not do this one with us.”

“What’s it about?” Asked Rose with a curious but hesitant expression.

“A labyrinth just came out and three guys from a village nearby went missing there. They want someone to explore it to see if there’s something dangerous in there and see if we could find what happened  There’s a chance for us to be the first to explore to clear the place, so why don’t we all do it together, it would be safer that way.”

“And because we’re not C-rank.” Added Elizabeth as Daniel let out a nervous laugh.

Seeing the events unfolding before me, I was certain that things were going to develop in a troublesome manner whether I acted or not. Thus, deciding to exert control on the way they developed, I answered Daniel by telling him. “Sure, I was planning on checking out the labyrinth regardless.” After all, if there’s something I’ve learned in this world. It’s that there’s no such things as coincidences.