We quickly arrived back at the city, reducing our speed once we got within eyesight of the gate, while we normally wouldn't use it outside of an intense battle, one of their party members and I cast Haste on the whole party. Passing through the gate by showing our guild cards, we made our way toward the guild as quickly as we could without letting it show in our actions that there was a problem.

When we entered the guild, we walked directly up to the counter, where the party leader began telling the receptionist why we had come, "I'm Sieg of the Spirit Wind Travelers and I have something urgent to report to the Guildmaster." He said quietly but very seriously. This was the first time I had heard his name and the name of their party. Previously, they had been introduced to me as 'the usual party' and everyone called Sieg 'leader'.

"I'm sorry, the Guildmaster is busy in a meeting right now, and the vice Guildmaster is taking part in it, so you will have to wait. You can leave them a message or try back after lunch." The receptionist replied apologetically.

"I'm afraid it can't wait, even if they are in a meeting with the duke, I need you to…" Sieg was appealing the importance of the matter, but I could tell from the look on her face that she would not budge on the matter. So while he was busy trying to convince her, I gathered up a bunch of my mana, and released it towards the strongest presence in the guild, lacing it with killing intent to make sure I got their attention.

My plan worked better than intended, as a group of 4 people, including the strong presence I detected, came racing towards the stairs leading to the second floor, weapons drawn, and the strong presence kneading mana to fire off a spell immediately depending on the situation.

"WHO?!?!" Yelled the female elf who had the strongest presence here.

"Guildmaster?!" screamed the receptionist in surprise, seeing all of them prepared to attack and looking our way. The whole guild had gone quiet enough to hear a pin drop.

With a sheepish smile due to the more exaggerated response than I had imagined, I raised my hand toward the group, "sorry, we had something urgent to report but the receptionist wasn't budging on saying you were busy. I didn't think the reaction would be so intense. Haha," I laughed with awkward quietness, while everyone in the guild turned to look at me, some of the people whispering to each other, wondering what I did.

After staring at me for a while, a strange look passed through her eyes, before she finally said, "I'll hear your story upstairs, come with me." Then she turned and walked back in the direction she came from, the other three people following from behind her. We looked at each other before racing after her.

When we got up the stairs, we were shown to a room with a table and chairs around it, there were enough chairs for all of us to sit, and there were two people already sitting down, who had not shown up at the stairs. Once we had all sat down, the Spirit Wind Travelers party looking extremely nervous while I had a look of curiosity on my face, the Guildmaster began speaking.

"First off, there is no reason for you to be so surprised about our response, with that much mana and killing intent directed this way, it wouldn't have been surprising if we came out attacking before asking questions. It's hard to believe someone who looks so young was able to produce that level of killing intent. The next order of business is introductions, I'm the Guildmaster, Alisha." After this, she introduced the rest of her group, which included the Viscount, who was in charge of the city. I then understood the real reason for the response to my killing intent.

Noticing the nervousness of the adventurers, I decided to make introductions for our side. "It's a pleasure to meet everyone, and I apologize for my choice of methods used to get your attention." I started, giving a bow. "My name is Cero, I really am only as old as I look, 8 years old, and this is the party 'Spirit Wind Travelers', with their party leader Sieg and scout Roy. I apologize again for the discourtesy, but I will immediately get to the issue at hand."

"Please do, we can discuss everything else after we know why you did what you did." Said Alisha, clearly not letting it go despite me being a child.

*Ahem* I cleared my throat before continuing, looking a bit awkward. "This party escorted a merchant caravan that I was on to this town, and I hired them to escort me to gather medicinal herbs today since none of us had anything better to do. While I was gathering, we got to the edge of the forest to the south, where I felt a large response from Presence Detection. Upon focusing on Presence Detection and Magic Detection, I discovered that it was a colony of orcs, with multiple advanced species in the group." At this point, the Viscounts group got visibly restless. I pulled out paper and a pencil, beginning to draw a map while I continued.

"I shared my discovery with their party and upon their suggestion, I led Roy into the forest to scout their colony. While scouting, I noticed that what I initially believed to be the size of their colony, was only a portion of them, and I was very off in my estimation. I stopped to focus on my detection skills when I noticed a large presence that had to belong to either a king or lord-class orc. Before I could find out which, a small group of orcs left the colony, heading directly toward the two of us, so I had to give up and head back before we were found out.

Due to the response of the orcs, it is safe to assume that they have a rare species mixed in, either a seer or a shaman most likely. The group colony appears to be approximately 200 strong, with around 30 advanced species by my count. They have 8 scouting groups patrolling around their colony, heading out in a spiral pattern from what I could tell. Lastly, and this is probably the most important part, judging by the lack of other monsters and animals in the area, they will likely stampede in the near future. This is a map of their stronghold based on what we were able to scout out." I finished speaking, sliding the map I drew toward Alisha.

"Can you confirm his statement, Roy?" Alisha asked while looking at the map I had drawn.

"I w-wasn't able to get as much information as Cero, b-but I was able to confirm the presence of two o-orc g-generals, and a few other advanced species, along with around 80 to 100 r-regular orcs," Roy replied nervously stuttering.

"I see, how many people are in line at the north gate right now?" Alisha asked this question randomly.

"P-p-p-pardon? Am I supposed to know the answer to that?" Roy said while I counted the number of reactions from my Presence Detection. His answer caused Alisha to shift her eyes toward me.

"17 people between the carriage and on foot lines. There are also two people using stealth at the gate aside from the guards doing inspections, and aside from the ones pulling the carriages, there are three animals and seven small monsters, probably F-rank non-hostile monsters such as Rainbow Rabbits, based on their small and weak presences." I answered her question with the information I had gained.

"Hoh, your Presence Detection is actually stronger than mine, I missed the monsters. I'm impressed, and now I see how you were able to get such detailed information about the orc colony," She mentioned, casually admitting that an 8-year-old child was better at scouting than her. "Thank you for the information, and the detailed map," she said to me before turning towards the Viscount.

"My apologies Viscount, but we will have to continue this meeting at a later time. Right now, we need to send out an emergency quest to all adventurers D-rank and above. I hope the knights at your disposal can work with the adventurers and aid in the subjugation efforts." The Guildmaster said to the viscount, not really giving him the option to say no.

"O-o-of course, consider them at your disposal." He replied with nervous sweat dripping down his brow. The man didn't look anything special, average all around, with dirty blond hair, and brown eyes. If anything, he looked like he would be good at paperwork, which from a city administration standpoint, is usually preferable.

Everyone was dismissed, so we stood up to leave, but before I could escape, the Guildmaster caught me and told me to stick around so she could talk to me some more. I was then led to her office while she gave out instructions to the vice Guildmaster and her assistant. I told the party members that I would meet them in the guild tavern for lunch when I was done.

Inside her office, I was offered a seat opposite her with a large desk between us. "So, I'm quite sure that there is no one like you in this city. What insane region raised a monster of a human, like you who can block my Character Appraisal skill?" Even though I knew it was coming since I had used Detailed Appraisal on her to figure out what that strange look she gave me was, I still took emotional damage from her question.

"First of all, I am a half-elf," I said while shifting my now somewhat shaggy hair that was covering my ears, "and I'm from Gale, not some insane region, I just happened to be given a status concealment skill during my baptism is all. Though, I think a strong magic or combat skill would be more useful than a rare skill that only works against another rare skill." I made it seem like I was more offended than I really was by her choice of words.

"Sorry, sorry, didn't mean any offense by that, it's just the way I speak. So, what's your deal kid? Are you going to play at being a merchant with skills like those?" She asked with a raised eyebrow.

"I'm registered at the merchants guild because I needed to be, I'm too young

to register as an adventurer anyway. Besides, I'm not playing at being a merchant, I am a merchant, at least an apprentice one according to my guild card, and I'm sure I made more money yesterday than you did last year." I replied, perhaps being a bit pompous with that last part, but I couldn't help myself.

"Oh, is that so?" she said with an amused grin. "Well, as much as I would like to continue with this banter, we should get down to business." Turning serious she continued, "how soon do you think the orcs might attack? How sure are you about that rare variant? How accurate are the numbers?" she asked in rapid succession.

"They may attack as soon as tomorrow and definitely less than a week from now. I can't be sure of the rare variant because I did not notice them with Presence Detection, or Magic Detection, but to my knowledge, only rare variants of orcs have decent detection abilities. There could be up to 10% more if they had more groups on the far side of their colony that was out of my detection range, but otherwise, the numbers are accurate." I replied seriously

"If you're planning to attack with the aim of complete annihilation, you'd be best off sending small teams to quickly kill their scout groups, as soon as they get far enough out to not be detected. Have the lower-ranked individuals surround the colony, then have your C- and B- ranked adventurers rush in, leaving your best coming in behind them, so they can rush to take care of the advanced species once the bulk of the orcs starts fighting the adventurers.

You would also do well to have multiple mages launch wide area-of-effect attack spells simultaneously to introduce chaos among the normal orcs. Also, be sure to have any high-ranked adventurers with stealth skills stay further back to respond to unforeseen issues, and kill the variant as soon as they find it. That's just what I was able to come up with based on what I found. The situation may change before you get the adventurers into position." I gave her all the information I could, hoping to have the colony cleared out before we were due to head home to Gale.

"I see, that is indeed the most suitable plan of attack based on the given information. How did you come up with such a plan?" She asked.

"My parents are ex-adventurers and my dad still works at the guild, I've spent a lot of time hearing about adventures, monsters, combat, and tactics. Plus, I was actually there in person to get that information, so I was able to come up with three viable plans to attack them, but this one is the most realistic." I responded.

"I see, well, I will look forward to when you become an adventurer. I have high hopes for your future," I was excused from her office after that, so I went to the tavern to look for the adventurers and get some lunch.

I talked with the party for a while before leaving the guild, they had to stay for a briefing that would happen once more adventurers had arrived. After splitting with them, I went to the Valeria magic tool workshop, to look for Jay. When I found him I told him that we might get held up here and let him know that he might be able to sell many potions to the adventurers guild if he acted fast. I, of course, sold him every health and mana potion I had with me, making a fair bit of money.

There wasn't much to do, so I walked around, looking at different workshops and such, buying what piqued my interest. I managed to find a few advanced-level books on magic tools, magic circuits, magic, alchemy, compounding, and even one on metallurgy which was odd since that is information usually only shared between dwarves. After walking around for about 2 hours, I returned to the inn.

I got some food on my way back to the inn, storing it in my item box so that I would still be hot when dinner time came around. Being bored, I made some potions in my room before having dinner and eventually called it a night.

The next day was supposed to be our last day here, leaving for gale early the next morning. I had heard that the orc subjugation quest would be starting this morning and that they were hoping to finish before nightfall. I can understand their desire to finish before nightfall, but not sure why it was supposed to take them an entire day to kill about 200 orcs. Unless that was including the cleanup time, which I would imagine takes longer than the actual subjugation.

Since there were so many adventurers, knights, and carriages going out of town this morning, I figured it would be easy to sneak out with them. It was surprisingly easy to do so, the adventurers were mostly talking among themselves about who would kill the most orcs, etc. While the knights were keeping their focus straight ahead as if they couldn't see the surroundings at all, must be a knight's pride thing.

With everyone busy with their pride or ego, I was able to easily slip into the crowd and attach myself to the bottom of a carriage. Once we were a bit from the gate, I easily slipped out from the group and into some brush, keeping my stealth skill active the entire time of course. From there, I made my way to a small river, about half an hour away, that is supposed to be a good collection site.

The number of monsters I encountered increased as I moved toward the river, but they were all dealt with or avoided easily. My main goal today was to collect herbs, spices, fruits, and other plants that were not found around Gale. One would think that being less than 60 miles away, Reginston would not have very different plants growing around it, but apparently, mana, spirits, and fairies have a large effect on the types of plants that grow in an area, so you could have entirely different ecosystems on different sides of a stream, or so Dryad told me.

When I finally arrived at the river, taking 15 minutes longer than I expected due to avoiding many monsters and killing the ones I couldn't, I encountered a slime. Slimes are non-aggressive, low-ranked monsters that eat pretty much anything converting what they eat into magic power and fertilizer that will excrete on their own or when ordered to by a tamer. Thinking that a Slime would be useful for my garden, and wanting to try out taming magic, I surrounded the slime with earth magic and cast tame on it.

Taming the slime was extremely easy, possibly due to the difference in our INT stat. I decided to carry the translucent blue ball-like slime on my shoulder and began my harvesting while keeping up my Presence Detection. About 30 minutes later, I had gathered an enormous amount and realized there probably weren't any other types here that I had not already collected, so I turned my attention to the river.

Inside the river, there were plenty of plants growing that I had not collected, and of course, there were fish as well. I did not have a fishing rod or net of course, so I would have to use water magic to catch some fish, which ended up working pretty well, but my use of magic attracted a few monsters, so I ended up having to fight a few, including a few D-rank monsters.

Once I had finished fishing and killing the monster that came, I was ready to harvest some river plants. There were no more monsters nearby according to my Presence Detection, so I kicked off my shoes, stripped down to my underwear, and tied a rope to a nearby tree that I had pulled out of my item box. Tying the other end of the rope around my waist to keep from being swept away by the currents I carefully slid into the water to avoid making a loud splash.

The water was pretty cold, but I was able to compensate for that using magic. I couldn't take too long in the river, or more monsters would end up coming by that I would have to deal with, either from in the river or when I got out. I quickly harvested the different flowers, reeds, and other plants, such as some wild rice and water chestnuts that I found. While I was pulling up a plant from the bottom of the river, I noticed a snail, a Golden Vine Snail. The Golden Vine Snail is an elusive low-ranked monster that is one of the ingredients in producing elixir.

Not wanting to miss such an opportunity, I used earth magic to make a fairly large box, in that I scooped some river dirt, and transplanted some river plants into it as well. I then carefully snagged the snail and placed it in the box. While I was doing that, I noticed another Golden Vine Snail, and soon noticed more of them, I don't know what the cause was, but there were almost two dozen that I had noticed within the range of the rope I had tied to me.

I carefully placed the box full of river water and Golden Vine Snails on the river bank before getting out, using Dry, and quickly getting dressed, having noticed that monsters had come rather close while I was collecting the snails. I ended up killing two of the monsters that had come close before the others ran away. Then heading back to the stone box I had made, I tried using taming magic on a few of them, and I successfully tamed 6 of them.

There was no way I was going to be able to carry this stone box all the way back to the city, having to deal with monsters and trying not to drop the box. Thinking about it for a while, I decided to try creating a dimension home, a type of space-time magic that creates a livable subspace connected to the person who created it. I had randomly found a book about space-time magic at a peddler's stand in the market, the book read more like an epic story about a space-time magic user in the past than an actual magic book.

One of the magics said to be used by the person this book talks about, is dimension home. Supposedly he used this magic to sleep in at night while traveling, which allowed him to travel through deserts and other harsh lands. Remembering what it said about the magic, I gathered my mana and imagined a fairly

large room that had light, warmth, and air, and could be accessed from a door-like portal. It took me a few minutes to solidify the image in my mind and then I cast the magic, creating my very own livable pocket dimension.

I had to take a mana potion because creating that dimension home took almost everything I had. Once I had recovered, I opened my dimension home and placed the box of snails inside, making sure there was plenty of food for them in the box. Getting back into town was easier than actually getting there, the guard had remembered me from yesterday, and even though there was a bit of a fuss when I said I walked out with the adventurers earlier, they were quick to let me in.

Aside from wandering around town and buying any useful materials that I didn't have or was low on, I didn't really have anything to do. Jay, myself and the other people that had come along on this trip could only wait for news about the subjugation. If the subjugation ran into any unexpected troubles, we might not be allowed to leave tomorrow. Similarly, if the adventurers hired by Jay were injured, our plans to leave would be delayed, so all we could do was wait and hope.