We got to the Adventurer's Guild shortly after we left the armory that morning. In essence, a guild was an entirely different entity from a party. You could almost think of it as an aggregation of parties, but the Adventurer's Guild was special, even in the game, as it was comprised and managed by NPCs. They were generally in charge of handing out missions and rewards, so they also had enforcement systems in place, and certain actions could get you blacklisted. Not that I want to get on their bad side...

I went up to the mission board and looked at all the available missions. Elimination quests, escort missions, finding missing persons, and people requesting simple services like moving furniture. But I was after the type of quest that would make us the most money: excavation missions, and that was when my gaze happened to land on one of the papers. I'm taking this! I thought as I took it and showed it to the party.

"What do you think?" I asked them with a confident smile. I knew I had picked a good one, so I expected praise but was surprised to hear.

"It's good, but that Ruglai cave is a three-day journey from here." Problem already, huh?

"Then we'll stock up on food and water," I shot back. I would be getting my hand on some Mythril no matter what! The details of the quest were simple. We just had to get to the mining site, find some Mythril, and bring it back to the client who issued the excavation quest, the townsmith. What? You thought we would bring it back to the guild? Not really. 

There were two types of quests: those issued by the guild and those issued by individual clients. Guild quests were non-negotiable, but client quests were, so we could very well ask him for some of the Mythril, or we could... Ku ku ku ku ku, lie about the quantity we found, I thought with an evil smile. 

"Daphne's up to no good again!" Phildina pointed out.

"S-shut up!" In this case, the client would be the one to pay us, and who's to say he won't try to pull a fast one on us? It was not wrong; I was just thinking two steps ahead. 

"Now she's trying to justify her evil plot with logic." She's a psychic!

"I-I'm not! Anyway, we're accepting this quest. We'll bring our merchant along. The only real headache is deciding who will be his guard." We wouldn't want him dying after all. 

"I'll volunteer," Sarde said while raising his hand. If I said I wasn't shocked, I'd be lying. This was something I'd expect from Kimmel, but Sarde? No way.

"S-sure. Knock yourself out," I answered. After waiting around for a while, they called our number, and we walked up to the counter. Kimmel took the paper and slid it through the opening at the bottom of a thick glass pane, which both shielded and obscured the person receiving our quest from view. 

"Excavation quest." It was the voice of a woman. She muttered as she filled in some details on a sheet of paper, which she then handed to us. "The leader should sign here." I was the party tactician, not the leader, so I let Kimmel handle this. He signed and handed it back to her. Then, he turned to me and asked,

"Should we visit the client for more info?"

"Nah, it seems pretty clear to me," I said in a laidback tone. I also wouldn't want to give him a chance to figure out my true intentions, but let's not say that, okay? We left the guild soon after and hired a ride to the Ruglai cave. Our merchant would be tagging along with the caravan, and I ensured I brought along lots of Rujii fruit. 

As I was just about to finish stocking up, I noticed a small vial lying in a hard-to-find spot. I picked it up and inspected it carefully, thinking to myself, Where have I seen this before? And that was when it clicked. Sarde, you bastard! I thought with tears welling up in my eyes. It was a powerful aphrodisiac they sold on the black market. I happened to remember it from the auction and how one of those fat, ugly nobles walked away with it, smiling pervertedly. But how did he manage to get his hands on this? I wondered, and that was when he caught me. 

"What are you doing with that?" He asked with a slight edge in his voice. 

"I could say the same thing to you. What are you doing with this?"

"I-it's a high-quality potion that cost a fortune, so you should just—"

"Do you take me for a fool?!" I shouted, my eyes burning with fury as I stared at him. He stood there unmoved, and that was when I saw it for the first time. So that's how you feel about me, huh? In a flash, I saw a deep disdain in his eyes he couldn't quite hide. I didn't know why he hated me so much, but from the look in his eyes, I could guess what happened. 

"Did you steal from the party funds?" He averted his gaze. "Answer me!" I thundered, losing my patience by the second. 

"Yes," He admitted while still looking away. People stole things for several reasons. Some out of desperation and others out of greed, but I knew one thing for a fact: If you truly respected someone, you wouldn't steal from them. One could almost say that contempt, in some way, shape, or form, was a common denominator to all thefts. 

"For a split second, I almost thought of selling you into slavery," I said to him honestly. That vial was sold for nothing less than 75 gold coins, so we had lost substantial amounts of money because of this fool's lust. Hey, that's it! "The Wujia tribe of beastkin would gladly take you," I said to him with a smile.

"No, you can't possibly be thinking of that..." He said with quivering lips. Oh, the horror! What a lovely expression! 

"They would gladly use you as a stud for their breeding. Day in and day out, you'd be squeezed endlessly until you die. Wouldn't that be a wonderful way to go, Mr. Womanizer?" The Wujia were a tribe of all-female cat beastkin. In Everlast Dynasty, if you explored the forests well enough, you could come across one of their Forest Cities, and depending on how you treated them, they could either act as regular NPCs or monsters. I didn't know if they truly performed such acts in-game, but I could tell I was spot on from his reactions.

"Y-you wouldn't!" 

"Look into my eyes and say that again," I said to him with a threatening glare, "Dare me."

"Kimmel would never allow it!" He shot back, so I walked up to him, placed my hand softly on his cheek, and said,

"Sarde, I love the people who love me and hate the people who hate me. So, I'm going to ask this of you: Are you family, or... should I consider you an enemy?" He stood there silently, probably weighing between his useless sense of pride and self-preservation instincts. "I'll give you time to think about this, but I want to hear an answer soon," I said to him as I withdrew my hand and walked away. 

Kureous

Depending on your answer, I'll decide what happens to Sarde.