GUILD CERTIFICATION CARD: DIANE CULAINE

*This is a much older Diane from later not-yet-reached books, but hey! Limited funds. #poormanslife #olderDianeIsEpic #byebyeShalltear #insideJokesIfYou'reNew*

Growth Potential: B

Aptitudes

Mana Capacity: 63

Magic (Fire)

Melee (Rapier)

Mana Regen: 3

Healing Factor: 1

Mana Reinforcement: 1.5

スピリチュアルアンプ

Skills:

Fireball

悪魔の光景

共感リンク

悪魔の怒り

Contract Capacity Available: 0

Contracts Held: エラー

Power: 23

RANK: COPPER

Issuer: Mr. Ye Fan, Mythril

Issuing location: Njord A.G.

*All items marked in red are removed from Diane's Officially Issued Card. Contracts held marked as 0.*

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Percival and Mr. Ye had gone to a small, closed-off pavilion well out of earshot of Diane. As soon as they entered, Mr. Ye closed the door behind them.

“So, care to explain what the hell you were doing?”

The severity in Mr. Ye’s tone takes Percival completely off guard.

“I… I was fighting properly! My punch would have only been strong enough to knock her out, and maybe do some rough bruising, but with her aura it wouldn’t have done much more than that! Newbies need to experience some of that pressure and pain so they don’t get the wrong idea!”

Mr. Ye rubs his forehead, clearly getting even more irritated.

“Now I know you are completely off the mark and unaware. I am not angry about that. I am angry because…”

He breathes in deeply, trying to calm himself before continuing.

“…because you lack awareness. This entire fight, you weren’t in control. You fell in line to her pressure, didn’t analyze the situation, didn’t recognize her abilities, and ultimately, you would have died if I did not step in to end the fight. Whether she recognized it or not, your cockiness would have cost you everything. The rules of the aptitude test are to treat it as a real fight. The point is to gauge the opponent and their capabilities, and to show newcomers the importance of paying attention to detail and strategizing. The last thing I expected was for a child to come here, and instead teach you a lesson.”

Percival lowered his head. He didn’t want to accept the idea he was going to die if the fight was not stopped, or that he lost control of the fight. Yes, she had surprised him a few times, but he still had more tricks up his sleeve!

As he going to open his mouth to argue, Mr. Ye interrupted him.

“I still can’t believe you haven’t noticed yet. Touch the front of your neck.”

… blood. There was blood on his neck. Fresh blood, coming from a very small point.

“W… when? Since when did I get this?”

“Right at the end of the fight. I told you, if I did not end the fight there, you were about to die. Your blow would have never even landed. You underestimated your opponent, fatally, and failed to think critically. You laughed when she came to collect the bounties on the heads of bandits, who would have required iron plate adventurers to take on the quest, and stated she had defeated them before coming here. Considering how far patrols go from the city gates, this would mean at minimum half a day’s ride before arriving if the bandits were reckless. Judging by the blood caked on her and how dried and blackened it had become, at least a full days ride out. The nearest settlement is two days out, which then would likely mean she killed an iron-difficulty group after a day of travel. Her weapon is a rapier, and since the weapon is covered in dried blood, you should have been able to easily tell her primary form of combat and validate the truth in her statement. All of this alone was enough to determine the fight, without even beginning to consider the extremes of a noble upbringing. A mistake like that out in the field would cost you not only your own life, but it could cost you the lives of your party. Be thankful you had this reminder here.”

Percival stood in silence staring at the blood on his hands, before slowly realizing that he had numerous other small wounds near small breaks in his armor, and a look of horror begins to show on his face.

Mr. Ye nods to himself, and as he turns to walk out of the door, he says over his shoulder “Ah, one last thing to mention, that girl was trained every day by Hal and Sir Gregory. They were locally quite famous adventurers before they left the guild. Hal had reached Gold before age started taking its toll on him and Duke Vermillion picked him up, and Sir Gregory was an upstart silver plate. Unfortunately, some other members felt threatened by him and took the opportunity to drive him out when his party died.”

Percival’s eyes widened for a moment, before his face calmed down again. He started chuckling to himself, “God damn that Mr. Ye, he had planned to teach me a lesson from the moment he set me up with this duel. I suppose I better come up with a way to thank him properly later. I wonder… maybe that girl would be open to joining a party with me?”

Percival immediately shook his head at the thought. No way, even if he could, the more he thought about it, the more he was sure that girl wasn’t a girl, but a little devil. Between her expression during that fight, and how readily she was going to kill him, it would be best to avoid her and stay out of her way.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

When Diane opened her eyes again, she realized that she was in a very… unconventional situation. First, when did she wind up on a couch? Second, why is Thistleman curled fetal and muttering in such a creepy fashion? Why is the catkin here? She seems so… flustered right now! And that gargantuan barbarian woman! What was her name again… Terra? She seems to be having a great time of all of this.

She starts to rub her eyes, before sitting up.

“Alright, alright, what is going on?”

“Nyah, you’re fyinally awayke! Please do syomthing about hyim, he jyust… broke wyen I asked hyim to do syum paperwork! And then… AND THEN she jyust barged ryight through the dyoor, saying she wanted to congratulate you!!”

Elsie practically pounces on Diane as soon as she realizes she had an opportunity to finish this next task and move on to the rest of her job. This was a direct assignment from the assistant branch manager! Why he would contact her personally to complete this was immaterial, but she knew it meant it needed to get done. When Thistleman carried a sleeping Diane in here, she figured it wouldn’t be too hard to knock out the paperwork quickly. Since Thistleman signed up as Diane’s party member, he would also suffice to complete it. But… as soon as he saw it… as soon as he saw it… this happened.

“I… can’t read it. I… can’t read it. Why? Why can’t I read it? Me? Can’t read? Me? I can’t? I… can’t.”

Thistleman never realized how bad it would affect him to not be able to do such a simple thing. Nor did he imagine he would have a mental break before Diane. 10,000 years, he is over 10,000 years old. He had learned all the languages of his world since he was extremely young. He spent an incredible amount of time studying, reading, and writing to plan how to destroy everything. Since he arrived on this world, he has encountered more failures in far shorter a time than ever before in his life. He was handicapped at every turn, and it frustrated him. But now? To be unable to do something so simple? It broke him. His mind was spared from breaking sooner from his confidence in language, that he didn’t realize he never actually spoke the language of this world until this moment. How he can understand and speak to them, with the speech automatically translating, is another major mystery. However, the current problem is overwhelming his ability to even consider the issue, because he cannot read. The first demon lord, the eldest daemon in the world, is incapable of READING.

Thus, Thistleman remained in a fetal position, his arms wrapped around his legs, with his fingers and eyes occasionally twitching as his mind kept up the loop of trying and failing to level with his newest predicament.

“Ahahahahahahahaha, I always knew it from the beginning, but you two! You two are certainly something special! You are an absolute riot! I haven’t had a day this interesting in months!”

Terra’s voice is overpowering, and her position makes it difficult for Elsie to maintain any semblance of control. This frustrates the catkin even more, causing her tail to wiggle violently as she hops from foot to foot.

“Ehhh… EH?” Diane’s mind finally starts to click the pieces in place through her exhaustion. Why the hell does she feel like the only adult in the room?

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

“Uuuwwuuuuu….”

Diane moans to herself.

“Finally, I’m finally done with all that paperwork.”

Diane is sitting at a table back in the main hall of the adventure’s guild, with Terra and a freshly recovered Thistleman. Her face looks so exhausted and covered with grime, caked sweat and blood that it would be easy to mistake her for a really tiny adult. Even the meal Terra brought for them isn’t enough to perk up Diane.

“C’mon, forget the paperwork and eat up! It’s not often a gold plate buys a meal for a copper plate! Plus, you don’t wanna stay so small and scrawny forever, do ya? Bahahahaha!”

Terra lets loose with another thunderous laugh. Just as Diane is wondering why Terra is the only one who seems to be having a good time through all of this, she received an incredible and irresistible smack on the back of her head from Terra’s open hand.

*plunk!*

Diane goes face first into her untouched meal. The potato and forest stag casserole sticks all over Diane’s face.

“Ooooh, looks like you got your appetite back! Huzzah! Best Appetite Diane! Embrace your inner potato!”

Thistleman starts cheering loudly, bringing attention to Diane’s food covered face and inspiring an outpouring of laughter. Terra has started laughing so hard, she is doubling over and smashing the table to hard with her hand that it knocks all the drinks over, some of which spills on to Diane.

“You! YOU! WHAT MAKES YOU THINK I WILL LET YOU GET AWAY WITH THIS? First the fiasco with Elsie, THEN you MADE me have to kick some sense back in to you, and now you are making fun of me?”

Thistleman freezes for a moment, and Diane takes the opportunity to grab her plate of smashed food and slams it in to Thistleman’s face.

*munch munch*

(muffled) “MMM, delicious, oh this is great, thanks!”

“Great? GREAT? That was my meal! Give it back!”

Diane then pulls the plate off of Thistleman’s face, before shaking him violently.

“HAH! Indirect kiss! Both of your faces were in the same food, so indirect kiss! HAHAHAHA!”

Terra completely loses her composure as she falls backwards off the table seat, knocking the table over in the process and laughing hysterically. Unfortunately for Diane, she had now enamored one of the greatest trouble makers in the Adventurer’s guild in the part of the Kingdom.

“WHAT? NO WAY! WE DIDN’T, WE DEFINITELY DIDN’T!” Diane and Thistleman yell out in unison, before spitting out their food and trying to wipe off their tongues. At first, when Terra saw the pair arrive at the guild, she was actually extremely worried that some broken monster had arrived and she was worried what effect it would have on the guild. However, now she was reassured that, at the very least, they are still kids. Weird, abnormal kids, but kids nonetheless.

“OH, oh, oh, that was good. Ah, so great. So, thanks for that. Tell ya what, let me make it up to you. In exchange for giving me such a good laugh, how about I teach you a thing or two about adventuring?”

Terra finally catches he breath and stands up, righting the table and seats in the process. One of the guild service attendants is staring in horror, while rapidly tallying up the cost of the mess that is now all over the floor.

“You’re going to teach me about adventuring? I can’t say I will forgive you for this either, Terra, but I will listen to what you have to say!”

Diane perks up at the thought of tips from a veteran adventurer, particularly a gold rank, however she tries desperately to appear disinterested and fails.

“First thing any adventurer needs is a decent map! Now, since y’all are new, I doubt you can find or afford one. But lucky for you, this gal here has an excellent memory!”

Terra makes a huge smile before pulling out a quill, and inkwell and some paper. Looking at her outfit, Diane couldn’t help but wonder; where was she keeping that this whole time?

Terra starts to draw furiously.

“Hmmm, im pretty sure this went here, and I heard about those reptiles from Sven… ah! I think Elsie forgot to tell you about the Adventurer ranking system!”

Terra’s face perks up and she looks at Diane, her face beaming with excitement and energy that practically forced Diane to ask.

“The ranking system? No… your right, she didn’t tell us about that…”

“Oh my, that is absolutely terrible! Well, it is best I tell you then!”

Diane looks a little apprehensively at the map. Terra is no longer focusing on it anymore, and is instead looking at Diane as she continues to sketch.

“So the guild has a lot of ranks, mainly because there is a huge variation in skill levels, but also because it helps us sort out the difficulty of quests or missions that we receive, and in appraising who is capable of taking them on. You see, before the system was established, there was a huge problem with dangerous quests causing the loss of a lot of young and reckless adventurers. This caused manpower shortages around the world and made it hard to protect and manage the various realms, especially since a lot of talented people died young and before they could grow and polish their skills! To mitigate this, the guild created the ranking system for parties and quests, in order to best match appropriate challenges to not only complete quests but to prevent parties from fighting monsters too difficult for them to survive. Naturally, adventurers can take any quest of their rank or lower. After proving themselves enough, the adventurers can earn the right to rank up! That’s when they come back to the guild for an advancement exam.”

Diane and Thistleman nod attentively, while Terra hardly seems to pause to even take a breath. Terra had always wanted an opportunity to take a newbie under her wing, and today is the one day her party leader hasn’t been around to prevent her. She will not miss this opportunity no matter what.

“Now the advancement exam only applies to the lower end of guild ranks, which are Copper, Bronze, Iron, and Silver. Gold is the last rank that you have to take the exam in order to become Mythril. After that, the guild will promote you based upon enough achievements within that rank. The guild says this is because after mythril rank, unless they are aiming to get in to guild management, there are generally not enough people of that skill level willing to conduct ranking exams. However, the reality is that exams conducted with people of that level was done before, and the damage got too far out of hand and occasionally destroyed smaller towns, so they nixed it altogether, ya follow?”

Diane silently swallowed, and nodded her head. She could imagine a couple of individuals fighting inadvertently creating another Kurstwood.

“Now, as a point of comparison for the lower ranks, your proctor today is probably the top Mythril rank in the guild. Aside from me and Sven as gold ranks, there is also a Hero party of gold ranked adventurers too. The funny part is that they are led by a silver ranked hero, and he only accepts women into his party! Apparently the hero was given silver rank only because he was summoned by the Goddess Ishtar, and he has since failed every attempt to rank up!”

Terra snickers to herself “Not that we need a useless perv like him. I can’t even comprehend why those other gold plates stick around, they must be a bunch of crazies. Now as for the higher ranks, we have Quicksilver, which is the minimum rank to apply to be a guild branch manager. Then, we have Orichalium and Adamantine. When the current guild master resigns, the next one is offered the positions from the top of adamantine on down to Orichalium. So far, only Adamantium adventurers have become guild masters, but Orichalium is kept as an option because at this point there are so few Adamantium adventurers that if they all refused, we would be in quite the pickle! Lastly, we have Dragonscale, and these are absolutely legendary adventurers who almost everyone knows about. First we have a team we call the Three Samurai. We aren’t sure how they ever managed to apply, and nobody has ever been able to talk to them. They just silently accept and turn in quests. Rumor has it that they are made up of an Oni, a Youkai, and an Akuma, but nobody has ever even seen their faces! The last time an adamantium party tried… they got hurt so bad they were forced to retire. Then we have The Walking Fortress Blanc, he is a Dragonkin who only ever works alone. He is rumored to be so tough, that if the dragons of old were to return today, they wouldn’t be able to hurt him! The last Dragonscale in the guild is The Fire God Byron, he is the first Human to make the rank and has brought the rest of his 5 man party with him. Of the Dragonscales, he definitely boasts the greatest firepower… but the way he uses his team... and his attitude… he is just such an asshole!”

The way she said that last line broke Diane’s train of thought. Why did she talk as if she had actually met the man? Her senses told her an opportunity for revenge had fallen in her lap.

Innocently, Diane asked “But Terra, why do you think he is such an asshole? Doesn’t being a dragonscale sound super cool and important?”

“You will learn this in the future, but men, they are terrible horrible swines! He dared to say I was too muscular and unrefined for him! MY natural beauty! MY tempered bosom! My…”

Terra stopped as she realized her terrible mistake. Silence filled the hall, as Diane started giggling. The other onlookers followed suit, and soon the hall erupted in laughter.

“Did you hear? Terra got rejected by Byron!”

“What? That woman was crazy enough to ask him out? No way!”

“Everyone knows Byron isn’t in to her type!”

Terra’s face turned a fascinating pink, and she stopped drawing the map.

“I… I… I have to go!”

Terra shoved the map towards Diane, who was now laughing full heartedly.

Ah… maybe she shouldn’t have pressed that button… Diane realized that the map was definitely missing a lot of important details.