The fiend lunged for her and Luna ducked beneath its fiery claws to run it through with her lance. The weapon, which normally served as her hat – thanks to the [Disguise True Purpose] skill from her [Tailor] class – pulsed with orange light as Luna channeled raw pumpkin magic into it and spread a web of vines into the monster’s smokelike body. The vines were hungry, and in less time than it took her racing heart to beat ten times, the fiend had been devoured, leaving a small loot pumpkin on the floor behind it. There were a handful of those on the ground already, and once the room was completely cleared of the monsters, Luna was going to go and harvest them. The rewards for pumpkins of this size weren’t terribly impressive, probably no more than a few tin fleurs, but maybe she’d luck out and get a small gemstone or two.

Even if the loot sucked, it wasn’t like she was going to turn her nose up at anything to make the job more lucrative. The guild was only paying her forty fleurs for clearing two blocks worth of fiends!

“Luna! A little help over here!”

The [Pumpkin Witch] turned around and saw her friend Hanako Maluw dueling two fiends. The thin girl danced and ducked beneath the claws that sought her flesh and used her tessen – war fans – to fight back. Snapping the weapons open and closed let her vary her strikes between flourishing cuts and bludgeoning blows, but none of them seemed to slow the fiends down. Her dodges seemed slower than they had been at the start of the day too, and Luna feared that the girl’s endurance was flagging. For the most part, fiends were a pretty low level enemy, but they could still be deadly.

“Be right there!” she shouted as she lowered her lance, took aim at the fiend nearest her friend and directed her floating mount forward. The point of her weapon found the gap in the monster’s defenses, and another burst of vines was every bit as effective as the last set had been.

With only one enemy to focus on, Hanako seemed to catch her second – or maybe fourth or fifth – wind. She leapt into the air and flicked open both tessen. They started to glow.

“[Storm of Steel]!”

Her body seemed to phase into air, and for the next few seconds, Luna could see and hear nothing but the flash and sound of the frostnickel weapons slicing the monster’s body into tiny pieces.

Hanako reappeared once the skill was done and fell onto her knees as she gasped for breath. Luna looked around the room to make sure that all of the fiends were in fact dealt with, then dismissed her mount – a hollow, floating pumpkin that was just big enough for her to sit inside – and used [Disguise True Purpose] to transform it back into her purse. She used the skill once more on her lance and put her hat back on, adjusting it so that the small pumpkin ornament was on its proper side. Reaching up, she brushed her dark bangs out of her eyes so that she could see.

A small scroll appeared on the floor, and Luna snatched it up. It was the proof she’d turn into the guild to show that she’d actually done what they’d hired her to do.

[Quest Complete! You have cleared two blocks of Southtown of fiends on behalf of the Adventurer’s Guild!]

[Might + 2]

[Adventurousness + 1]

[Guts +1]

[Your Guts is now 28. Your [Shrug off Wounds] ability is now [Ignore Injury]!

Luna was covered in sweat, her shoulders ached, and she just wanted to lay down and sleep, but she needed to get Hanako back to Northtown before anyone discovered that she was gone. Hanako’s father was a serious man who had no love for adventurers. He would be furious if he ever found out that his eldest daughter had secretly started accompanying Luna on adventuring jobs.

She hurried over to her friend and helped her clamber to her feet. The girls were both covered in dirt and dust, but Hanako’s delicate dress patterned with flower petals looked much worse for wear than did Luna’s thick shirt and heavy overalls.

“Next time we do this I’ll have you borrow some of my clothes first,” Luna said as she winced at a sliced bit of fabric in her friend’s side. “I’m pretty sure this dress is ruined.”

Hanako grinned and shrugged. “It’s fine. I have like a million of these things in my closet. I’ll just throw this one away and change into a fresh one when I get home.”

Luna had long since gotten used to her friend throwing away things that cost as much as her entire wardrobe as if they were worthless, so she didn’t say anything and just nodded. If I had that kind of money I could – she thought before she stopped herself. There was nothing pleasant at the end of that road and she knew it.

Hanako flourished her hands and her tessen vanished back up into their holsters hidden by her sleeves. She wiped her forehead, smearing some of the thick white makeup that she always wore on her face. It was already pretty messed up though from the fighting, so the smear was barely noticeable.

“Thanks for helping me out back there,” she said as she drew out a small mirror from one of her pockets and got to fixing her appearance with the makeup she always carried. “I don’t know why my normal blows stopped working on the fiends. They were effective this morning.”

“Probably just fatigue,” Luna said. “It takes some power to land a hit on fiends, since they’re not really corporeal.”

“Must have been that, yeah. I’m more tired than I’ve ever been in my life. But I leveled up! I’m a Level 6 [Petal Dancer] now!”

“Hey, that’s great!” Luna said with a big grin. “You’re really climbing quick! A couple months ago you were only level 2.”

“That’s only because you keep carrying me on jobs,” Hanako said. “There’s no way I could do any of this on my own.”

“That’s not true at all,” Luna said. “You took down almost as many of those fiends as I did!”

That wasn’t even close to being remotely true, but Luna was a firm believer that a little white lie once in a while never hurt anybody and she could see that it made her friend feel better.

Once she was sure that Hanako would stay on her feet without any help, Luna lifted her arm away and hurried to pick up the loot pumpkins. She used a burst of pumpkin magic to open them up, and they disappeared one by one, leaving their loot behind. This room hadn’t been particularly profitable, dropping only three tin fleurs and a few potion reagents that she didn’t know how to use.

Luna sighed. Piddly rewards were better than no rewards, she supposed.

The pair exited the building and started walking back towards the gate to Northtown. They didn’t fear being attacked by fiends along the way since they were within the two blocks they’d just cleared, and it was daytime. Fiends really only roamed the streets at night.

Luna pounded on the gate once they reached it, and a small window opened in the center. Kyler, the [City Guard] on duty, looked out at them and lifted his visor so that they could see his smile. Hanako blushed and hid her face behind one of her tessen.

“Good to see you two make it out of there alive. Any serious injuries?”

Luna shook her head. “We’re both fine, but we’re exhausted. I’ve got to get Hanako home pretty quick though, so open the gate, eh?”

There was a loud groan of metal and wood as the young man acceded to her request and Luna breathed a healthy sigh of relief once they were inside and the gate slammed shut behind them. Another mission done, another success.

She and Hanako weaved through the streets and alleys until they got back to Hanako’s house – a massive mansion that had been built over a hundred years ago and meticulously maintained by the Maluw family ever since. They snuck through the hole in the back hedge that they used to come and go from adventuring jobs, Hanako climbed the tree that led to her window and slipped inside with none of the servants being any the wiser. Or, if they were, they all had the common decency to pretend that they weren’t.

Hanako vanished for a few minutes and returned to the window looking as if she’d spent the day doing nothing a young lady shouldn’t. She’d changed to a green dress, and her makeup was impeccable. Luna gave her a thumbs up and pantomimed that she’d see her friend again soon, and then it was back through the hedge and over to the adventurer’s guild so that she could turn in her quest.

She handed over her scrolls and collected her reward, and then it was almost time to go home. She wanted to take a hot bath and eat something tasty. Towards that latter goal, she stopped at the market on her way and bought a bag of caramel apple candy from Joleimna, the salamander [Candy Man] and a hot roast beef sandwich with crinkly fries from Anastasia, the kitrekin [Short Order Cook] who always smiled at her and gave her a few extra fries.

There was just one other place Luna had to stop before she could go home. The clinic.

She walked into the building and her skin started crawling. Not for the first time, she mused on the fact that she didn’t mind the filth found in the dens of fiends at all, but the super sanitized atmosphere of the clinic bothered her so much.

The [Receptionist], a woman younger than Luna with auburn hair looked up as the [Pumpkin Witch] approached the desk. “Oh, Miss Redhenny , it’s a pleasure to see you. Do you require treatment? Or have you come to make a payment?”

“Make a payment.” Luna answered as she handed over almost the entire purse she’d gotten from the adventurer’s guild. She’d taken four of the silver fleurs for herself which would have to cover groceries until her next paycheck from the post office came in at the end of the month. It’d be tight, but she could make it work.

The [Receptionist] took the money into the office behind her. When she came out again, she gave Luna a receipt, and the [Pumpkin Witch] sagged as she saw the remaining balance it listed. Still though, she smiled, thanked the woman and bid her a good rest of the day.

Later that afternoon, Luna walked through the door of her tiny house and hung her hat on the rack.

“Ma, I’m home. I brought you some of that caramel apple candy you like.”

She walked into the living room, where her mother was reading a book in the same chair she’d left her in that morning. Her mom’s skin was sallow, and she looked tired, but she smiled at Luna as the girl opened the bag of candy and handed her a piece.

“You get this from Joleimna?”

“Of course.”

Her mom grinned as the candy’s hard outer shell melted away and revealed the soft filling inside. “He makes the best candy in the city. You know, back when your father and I were first dating, he used to sell these strawberry lavender candies that were to –“

She was interrupted by a fierce bout of coughing and held a threadbare rag to her lips. She tried to hide it when she pulled it away from her mouth, but Luna had already seen the pink splotches and tears filled the girl’s eyes.

[Hope -1]

“I think I’m tired, darling,” Luna’s mom said as she folded the rag and put it away. “I want to take a little nap. Why don’t you go ahead and get cleaned up? You look like you had a long day.”

Luna wiped her eyes dry and nodded. “Holler if you need anything, okay?”

“Of course, sweetie. Thanks for the candy. It’s delicious. I’ll have the rest later.”

Luna went to the bathroom and started the water. She sank into the tub once it was filled, and relished the way the hot water soothed her aching muscles and washed the scum from her skin. But, despite how nice it would have been to stay in the tub until the water turned frigid, there were other things to be done before going to bed that night. Things like training. Her stealth skill was still too low to really be much use, so she’d go to the seedier parts of town and practice following people in an attempt to raise it higher so that she could take on some of the more dangerous and lucrative jobs from the guild. If only the two guys from the other night hadn’t been such poor marks!

She closed her eyes and took several deep breaths. There was no point in dwelling on the past. Tomorrow it was back to business. Wake up, make her mail deliveries, and then go get another job from the guild. Probably clearing more fiends. Hanako’s dad was getting back from a business trip tomorrow morning, which meant that Luna’s friend probably wouldn’t be able to come along for a few days. That was a good and a bad thing, since it meant that Luna could pretty safely take on more dangerous jobs without having to worry about her friend’s safety, but she’d have to do them by herself.

Ugh. Sometimes it felt like her life was a never ending list of—

“[Sunny Disposition]!” she said as she opened her eyes. The skill filled her mind with warm, happy thoughts and held the negativity at bay. For now.

She leaned her head back against the wall and prayed. It was simple prayer, and one that she’d made many times before.

“Please, just give me a chance to make things right.”

That was all she’d ever wanted. A chance.

Stat Sheets:

Luna Redhenny

Primary Class: Pumpkin Witch (Sarah Redhenny), Level 26

Secondary Class: Tailor (Sarah Redhenny), Level 14

Might: 30 (+2)

Wit: 27

Faith: 19

Loyalty: 33

Adventurousness: 28 (+1)

Guts: 28 (+1)

Hope: 20 (-1) [WARNING: FURTHER LOSSES OF HOPE WILL CAUSE YOUR [SUNNY DISPOSITION] SKILL TO BECOME INACTIVE]

Stealth: 6

Charisma: 22

Hanako Maluw:

Primary Class: ????

Secondary Class: ????

Tertiary Class (Hidden): Petal Dancer (Madame Li’s Guide to Martial Arts), Level 6 (+1)

Might: 8

Wit: 15

Faith: 7

Agility: 13

Adventurousness: 9

Guts: 7

Deceptiveness: 4