Edited by: Flubbykin

The repetitive sound of wood hitting wood echoed across the darkened room. Tik-Tak-Tok, small break and again. Tik-Tak-Tok. The room was lit only by a few torches, that did a poor job fighting the all-embracing darkness. Only a few pools of light that were causing more bad than good – not letting eyes to fully adapt to darkness.

Tik-Tak-Tok.

Little blond haired girl jumped through the beam of light, another shape almost fell into the beam, but with swift moves, it danced on the edge of the darkness, circled around and attacked the girl.

- “What did I tell you about avoiding light?!”

Aiele yelled annoyed.

Tik-Tak-… dull sound and muffled “eek!” of a little girl, as a wooden weapon hit her head.

- “I-i-it hurts!”

- “It was supposed to! Fool! Don’t step in the light! Rus! Lights on!”

In a second the whole room became as bright as in the middle of the day.

Elana was sitting on the ground massaging her head, Aiele was standing over her with an angry expression. Far away, in a corner of the room, Russiwel was sitting in a meditation stance, breathing heavily.

- “What, Rus, you too? How long were you sitting there? Hour? Two?”

Wizardress only threw an angry glance at her “teacher”. She was balancing on the edge of mana exhaustion for almost the entire day. She could collapse any second now, the only reason why she lasted this long was her pure will. And anger. And irritation. She knew that Aiele would mock her if she would fall. She told herself she would last till the end of the training, just so she could puke on her teacher.

- “And you! How many times have I told you this? – The light is your enemy, not only does it betrays your position, but it also blinds you! You have to learn to react to mere shadows! The moves you see with the corners of your eyes! Also, rogues are acting from the dark. You have to learn that or… Why am I even bothering?”

Suddenly, resignation appeared on her face.

- “Rus, you too, take a break.”

- “No… thank you… I will… manage…”

- “Break. Now.”

Syndicate’s assassin picked a pebble and threw it at Russiwel’s face, completely breaking remaining focus.

- “Elana. There is something I have to tell you. I am training you because Zariel told me to… but, it brings us nowhere. Some people are just not cut out for certain roles, I, for example, could never be an accountant! You… sorry to say it, but you will never be an adventurer.”

The room became completely quiet. Rus skipped a breath and Elana, Elana was just staring at her teacher with widened eyes.

- “You have no magical powers, so the class of mage is out of the question. Warrior – just look how tiny you are. And because of your you will never grow muscle tissue to wear armor. Becoming a rogue was your last resort, but… you are just not fit for this role. You too easily lose focus. You are too naïve – you could never trick someone. I thought that we could at least make you a courtesan-killer, you know, like a regular hooker, with that little twist that after, or during sex, you would kill your target, but just hearing the word sex makes you blush.”

- “O-o-of course it does! W-w-who would even consider such a job?”

- “How old are you? Twelve? At your age I was already raped thrice.”

That was more than enough to cause El to stop talking.

- “Seriously, girl, not all heroes are wearing full armor with a sword by their belt. Look at Zariel, he is using adventuring only as an excuse to collect samples of new animals and plants for his factory. He already changed the world by reducing costs of potions by half. You could do the same. Become an administration worker, an accountant, bloody nurse!... Seriously, I can’t teach you anything else. For the past month, we made no progress at all, and all you know are just some basics. Even if you would become an adventurer, you will never get past rank E. If looking for lost puppies is what you want to do, go on. But you will never be able to kill a lone goblin, not to mention exterminating the whole nest.”

- “H-hey! Aiele…” it was Rust that finally got up from the corner “… that was too rude, even for you! If you wanted to motivate her then…”

- “Motivate? No, El doesn’t require motivation, look in her eyes, there is passion in them. The problem is her lack of skills and talent, as well as her broken body. She is like a beautiful, but broken doll, the one that you don’t want to throw away, but will never be able to be used in a puppet show. El, I heard that you and Rus made a party. The thing is – you will slow her down, be a burden putting her life at risk. She made colossal progress. You will never be able to catch up.”

The lower lip of the blonde girl was trembling. She was about to cry. Eventually, she jumped from her spot and ran away.

- “Sister El!”

Red-haired magician tried to stop her friend but was stopped by Ay.

- “Don’t follow her. She needed that kick in the butt.”

- “W-what do you mean!? That was rude! And lie… And…”

- “I didn’t lie, not completely, that is. We indeed stopped making any progress, and what stops her is her naivety. When we spar, I am purposely making openings. I wanted to teach her to use opportunities that appear in the heat of battle. But she is not using them, do you know why?”

Rus just declined with her head.

- “Because she doesn’t want to hurt me. Do you get it? Rogue! Not wanting to hurt anyone! I think that she has the wrong idea regarding adventurer’s job. She thinks it’s pure and noble when it actually is dirty work that nobody else wishes to do. Now, she has to make a choice, and there are only two to choose from. Either she would give up, and indeed she would find more noble pursuit in her life… or…”

- “Or?” magician was really worried

- “Or she will do something stupid and reckless to prove me wrong. Something that would put her life in danger. Something that could kill her, but make her return baptized in blood.”

- “T-t-that’s… ARE YOU CRAZY!? A MADMAN!? Like hell, I will let her risk that much!”

Rus started heading toward the exit, hoping that she would catch up with her friend, but, in the next moment, a whip tangled her legs and pulled her back into the room.

- “What are you doing!?”

- “I could ask you the same question, morsel. If you are an adventurer, you have to trust your companion and to trust your companion, your companion has to first trust herself. My-my! Look at the time! Your break is over! Oh, but I am lacking a sparring partner. What a coincidence, don’t you think?!”

Truly diabolic smile bloomed on Ay’s mouth.

Elana was sitting in the guild thinking about what her teacher told her. Indeed, they made almost no progress, El noticed that too, and it was driving her crazy. She knew what Ay was expecting from her – all these perfect opportunities to attack weren’t just coincidences. They were splits of seconds she was supposed to use to deliver a quick, focused attack.

But she couldn’t

Each time she wanted to make a thrust, seeing a defenseless victim made her stop her blade. The idea of hurting another living being was simply too much for her. Even if she was using a wooden blade, even if knew that her teacher would still manage to counter or block the attack.

She would hesitate, and that second of hesitation was more than enough for the opportunity to pass.

The words of her teacher were still echoing in her head.

“you will never be able to kill a lone goblin, not to mention exterminating the whole nest.”

Indeed, there was an unwritten rule that you couldn’t call yourself an adventurer until you either clear your first dungeon, or destroy a stray goblin’s nest.

Goblins were small and weak, but they were compensating their lackings with cunningness and numbers. Many younger adventurers would die because they underestimated the little-devils – as villagers called goblins.

And El knew – she would die too. There was no way she could get rid of goblins alone, and if she would go with a team, she would just slow them down. There was no way that…

- “Henry! How was your hunt!” Two adventures greeted one another in the distant corner of the guild.

- “The hunt ended well, those Swarmers stood no chance. But, the end was rather surprising – the goblins attacked us.”

- “What?! You didn’t walk into their nest, or something?”

- “No, they were aggressive on their own. Of course, we killed all that attacked us, but still, their behavior was rather surprising.”

- “They usually can tell the difference between villagers and skilled adventurers, so they hide or play dead. To think they would attack…”

- “Aye! Apparently, they wanted to steal our trophies. I heard that they are using Swarmer's body parts as tools and weapons…”

- “Still, to think that they would be THAT desperate… Wait, speaking about the devil, wasn’t there a quest regarding dealing with violent goblins on the north?”

- “Maybe, I am B-rank, I am not even looking at goblin-related quests. There are more dangerous beasts in desperate need of eradication…” the man laughed loudly “… eventually, militia or some knight’s squad would deal with them, so no wo… Hey, looks like someone took that quest.”

- “Ho! You are right. The quest is gone from the board. Finally, one could say, that quest was hanging there for a month!”

Indeed, the quest notice was gone.

And so was Elana.