Aina jogged back to the Traveler’s Cabin following the path her Master traced for her.

As she stabilized her breath, she made the lightning run through her body again. After a lifetime of being scared of it and feeling pain while trying to constrict it, she now felt pleasure at the sensation of electricity in her veins.

She felt the wild power coursing through her body and she felt strong, free… alive. It was exhilarating, she was excited about all the things she could do now, and she dreamt about what she could do in the future.

She dashed, moving faster and faster as she ran following the traced path. The wonders of cultivation allowed her body to reach speeds she had only heard about in the tales of her village, and what accelerated the most was not her body but her mind.

As the trees blurred past her at high speed, she started to be able to take in more details, now they were no longer so blurry, she could see everything moving at a slower pace around her.

She was a bolt of lightning, flying unstoppable.

A couple dozens of minutes later, she reached the beach, Aina looked as her mother turned her head slowly towards her, a smile already forming on her lips.

Slowly, her mother raised a hand and waved it at a snail’s pace.

Aina stopped in front of her, and stopped the coursing lightning on her, returning the world to its normal speed.

“It was great, mom! I hunted 4 birds, 2 snakes, 3 wolves, and I killed a bear that scared and wounded some adventurers, it was big and strong but Master helped me telling me what I should do to beat it. Master is amazing, with his plan it was so easy!”

Aina spoke at high speed, jumping on the tips of her feet excitedly as she recounted her hunt and the fight with the beasts.

Maria smiled and patted her daughter’s head.

“Calm down, sweetie. Show us the beasts you hunted and let’s start preparing lunch. Tell me about your hunt slowly, ok? I want all the details.”

Aina obeyed and with a thought made the animals she hunted appear near her. She excitedly started explaining which species they were and how she killed each one.

Maria was quite surprised at this, Aina had grown very strong in such a short time, being capable of killing a Direbear was especially surprising.

“Where’s Master?”

“Fishing.”

Maria pointed to the sea, there was a figure approaching them by walking over the water.

As Navin rapidly walked to them, a dozen different fishes floated behind him, being scaled, gutted and sliced in the air, a ball of flame consumed the scales, guts, roe, and gills.

“We are going to have quite a feast today.”

Navin whistled at the amount of game Aina had hunted. The bodies rose into the air and started to be processed.

Pelts, fangs, claws, feathers and such were cleaned and organized for storage as they could be sold or used for crafting, while certain organs and inedible parts of the beasts were burned.

The meat was sliced and prepared for cooking in different ways, so dishes of different styles could be made.

Aina smiled at the spectacle, went to wash her hands, then readied a table and sat while watching her mother and her Master cooking.

“I hope you are hungry, Aina. There’s a lot here.”

“Hehehe. It’s better when there’s a lot, Master.”

“Indeed.”

Aina never had so much good food as in the past few days, ever since meeting her Master her life had become amazing, one great thing after the other.

She continued talking about her adventure in the forest and how she hunted the beasts, now that Navin was here, she asked about techniques and more effective ways to kill the beasts next time.

“Lord Navin, is such growth in strength normal?”

Maria asked Navin, she was surprised at Aina killing so many beasts, even if by her story it was obvious she was ambushing them, many of those were not killed with their guard down.

“No, there are a few factors that enabled this situation.”

Navin answered while grilling some of the Direbear meat, by one side there were frying pans filled with slices of fish.

“She has indeed gotten a lot stronger due to becoming a cultivator, and her special physique had enhanced her capabilities further, but Aina’s greatest advantage is her lightning manipulation ability, with it, she can paralyze any of these low-level beasts and kill them with relative ease thanks to her dagger.”

Despite that, Navin had put a defensive barrier over Aina to avoid an accident from happening.

“Master, I want to learn to fly, how do I do that?”

Aina had sparks in her eyes as she asked that question, she had ‘read’ multiple sections in her Cultivation Art about flight techniques, but she figured it would be easier to ask her Master about it.

“Well, there are many ways to do it, but it’s still too early for you to learn that. It requires a lot of energy and more importantly, control.”

“Aww… but I want to try it…”

“You will, I’ll show you how to do it later, just be warned, don’t get frustrated if you don’t succeed at the first try. We have plenty of time so don’t be impatient, ok?”

“Okay!”

Aina celebrated raising both arms over her head, today was going to be a fun day.

Today was not a fun day.

Tina walked with the group of disheartened adventurers into Buri City; they all had some bruises and minor burns, but some were seriously battered by the Firestone Direbear.

While any serious wound had been healed with potions, they were tired, without a trophy to get a reward, and the thing most wounded was their pride.

This quest had been a failure; they were really close to dying back then.

But they had some consolation; due to the inaccuracy of the quest they would not be penalized and would get a small compensation for damages.

Their leaders had decided to report that the beast had been killed and make a statement under truth spell that they participated in the fight against it.

It would be a long shot, but if it went well they could get a bit of reward for their participation, even if the actual killer was another person.

The real juicy prize would be given to that girl or whoever appeared later with the body of the Firestone Direbear, assuming they even appeared.

That was adventuring, sometimes you won, sometimes you lost; sometimes one team would get decimated in a Quest and the survivors would obtain glory and fame, while occasionally some adventurer would obtain something from the wilderness and get everyone else into trouble due to a pissed off beast.

All kinds of circumstances filled their lifestyle, in this case, it was a dangerous situation and inevitable defeat that still held a silver lining for them to get a profit.

However, that was a job for the team leaders to handle, Tina just wanted to get a bath, eat, and sleep.

They entered the Adventurer’s Guild, making every head in the room turn to them for a moment before everyone returned to their own conversations.

The group of 15 people started to divide, most of them took chairs on some tables while the leaders and a few others approached a receptionist to report about the Quest.

One burly man stood from one of the tables and approached them, he was bald and wore an open jacket with no shirt under it, showing his muscles and a green jade necklace.

Simon Bickherd, the leader of B rank adventuring team ‘Serpent Wing’ and a popular character among the adventurers in Buri City.

“How did it go?”

Simon asked, he looked at each of them and noticed there were a bit dirty but with no serious injury, he also noticed by their expressions that it couldn’t have gone well.

“You will have to sit to hear the whole story, bro. But believe me, this is quite a tale.”

Bok went forward and greeted Simon with a handshake.

“The information about the beast was inaccurate. It was stronger than expected.”

Rual explained by the side and glanced at the receptionist from the Guild, a young woman named Carol.

“We are going to report it.”

“Understood.”

Carol answered with a serious face and started getting the necessary documents.

A misinformed Quest was a serious thing that put the lives of adventurers at risk, she understood the gravity of the situation and was glad none of them seemed to be badly hurt.

She put the papers on her desk then put out a magic pen and a crystal orb on a golden base, it was a magical artifact used to ascertain the truth of testimonies.

Rual put one of his hands over the crystal orb while Tom and Bok took seats by his side, Simon leaned on a wall and stood there listening to the report, as were many other adventurers in the room.

“Then we will proceed with the report. Is the information you will provide first-hand and did you witness personally these events?”

“Yes.”

“Good, let’s proceed then. What was the situation?”

Carol asked the questions professionally with a serious face and started to fill the document with the magic pen.

“We took the Quest to subjugate a fire-type bear beast; but upon confrontation, we confirmed it was actually a Firestone Direbear, much stronger than what we expected.”

Rual spoke and the orb shone with a light white color.

Carol looked at the orb’s color, confirming the veracity of his words.

She nodded and continued writing on the documents while asking more questions.

“Then what happened? Did you fail the Quest due to the unexpectedly stronger monster? We will update the details of the Quest and raise its difficulty level.”

“No need for that, the Firestone Direbear is dead.”

Carol was surprised, their team was composed with mostly C rank adventurers, only the three team leaders were B rank, and they only had one mage with them.

Across the room, all the adventurers were surprised, if this joined party had managed to kill that beast with so little damage then they were worthy of being B rank teams.

“It wasn’t us.”

Rual continued.

“Please tell me every detail.”

“We tracked the beast’s location to a lake near a rocky formation inside the forest. But the beast appeared on our rear and started a fire on our escape route.”

“It trapped you?”

Simon asked with a frown.

Bok turned to him and nodded, Tom extended his hand and placed it on the crystal, next to Rual’s hand before speaking.

“I believe that beast actually lured us there, there’s no other way to look at it but as a trap laid by the Firestone Direbear. Even if it didn’t purposely lure us there, it still had enough intelligence to hide when we were on its track and to raise a firewall on our escape route.”

The orb kept its white color, prompting everyone present to be shocked.

Tom withdrew his hand from the crystal and let Rual continue the report. In front of them, Carol was quickly writing everything.

“I think the same as Tom, that thing had some degree of intelligence. And that wasn’t the worst, it was strong, its Earth-type characteristics gave it a hard skin and thick muscles, our weapons and spells were unable to hurt it significantly, we got our wounds from its Fire-type attacks while we were futilely trying to make some damage.”

Rual fell silent after that, he seemed to be organizing his thoughts or choosing his words.

Carol looked at him after finishing a line in the report.

“Then what happened? If it was so strong, then how-”

“Like I said, it wasn’t us who killed it, we were fighting it, but ultimately it was killed by someone else.”

“By whom?”

“A girl who appeared from the forest, she used a lightning magic to stun the beast and proceeded to blind it with her dagger, she then used more lightning attacks and killed it.”

The crystal kept its white color, Rual knew they needed to make an honest report if they wanted to have a chance at obtaining any reward, but it still sounded amazing.

“A lightning mage?”

Simon muttered

“Who was this girl, Rual?”

“I don’t know, she didn’t give us her name, I’m not even sure she was a mage, she didn’t use any wand and didn’t chant any spell.”

“Describe her.”

“Is it really necessary?”

“Every detail matters, you know that.”

“Alright… she was human, very young with fair skin and short black hair, between 12 and 14 years old. She wore expensive clothes. She took the Firestone Direbear after killing it and left.”

“I see… well, no one has come today with any Direbear, we’ll be attentive in case she appears to claim the reward.”

“Yeah, I wanted to talk to you about that. Do we get something? We were fighting it, after all.”

Bok commented while holding his side, the potion had healed most damage, but it still hurt a bit.

Tom also had bandages on his chest under the shirt, he glanced at Lana a few meters behind him, she was holding his burned breastplate, he was going to have to buy a new one.

“Once the report is delivered to the Guild Master, he will decide. But I think there will be some reward, besides, you are owed a compensation due to the actual difficulty being higher than estimated. The amount will be decided by the Guild Master after reading the report, please wait until tomorrow and get some rest.”

“Thank you very much.”

Rual and the rest of the joined party thanked Carol.

“You are welcome, this is my job, after all. I’m just glad none of you has serious injuries.”

“Yeah, we were lucky in that regard.”

Tom said with a bittersweet smile, the memory of being blasted away by a fireball on his chest was still fresh on his mind, it was a miracle that he didn’t get his whole head burned.

They gathered in 3 tables and ordered some food and drinks.

The Adventurers’ Guild building also functioned as a restaurant-bar and even had an Inn next door owned by the Guild.

They knew adventurers needed to rest and take the stress out from the constant traveling and fighting.

The food, drinks, and accommodations were good and at a fair price, so it was very popular even among citizens who were not adventurers.

Tom was glad to have a cold drink to fill his belly, it was refreshing and his chest thanked the cool sensation.

“So what now?”

One of Bok’s teammates, a swordsman called Carl asked when the food was delivered to the table.

“Well, now we wait. Tomorrow we’ll have our reward and then we can make plans about the next Quest, but for now let’s just relax”

Bok answered while taking a spoon full of rice into his mouth.

“I agree, let’s rest.”

Rual nodded and took a bite of the roasted pork on his dish.

The rest of the party members voiced their agreement and started to eat with gusto.

Adventuring was a dangerous profession, but it was also very rewarding if one had the skills and enough luck. It was important to take rests whenever they had the chance, no one knew how long they would have to travel and sleep in the wild during journeys or when a Quest would be their last.

It wasn’t pretty, but it also wasn’t a bad lifestyle. It was just like life itself, sometimes good, sometimes bad, there were fun times and sad times, and danger lurked behind every chest of treasure.

That was their life, they could consider that they had been lucky today, even after running into a Firestone Direbear they had escaped with minor injuries.

The ringing of the siege alarm bells sounded across the city, stirring every adventurer and making them jump to their feet grabbing their weapons.

“Emergency, the city is under attack!”

Loud shouts were heard from outside but inside there were only a few murmurs among the adventurers, many were nervous, but the most experienced ones kept a serious face and looked at each other, this wasn’t the first time the city was attacked, and would not be the last.

It seemed whatever luck they had to survive the Firestone Direbear was running out.

Buri City was under attack.

One member of the City Watch opened the doors of the Guild and ran inside, he looked at all the adventurers standing with their weapons.

He looked at them and nodded, then spoke only one word to explain the situation.

“Goblins!”