Rupe and I knock on Hugh’s door and enter his office.

“Hello Plush? Did you realize something about the spirits that you’d forgotten about earlier!?”

Hugh looks at me with sparkling eyes not befitting of a gruff old man.

“No, it’s something else.”

“... Oh…” He leans back in his chair and looks both pissed off and horribly disappointed.

“This guy is looking for a job and I was thinking you guys may have an open positio-”

*SLAM*

“WHAT!?”

“Erm, is it no good?”

“What are you talking about!? This is great! Come, have a seat.”

“I’ll be on my way then,”

“Nope! Since you’re introducing this person you’re staying for the interview!”

I shrug my shoulders and go sit on one of the chairs, my head barely reaching above the table.

“Now then, why would you like to work here? And also what’s your name?”

“My name is Rupert Tillian, sir!”

“No need for the formality.”

“Ah, sorry, old habit from being in the guards corps.” Responds Rupe while scratching the back of his head.

“And the reason I want to work here is; I currently own a shop focused on selling things for adventurers, however due to it being so far away from any route adventurers take in their daily lives I get hardly any customers, and then Plush here thought that maybe if I worked here I could be allowed to set up my shop somewhere nearby.”

“Hm…” Hugh starts thinking for himself while twirling his beard with his right hand while holding the other around his stomach.

“That… Could actually be useful… It would be another way for us to get more money so we can actually pay for more workers…”

“So then-”

“However! Like I said we don’t have enough money to actually pay for workers, the central isn’t sending us enough but we don’t want to raise the price of submitting quests either, so at the beginning you will have to use the store room and one of the booths for your shop and you will only get salary out of the money you make from selling things, on the other hand depending on how well your shop does we may be able to hire workers to build an additional building attached to the guild for you to use, as well certain bonuses like not needing to pay as much to submit a quest among other things.”

Hugh had been looking very professional during this talk and if I hadn’t seen Lizz throw so many shoes at him I might’ve even been able to take him seriously now.

“That’s already more than I can ask you! Thank you very much!”

“Don’t worry about it, but if you really want to pay back the favour then make sure to earn us lots of money.”

“Yes! But, could I get some help moving all of my wares?”

“Since it seems mostly decided by now, can I leave? I want to go check up on those friends I said were joining the guild:”

“Sure, go ahead”

I then hop down from the chair and exit the door while I hear Hugh and Rupe still talking, by now them seem to have moved on to the expected sales or something another.

After I walk out of Hugh’s office I walk back down the stairs and see pickits coming out of the door leading to the basement.

‘Hey, did you guys just finish?’ I ask them as the stop walking while Lizz goes towards the quest boards.

“Yup, and I’ll tell you about our story later so don’t say anything to anyone yet.”

‘Alright.’

At this time Cathy comes back with a handful of quest notes and gives them to Charlie.

“Since you guys are an adventuring party the number of provisional quests you need to do goes down to five of each type for a total of fifteen rather than the twenty seven you would’ve had to do otherwise.”

“Adventuring party?”

“Oh, I never explained, did I? A group of adventurers can register as a party, this way they can accept quests together, however each quest only gives them half a completed quest on the license.”

“Interesting, is there anything else you’ve forgotten to tell me as well?”

“Well if I knew that they wouldn’t be forgotten, right?”

“*sigh* I guess… By the way, is it possible for me to follow them or is there some rule against adventurers helping others to join?”

“No there’s no such rule, being able to get others to do your work and gather connections is also a good skill to have as an adventurer, if someone can convince someone to help them with something it’s still seen as partly being their feat since they were the ones who used either their powers or wits to get help, so whether you help them or not doesn’t make much of a difference to the guild.”

“Plush, though it’s good you’re coming along since you needed to speak with father, please don’t help us with the quests, we want to see how that goes by ourselves.”

“Fair enough, is there anything you guys need to go or can we go immediately?”

“We’re all good to go, we were planning on doing the monster subjugations and resource gathering quests first.”

“In that case I might as well get some quests myself too so hang on a bit.”

I then go to a booth and get a stool.

‘How about some subjugation quests? Let’s see… slimes, goblins, kobolds, treants… Wow there’s a lot of different monsters… for now how about getting used to ones I haven’t fought yet? In that case, kobolds, hobgoblins and orcs? For every five I kill it counts as one quest completed, and looking at the others it’s the same for them, except for treant, for them I still just need one, do you know why Lizz?’

‘Huh, I guess that means the quests I got before where it was three for the slimes and goblins were just easier than normally. Huh, the orc one even says it's a C rank, so I guess this will actually let me see how strong I really am. One silver and twenty copper per kobold, three silver per hobgoblin and five silver per orc doesn’t look like a bad price either… Alright, I’ve decided.’

I then grab the three notes and go to the booth where Rico is now sitting in the one next to Grizz.

“These three please.”

“Sir Plush, you do know that for subjugation and gathering quests you can actually simply come here with the gathered resources or proofs of subjugation without needing to actually take the quest note with you right?”

I look towards the stairs that Cathy had disappeared into a while earlier.

“... No, a certain someone must’ve forgotten to tell me…”

*Sigh* “Very well, at least you know now, do you want to take the quest notes with you either way? If not please put them back on the board.”

“Alright, later.”

I walk back with the notes to the board and then put the stool back in the booth, after that I go to the pickits and tell them I’m ready to depart.

“Alright, and all of these are in the mountains forest right? Then we’ll go meet with dad after we’re done with the quests, we already know where most of these can be found so it shouldn’t take long.”

We then walk out the town and into the forest, after walking there for a while we come across a group of goblins which the pickits take care of with minimal problems.

“That’s one quest done, by the way, do you think we should split up Plush? I mean you have your own quests to take care of right?”

‘Sure, let’s meet back up at the cave we left through earlier.”

The pickits then start walking again and I climb one of the nearby trees.

‘Lizz, what are kobolds, orcs and hobgoblins?’

‘Well now that you mention it… but didn’t you call the high goblins before?’

‘Orcs and kobolds then?’

‘But… What’s the difference between them and demi-humans? Why do these guys get hunted like goblins while there are other demi-wolves and pigs in the city?’

‘Well, where could I find them then?’

‘Well in that case I guess I’ll start looking for kobolds and orcs first, and maybe I’ll encounter some hobgoblins on the way there.’

I look around and see that there are several meadows around, and I start making my way towards the nearest one.

When I get there I see a lot of goblins sitting on boulders and eating…

‘Are those cats!?’

‘Not any kind of monster, but just normal cats!?’

‘What the fuck! How the hell did these weaklings even catch these guys?!’

‘They drugged them!? Like hell I’m letting any of the fucks leave!’

Too angry to react to her teasing I simply cover my arms with solidified air, doubling my reach while also being very sharp, and get ready to start scattering red paint across the grass.

As I walk out of the bushes and into the meadow I can see a group of six larger goblins sitting in a small circle away from the others.

‘Are those the hobs?’

I phase my feet into the ground and make myself move towards with great speed, once I get there all six of them have put down the meat they were eating and started running towards me.

Remembering what had happened in the cave I simply hold my arms outwards, and just like with the goblin back then…

*shunk* *shunk*

Two of the hobgoblins simply run straight at me and pierce themselves with my claws, however due to them being taller than normal goblins it doesn’t pierce their hearts and they start swiping at me.

‘These guys really don’t seem smart enough to have been able to come up with the idea of drugging the cats.’

I use phasing on my body, making the hobgoblins swipes go through me without causing any damage.

I keep phasing active while making sure that the claws are still solid yet not falling off of me, and start slashing away at the rest of the hobgoblins, the two who pierced themselves already laying on the ground and dying of blood loss due to not having my claws in them to plug the giant holes anymore.

Two other hobgoblins lose their legs, they then lay on the ground like the first two, however these guys are still swiping at me, seemingly not feeling any pain.

While I’m slashing at the last two the ones on the ground start slowing down, seemingly finally passing out from blood loss.

I make another hobgoblins head come off, however since I slashed at his neck rather than bash his head it didn’t fly very far, and the last one I simply stab where the heart should be, making him fall to the ground within a few short moments.

After the six hobgoblins have died I look around to see all of the normal goblins running at me while screeching at raising their arms.

I slash and swipe at the goblins, some of the head fall off, some of their bodies get cut in two, some of them get gutted and have their innards droop out, however I can’t think of these guys as anything other than wild animals at this point and don’t get phased by it.

Some of the goblins get close and swipe at me and try to bite me, however due to constantly covering my body in phasing they don’t touch me.

Eventually I cover my legs with solidification as well and start performing roundhouse kicks, stretching my ankles straight and making the solidified claws go outwards, hitting more goblins.

However the goblins never seem to end while I’m starting to grow tired.

I let go of the solidification on one of my arms to make it easier to use, and take out a few blue jellies from the pouch, after letting them seep into myself I make a new set of claws and resume fighting.

There are so many goblin corpses now that it’s getting hard for more goblins to get close, yet they still refuse to give up, so I launch myself a small distance away from the corpses and the stream of goblins speed up again.

While I was in the air after I launched myself I could see that there weren’t actually that many goblins left, while also seeing that there were several more hobgoblin corpses mixed in with all the goblin ones.

Finally feeling like I was close to being done I try to cover the rest of my body in solidification as well and create spike, however I’m still unable to make the solidified spikes properly sharp if they cover something that isn’t already sharp, however luckily enough it’s still sharp enough for the weak bodies of goblins, and soon enough there is no longer anyone trying to attack me.

I go to a spot of grass that’s lacking goblin blood and lay down, resting.

Lizz doesn’t know what to say, and frankly neither do I, so we both just stay quiet for a while and try to gather ourselves.

‘What do you mean…?’

‘No, I didn’t notice at all, after I saw them eating an animal I used to have as a pet, and you telling me they killed them by drugging them I just sort of… I don’t even know what I did… Or how I did it, I just didn’t feel right with leaving after I saw what they did…’

‘Well… If I had to guess, when I was younger, maybe three or so, my family got ourselves a pet cat, and later on when I became six and started school, well, I was kind of a loner. I didn’t choose to be a loner, I just wasn’t a fun kid to hang around… To be honest, if I met a kid that acts the way I did when I was younger I would probably punch hem in the face… But either way, when no one wanted to hang out with me and I didn’t have any friends in school, it felt like that cat was my only friend… However one day the cat went outside and didn’t come back. My dad heard from one of the neighbors that they had felt like they hit something with their… Err… “Wagon”, yet when they looked back there was nothing there. Both me and my dad think the cat must’ve been hit and then ran off somewhere in the forest before it died… I wouldn’t be surprised if you think that this till doesn’t sound like enough to do what I did, frankly even I can hardly take myself seriously right now, but when I saw them do what they did… It felt like watching them eat a childhood friend...’

Lizz seemed to not know what to say again, and I could feel the book on my back shaking every so often, almost like it was crying.

‘...Well, enough about that.’ I think as I sit up

‘Now I need to get all the ears from these guys… This is going to be a pain…’

Suddenly blue hands start appearing from behind me, grabbing every goblin corpse nearby and pulling it back inside.

‘Huh, guess you go a plan then eh? Suppose I can always trust you when things get annoying…’

I stand up and start walking towards the corpses that were too far away for the blue hands to reach them.

After a few minutes the meadow is empty and looks like the battle never happened, well, except for the fact that all the grass was now red that is.

The book then opens on my back and I can feel it spewing something out, after a minute or so it stops and closes again, letting me turn around to see that all the corpses that it had stored had been spewed back out, only thing was that they were all missing their right ears.

*fwoosh*

A small blue piece of paper comes out of the pouch attached to the book.

Storage

¤ 634 Goblin ears

¤ 57 Hobgoblin ears

¤ 3 High goblin ears

‘Wow, that really is a lot… You know what? I think I’ll take the orcs and kobolds some other time, thank god I didn’t actually officially accept the quests this time.’

I then climb a tree again and look for the entrance to the pickit cavern, once I find it I start making my way over there.

‘Huh, guess they’re not here yet…’

Lizz the flies out of the book.

‘Know what? I think I’ll take you up on that offer…’

I then lay down on the ground where Charlie used to stay guard, there wasn’t anyone there right now so the place was open.

As I lay down on the grass I can feel my consciousness fading, and eventually everything turns black.