The sky slowly grew dark as lamps were slowly lit one by one along the roughly paved road. A tavern was full of customers as it ever was for its acceptable food quality at a low price that beginner adventurers could afford.

Inside the said tavern, a pair of girls were preserving a table in a corner as they waited for the third person to return. On the table, there was only a bowl of grape that gradually became more empty as time passed.

“Big sis Hilda sure is late. I wonder if she was picked up by a handsome boy.” a cherry pink hair girl grumbled as she leaned onto a dining table, resting her white cheek on her palm.

The bored girl tossed a grape drupe into her mouth as her eyes swam around the tavern, searching for a good looking man who was nowhere to be seen.

“Don't joke around, Cheri! In our group of three, there is only you who want to hook a boy that much! Besides, Big sis Hilda would never pick up a random guy like that!, ” The girl with curly blonde hair who sat on the opposite side argued as she let out a sigh.

They were Cheri and Mina, a pyromancer and a hydromancer. When included Hilda who was once a royal knight into the party, they were called the Three Roses of Terario city's adventurer guild.

It wasn’t like they were recognized by their true ability as they were only silver rank in their adventurer guild, the third lowest rank out of seven. However, they were treated as a mascot of this city's adventurer guild due to being a rare girl group among the adventurers who generally relied on men as a vanguard.

But in the case of this Three Roses party, their leader, Hilda had covered that position all by herself as she had acquired several useful vanguard skills since the time when she was a royal knight.

“Jeez, a popular girl like you has no right to blame me! Look at this huge breast! Just how many men did it charm into your fan club?”

Cheri jumped forward and sunk her small fingers into Mina’s breast as she massaged it without minding the surrounding gazes of the men that looked at them with a blushed face.

“Nooo, stop it! It's not like I want to have that fan club thing. They were all crazy and scary like a wild beast. And stop touching it already! Don't you also have yours?”

Not wanting to be touched one-sided, Mina extended her hands to grope Cheri's flat chest.

Being shocked by her friend's counter-attack, Cheri looked down back and forth between her none-existed chest and her friend's enormous boob as her cute face suddenly turned ugly.

“Mu! This vile cow is so vile! I must thoroughly punish it with my hands!, ” said Cheri as she exerted greater force into her fingers.

“Nooooo, just stop it already! Why did big sis tell me that doing this will make you stop for sure!? Big sis Hilda, why do you betray me!?, ” Mina cried as she frantically retrieved her hands to protect her chest from the old man in a girl form.

All the men eating in the tavern had their eyes glued on the girls’ catfight as they tried to shift get face slightly away so that the girls won't notice them and continue her play.

Then the wooden door was opened without anyone noticing it as a person in his chainmail and with a bastard sword hanging on his belt entered the tavern. He walked straight to the table that had gathered everyone's attention and chopped his hands on the girls’ head.

““Ouch! That hurts… Big sis Hilda!?,”” they cried out together.

“Yes, it's me. Can you two stop playing around? We must hurry to prepare necessary stuff, ” the girl who wore the chainmail said.

Her long, slightly curly hair rested on her shoulder as she leaned her hand on the table. In her other hand held a rolled parchment as she showed it to the girls.

“Aww, big sis Hilda, what's the quest this time?, ” Cheri asked while rubbing her head with a drop of tear in her eyes.

“It isn’t a slime extermination quest, right? I really hate them. They are sticky and slimy and I don’t want to prepare a spare cloth to change in the forest again…,” Mina complained as she remembers a painful quest in her memory.

“And I hope that it isn’t a merchant escort quest either. The last time we escorted that Brudo firm, our reward was unjustly deducted! They blamed us for damaging the goods even though we had made sure to not let anyone or anything inside the cargo.

Who knows, they might use an initially damaged product as an evidence to put the fault onto us! The merchants are all vile and tricky after all,” said Cheri.

Hilda shrugged her shoulder as she made an “It can’t be helped face.” Even though Hilda was the eldest of the three sisters and was more experienced in combat, they began their lives as an adventurer around the same time. So they were all counted as an amateur when it came to completing an adventurer guild’s quest.

Still, in this party, Hilda who was most experienced in combat and had the strongest aura of an adult was chosen as the leader. The other girls would never put the blame onto her even though they had complained all this time around.

“It can’t be helped. We are just a rookie in the adventurer guild so we all lack the secrets and tricks to complete the quests. Maybe we should join up with a more experienced adventurer, but you two don’t want that right?,” She asked the other girls while making a troubled face.

“Of course!,” Cheri answered as she hit the table with her palm, slightly lifting the grape in the bowl, “The male adventurers were all self-centered. I always wanted to burn them with my magic whenever they bragged about their abilities.”

Mina nodded in confirmation, “That’s right. And they also look at us with a lewd face. All of them only care about our body and just want to flirt around us.”

“It’s because your useless lumps of fat lure them to us! So we should just cut them out and feed them to the hungry men!”

Cheri glared at Mina’s chest as she made a scary face while extending her hands toward Mina.

Seeing that, Mina knew in an instant for what Cheri meant by the lumps of fat as she hurriedly raised her arms to protect her breast.

“Noooo, you can’t cut them! They aren’t just lumps of fat! Big sis Hilda, please help me~!,” she begged Hilda while giving her a pitiful face.

“You two…,” Hilda sighed as she stopped Cheri from jumping at Mina, “Now stop playing around and listen to the quest detail.”

Both Cheri and Mina obediently listened to Hilda as they became more serious about the quest matters.

“So the quest this time?,” Cheri asked.

“It’s an investigation quest. A forest investigation!,” Hilda answered, unfolding the parchment in her hand to show the detail of the quest written inside.

““A forest investigation?,”” Cheri and Mina repeated the words at the same time.

“That’s right. We just need to go there, investigate the oddity inside, and come back to report. It’s an easy task right?”

“But traveling inside an unfamiliar forest is a little bit…”

“Don’t worry, in the quest, there will be the other two parties beside us. And I will tell you since you two heard this for the first time, but I had lived in a town nearby that forest when I was young, so the place that we are going to was something like a backyard for me.”

“Eh, I didn’t know that big sis had been around here before,” Cheri got surprised.

“That is because my family had moved to a city near royal capital when my mom remarried... Putting that aside, this is a suitable quest for us isn’t it?”

“Is that forest dangerous?,” Mina asked, looking worried.

But Hilda just casually shook her head, “There is nothing to fear. There are very few dangerous beasts in that forest. And besides…”

She made a broad smile that showed just how happy she was to speak the following words.

“That forest is protected and taken care of by someone,” Hilda said confidently.