Saturday next weekend huh. Eight more days until the attack. I wonder what kind of plan we'll go with.

Right now I'm sitting at my desk staring at the board, class isn't in session yet but I can't help but stare at the words on the board. You and your partner will be taking on a request at the adventurer's guild today.

I've thought about becoming an adventurer but that all changed last year. Why are they having us do something like this? Does this help fund the academy? It's probably something that the first years do for experience. They'll probably screen the quests that we can take.

"Everyone please take your seats!"

Miss Ein walks into the room.

"I assume that everyone has looked at the writing on the board." she pushes her glasses up. "Next week, something similar to this will happen." she looks around the room. "A party that is ranked B or higher will be here on the Monday to choose a pair from each class to undertake a mission."

Axel raises his hand.

"So does a random group come?"

"No. The group will be picked by the headmaster. In each first year class, two people will go. One will be chosen and their partner will tag along."

A chill runs down my back. If the headmaster's picking them he might tell them to take me. Not sure what good it'll do him but if it does happen, It'll be bad for me, that I'm sure of.

"Anyone else have any questions, no? Okay, before we go I'll teach you guys the [Analysis] spell if you don't already know it."

Miss Ein goes on to tell every single piece of information about the spell. Basically it's like appraising something, you get to see the effects and uses of an item. It can also be used to check the status of a person like if they're poisoned or not. I didn't learn it, my master never got around to it since my powers awakened so late. He would just use the skill himself or sometimes he gave me an item to use.

After her long explanation, the class follows her outside.

It's good to see that the city is always brimming with life. Even from here we can hear the noises of the people, since we're so far away they just look like a massive blob. I love the way the sun shines on the city, it gives it a new day feel. The air's begun to get chilly, Autumn's just around the corner.

The other first year classes have come out. I know that the Adventurer's Guild is huge but seeing all these students, I wonder if it could fit us all or even have enough quests.

I glance at blue hair, we lock eyes. She quickly turns her head. Hmmmm, I should talk to her about which quest us two magicians should take.

You know those buildings that look horrible from the outside and great on the inside or vise versa? Well, the guild isn't like those buildings. Standing a bit under 80 feet tall, with a large red dome, and solid wooden doors meant to let hundreds of people in at the same time, is the Adventurer's Guild. Needless to say, the outside look is amazing, same goes for the inside of it. Thick pillars support the structure of the building, hundreds of tables lay inside for adventurers to sit down and enjoy a meal on.

The quest boards are filled with sheets of paper, the quests on there range from the lowest F-rank missions to the grueling S-rank missions. My master says to get quests above S-rank, one has to be an S-rank adventurer for over a year and have completed at least five S-rank missions. The number of S-rank parties are somewhere in the high forties. The SS to SSS-ranks are only one to two parties. To rise in rank you have to have enough points and do at least one mission above your own rank.

To become an adventurer, you have to register, once you do they'll put an invisible mark on your palm and you'll get a card showing your current rank, name, party affiliation, and race. The mark on the palm is in there in case one would lose their card. Everyone starts out at F-rank. My master took me to another guild once and I got registered there. He'd send me to complete a few missions as a part of my training and whatever money I earned would go to him, that bastard.

Currently I'm an E-rank adventurer.

I sit down at one of the tables as the students all get registered, poor desk workers, at least they get paid for it. I can see the sparkles in some of the student's eyes. I guess even some richer people want to go on adventures.

"Rainen. Why aren't you getting in line?" Miss Ein asks.

"Oh, because I'm already registered."

"Hoh? What rank?"

"Just E-rank." I say.

Miss Ein nods and walks to where the other teachers are, at a table by the front doors.

"Everyone! Once you get registered and pick a quest, come here and we'll look it over!" Yells a teacher.

He has a sword around his waist and is wearing a fancy leather vest. He's one of the teachers that teach sword combat.

The students that come to learn the sword and magic are much fewer than the ones who come for magic only. Two out of the five classes are sword classes, they also have much less people per class.

I feel an intense stare boring into me. I keep my head locked onto the desks and slightly move my eyes to the right. Out of my peripheral vision, I notice a head facing me, it wouldn't have been so obvious if it were a simple human head. I swiftly turn my head, the one staring is the lizardman from before. Upon meeting my gaze he gets out of line and walks towards me.

"Hello, feeling better?" I say.

"So you do remember me. I'm feeling much better, thank you." he has his hand out. "I'm Malburk."

I take his hand. "I'm Rainen."

For a few minutes we talk the boredom of waiting away. During our conversation I notice that he doesn't seem to like humans that much, it's not on the level that he would insult them, but he would definitely prefer not to talk to one. His fight with the noble boy was probably both of their fault, not to say that what the noble boy did was justified.

When the line dies down, he bows his head a little and goes back into line. At least he seems like he's trying to get over his disdain of humans, I know that we're not the nicest of species.

Next to me I hear a chair move and a plop soon after. I turn my attention towards the person there, expecting blue hair.

"Heya."

The smiling girl slaps my back, it kinda stings.

"Hello there?" I say awkwardly.

Do I know her? She's got short dark brown hair and a slender body.

"I noticed that you ain't in line like the others. Why's that? Are you a loner?"

"No. I'm already registered."

"But you weren't registered today right?"

"Yeah."

"What rank are you?" she asks.

"E-rank." I respond.

"It's good to see young adventurers going to school" she laughs. "By the way, which class-"

I interrupt her, a thought runs through my mind.

"What rank are you?"

"Huh? Oh, ah, I'm part of an S-rank party. Pretty impressive huh." she sticks out her large chest with her head upturned.

Oh crap. Glad I stopped her. For an S-rank to show up in a city like this, she could be one of the parties that take two students with them. It's even more unlikely that she'd come and talk to a stranger like me. Could the headmaster be pushing her to talk to me? And is there even a reason to ask which class I'm in? Maybe the headmaster didn't tell them, should I lie? Would it even matter? It would be even weirder if I lied right? What reason would I have to do that?

I decide to stall my answer. "WOW! YOU'RE AND S-RANK ADVENTURER?!" I yell it out.

Some of the students in line turn to look at us, the ones who are already sitting down rush over. They were the ones with the twinkles in their eyes.

"Woah, hey guys..." her hands are out as if saying 'calm down.'

I'm able to sneak away from the table.

I go stand next to the board. The F-rank quests are simple things, like finding a lost pet or getting an item. Being an E-rank I could get a D-rank quest but I don't know if the teachers will let us do it. So I decide to look for an E-rank quest, most of the people next to me are picking the easy F-rank ones.

"Heya."

My first thought was, oh please no. But the voice was much more familiar, I turn around and see blue hair there.

"Hey, I was just looking at the board for a quest."

"Was that really an S-rank adventurer?" she asks.

Not her too.

"Yeah." I say. "Now, I was thinking of taking an E-rank mission."

"Shouldn't we take an F-rank one?"

"Well, I'm an E-rank so I think that the teachers will let us take an E-rank mission. Plus, most of the F-ranks are gone."

She looks at the board. None seem to catch her interest.

"Alright, which quest are we taking?" she asks while fingering her card.

"We'll take a basic E-rank one, goblin extermination."

We head to the teachers with the paper in hand.

"You want to take an E-rank mission?" Miss Ein says.

"Yes. I am an E-rank adventurer after all."

The teachers exchange glances, this can't be the first time a student has asked for an E-rank mission. Maybe I'm just the first who's an E-rank adventurer. The man from before speaks up.

"I'm not so sure about this Miss Ein. We've already told some other students that they couldn't do it, we can't just let another student accept the request."

"This is different, the others were F-ranks." Miss Ein interjects.

"But they're mages, goblins will get them into close combat, then they're useless."

All of the magic teacher's eyes twitch. Then blue hair speaks up.

"How about a vote?"

The teachers all look at each other again.

"Alright." Miss Ein says. "All in favor?"

Miss Ein and two other hands go up.

"Majority wins. Go ahead you two, but be back before lunch."

I nod and go to accept the quest at the desk. I hear a mumble from behind me.

"Dang magic teachers... so unfair."

After accepting the quest, we walked out of the guild and moved to the doors of the city.

"You there, Halt!"

An older looking guard walks up to us.

"Where are you two students going?" he asks.

"Right now we're on a quest," I hold up the paper in my hands. "it was already approved."

The guard looks skeptically at the paper for a minute and nods.

"Alright, open the gate!"

.

.

It's been ten minutes since we left the city, the place we're headed is the forest up ahead where goblin activity has been rising. The trees are all very tall and the area very large, this place must've been considered when they were building villages. The monster activity probably pushed them away though.

Blue hair hasn't really been talking to me, she's just looking at the paper which I handed over to her. It looks like she's reading all of it. Kill twenty goblins, it says. I've done this quest before, goblins reproduce very quickly so this quest is quite common. Their strength rating is 5, very weak, F-rank monsters. Of course that's for individual goblins, together they're much more powerful. By the way the number rating doesn't exactly have a limit, also, normal humans are about a 7 on the scale.

The strongest monster I've ever faced, that had a number, was a bear type monster at around the low 30s, so borderline E-rank. My master watched as I fought it. I won with ease, the hard part was getting a knife to pierce its skin.

"Have you ever fought goblins before?" she asks. She sounds nervous about fighting them.

"Yeah, they're weak. One fireball from you could wipe out the twenty we need to kill." I say reassuringly.

That seemed to make her less nervous, her shoulders have relaxed.

We walk right up to the first path leading into the forest. I take the first steps and have blue hair follow, I'm moving quietly so I can hear any movements from the surrounding bushes. Nothing at all.

"I don't think they've noticed us, lets go in deeper." I say.

"Okay."

Normally I'd be on guard but I have another person with me and the sun is out, not to mention that goblins are really weak. After going for another minute we reach a clearing in the forest, in the middle lays a ransacked wagon. On the ground next to it lay a three longswords, this makes my breath stop, blood is all over the wagon.

"Stay close." I say.

A sneakily move up to the wagon. Inside I can hear someone breathing. An ambush maybe? Just in case, I take two knives out and stand by the cloth covering the back. I nod at blue hair and she seems to understand, a waterball forms in her hands. With one quick movement I fling aside the cloth and point my knife at the thing inside.

"W-wait! I'm human!"

An armored man sits there with his arms our in a defensive position, actually only one arm is like that. His other arm looks to be only attached by skin, nasty. His other wounds are wrapped in rags. I lead the man out and have him sit down, I ask blue hair to perform healing magic. He strips off his chest armor and blue hair kneels behind him.

"What happened here?" blue hair asks.

"We were attacked..."

"Obviously." I say. "But by what? Some goblins?"

"Ye-Yeah."

I have a hard time believing his story, even regular guards are around 10-15 in strength. Mercenaries like this guy should be around 14-20s, four of them should've been able to protect the wagon.

"You were defeated by a band of goblins?" I question him.

"They weren't just regular goblins, they were the taller ones. You know, the hobgoblins."

I see. They average 12 in strength.

"How many?" blue hair asks.

"I-I think there were... twenty?"

I shake my head. This is a horrible mistake by the quest giver, this should be at least D-rank. It's possible that they put it up as an E-rank mission on purpose to lower the reward, bastards.

"What are you kids doing here?"

"We're here to exterminate some goblins, around twenty of them." I say.

The man's eyes widen and shakes his head.

"No goblins here, you guys should go back and tell the guild of this mistake."

"No, we can complete it."

The man looks at me in disbelief.

"You two... you guys should just go back, there's no way you can take on twenty by yourselves."

I chuckle, "Kukuku. That's why we have someone like you! We're both mages so we need a front liner, how about it?"

It seems like the man just noticed. He looks at our clothing.

"So you guys are from the academy?"

I nod.

"Alright... fine. I'll help you guys out, only because I haven't been paid yet. The old peddler and his daughter were taken, we'll have to go rescue them."

"Gotcha." *SMACK*

Blue hair hits his bare back with both hands.

"OW!" he tries to rub his back but can't reach. "Gosh, that hurt kid. lets go, they went this way." he started walking down another path after putting his armor back on.

.

.

.

.

We stopped when we reached a small camp, we hid in the bushes.

"This is the hobgoblin's camp" he said.

"How do you know? You could be mistaken." blue hair responded.

"Well, I was just guessing, we'll wait a bit."

After a few more minutes we saw our first hobgoblin.

"Look! It's going into the cave." he says.

My stomach drops, from here I can almost see the face of the hobgoblin.

"They took the peddler and his daughter right?" I ask.

"Yeah."

"How old is she? Is she pretty?"

When I say that I see the color drain from blue hair's face.

"Hmmm? Yeah, she's kinda pretty, she should be a little older than you two."

He still hasn't understood. The girl has probably already had to endure it multiple times already.

I stand up.

"What are you doing kid?" he has a confused look.

"We're going to attack them." I stare at him. "NOW."

I see sweat drop from his forehead, he stands.

"Go take the vanguard, we'll cover you."

He unsteadily nods, and charges into the camp.

I know that I said that but I took out two knives and charged with him. Blue hair follows closely behind and starts flinging spells at the ones who first notice us.

Under her barrage, three have already fallen, two are in crisps and one has a gaping hole in his chest where a waterball hit him.

The slow witted mercenary is skillfully wielding his sword, the first hobgoblin who went to meet him, was cut down with one stroke and the others who went are being held off by his parries. For such a big man, he has some quick movements.

I've already cut down two, the knife easily slit their throats. Four rush at me, I throw both my knives and two reach at their necks and fall. I charge one of my fists with mana and crush one's head easily, they can't use the protect spell, even people who can't use magic can use that single spell to some degree.

He swings his club, I side step it and launch two quick strikes at his chest. He raises the club and swings it horizontally. I duck, pull out a knife, and drive it into his stomach.

"Guh!"

I twist the knife then pull it out, he falls to the ground lifelessly.

The numbers of the hobgoblins have dropped drastically, in the time that I was fighting those four, blue hair had taken out another six and the mercenary had killed another four. No more come out to meet us.

"You seem to be holding up much better than when you were attacked last time." I say.

"Yeah, we were ambushed last time."

Blue hair runs up to us.

"A few of them hid inside the cave."

"Let's go kids." he beckons us as he runs.

The hobgoblins inside are using the girl and the old man as hostages. The girl's clothes are all ripped, her face is streaked with tears, her long chestnut hair is in shambles, entire globs of it are on the floor. The old man doesn't look much better.

"Kukukukuku. Throw down your weapons or we'll kill'em!"

It's the hobgoblin from before. He's muffling the cries of the girl with his hand and holds a knife to her neck, her eyes are pleading for us to save her. Only two of them are there, each has a hostage.

"Don't worry, we'll save you!" the mercenary raises his sword.

The hobgoblin holding the father drives the knife into his shoulder.

"HMMFFFFFFH"

The old man lets out a muffled scream.

"Drop your sword." I say.

"Bu-"

"DROP. IT."

His grip loosens and the sword falls to the ground with a clang, I drop both my knives, and blue hair lets her wand fall.

"Hehehe, we'll have some fun making more of us with that new girl over there." his eyes start violating blue hair.

She uses her hands to cover her fully clothed body.

Nobody says that to my partner. I'm just waiting for one of them to come pick up the weapons.

Sure enough, the one holding the old man flings him to the ground and moves to collect the weapons.

I activate the bracer and a knife falls into my hand, the next moment I appear behind the one holding the girl.

"GUK!"

With my left hand I push the knife through his heart and with my right hand I make sure that the knife never connects with the girl's neck.

"KILL THE OTHER ONE!" I yell.

The mercenary dives for the sword, the hobgoblin does the same. Blue hair can't fire of a spell, she doesn't have a clear shot. They're rolling on the floor struggling for the sword. The mercenary mounts him, and throws punches with his free hand while the hobgoblin tries to bite his hand.

I push away the dead body of the hobgoblin and catch the girl who collapses to the floor.

"[Stone Pillar]" Blue hair puts both her hands on the ground.

Upon hearing the noise the mercenary gives up the fight and rolls out of the way. A chunk of rock rises up and slams the hobgoblin against the top of the cave.

"UGH!"

The pillar crumbles and the man quickly reaches for his sword and ends the injured monster.

"Phew!" he falls on his butt and wipes the sweat on his forehead. "Heal the old man."

I nod and blue hair rushes over to heal him.

I take off my school uniform and put it around the girl, I'm left with cotton pants, and a black shirt.

"Are you okay? Do you need healing?" I ask.

She shakes her head and the tears start falling again, she buries her face into my chest and we stay like that for a while.

The old man had passed out from the loss of blood. The mercenary, Jones, carried the man on his back and I carried the weakened girl on mine. At first the girl's arms were wrapped around my neck really tightly but they went limp as she fell asleep. Blue hair smiled happily at the outcome, Jones looked at me jealously. Not my fault man, she picked me!

The time it took to get back to the city was slightly longer than I thought it would take, Jones had to frequently take breaks because of the amount of baggage he had to carry. By the time we got back it was around 11:14. It took us a little over two hours to complete our mission.

"Ah, these two were reported missing by their family a few days ago." The guard from before let us in after sending another guard to report to the family.

The girl wakes up so I put her down, she takes off the uniform and one of her family members puts a cloak over her.

"Thanks for saving us," she goes into a deep bow. "brave adventurers."

She takes one step, kisses me on the cheek and quickly scurries away back to her family.

"Heh, lucky kid. Well, see you two kids later, nice meetin ya."

"You too."

We shake hands and wave goodbye.

Suddenly water hits my cheek, I turn around to see blue hair with a water ball floating above her hands.

"Oh, my bad. I was thirsty." she downs the water. "Lets go, we gotta get back soon." she turns on her heel goes to the guild.

I have to run to catch up with her.