After Victor arrived at the town's guild he started to look at the posters. Of the, roughly, twenty-five a little over half of them were black and, except for two orange posters, the rest were marked red.

Looking over them, he wished that one of the kids who would read for some money was there or that he had committed more time to figuring out the world's written word. He was unsure how it would work though since he wasn't sure if he was now speaking their tongue or it was some sort of translation planted into his mind.

A fair amount of time passed before the first worker of the day went behind the counter. As Victor made his way to the counter, he felt a tap on his shoulder causing him to pause turn, looking behind him. Three of the four other people who had been at the counters looking at the jobs were behind him.

"You don't look familiar. Passing through or thinking of moving in?"

The one who spoke was a man with a little bit of bulk to him and a portion of his right ear missing.

To the man's side was a slightly short woman with shorter hair that held just enough length to bob as she walked.

Beside her was a thin man who looked like he was, at least part, elf. He had dark flowing robes over his body and seemed to be shorter than the muscular man, but taller than the woman.

"I haven't really decided yet?" Victor said, uncertain of his own words.

"I just got here and well I was about to ask for the counter woman to tell me what jobs I might want to do. Why do you ask?"

The woman spoke up with a slight smile, "Well an orange request came in and we were thinking of having someone join us. Mostly because we want a fourth for this sort of thing."

Victor looked at the small group. He felt that these people were at least nicer than the group who approached him at the first guild, based on the way they spoke, but he still wasn't sure.

"Why me? Why come up to me when you said you had no clue who I was?" He said almost accusingly.

With a shrug, the first man who spoke continued, "No specific reason I guess. You got a sword so you're willing to fight if you need to and it could help cut the hide if the knives break. Never hurts to have a backup. That and you seem alone so we wouldn't have you trying to get others to join us when we don't need a big group."

"I'm not very good with it," Victor admitted as he put his hand on the sword.

"You'll get there with practice. You can get some practice on what we don't plan on taking back with us."

The elf spoke up for the first time since the conversation started.

"What rank are you? It's technically an orange mission, mostly because it's hard to carve the hide properly unless you have enough strength or specialized magic, brute force in our case. We just need someone to act as a lookout while we work."

"I'm not especially strong either and I don't have any magic. I failed my test so bad they wouldn't even pretend to let me learn magic." Victor bluntly replied.

"We don't need you to fight we need someone to watch out the whole time. Keep his ears and eyes open in every direction while the rest of us work."

The elf was speaking at a steady pace that held a friendly tone to it, "We just want to be able to work without worrying about looking behind us every moment. It's not an especially dangerous area, but it only takes a moment of surprise for something to happen."

Looking between the group of them, Victor approached the only other person in the guild, who wasn't working, "Excuse me, I'm new to Green Rebirth and don't know the people who work in this area. Can you think of any reason, fact or rumor, that I shouldn't trust this trio as a group for a job request?"

The woman stopped from looking between a pair of red ranked posters and turned and looked at the group, along with Victor.

"They all snore, Sanri gets sidetracked from things to easily if she sees a beast she thinks she could train even if it's never been done, and Cador well he's just a loudmouth who won't stop talking. I don't think they screw anyone over, but they are an annoying group."

The woman, apparently named Sanri let out a fake, but audible gasp, "You speak so bluntly you break my bones. If we only try to train the beasts that we have had success on in the past, how will we learn to train new ones? I almost managed to get a zurndat to listen to me."

"Yeah," the other woman said, "assuming you wanted it to try and rip off Cadors ear," She said turning to Victor, "I wouldn't team up with them, but I have a hard time dealing with annoying people."

Leaving the group to argue behind him, Victor went to speak with the guild representative standing behind the counter. He asked if there were any bad marks on the trio's record and was told that they tended to be a close group that had managed most of their work, but weren't hesitant about getting, what some people called, 'filler' group members for a request if they thought it would make it easier.

Waiting for the verbal jabs to stop, Victor eventually approached the elf.

"Tell me what the request is, what I have to do, and what my reward will be. If I think you guys are going to try something I won't hesitate to leave you though."

A slight bit of flourish was used as the elf spoke, his hands almost amplifying the communication.

"That would be wonderful sir. My name is Evezi from the Blood Dripping Forest originally. I am a red rank just like Sanri and the large member, Cador, is as of twenty-four days ago a rank orange. It's thanks to him we can even take this mission."

"Now let's see, you said you wanted to know the request. We are going to one of the dragon graveyards to harvest the hides and, if we can, get the mana cores. You'll just look around and tell us if you see anything, we will fight. You can join if you like, but we can manage. Since our reward is based on the results we can't promise a set amount."

"Well," Victor interrupted, "What sort of hides and can you at least give me a minimum amount of money for the mission?

"Your cut depends on what color rank you are." The elf continued, "Could you show me your crystal for a moment?

Taking out the guild crystal, Victor showed it to the elf to show what his rank was.

"I see you're still black. This could get you close to red depending on how well we do." Evezi said.

"That means you will get half as much as me. The way we do it is the lowest rank gets the smallest reward. The next step up doubles that and the one above that doubles the previous one."

"As far as your minimum payment, if you are worried that something will make it so we get nothing to sell I'm sure we can get you at least three small silver so long as you do the job."

Doing some quick math, Victor figured out the numbers.

"So I get one ninth of the total reward. What should I expect to get and can I get a bonus if I do something especially good?"

The elf smiled a bit, "Tell you what, it is Cadors call in the end, but if you end up warning us of a real concern we can probably give you something of a bonus. Call it an incentive to do your job."

"Based on previous jobs I would assume if nothing goes wrong, at least five small silver."

Eventually, the spat between the two women finished and the trio were all around Victor as he talked. He didn't speak of his spear or card just in case he had to spring it on them for something. The bit of practice with the spear and sword had given him a couple small ideas on how to use his card to fight, even though it was only a technique that he figured out because his weapon got stuck in the tree.

It wasn't very long into the day before the group and Victor had packed up a cart and were ready to go. The ride was set for just about a day as they would camp out away from the dragon's graveyard and continue to it in the morning, but they would be back to Green Rebirth late the next day, possibly after the sunset depending on how much they were able to harvest.

The ride was pretty uneventful as Victor learned some about the trio and shared as little as he could in return to keep the conversation flowing

Cador had failed all three aspects of the magic test and tended to joke that while the people were learning how to do things like cover their hand in fire so they could punch better, he would just punch hard enough so they never got the chance.

Sanri seemed to have a bit of a smart mouth that reminded Victor of one of his cousins, making him miss home a bit as a result. She was the only one of the group that had passed the magic scores, although apparently, she had to train to get one score high enough.

Evezi was apparently only part elf, his thin frame and slightly pointed ears reflected this. His home was far away and he wanted to see what there was outside of his home. His home was called the Blood Dripping Forest because the sap of the trees was thick and red, letting it look like blood slowly dripping down the tree. Victor was a little surprised that the elf had a small collection of metal fragments from weapons he had that broke while he would fight with them as a reminder that any weapon can fail you.

The trio had apparently been working with each other for about half a year if Victor understood them right. Sharing their stories put a smile upon their faces. Especially when they told some of the odd happenings they happened across.

Victor nodded his head and leaned in to try and show his interest, despite the fact he wasn't always interested. He couldn't help but look around to see if anything was coming their way.

By the time night came they had set up camp, Evezi had started to look around the general area to set up a minor warning system, using a hint of magic. It seemed that the dragon graveyard was in a cave where many dragons would go to die when their age became too much for them, but this one was only from a clan of green dragons.

When everything was ready for the night, the campfire lightly crackled and caused their tents to cast shadows, Victor decided to ask something that had been on his mind for a while.

"So dragons..... do you think there will be one of their treasure hoards at the graveyard?"

Cador laughed and smirked a little bit at the question.

"Ah, you think that they all hoard treasure? Yes, they hoard stuff, but it's usually junk. My dad had to deal with a dragon once when he was in the war and it had a hoard of rope. That beast would go out to the sea and attack the boats to try and get more rope for its collection."

Taking out a piece of rope he snapped it audibly by pulling it. "I get that a hoard of gemstones or gold coins makes for a good story, but very few end up collecting them. I did hear one was found that would only collect broadswords and one that would do anything it could to have horses as its hoard. They are an odd species honestly. Dangerous, but odd."

The rest of the night went by smoothly. Cador kept watch for a little bit in the beginning, while Evezi kept his eyes closed so he could rest. The elven member took over during the middle shift having the best vision for the darkest part of the night, and Sanri was the last watch letting Victor sleep as he liked, although he woke up and helped Sanri during the last half of her shift.

Letting her continue with her shift as the sun began to rise, Victor decides to start cooking breakfast. Looking to see what all they had he starts making a hot meat and cheese sandwich. Cooking some meat he used a knife to cut the bread into slices and lets some cheese melt onto the heated meat.

Once everyone was up, he handed each of them one, "I would rather do this with a fried egg, but a breakfast sandwich works well even if it doesn't have any eggs."

Looking at the meal provided to them, the trio looked at it, uncertain of how to proceed. Ezevi began to pull the slices of bread apart to look into what it was before taking the first smaller bite.

"I figured this would be easier to eat than having it all separated," Victor said confidently.

"The bread will soak up some of the grease and well you get all of the flavors in one bite. Have you all never had a sandwich before?"

The general consensus was that none of the trio had heard of a sandwich before today, which reminded Victor that he had never seen one in town or on any menu since he had gotten to this world. He was a bit surprised since bread bowls were something he had seen before.

After the group finished their meal they packed up their campsite and placed it within their cart. Starting on their way to the last length of their trip, slowly coming upon a cave extending deep into the side the stone, slowly expanding in size as it did so.

"So how do these grave places work?" Victor asked.

Evezi was the first to speak up as they started inside, walking past some claw marks along the walls.

"For some reason, some color dragons know when they are about to die and want to go to caves. We don't know why, but this one seems to be where this one family of green dragons come to die. They don't have the best scales, but its the least risk so it's a fair trade off."

Setting up a couple of lanterns around the cave, the group found the two dragon bodies shortly after they entered.

"Those..... are smaller than I thought they would be."

Sanri and Evezi both laughed a little bit, although only Sanri spoke up to him as the other two got their tools ready.

"I see you lived a sheltered life. Only a few dragons get to big. The green ones tend to grow as big as..... two griffons I think. Of course, some can be bigger if they get a strong mana core, but that's beside the point. Watch the entrance and tell us if anyone or anything is coming in."

Smacking him on the ass, Sanri went to where the other two members of the trio had set up the two dragon corpses, sharpening their knives before they started to cut into its underbelly.

Time passed by slowly and, mostly, uneventfully. One of the two dragons had a mana core within it, slightly larger than a fist, but beyond that, it was a long boring job.

When the dragons were finished being skinned, the hides were placed into stacks of different sizes. Different parts of their body offered different sizes of hide and, usually, different density of scales.

Victor heard a few stories and even a couple of songs that the trio sang as they worked. A pacing of words that didn't seem to match the melody that was being sung, while at the exact same time it somehow fits perfectly.

He even found himself singing along with them during one of the songs, while he and the trio were bringing everything out towards the cart.

"The blackness of the sky shines through, the flames as they spread. Another day another death, of shimmering eyes betrayed."

"And while they march and scream and fight another wave approaches. When the flame cleared away its birth began to decay and the king's crown began to shine."

"Days went by and night returned, the moon filling up the sky, but nothing happened as the crown began to cry. Those from his past lost to the dark and light no longer shining. It's never the crown's life to be with just one as easily as the sun sets."

Victor asked what the song was about, but apparently, there were different stories about its origin. A story about a prince who wasn't right for the job of the king. One about how a king must care for his subjects or be killed and replaced. Another about removing the filth you see while keeping the pristine.

"So," Victor started as he put a bundle in the cart, "We camping out here or going somewhere else first? And is this a fair amount or not really?"

"We will travel a fair distance in case a dragon comes to die," Cador bellowed, "As for the scales depends on the appraisal. We didn't get as much as I hoped, but I think the quality is a bit better."

Setting up the cart and going a fair distance away, the group set up camp again not too far from where they had been the night before.

Victor stepped away from the group, saying he had to pee, while they prepared dinner.

Feeling a bit anxious to practice like he had before joining the group. He took out his card and decided to go find a tree to work with, before returning to the group.

Victor knew that his combat skills were lacking, but as he swung his blade and stabbed his spear, swapping between the two and using his card as best as he could he managed a few times to do something he thought would catch an enemy by surprise. A thrust someone wouldn't see and not having a worry if his weapon got stuck.

Wanting to keep at it a little more, Victor put his spear away and started to head back to the camp. He wasn't sure how long it would take before someone came looking for him, but the possibility that his training would draw something's attention was foremost in his mind as he headed to camp.

Once he got back he saw four shadowy figures around the campfire, instead of three, causing him to pause and look to see who it might be while holding his breath.