On the next morning I was woken up by Kylie. If she didn’t come to wake me up they would probably have gone without me. Together, we went to the castle gate where Rowen and 2 other people were waiting. One huge beastmen. He had brown fur and looked a lot like a bear. The second one was a female fox. It was possible to see that both of them were no pushovers. When the old man saw us he winked us to him. We went over to them and he introduced everyone.

He started with us because we were the hottest topic in the adventurer guild at the moment.

“As you already heard, this here is the famous A rank adventurer Darkness with his companion Kylie. As far as I know he has a huge arsenal of [Darkness] magic and she can use the beastmen trait magic [Zero] magic. If you want to know more ask them yourself. In your team, Darkness will play the role of the Mage and Kylie will be the support type.”(Rowen)

When he finished with our introduction he made a short pause to catch his breath and continued.

“Those 2 are both B rank adventurers but they are real experts.”(Rowen)

Before he could continue the bear man stepped forward and introduced himself.

“It is a great honour to meet the A rank adventurer Darkness. My name is Matt Griz, I am a bear beastman and I am 41 years old. My main weapon is the heavy sword and I will act as the forward of our team. As you probably saw already, my weakness is that I concentrate too much on strength but lack a lot in speed and technique. I have been an adventurer for almost 20 years now and have been through a lot. I will do my best to keep the damage to only me.”(Matt)

So he said. He looked and acted like a fellow everyone would get along with. I was relieved to have someone like that. We all looked at the woman but she was silent till Rowen asked her to introduce herself too.

“Name is Rose Lana, profession is B rank adventurer. I am a mage and specialize in fire magic.”(Rose)

It was a really short introduction but if I had to introduce myself I would have done the same. I would never give someone else my personal information so easily. Actually no one except Kylie knew anything about me so it was fine.

The obstacle for me on this journey was created. I would have to constantly stay in [black form] because of our 2 new companions. At least I could take it as some kind of training. With our teammates and our shipment passes we began to travel to the east coast of the beastmen continent.

We used the adventurer style to travel. We got us a nice and easy quest to protect and escort a merchant to a town near the port. Kylie was a lively person and got along with Matt. They talked a lot. Meanwhile I found out that the last member of our team had a similar character to me, probably.

Rose almost never said a word. She just sat quietly in the back of the wagon. I at least wanted to try to blend in sometimes when they would talk about fighting, magic or something interesting. After some time I gave up and walked silently behind the vehicle. I am just don’t have a talkative personality but I didn’t need it as long as Kylie would take over it for me.

When we arrived at the port 4 days later all I learned was some of Matt’s adventurer stories as well as his fighting style. He was the kind of person who was reliable. Not as a fighter but as a teammate, because he would protect his companions even with his life. Or at least that was what he told us. Rose as always kept her talking to a minimum.

We parted with the merchant after we got paid and went to the harbour. The docks as well as the ships were huge and looked really awesome, but as we asked which our ship was we were guided to a remote landing stage with one ship waiting. The ship was obviously ours. I was a little bit disappointed because it didn’t look as cool as the ones we saw before but then again, our mission was really dangerous and the less people knew about it the better.

“So that is our ship? I would prefer the ones we saw before.”(Kylie)

Kylie said dissatisfied.

“Not something to worry.”(Rose)

A rare person gave her statement. Everyone boarded the ship and I was the last person. When I set food on the plank which connected the land and the ship I could feel the movements of the waves. My legs went numb and I stopped moving. A shiver ran down my spine as I remembered my first time on the sea. I had to calm myself down.

“It’s ok. This time it is not me who has to manoeuvre the ship and the destination is only one day afar. I will survive this.”(Me)

I whispered to myself. In the end it took me 5 minutes to walk up the plank which everyone else only needed a few seconds for. When I arrived at the deck everyone looked at me.

“Sorry, I just had a really bad experience with ships and the sea.”(Me)

I said and smiled embarrassed. Everyone’s tension was gone with that and the crew members returned to their posts, Kylie and Matt went back to talking and Rose, yeah even Rose was stupefied by my movement speed, sat down in a corner of the ship.

“I would say the ship is big enough to let a crew of 15 people sleep in it. What’s your guess?”(Kylie)

“I’ll go with 20.”(Me)

The actual number was 30 and we got to know the reason for it soon. There were no beds, but Hammocks to sleep in. They were really uncomfortable and you would feel every wave. The next problem was that the whole crew were men, or better beastmen. They needed only little space and in the first night Kylie and I got to know that they were loud, really loud. They snored like hell and I could barely get any sleep. Meditation was also impossible. It annoyed me so much but they had to safely bring me to a land so I stayed quiet.

When I woke up in the morning with only having slept 1 hour, I went up to the surface of the ship and I think I saw the first spirit or ghost in my life. No sorry, my fault it was only a half dead Kylie who probably tried to get some fresh air and fell asleep on deck. I could understand her so I searched around for something to cover her and found a blanket.

The sun had just risen and it was really early and cold. I could see the helmsmen in the back of the ship. When I turned and faced the front, there was land in sight. It was far away but as I had really good eyes I could already see it. If I had to take a guess, with our speed we would reach the coast in a few hours. The weather was nice, no clouds and the waters were silent with no waves as far and wide as the eyes could see.

As I predicted we arrived after 3 hours and dropped the anchor near the coast. At first the crew wanted to ready a boat.

“Guys its ok you don’t have too. I can use wind magic and transport us to the coast from here. Thanks for everything you have done for us.”(Me)

The distance was only 30 to 40 meters. Everyone looked at me.

“I expected nothing less from an A rank adventurer.”(Matt)

“Interesting.”(Rose)

With that I activated my wind magic and flew us 4 to the coast. To pretend to be bad at wind magic, I dropped us 3 meters away and everyone landed hard in the water. To defend myself I added a sentence as well as a smile.

“Oops, guess I am not good with wind magic. I should stick to the element of Darkness.”(Me)

All 3 of them had a creepy expression and looked like they wanted to kill me. The most extreme was the one from Kylie as she knew that I only pretended and didn’t warn her.

Step 1 of operation was over with this. We successfully arrived at the recently ascended island. Now our next mission was to either get our hands on some useful information, perhaps even some treasures or to search for enemies and beat the crap out of them.