“Wait here for me while I go to the Guild to hand over the quest item,” Andric said as he stood by the door.

“Sure,” Elise replied offhandedly, her attention drawn to the interiors of the room that she will be staying in for the night.

They had finally reached the town of Wivendale that morning after being forced to camp in the forest. As it was still early, the streets were relatively quiet with few people walking around. After passing through the gates of the town, Andric had brought her straight to an inn.

The inn was fairly small and sparsely decorated, but it was clean, and the innkeeper looked honest, so it should be a safe place. Andric had requested for two rooms, and the room they were currently in was the room that was going to be hers.

“What? I thought you were going to the Guild?” Elise asked when she realised that he was still standing behind her.

“Soon,” Andric gave a wry smile at the girl who was impatient to throw him out of the room. “But don’t go out of the inn until I return, alright?”

Does he really think that he is my guardian? Elise thought, slightly amused. This young man had been helping her a lot, so she should play along with him for a while.

Elise nodded meekly. “I won’t go out of the inn,” she promised.

“Ah, but if you don’t come back before lunch, I’m going to go out on my own,” she quickly added. She wanted to go out and take a proper look around the town. It was the first time she had went to the lower world after all. Despite everything, she still can’t help but feel excited about travelling to new places.

Andric froze upon hearing the contradictory statements from Elise. Exactly what kind of trouble has he brought upon himself?

*****

The Adventurer Guild was an independent organisation that has branches all around the continent. As the land was plagued with ferocious magical beasts, it was difficult for countries to send military to resolve all of such complaints. The Adventurer Guild comes in to solve this by allowing people to put up requests to resolve monster related problems. People who pick up such requests were called ‘Adventurers’, and the requests were called ‘Quests’. Quests have since expanded in category and did not only deal with the traditional monster subjugation. Adventurers could also pick up quests that need them to harvest certain items or serve as a bodyguard to protect people against monsters while traveling.

The Adventurer Guild in Wivendale was modestly sized. It was a three storey stone building that had its own armory and training field. While it was not as grand as the one in the capital of Perenia Kingdom, as the town is surrounded by forests, it had a good number of requests coming in and could be said to be one of the top five busiest branches in the Kingdom.

However, on that particular day, the business for the Guild was lull.

“Ah… Bored…”

The person who had muttered the complain was a young lady with layered shoulder length moss green hair. She was seated behind a counter with a stone table top and was currently twirling her pencil absent mindedly as she waited for Adventurers to arrive.

Her name is Fiore Teak, and she had been working in the Wivendale Guild since she was sixteen, so this marked her third year as a Guild Receptionist. She was proud of her job as a receptionist, and found it to be very fun and rewarding, so she did not have much complains.

However, she mood on that that was terrible.

Apart from herself, there were two other girls around the same age who were also working as receptionists. However, the girl who was supposed to be on duty that day took a sudden day off as her boyfriend managed to get hold of tickets to a show at the theatre. As it was extremely difficult to get tickets to the show, the girl had pleaded with their Guild Master to let her take the day off.

Their soft-hearted Guild Master was unable to win against the pleads of a cute girl so he granted her the leave. Even so, that was not the horrible part.

The reason why she was upset was because she had overheard him saying while laughing good naturedly, “Hahaha! It is not like Fiore will have a date, so she should be free to take over your shift!”

So what if she don’t have a boyfriend? Does it make her the go to person to cover for any shift? Fiore sulked. That stupid Guild Master! He’s still single as well anyway!

Just then, the bell placed at the entrance tingled as the door opened.

Tidying her feelings, Fiore sat upright and greeted cheerfully, “Welcome to the Wivendale Guild!”

As Fiore saw a man with russet coloured hair and eyes appear from behind the door, her professional smile turned into one of genuine happiness.

It was the good looking man in his early twenties that took up the quest for the Giant Spider Thread four days ago! She recognised him immediately as he had chose to complete the quest alone although that would usually take at least a party of four rank B Adventurers to complete.

She had cautioned him about it as he was an Adventurer that had just arrived in town. Even if he was an Rank B Adventurer on the verge of becoming B+, it would still be extremely difficult for him to complete it alone, and it would be unfortunate if he died or be forced to pay the penalty for giving up the quest halfway.

However, he just smiled and assured that he was confident to complete it on his own.

She had fretted about it for a couple of days, so she was really glad to see him still well and alive.

“Good morning! Did you manage to complete the Giant Spider Thread quest?” The green haired lady at the counter smiled amiably as Andric approached the reception.

Andric was slightly surprised that she was able to recognise him. If he did not remember wrongly, she was the same person who had assisted him when he came by to pick up the quest. He had a strong impression of her as her green hair was quite rare. What was her name again?

Smiling in return, he nodded, “Yes, I have completed the quest. Please help me to verify the contents.”

He put the rucksack containing the threads onto the countertop. The lady quickly took out the contents and put it in a separate basket. After going through the contents carefully, she nodded in satisfaction. “These all Giant Spider Threads.”

Following that, she put the basket on a weighing machine.

“The reward for this quest is 70 Merin for each kilogram of Giant Spider Thread obtained. You have 4.5kg here, so it comes up to 315 Merin.”

Looking at him curiously, she asked in a disbelieving tone, “Did you really complete the quest all by yourself?”

“Yes, I did,” he answered with a wry smile. He recalled that the lady had warned him repeatedly about completing the quest alone as it was usually for a party. It seems like she still had some doubts.

The lady looked at him strangely, but her professionalism soon took over, and requested. “Since you have completed the quest, then please let me enter it into your records.”

Andric took out his silver Adventurer pass and handed it over to her.

The Adventurer pass was the identification card for Adventurers. Adventurers who want to pick up quests need to register themselves with the Guild. The pass shows the individual's name, place of birth, age, gender, job class and rank. When it is scanned with a special magic device at the Guild, it will display on a special parchment the record of the list of quests that the Adventurer had picked up, completed or failed to complete.

“It seems like you have just fulfilled the criteria to go for the rank up examination!” She exclaimed after she had updated the status of the quest from ‘ongoing’ to ‘completed’.

“Will you be going to the capital to take the examination soon?”

In order to Rank up from a Rank F Adventurer to a Rank B, the individual just need to complete a number of quests. However, to Rank up from a B to B+, a special test will be conducted by the Adventurers of Rank A and above, and this test can be taken at the capital of each country.

Andric pondered for a moment before replying, “I have something on hand at the moment, but I do intend on completing the test as soon as possible.”

“Best of luck with it then!” The lady answered with a cheerful smile. “And here is your reward for completing the quest. Please ensure that the amount is correct.”

Andric counted the coins and nodded. “These are correct. Thank you very much for your help. By the way, are there any quests for subjugation of Goblins here? I killed some Goblins while I was on the way back from the quest at Spider Forest.”

As Goblins were a well known menace to humans, stealing food and kidnapping children or women, there were often quests that rewarded people for killing them at most Guilds.

“Hmm, I am sure there is. But can you let me take a look at the evidence that you have first?”

Andric took out another rucksack filled with the tips of Goblin ears that he had cut off from the corpses. A certain body part from monsters were usually requested to be used as identification parts for subjugation quests. For the case of Goblins, the requested item was usually the tip of the right ear.

Looking at the number of parts that pour out of the bag, her jaw dropped.

She looked at him with an astonished face and exclaimed, “You killed all of them alone?”

Andric could understand the reason why she was surprised. There were thirty High Goblin ears, fifteen Goblin ears and two Red Goblin ears in total after all. Red Goblins were a type of Goblins that evolved from High Goblins and were able to use fire magic. This made them trickier to deal with than normal Goblins. Although Goblins were weak individually, to face an army of close to fifty Goblins with evolved species, it would usually require a party of at least six Rank B Adventurers.

“I had some help,” he replied truthfully.

“Is that so?” The lady asked curiously.

As Elise could use magic, she had suggested to use her magic to help to clear the Goblins more quickly. After some experimentation, they found out that the best way was for Elise to use her magic to control the growth of plants and use the roots of trees to hinder the Goblins’ movement. So while she distracted some of the Goblins, he would finish off the others. Using this tactic, they successfully destroyed the Goblins that attacked them. Although there were some who ran away, Andric felt that it was inevitable as there were only the two of them.

Seeing that the he was not going to elaborate, the receptionist reluctantly changed the topic.

“The Guild is willing to pay 2 Merin for each Goblin, 10 Merin for each High Goblin and 20 Merin for each Red Goblin,” she said after flipping through a thick leather bound book that contained all the quests that were offered by the Guild. “So it will come up to a total of 370 Merin.”

“Thank you,” Andric thanked once again after he had received the money.

“You are welcome!” The lady at the counter replied cheerfully. “Is there anything else that I might be able to assist you with?”

Andric thought carefully before leaning slightly forward. “It is not regarding a quest, but here is one more thing I'll like to check about.”

“Please ask away!”

“Do you know any female Adventurer of around fifteen to sixteen years old with grey eyes and long light blond hair by the name of Elise?”

Author's note:

Hi everyone! How are you enjoying the story so far?

The start is quite slow as I am still building up the story, but please bear with me as it will get more exciting later!

In terms of how you can expect the story to be, if there is a shoujo tag I'll definitely put it there. I really enjoy reading Japanese light novels, like Common Sense of a Duke's Daughter, Dragon Life and I Reincarnated into an Otome Game as a Villainess With Only Destruction Flags, so you can expect it to have a similar tone and style. If you like the kind of stories I have mentioned above then, you might like this as well!

For release schedule, I plan to release a chapter every other day until chapter 14, after which I will take a short break as I need time to write more chapters.