Soil, stone, and soot flew up into the air as a man cried out. His body disintegrated as magic-imbued sound waves sank through his armor and violently tore the man apart from the inside out. More explosions followed as the rest of the three teams were targeted by the seventy-foot tall, three-headed, six-shouldered, twelve-armed King Mountain-Bard. It stomped around while wielding a fiddle, an accordion, and a flute to deadly effect. Tearing apart the surrounding mountains as it did so.

The King Mountain-Bard was a kind of mutated nature spirit that had been generated by the wilderness after decades of no one coming out here. Mountain-Bards were normally small, harmless creatures, with an annoying tendency of drawing out enemies with their music, and casting debuffs. When found on their own, the creatures were easily dispatched by even non-elites.

The King Mountain-Bard on the other hand, was an entirely different kettle of fish. The massive, eccentrically dressed, goat-man, could use destructive sound magic, and music-based curses to extremely deadly effect, and had grown to a scale where it could easily threaten an entire city, if not an entire region. Which was why the Adventurer’s Guild had issued the emergency termination mission.

This particular job was already hard enough, but the difficulty was raised even further by the fact that the guild had triple booked the task. Assigning three teams of ten high-level adventurers, and hunters, to deal with the creature. Normally, sending more people to make sure that a city annihilating horror was properly wiped out before it could reach the civilized part of the region would be good thinking. Alas, the guild’s officials had forgotten to pay heed to the issues of politics and personality.

Thus Sawyer found herself in the terrible position of having to dodge bullets and blades from some of her vicious teammates, along with the falling rocks, exploded trees, and lethal music loosed by the King Mountain-Bard. Two out of the three teams that the guild had sent to deal with the monster were led by a pair of arrogant pricks, who thoroughly hated one another. Those two teams were also strong enough to have some grounds in indulging the egotistical belief that their team alone could deal with the King Mountain-Bard on their own.

Accidents happened all the time when it came to hunter and adventurer work, and they were scarcely investigated. And unless a contrary arrangement was made beforehand, or such terms were pre-set by the guild, the reward for a job would increase the fewer survivors there were, since generally dead guildsmen couldn’t collect on the reward.

Thus, heedless of the fact that attacking others would likely weaken the three teams to the point where no one would be able to get the job done, the two antagonistic teams attempted to eliminate one another to settle their old grudge. Not-so-subtly targeting Sawyer’s team of uninvolved bystanders, for the sake of eliminating witnesses.

Fortunately, for Sawyer, she came prepared for dealing with bigger, tougher, foes. She’d recently gotten some augments that boosted her physical defense and resilience a 1000-fold. She’d also recently purchased a cloudburst cannon that fired electricity and refined kinetic-force at such an amplitude that one could easily knock strong pseudo-dragons, and weaker true-dragons out of the air with one shot. Thus when she saw an opening, she took it, and blew a hole through the chest of the King Mountain-Bard.

Suddenly the fighting stopped, Sawyer saw to her dismay and her distaste that the group of 30 had been reduced to less than a third of their number. There were only seven people still alive not including herself, and some of the survivors looked like they wouldn’t be long for this side of the mortal-veil, based on the grievousness of their injuries.

“Enough!” bellowed the huntress. Her thunderous voice, and towering aura, poured free from her petite figure and oppressed the entire mountain.

“.....”

“.....”

No one seemed to have anything to say. So Sawyer got to the task of trying to help the few survivors amongst her team get back onto their feet. Quickly loading the injured, and the more intact bodies of the fallen, into the trucks their teams had been lent and peeling off, before the idiots, she’d left behind, realized that they should probably do "something", because Sawyer almost certainly would be reporting their malfeasance to the guild.

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A little later, an exhausted Sawyer stepped through a doorway that appeared in the empty road. This door was one of the many benefits of being a member of a certain shop’s loyalty-program. Instead of finding herself directly inside the shop, she found herself in a spacious apartment suite.

That apartment was hers. It was Sawyer's first permanent home, in who knows how long. Apparently, loyalty-program members were able to purchase real estate, and various other forms of rest and respite, from the Holst store. Sawyer had purchased one of the smaller suites that the shop had available, yet there were still ten luxurious rooms in the apartment. Each elegantly furnished, and perfectly clean, each time she returned to them. Maintenance and protection had come included with the Sawyers purchase.

Now Sawyer stumbled through the suite, kicking off her boots, shimmying out of her pants, tugging off her top, and quickly getting to a state of undress because she desperately needed a long hot shower. By the time she left the shower, Sawyer was practically asleep on her feet. Barely managing to make it to her bedroom, before she keeled over. Collapsing onto the bed.

*************************************************************************************************************

A little later, after another shower, Sawyer decided to go get breakfast. The door to the apartment "could" lead to the outside world, but it would lead to the shop by default. Sawyer chose that latter option now, because travelling as much as she had, Sawyer had learned that there were few better places to get a decent breakfast than inside the Holst shop’s in-house cafe and restaurant.

“Hey!” said Josephine. Who happened to be the one manning the cafe’s counter that morning.

“Um…Hi…” said the shy red-head that Sawyer occasionally saw in the shop, Brandy.

“Morning, ladies…” yawned Sawyer.

“Morning! What can I get for you?!” said Josephine. Sounding so disgustingly like a morning person that it put a small smile on Sawyer’s face.

“Nhn…Some coffee…and I don’t know…What would you suggest for breakfast?” said Sawyer. Smiling. Hands in her pockets because she never really knew what to do with them, when she wasn’t holding something or fighting.

“Ooh, uh, we got a fresh shipment of snow-devil meat that we’ve cooked and cured into ham!” said Josephine.

“Hm…Tempting but I’m not sure how I feel about eating hominids,” said Sawyer. Finding herself slightly curious, but also a little repulsed as she recalled how human-like the snow-devil’s she’d fought had been.

“Fair enough. How about thunder-beast sausage with some cloud-swallower eggs?” said Josephine.

“Sounds good. I guess I’ll have some of that. Plus the coffee, please,” said Sawyer.

“Excellent, we’ll get that right to you,” said Jo.

Less than five minutes later, some of the store’s eerily quiet, mannequin-like, pawns appeared with a tray of sausage, eggs, and freshly brewed, freshly roasted, coffee, with assorted creamers, sugar, artificial sugar substitutes, and napkins, on the side.

“Thank you,” said Sawyer.

Sawyer ate. Cutting a slice of sausage and dabbing into one of the small swirls of sauce that was plated with the sausage and eggs. The savory-sweet, almost minty, taste of the meat made her taste buds dance. As she ate, Sawyer considered the situation with those two ass-hat guild-captains. She sighed. She was pretty sure at least one of them was nobility, or half-nobility, or something of the type. Thus most likely at least one of those jerks was probably going to get off with a slap on the wrist, which meant, she, Sawyer, had another enemy at large.

Sawyer didn’t regret reporting the two man-children. They’d acted not just recklessness, but with malice, and their sheer disregard for the lives of their fellow hunters was enough that Sawyer almost regretted not killing them herself. That being said, it probably wouldn’t be a good idea for Sawyer to be out and about in the near future.

This thought led to other thoughts, and those thoughts led Sawyer back to a single thought she’d had in her head for quite some time. There was no need to pay for the food immediately, because having a charge account, or tab, with the shop was another benefit of being a loyalty-member of the Holst curio and convenience store.

Thus when she got up to go to the counter, it was with an entirely different purpose in mind.

“Um…” said Sawyer. Suddenly feeling a whole lot more nervous.

“Yes?” said Josephine. Smiling lightly as she looked up from the magazine she’d been reading.

“So, I might have brought this up before…or maybe not…but I’ve been wondering for a while, if you guys might be interested in hiring extra help…Or like, I already sell you my stuff when I’ve got something you might be interested in…But I was wondering, if you might, maybe, be…uh…interested in taking me in an uh…more direct sense…” said Sawyer. Heart pounding in her chest for some reason.

“Oh!…Funny you should ask…We actually have been considering hiring new help lately. Let’s just say our operations have gotten a bit broader in scope than they used to be,” said Josephine. Her bright expression made the young huntress feel a surge of anticipation and excitement that she hadn’t felt in quite some time.