They glanced over the various requests posted on the board, most of them were simple fetch and retrieve quests nothing he was particularly interested in, a escort request caught his eye. It asked bronze rank adventurers to accompany a merchants group to the capital city. They would leave in three weeks. That seemed like plenty of time to make it to bronze rank. He told his thoughts to Weira who agreed, she didn’t want to spend more than a month in a hamlet like this. It wasn’t that different from home after all.

In the end they decided to grab five requests that needed them to travel into the forest to the south, they needed to gather some boar skins. Regular boars, not even some strange monstrous version. Two other requests asked for various herbs, which Weira told him she know what they were like so he grabbed those as well. The fourth asked them to get some bark of one sort or the other. Only the last request was something more interesting, it was a herbalist apprentice asking for guards to go with her deeper into the forest for reagents. Since that request took them through the area they needed to travel for the others they hoped to do it all in a single run.

They went to the receptionist and showed them which requests they had accepted, she nodded and told them she would inform the herbalist that they would depart first thing in the morning. They nodded their thanks and made their way to the inn, they booked a room for nine coppers and went to sleep. Weira woke him up once morning arrived, they headed back to the adventurer’s guild and saw a young man with a bandolier, various pouches and a rather large backpack.

Jace walked up to him, “You’re the herbalist? I have to admit I expected a girl.”

The young man almost jumped out of his shoes, “WAH, owh lord of the forest save me, you scared me.”

Jace’s eyes widened, “My apologies, I did not mean to frighten you, me and tall and looming over there accepted the request for escorting you deeper into the village. I’m Jace and she’s Weira. A pleasure!”

The young man stroked his clothes and nodded, “I’m Norm, sorry about that I am truly nervous about venturing deep into the woods, I need a specific magical plant for my research and that requires me personally traveling deeper into the woods. I… don’t get out much.”

Jace nodded and patted Norm on the shoulder. “Well both myself and Weira here are plenty experienced in traveling through the woods. You got yourself nothing to worry about.”

Norm glanced at him and narrowed his eyes, “Yet you remain copper rank adventurers?”

Jace shrugged, “We only joined yesterday, we lived a good distance away from civilisation and simply got bored by life in a single village so we decided to travel. Weira here has been a member of the guard for six years was it?”

He glanced at Weira for confirmation, she nodded. “And I myself have been a soldier for six years and a guard for the past one. In all honesty we are probably overqualified for the job, but we need to do five requests before we can rank up. Yours was the only one even slightly interesting, we took another four jobs that we can most likely complete along the way.”

Norm relaxed, Jace noticed the tension in the young man’s shoulders lessen. “I’m glad to hear that, I would have gotten higher ranked escorts if I had the money, unfortunately the research I have been conducting have sucked up all of my finances.”

Jace grinned, “Such be research, they are a drain on resources till you finally complete it. I’m pretty sure Weira would love to hear about your research. She’s an egghead herself.”

Norm glanced at the tall muscular woman with clear doubt in his eyes. “She does not seem the type. What is an egghead however.”

“An educated person who loves research and over smart intelligent stuff like that.” Jace shrugged, “Weira can’t talk she’s mute, but I’m sure she’ll be happy to listen.”

Weira vigorously nodded her head and walked next to Norm and motioned for him to explain his research. Norm on the other hand, surprised by the genuine interest got excited and started waterfalling. The words formed a constant stream from his mouth, the cascade caused Jace a headache so he told the two he would be scouting ahead to check for trouble. The two waved him off and got absorbed into their one sided conversation.

Jace led the way through the forest, once more admiring the off-colour trees and the sheer size of the flora. Even the smaller trees were to large for him to wrap his hands around. He kept an eye out for movement as he lead the pair deeper. He tried to keep an ear out as well but the various sounds of the forest droned out anything he might’ve otherwise heard. He paused and held a hand up, Weira instantly stopped and put a hand on the herbalist’s shoulder. The man froze and glanced around in panic. He was about to ask a question when Weira motioned for him to be silent.

Jace unsheathed his sword and kept an eye on the forest, he tapped his sword on his shield. A metallic clang rang through the forest, a rustle came from his right. Jace lowered his center of gravity, a blur shot at him through the bushes, he caught it on his shield and swung it into a nearby tree. He dashed forward and thrust. The blade pierced flesh, the creature growled. Jace had already pulled his blade out and made another thrust aimed at the head, it pierced bone and the creature went silent.

He studied his now dead opponent and saw something similar to a wolf, its spin as higher and it’s legs to the side instead of underneath the torso, it had clawed feet more similar to a reptile than any canine. It looked to him like a mad scientist’s experiment in combining a wolf and a lizard. He shrugged his shoulder and cleaned his blade before he resheathed it.

Norm walked up to the specimen with wide eyes. “That’s a Kliccer, what’s one of those doing all the way down here, they live much deeper in the forest.”

Jace shrugged, “Two possible answers, One it strayed from its regular hunting spot and wandered all the way down here, two it was driven away from its usual area.”

Norm blanched, “Should we turn back? If something drove it away then we might be in trouble, what if its a dragon or something?!”

Jace smiled reassuringly, “It’s unlikely to be a dragon, we would have definitely noticed if one of those was near. The forest life is generally still acting as usual so it won’t be anything too powerful. Even if we were attacked by a dozen of the Kliccers we wouldn’t have much of an issue in fighting them off. Our job is to bring you safely to where you need to go and bring you back in one piece. We intend to do our job so just leave it to us!”

Norm took a deep breath to calm down, “Yes you did seem to have that in hand, the way you dispatched the beast with apparent ease was impressive. I was truly fortunate to have my request picked up by the two of you.”

Weira nodded and put a hand on his shoulder, “That’s her saying and you better know it, just so you know.” Jace smirked and turned back around. “Well lets keep moving, there’s bound to be more interesting stuff. We still need the boar hides and the bark!”

The rest of the herbs they needed had already been gathered by Weira along the way. Was the flower called maidenhood? Probably not, he must have remembered that wrong.

They continued forward, they eventually ran into the boars they needed which he killed and skinned, the bark was found by Norm who harvested it himself and gave it to them. A service for the fortunate he called it with a smile and a wink. Weira rolled her eyes but took the bark anyways. The jumpy herbalist fit in with the two of them, he was a nice enough fellow. Even if half of the time Jace had no idea what the man was talking about. Weira on the other hand was a fish in water, she took to his technical terms as if she was born hearing them. She even somehow managed to ask him questions, with that weird eyebrow raising trick she had.

He shook his head as another bush rustled, he didn’t even react. A thin blue needle flew past him and killed the third Kliccer they had come across so far. After her first time coming across one Weira had studied it and knew exactly where to hit it with a needle to quickly end its life. Thus the small group reached the clearing were they needed to be in good time. Jace paused just outside the clearing and stared ahead of him. About four hundred meters from him, leaning against a large tree was an ogre of sorts.

He turned around to Weira, “That’s an ogre isn’t it? What’s a mountain dweller doing down here in the forest?”

Weira shrugged, uninterested. She grabbed her halberd and gave it a twirl.

Norm stared nervously at the two, “I knew it, lets turn back an ogre is too much to deal with.”

Both of them turned to him with raised eyebrows. “You kidding me? We finally get to find something interesting, no way I’m backing of now.” He grinned and unsheathed his sword. “Let’s dance with the big guy.” He confidently stepped into the clearing with the blond haired halberd wielding viking behind him. Both with a manic glimmer of excitement in their eyes.