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Due to its peculiar location and surrounding terrain, the human town of Colchester belonging to the northern Ascot kindom was a busy hub for adventurers. The place was dotted with several lakes and swapms, coniferous and deciduous forests, and some plains and hills going between them. The variety of monsters available for hunting was staggering and the fact it is connected to no less than four other towns made it a perfect hub for trading. From Colchester one could go to the capital Ascot, also known as the gateway to the beastlands, to the northernmost human town of Easthallow famous for its plains full of winter stallions, the mining town of Highpass sitting on the foot of the Crown Mountains, and last but not least the granary town of Barnsley and the entire Heorot Kingdom south of Barnsley.

It was no surprise that the merchant family led by Azelinus would decide to settle in Colchester after imigrating from Mirfield because their younger daughter Helen was accused of being a 'Monster Bride'. They were forewarned by Marcy that something huge was coming and had so much trust in their daughter they foreclosed their home and business and fled north. The 'something huge' was an animated tree smashing walls but looking backward, they evaded the whole orc invasion and troll rescue thing. In the end, the loss of other merchant families was way bigger than theirs.

In this harsh, besieged society, it is not normal to spend too much on a child that bears no promise. A fertile couple can always make children easier than they can make gold as the saying goes. Azelinus and Hildegard were different in this matter. Their daughter whose hair resembled a ripe wheat field was born two days before the midwinter festival in what would be later known as the harshest winter of the century. She was born slightly preterm and had respiratory problems. Soon after winter ended she contracted tuberculosis and would be plagued with the disease for most of her childhood until a wandering healer capable enough to cure that dreaded disease visited Mirfield. It came to a point where all the profit of the merchant house was spent into just keeping that one girl alive.

'Winter Child', 'Wheat Girl', 'Consumption Girl', 'Miss Coughies'. The stream of nicknames and insults was endless. The blonde frail girl would have that inferiority complex engraved deep in her psyche. And she had a slender frame that while it would be considered elegant and beautiful by Earth standards, in a society that placed more value in a woman's breeding capacity than other human qualities she was believed to be unattractive and a bad match. Her only redeeming feature was the ability to use magic.

After a lavish tuition was agreed upon, Gruenwald the wizard agreed to take Helen under his wing as an apprentice. The teaching methods were questionable and involved a lot more physical punishment than even their harsh society would consider adequate, but the girl endured and graduated. She became a full-fledged adult after her fifteenth winter and registered at the adventurer's guild. Together with Julius, Marcy, and Cloude, three of her childhood friends, Helen went on her first adventure hunting wolves, rabbits and herb gathering in the low-danger woods near Mirfield. They had quite the catch and were settled for their first night camping outside the safety of the town's walls when a freaking B-rank troll showed up. That encounter was as absurd as finding a tiger shark in a goldfish bowl.

And everything went full circle and here they are, living and laying low in Colchester. The best place to hide a tree is in a forest, as they say. She partied up with Marcy and they get by making some coin by completing some easy requests. Invitations showered them every single day for several reasons, a few more worthy of consideration than others. Their party balance was bad, one magician and one scout without any vanguard, they had a friggin healer and no tank to receive said healing and they could help foster gender equality in other adventurer parties if only on the number of members part.

We are intentionally leaving the 'because I feel lonely at night during my adventures' and other reasons that basically amount to having the female adventurers join up because they are female rather than adventurers out.

"Heey, Helen, look at this huge haul we brought today!! Two silver for each one of us!! Yay!!!"

Marcy was psyched that day. After a streak of low-earning days, they were lucky to find a fire salamander in a salamander nest on the foot of a hill next to some fetid swamp and the mage-archer combo was able to get every single one of them. The fire salamander pelt was caught unblemished thanks to Helen's earth magic. Two silver coins each would be enough to last the two girls for more than ten days with a bit of splurging or even last the whole winter if they settled for meager rations.

"Wow nice! Did the materials sell for that much? The winter really increases the demand for fire-aligned materials!"

Helen was also glad they got lucky once. She was prone to fall into melancholy and guilt for dragging her family north, but after having the story of the orc siege pummeled into her stubborn head by Marcy, she was relieved.

"I'm having a salamander skin dress made for me!!"

Marcy climbed on a table and started to dance for the delight of the already drunk adventurers in the guild's mess hall. The men started to sing and clap merrily, and Helen sighed already foreseeing the avalance of party invites that would surely follow. The receptionists told her it was part of being a female adventurer, but she held firmly into the belief that her opinion should be respected. She was shaken out of her musings by the sight of her redhead friend going for her coin purse.

"Yes, Marcy, it is good, but you are not buying anyone any drinks." She even attempts to intimidate the ruffians with a cold glare, but the pea-brains of these warriors and scouts failed to register the blonde's feeble attempt at intimidation.

"Oh, too bad I was going to get them to buy me drinks this time around..."

"HO! I'll buy a drink for miss Marcy! Get her some mead!"

Helen flinched and grimaced at the boastful voice that just barged into the guild main building. 'Spear Lord' Cedric. This C-rank adventurer made his life's goal to get inside Marcy's pants. It was rumored he had already sired a score of kids in Colchester alone. Helen was sure he was more interested in boasting about the conquest than in having a meaningful relationship with Marcy. He would surely ditch her for the next skirt to conquest soon after. She wouldn't mind losing Marcy to someone that would cherish and care of her for their whole lives, but there was no way she would let her friend become just a trophy on someone's shelf.

"You are not drinking today. We need to resupply. Winter is coming."

She grabbed the dancer and pulled her down from the table, making their way outside. She could hear her familiar rat Emory giggling inside her robe.

"Helen you meanie! Fine, let's go shopping."

As easy as she got annoyed for being yanked Marcy let it go and set out in the mood to make those hard-earned silver coins disappear faster than they have earned them.

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The days went by and the silver coins were spared a tragic fate in the town's market bauble stalls. The girls were laying low and enjoying their guild-subsided meal when the doorbell rang. It was a hazing prank set by the guild veterans. The bell would ring if you opened the door carelessly, announcing that a newbie had entered the guild. He would then be properly hazed by the residents, sometimes it even devolved into a fight.

"It would be nice if a mysterious stranger came to yank us out of this boredom," Thought Helen, but she was mistaken. Maybe in another parallel world it happened, but this time it was just one of the regulars that had a maimed arm and pushed the door too hard. This particular adventurer was fond of taking escort and messenger requests to travel abroad.

"Where is the guild master? Send for the guild master at once!" The man looked tired, dirt and beaten from being on the road.

A bespectacled receptionist stepped forward. "The guild master is currently away on official guild business. May I help you?" That was a white lie. Everyone knew that Kareena was yanked out of her office by her brother, the S-rank champion Gilgamesh. Almost every woman in the guild swooned to those herculean muscles bulging beneath his tunic, notable exceptions would be Helen and Imayne, the receptionist talking to the traveler right now.

"It is bad! I have urgent news to deliver. Mirfield was attacked by a troll a few days ago, and it killed Guild Master, Gruenwald, Baron Mirfield and several others!"

Helen and Marcy froze on their bench. Trolls did not spawn in the woods around Mirfield or in the Dragon Valley. They were a very rare type of monster on the southwestern lands on the other side of Heorot Kingdom. This could only mean Grendel paid a visit to town to look for them and things went sour from there.

The messenger gave Imayne an unsealed scroll that the receptionist just put away without reading. It was very strange. Imayne was supposed to be a librarian and stuff but she was never caught actually reading a book. Her recommendations were always spot-on, and she found in Marcy a soulmate in their quest for knowledge.

The two girls exchanged a look and decided to keep quiet and bid their time for more news about the situation south. Piecing together what they could, they learned that the guild master Kareena and his brother's adventurer party were hired by King Hrothgar to slay a particular troublesome troll.

Helen's hopes of seeing her beloved monster went down the sewer grate.

Gilgamesh was the pinnacle of humanity. A superhero, if the term existed in their language, and it did not. Holder of not one but two tier six jobs, he was rumored to have wrestled dragons out of boredom. At his side he had four absurdly powerful companions, each one of them capable of leveling a town. He yanked Kareena out of retirement on a whim, but even her own 'Heartseeker Blade' could kill anything with a reachable heart.

If those five went after him, Grendel was as good as dead.

More days went by and right before autumn would turn to winter, calamity fell on the Colchester branch of the Adventurer's Guild. The 'job-changing crystal' the common name adventurers called the guild crystal went dormant.

It could mean only one thing. The guild master that owned that crystal died.

Kareena was dead. The entire Colchester receptionist team owed her a lot. Not only she disallowed adventurers to hit on the receptionists, she gave them shelter when nobody else would. Several of the girls working there were grateful for the only opportunity they had.

And without a working guild crystal, the adventurers could not change their jobs or even create or join parties.

Worse yet, they would have to wait for the guild heardquarters to hear of their predicament, appoint a new guild master and have him travel all the way to Colchester. With winter upon them and the roads closing, it would be summer by then.

The realization hit all the adventurers working in Colchester. They would be stuck without the guild facilities during the entire winter. During the next days hundreds of adventurers and civilians would emigrate to greener pastures, most of them south to Barnsley.

The only person that was happy with this development was Helen. If the Kareena died under the overprotective watch of her S-rank brother, there was a chance Grendel had survived their encounter. She hung onto that fleeting sliver of hope and steeled herself to endure a guildless winter.

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