Early the next morning, the four of us headed to the guild. We had agreed to do extermination requests since that was what all of us could do. The siblings had tried herb-gathering before, but didn't have the patience to do it well, so they preferred killing monsters. So far they hadn't taken up any hunting requests either since they had no way of storing their quarry. In any case, neither Masa nor I were interested in doing any hunting jobs, so the question was moot.

The morning crowd of adventurers was smaller than I expected. Less than ten people were looking at the notice board. Well, the town wasn't that large, so I guess it made sense that there wouldn't be many adventurers stationed here. A couple of them nodded at Daryl and gave us curious looks, but didn't say anything. Most of them were older men wearing clothes suitable for rough work. The only ladies I saw were guild staff. I was having mixed feelings about whether to feel relieved or not that we didn't have any typical encounters with rowdy adventurers wanting to pick a fight with rookies. On one hand, these were ordinary people were trying to earn a living, so they likely wouldn't risk getting into a fight before finishing their quota for the day. On the other hand, there went another of my preconceived notions about adventurers. Ah well, I could live with that.

We joined the group gazing up at the requests posted on the board and soon picked up a couple of regular requests:

Regular requests:

Vanquish 15 Giant Snails (8 silver)

Vanquish 10 Great Hoppers (10 silver)

As could be seen from the rewards, these were likely tougher than the previous quests we had taken before. Both of these creatures were relatively common and could be spotted near the town, so the higher reward had to be due to the difficulty in taking them down. We discussed our options for a while and finally settled with taking the quests on an individual basis. At first, Crystie was worried that she wouldn't be able to finish her quota, but the rest of us reassured her that we would be there to help her out, so she finally agreed. We estimated that we would have to spend at least two days hunting, so the siblings returned to the inn to pick up their stuff and cancel that night's stay. Masa and I had only booked one night since we weren't sure how long we would be staying.

I wanted to return to Singapore as soon as I could, but we didn't know how long it might take for a permanent portal to be set up. Masa suggested that we give the administrators more time and maybe check it out after we were done with this job. I did tell my parents that I would be hanging out with my friends, so hopefully they would assume I was staying over at one of their houses or something. Masa was still on holiday, so he said that his parents wouldn't be worried about him. He did inform Muhammad to make up some excuse in case we were away for more than a week in Earth time. Hopefully our little adventure wouldn't take that long. Hopefully.

All packed and ready, the four of us set out for the nearby forest to hunt snails and grasshoppers. Crystie and Daryl looked enviously at my empty hands. Masa was carrying his usual backpack and had Roku tucked into his belt. I did offer to carry some of the Australians' items, but either they didn't trust me with their valuables or didn't want to burden me. We just met yesterday, so it was understandable and I didn't press the issue. Maybe they didn't want to get used to the convenience since we were only a temporary party.

After walking quietly for several minutes in the forest, Masa, who was in front, froze and pointed ahead. I took out Deux and slowly moved to the right to flank the huge snail approaching us. Eins wouldn't be useful for the type of creatures we were after this time, so I chose the talkative one instead. I did warn it beforehand not to talk too much since we were not alone. Fortunately, the prideful sword merely responded with a low "Hmph!"

Crystie and Daryl also spread out to the left, leaving Masa to face the monster head-on. They had also drawn their unusual swords, a Chinese Dao named San and a straight sword without a handguard named Chamisha. We had shared some information about our swords since we would be cooperating, and apparently their swords had nearly opposite effects. San could dispel magic while Chamisha could inflict random status effects. However, despite their appearances, they did not deal much damage. Much like Eins, I suppose.

As I had more or less expected, all these swords were made by the same eccentric swordsmith, this Masamane. Their names were also pretty obviously numbers in the language of the culture which the sword came from. Eins was German for "one", Deux was French for "two", San was "three" in Mandarin and Roku was "six" in Japanese. I had no idea what language Syv and Chamisha were though. Maybe I could google them the next time I had Internet access.

As for the swordsmith's name, it could be the person's name, but I thought it more likely to be a pseudonym made up of the words "Masa" and "mane". There were two famous swordsmiths in Japanese history with "Masa" in their names—Masamune and Muramasa—and "mane" could come from the verb "maneru", meaning "to imitate". Was this guy was parodying those famous swordsmiths by making such junky—ahem, unique swords? Hmm, at least it wasn't some anime otaku that was making them, or we could have ended up with a knockoff reversed-blade katana, or Zangetsu and who know what else. I wondered how many he had made in total. Would we be able to collect them all? But if their effects were all over the place, maybe we would be better off not collecting them.