I slowly got up from my cradle position and clenched my fingers tightly and reopened them. It's as if the injury never happened, and the pain was forgotten. "Cool..."
My sudden calmness surprised all of them.
"I-It's not that cool as to awe over it. It's just a simple healing spell." Rubellia replied diffidently.
"Ah, I see." She was right though. It was indeed a simple healing that spell even those who aren't mages could learn.
Besides, the spell wasn't what really intrigued me, it was the wave of calmness that kept washing over me like a soft summer breeze that cooled your sweating skin. Calm Mind, that had to be the reason behind this, right? I mean, it's crazy.
Seconds ago I was cradled over, but once it was all done and gone, I was calm again like it never happened.
I gathered up my thoughts and sighed heavily. I don't understand how that works, but no point in questioning it. No, I should be questioning them.
"Why were y'all in there?" I spoke bluntly.
"Huh?" Sora answered almost immediately, leading me to believe she was at fault for it. Meaning she was this parties leader.
She was around five six with short brown hair and eyes as blue as the sky. Her armor consisted of a skirt and a long sleeve shirt with leather padding. Her armor was blue with some white on the parts where leather wasn't. Her fair white skin made her look like a princess which matched her figure. She was toned and had curves and edges in all the right places. Her breasts weren't anything to awe at, but that didn't really matter to me.
Heh.
But honestly, with her looks, if I had met her in a town, I would have assumed she belong to royalty. Although her bow and quiver of arrows would have fixed that quite fast.
"The cave. Why were you in there?" I repeated.
"Oh, well, it was a quest given to us by some other adventures. They said they didn't want the quest. It seemed shady, but we had to take it."
"Why not get a quest from the quest board?" Please tell me that's what it's called! I mean, the rest of this world seemed like a video game, so the names of things should be the same, right?
"Because all the easier ones were already taken, and we can't do any S ranked quests, we're only ranked D as a party." She puffed her cheeks. She was embarrassed at the low rank of her party.
D rank, that's the lowest rank.
They really are new!
Besides that, I was relieved to hear that this world worked like an MMORPG with its system. I blinked slowly as I spoke. "And so some random adventurers gave y'all this quest? Let me see the form for it." I reached my hand out and she gave me the paper.
QUEST NAME: THE GOBLIN HORDE
There have been sightings of hordes of goblins coming in and out of the Wolf Rock Cave in the Grassy Plains , north of the Great Pendulin tree. Sources say that the goblins are reproducing at a high rate. This could be a danger to all adventurers, as hordes of goblins have been known to destroy villages and abduct woman for their monstrous pleasures. The mayor of the Nartuca Village, south of the cave, has requested a group of adventures to explore the cave and defeat all goblins in there. Beware of other monsters, as not only goblins find their ways into caves.
Reward: 1,000 Gold Coins.
EXP Reward: 1,000
Quest Rank: D
I read over it several times. Something was strange about this quest form, but I don't know what. I spent a little longer skimming over it. But the heat of the sun was too much to bear, and I started to sweat. I was about to give up, deciding nothing was wrong and it was just my imagination, when a bead of sweat dripped onto the paper and landed on the quest rank.
"Huh?" I looked at it as the ink dissolved off of the D.
It wasn't black ink that was dissolving, it was white ink, ink that matched the paper color. The quest that they thought was a D rank had actually been a B rank.
"Uh, y'all may wanna look at this." I gave them the paper.
"WHAT?!" They all spoke in sync loudly.
"W-We just completed a B rank quest? No way!" Han had excitement in his voice and on his face, as well as the others.
It seemed that instead of being scared at finding out they could have died, they were excited that they completed a B rank quest, a quest much too hard for them.
Deep down it didn't surprise me. I knew the feeling of completing a quest thought too difficult for you. After all, I had done it many of times during my gaming days.
"We can't take all the credit." Sora said with a smile. I could feel all their gazes on me and my skin started to crawl. "Without you, we would all be dead. Thank you."
"...." I blinked slowly.
I didn't know what to say. Well, I don't know what to say in half the conversations I've ever had, so it's nothing new.
I blame society for that.
I was always ignored, even in school. Though to be fair, I preferred that. Only time I was spoken to was if we were forced into groups for a project, but that was the teacher telling me which group I was in. The only thing different after being put in a group was that it was obvious they were putting in an effort to ignore me.
"And I think I speak for the rest of us when I say we would love if you joined our party." She reached her hand out to me.
I stared at it.
I was a shut-in, if you hadn't already figured it out. And in all my life of gaming, I had never once joined a party. The most I would do was let people follow me and I would help them, but I never joined the party. It made me feel like I belonged to them, and I couldn't allow that.
Yet as I stared at her hand, the thought of rejection didn't occur to me. And I found my hand reaching out to hers. "Yeah...okay." I grabbed it.
"Really?!" She looked surprised.
"Was I supposed to say no?" I said sarcastically, to me at least. She took it seriously.
"N-no. I'm just surprised you would actually agree to join our low ranked party." Sora quickly tried to fix what she thought had been a misunderstanding. I decided I would play a little prank on her and keep this going.
"Then why ask me?"
"W-well, y-you see I....I uh....We need more members. And you just so happened to be here and you can fight, so...," she looked up at me with sad eyes.
D-don't give me that look! I may actually begin to feel guilty.
"Ah, I see. Well then I guess I could make an exception and join. Though I'm not that strong either." As soon as the words left my mouth, three names appeared below mine in my HUD, all with their health, magic, level and their class, which was shown as a symbol next to their name. Mage was a purple staff, Archer was a green bow, and Warrior was a red ax.
"So, Kichirou," although I hadn't told them my name, me being in the party gave it to them, that's why Han now knew it. "What's your class? It's not showing it."
"Oh, uh..."
Crap, what do I say about that?
"Oh, yeah. My class hasn't been unlocked yet." I said the first thing that came to mine, which was the truth.
"Why not? You're level 18, it should've been unlocked at 10." Sora was confused and struggled to understand the situation.
The others were just as confused. They gave me looks of curiosity. All which made me feel uneasy. Judging from the looks, none of them knew what to say. At this point they should just give up trying to understand me, hell, I barely understand me.
While those three were giving me strange looks, I was looking at my status menu. I was level 18, just as Han said, which must have been due to all the fighting. But my stats...really? The 80's?
You've gotta be kidding me.
I felt like Fohargh. No matter how much I train or level up, I don't get any stronger.
"Well we should probably go turn that quest in now, huh?" I closed my window and looked over at the three of them.
They were still giving me questionable looks, but I guess my plan to change the subject worked, because they all agreed and we went on our way.
Our file order was like this; I was in the middle, Sora was to my right, Rubellia to my left, and Han walked directly behind me.
The walk was around twenty minutes or so and we had to fight a few monsters on the way. Oh, it'd be best to mention this; All my party members were level 22+, with Han being the highest at level 26, Sora the second at level 24 and Rubellia at level 22.