The training ground had a strange peaceful atmosphere, I think the news of the alpha beast hasn't gotten here yet, but it shouldn't be long before that happens. Nobles are quite gossips when they want to be, and as the hunt for her will be a contest for the alliances formed by noble families, the younger generation will soon find out about it.
Upon arriving in the area where the quests are available, each member of the party started looking for interesting quests for us to do. With the number of missions available, finding an interesting mission is not difficult and finding more than one in the same region so that we can save travel time and do more missions until the end of this part of the test.
There isn't even a new kind of quest, and killing beasts or magical animals, getting materials from magical beasts or animals, collecting natural resources and some small mysteries it's a shame I can't identify if one of the scrolls has hidden information like the collect mission parts of the owls had, thinking about it I have to go deliver the eggs, they cannot be delivered directly to the mission box, I must send it with the help of one of the examiners to two names I need to find to ask for your help.
But I think this shouldn't take long to do, so I'll leave it for after choosing the next missions we're going to do.
"It seems to have a cool mission in the eastern region, killing the bunch of magical beasts that are destroying the pastures and devouring anyone who enters the fields. It seems like a cool thing to do, and as the beasts are hampering a wide region, the reward for the mission is pretty high."
"She's not bad but there isn't even one other mission to do in that aria and we might have to spend a lot of time hunting all the beasts in the pack, if the pack is covering such a big area I don't think they're moving all together, they should probably split into smaller groups or pairs to hunt in their territory."
"Ulric is right, these magical beasts must be ganuvis, they create a territory and spread across it in smaller groups, they only reassemble when their territory is being contested by another magical beast or band of magical beasts. They are fast with great stamina and they know how to run away, hunting them might not be a difficult task for us because we are fast, but we will still spend a lot of time killing the whole bunch of Ganuvis."
"I didn't know you knew that much about magical beasts, Alice. Have you studied magical beasts from all regions of the kingdom?"
"Not exactly, but I ended up learning a lot about magical beasts before I woke up. Some members of my family are different, but I mean not to waste our time talking about it."
"Okay, but someone found something interesting."
It took a while to come up with another good suggestion, but at the end of the day we chose to head to the western region of the kingdom.
"How about the mission to collect the tuniri ore that is formed at this time of year, it is formed in a cave in the small desert near the wind boundary, as far as I know this ore is formed in small quantities and is hidden by a small layer of land."
"It sounds like an interesting choice, but I only see one other mission in this aria, which is to collect material from a magical beast that seems to live in caves in this region. Do you have any other missions in the region, Gloria?"
"Yes, the one to collect some plants in the desert region of the kingdom which is the region that the cave is located in, the mission has a vague discretion so it was not placed near the ore mission or to harvest part of magical beasts. But the last mission in that aria and over the border is to locate the route that a smuggler group has been taking, our mission is to eliminate them or identify the method they have been using to stay undetectable while crossing the border."
"This last mission can be a little dangerous as the group can be strong, but as it has the recon option, I think we can do it. The tracking skills Ulric has demonstrated over the past few days should be good enough to do that."
"I appreciate the vote of confidence and agree that these four missions are our best choice of assignment we can do right now. They are not very dangerous missions in the same aria and we believe we can do them all in no time since we haven't had a lot of bad luck."
"Like bumping into another evolving alpha beast?"
"If we go west and this happens, I admit that we are cursed and should take a tourist trip through the realms that are enemies to ours, awakening troublesome beasts in his realms would be a great help to our realm."
"That would be an interesting job to do and should make good money."
Alice liked the joke, but Zephyr not so much.
"I shouldn't play with the word curse like that, it can bring a lot of bad luck because many magicians of that element are offended by that kind of comment and so you can be the target of many curses."
"Thanks for the reminder, with our luck and good that the word curse doesn't come out anymore because it causes problems for us later."
Hilda was amused by our lucky comments, but she didn't even make a joke about our bad luck for some reason. I think even she doesn't feel like joking about our good fortune.
"Well, kidding aside. I'll register us for missions and get the full mission information."
While my team members were having fun with their boring pranks, I registered us for the missions. I had an unusual feeling; the receptionist is acting weird.
She was avoiding eye contact with me, finishing her sentences quickly, stuttering a bit and I believe when she saw me, she turned a few shades whiter. There's something wrong here, but there's no way for me to find out what it is, no and as if I could interrogate her here in mine in the salon.
I would really like to do that because it's extremely irritating to think that this bitch who knows where I'm going with my group has a problem with me. Is she being bullied into seeing information about my team? That would explain her nervousness.
I took the scrolls from the woman's hand that ended when I did it and gave her a good piercing look that made her shiver a little more.
"Is there anything else you want to tell me? This is your best chance to do this. The truth will set her free."
"No? Are you sure?"
The woman is panicked by my questions and refused to say anything.
"I'll be back to talk more in the future."
Not that it's much fun to threaten her and it's always nice to show that I know what she's doing and it's going to have consequences. But in the end, she didn't break, and too bad she's under the examiners' protection so I can't do anything against her directly, even if I find out she's sold my information to other teams.
I wonder how she is being threatened into doing this or was this just a theater for her to claim that she was coerced into breaking the rules?
I start studying the scrolls after arriving where my team is still chatting and joking about our bad luck. And speaking of bad luck I didn't even find a special mission hidden in these scrolls, I even heated the paper with my fire element slightly to see if there was some invisible ink on the parchment, but nothing happens.
I think we're out of luck this time, out of four missions not one of them has a hacksaw request hidden in it. The information on the scrolls that I spread around the group for them to read had some interesting things, but nothing that would make a big difference to us.
A map of the region is always useful for us and information about flora and fauna in the region is useful. Some information about groups that have smuggled across the border before and what is likely being smuggled into and out of the realm.
To my surprise it's drugs, people and rare ingredients. How shocking, it seems like a market among drug nobles, nobles dredging up because their lives can always get better.
I got really into the black market for ingredients, it seems that there are many taxes on certain types of materials and to avoid them smugglers have been exporting and importing many ingredients that have their origin in the dungeons of the realms. It would be great to get some ingredients from the smugglers, it would be pure profit.
But the problem is with the groups that smuggle people, not only slaves are transported that way. To many criminals and people who want to keep their identity hidden use the services of smugglers to avoid the troops that protect the borders between the kingdoms, I prefer not to find this type because the combat power of these groups tends to be stronger than those who only they smuggle objects of value and resource.
"Tomorrow we will start our hunts again, we will leave the smugglers for last and start with collecting desert plants and then go to the cave where we can kill the magical beasts and catch the miner. Everyone agrees with that."
With the unanimous answer yes, we all went to prepare to travel tomorrow, not as if there was much for them to do as the kills were already sharp, but I had to go and send the owl eggs to the hurt in the capital today.