In a clearing in the forest under the sun.
"You are crazy! I'm not going to do suicide missions just to try to raise our rank, there is a limit to recklessly hunting necromancers, bands of bandits that are anything but common, and a fucking dragon is not something we should try."
"I didn't say we had to choose a mission, Zephyr, I'm telling you what happened just now. More than one team will try to complete these missions and we have to decide what we are going to do."
"I want to hunt the dragon, even if he is just a cub, we can earn a lot of prestige and money by killing the little dragon."
I didn't expect this from Gloria, I thought she would be more cautious, but I think I underestimated the importance of the word dragon, keeping one even if it's small and big achievement dragons don't breed in large numbers, so it's pretty hard to get kill one of them.
The glamor or prestige of having killed one of them is great for the nobles and as a woman who has a lot of competition to become one of the leaders of her family, Gloria would really gain a lot by killing this little dragon.
It would be a great achievement for her that would help her path for many years to come, maybe even forever. Killing a dragon before she's eighteen is great stuff to build her reputation in noble circles.
Hilda might not have joined Gloria, but I noticed her eyes lit up when I told the group about the dragon, she might put on the facade that she doesn't care so much about her heir status, but I doubt that in a large family like hers. her there aren't some idiots who want to take her place as a candidate for leader of the family.
Getting to slay the dragon will help her as much as it does Gloria, but does she care too much for the rest of the team to join Gloria's demand or she just doesn't want to openly agree with Gloria. The fight between the two has gotten a lot worse in the last few weeks and I'm afraid one of them could actually attack the other before the test is over, and that will suck for the entire team and our assessment.
I doubt the examiners will approve or give positive points to teams where their members have actually fought each other.
"I really wanted to kill the bad guys because I can help our team find them and maybe even separate them, but to do that we would need two more teams or a really strong team like a team led by one of the capital's stars. preferably the Leonor Sunshine team."
"With our two teams together, we can ambush the group of purple snakes and kill their leaders separately, joining my information with Ulric's tracking ability we can kill them, but we need to convince Leonor Sunshine to join us with her cover to kill the snakes. leaders of the purple snakes will be easy the only problem left and do it before the test time runs out."
"Dangerous, but this is a better option than going to hunt a dragon alone."
"A good proposition, Alice, but Zephyrus is wrong to think that if we were to hunt the dragon, we would do it alone. I don't think we'll need the help of a very strong group, but we will need a group with the right skill set to help us slay the dragon."
"What kind of skill, Ulric? Taking on a dragon isn't easy and weakening it isn't a very effective strategy, in most records defeating a dragon is based more on strength and numbers than tricks."
"That's because they haven't figured out the right trick and even if our strategy isn't very effective, but if it's able to weaken the dragon a little or damage its movement and attack ability, that's a win, Gloria. Killing a dragon is not easy and because of that any help we can get would be very valuable to us if we decide to go down that path."
The group was silent, even though Hilda didn't have a position, our team was divided into two ideas, face the dragon or hunt the purple snakes. Those are the two best options we have, when I started to reflect on the possibilities like the rest of my team that was silent that ended up being broken in a short time by Hilda.
"I'm interested in hunting the dragon. Now it's just your opinion, Ulric, which of the two quests do you think is better and why or are you interested in other quests. You had a lot more time to think about them than us."
"I don't have a choice between the quests already set, Hilda, but to be honest I've never really felt like doing any of them. But it's obvious that among them are the missions that I wouldn't take even if the whole team went back on it, I'm not going to invade a neighboring kingdom to kill their military, I'm not going to hunt cultists or even go after a rising necromancer."
"And with our luck deciding to head north I wouldn't be surprised that our presence there would cause the awakening of a beast or natural calamity on that mountain, at least picking the dragon or the purple snakes we know who our enemy is. Who knows what we might find entering the heart of a mountain in a wilderness area."
"True, when I read that mission on the board, the first thing I thought of was the mountain turning into a volcano with us inside. For those who don't know that several mountains in the north have a lava flow inside them, because of that there are many types of metals needed inside them the only negative point is that the amount of them is usually quite small."
"To several groups that venture in the north trying to get lucky to get a high-level ore and that's why it's hard to get much from the same miner, constant extraction of little by little, prevents a large deposit of a type of metal from appearing."
"There are several mountains in the north, but not all of them have been explored, but to do so is very expensive. Putting together a team of earth elemental mages to create a mine is quite expensive because the older the mountains become, the more mana and elemental energy is accumulated in them and that makes the mages' job that much more difficult."
"Because of this, the number of mountains with tunes made is not very large."
"The difficulty of digging a mine in such an ancient mountain?"
"Yes, Zephyrus. My sister is a mage with the earth element, to train her control over her basic magic she made her dig in an environment with a lot of mana and elemental energy, to increase the difficulty she just digs deeper since the more you gave the denser is the elemental energy of the earth element, but mana depends more on the region than just depth."
"Nice information, Alice, but we strayed from the discussion a bit. The team is split on whether to go hunting bandits or the little dragon, as I said before I don't even have a preference between the two, so I think I'll use a different way of choosing where my vote goes."
"Ulric, explain yourself better, you're not making much sense. Just choose one of the missions"
"Calm down, Gloria. What I mean is that I'm going to use the second team or allied team problem to decide where my vote goes, between the two missions I believe it's easier to find a team that can help us kill the dragon, because the team we need for that is a simpler team."
"I want to find a team that can restrain the dragon and I already know the team for that. Among the various teams that were formed, to a team that has two old teammates of mine and Hilda's, they were put on the same team because of their elements and this team is perfect to join us in this hunt, but in case they are not available we can go look for a simply strong team to go kill the thieves."
"What do you think of this?"
"Sounds cool, but the team to hunt the dragon and the team that Raziel is on?"
"Exactly."
"I support this idea, but who is part of this team?"
Gloria is almost jumping for joy, but she still can't help but doubt my decisions. Only after she meets all the members of Raziel's team will she be calm.
"I will introduce the group to all of you."
"I think I know the team you're talking about, Ulric. This group has the element of shadow, curse, water and earth isn't it! I have a friend in him too, the name Raziel is familiar to me because my friend is into him, but don't tell him that because I shouldn't have told you guys, I fucked up."
"Serious? I didn't expect this, Alice, but since it's like that, I think it's just a matter of Zephyrus giving his opinion on my solution."
"I'm fine with your idea. Shall we go after that group now?"
"Yes, the sooner we find them and convince them to take their chances with us in the hunt for the little dragon's head, the better our chances of completing this quest. Remember we are still in the period when the news and content of these difficult quests are still being spread, if we are lucky which is a rare thing, we can be the first to go hunting the dragon."
"Gloria and Zephyr will keep an eye on the mission boards to see how things are going there and me, Hilda and Alice will go after the team that will join us."
With that, my group split when entering the camp.