Earlier in the day.
In a cheap rental house located within the outer sector of Breezy Meadow Town, a party of three was resting peacefully.
A small girl with strikingly vibrant blue hair was slowly rising from her slumber, warm morning sunlight caressed her cheeks and weighed down on her eyelids, lifting her into consciousness.
"mnmm... g'morningg..."
Annali mumbled out sleepily, sitting up and yawning wide as she stretched her arms and legs.
She surveyed the sole room of the tiny house Aisha, Philip, and her were currently renting together. Cutting costs and living as a party, sharing the money they made, and keeping close despite their quarrels.
Having their own place was already pretty good, and they all had hopes to move up the ranks in the future.
She realized Philip and Aisha were both still asleep as she looked around, Philip was curled up in the corner, snoring heavily, and Aisha had her limbs spread out like a starfish with drool running down her face.
Annali stood up, moving over to where Aisha lay. Shaking her by the shoulder, Annali whisper-shouted,
"Aishaaaa... wake uuuuup! we were going out today remember? we need to start getting ready."
"hueh...? argh, ah, one second... let me wake up..." The prideful novice warrior voiced out sleepily.
Annali knew Aisha wouldn't be willingly waking up anytime soon, so as she extracted her adventuring clothes from a cabinet and dropped them directly onto her face.
"AH! okay! I'm up!" She cried, shooting up into a sitting position.
Aisha continued with a grumble "Sheesh, Annali I would have been up in just a minute you know!"
"...that's a lie..."
"Anyways what were we doing again?" Aisha asked, completely dodging the accusation.
"hahhh... we're going levelling remember? You were setting me up with kills again today so I don't stay low level!"
"OOooh! right, right..."
Aisha reached down and grabbed the clothes that had been launched onto her previously, stripping off her only set of pajamas without hesitation.
Behind, Philip began waking up, throwing his hands over his eyes the moment he opened them.
"JESUS FUCK AISHA-"
like a flash, Aisha dropped to the ground, whipped up the blanket she had been sleeping with, and moved like lighting to smother Philip with it.
"DAMN! YOU PERVERT WERE YOU WAITING FOR THIS!?"
Philip screamed something that sounded like 'what the fuck is wrong with you'. However, with the blanket turning his voice into incoherent mumbling, he was unable to plead his innocence.
"How could you try to prey on poor little Annali! Disgusting! Annali change quickly I'll make sure he doesn't budge."
And as Annali shed her nightgown and slipped into her light gear designed for mages, Philip could only voice his complaints within himself as his oxygen slowly ran out.
"I didn't even do anything..."
Of course, with their current one room situation it was understandable.
However...
This occurred nearly every single day...
After the commotion ended, Philip left while angrily muttering something about not needing 'that bitch's help anyways', and he went off to the Guild Post to find a request to accept alone.
Annali and Aisha then finished up with their preparations, and left quickly.
They passed the Guild Post, exited the city, and began walking towards the same forest that the horde from the Emergency Quest had come from.
It was the Mahjinaki Forest, and the lowest levelled [Clawed Goblins] were their target for the day.
The plan was, as usual, to have Aisha scout out a small group of goblins that she could handle by herself, beat them within an inch of their life, and then hand Annali her sword to easily finish them off.
Due to the fact that and adventurer must kill to earn EXP, people who specialized as healers were rare, exponentially so when it came to higher ranked individuals.
The reason was exactly this tedious leveling process, which required not only significantly larger quantities of time, but also the help of someone who was equal or higher level than yourself.
At least if you wanted any tangible growth that is.
On top of that, healing related skills were incredibly rare if compared to the most common ones, since their effects related to the complex manipulation of organic material. Skills like basic enhanced attacks or base elemental spells were simple in comparison.
Because of these limitations, professional healers normally came from wealthy backgrounds, having to hire multitudes of adept mercenaries for extended periods of time to help them level.
Obviously they also had to possess the funds for healing skills in the first place.
Annali sat against a tree at the edge of the forest, waiting for a few tens of minutes before hearing a shout,
"Annali! Come quick before any monsters find them! I got a group ready!"
Annali hurried after an excited Aisha, who led her to a spot where three small goblins lay bleeding on the forest floor.
"Alright here, take the sword, you got this!"
"Annali hated this part, but she always stuck it out, it was necessary after all."
Shing, Shing, Shing.
[User Slayed Level 3 Entity - Clawed Goblin]
[User Slayed Level 2 Entity - Clawed Goblin]
[User Slayed Level 3 Entity - Clawed Goblin]
"Phew..." Annali looked away from the bodies, moving away to sit against a tree again as Aisha left to repeat the process.
Like this they went for hours.
Aisha would go to scout and debilitate weak, small groups of [Clawed Goblin], while Annali would stay near the site of the previous kills waiting for Aisha's return.
Unlike the horde, where the monsters had come from much deeper within the forest, the pair always made sure to stick near the outer regions, where the most common enemy were extremely low level goblins.
The only issue however, was that the monsters were almost always in larger groups.
Aisha could handle a monster her own level, and fighting a larger group of significantly under leveled creatures would only be just as difficult, however that was in a fight to the death.
While every single enemy in a large group would aim for her life, she would have to try and only injure them non-fatally in return, and anyone experienced in combat would know the difficulty of controlling numerous opponents to such a degree.
After all, if even one thing went wrong, it meant death, and who would take such a risky route for just a temporarily increased levelling speed?
---
Towards the end of the day, when Philip and Einer had given up and begun to head home, Aisha and Annali were wrapping up as well when...
[Accumulated Experience Has Reached The Required Threshold]
[Level Up]
"Aisha..."
"hmm?"
"I'm level 7!"
"What? Really?!" Aisha's tired face lit up immediately as she ran up to Annali.
The two danced around for a bit, and then decided to go to the guild tavern and have a celebratory feast.
Talking happily the whole way back to town, Annali was absolutely ecstatic about becoming even slightly more useful.
Her greatest desire.
'I don't want to be a burden anymore!'