It's been a Three more months now, ever since my first day at the university. Besides the first day and its oddities, I've been progressing pretty fine. The first day for intermediate fire and Water spell classes were somewhat tame, most of the things they taught I already knew myself from experimenting and as such, I easily made my way through it. That result wasn't the same with healing, I still found it substantially hard to even heal in intermediate ranking even when Crota insisted it was a beginners class. I guess I let my Ego get to me. I've been getting along with Griffin and Sura, so often Sura would leave to take care of other things she wouldn't even tell us of. I ended up having Griffin as a Sparring partner in magic when we wanted to test out magic.
It was now Winter in Prusha, there was a bit of snow packed up here just like in Shanford when I was younger. The white color of the snow basically blended into the City, if you looked from a top down perspective, you just assumed this whole place was just a flat land of snow! I also needed to change my outfit as it didn't suit the weather. I wore a more rugged outfit that I usually wore that had Fur inside of it. When I asked Kale what the fur was from, he said it was from the wolves that are local around here. Kale kept the same outfit though, only now that the inside of his cloak had fur as well…actually I believe he has another cloak that's just like his other cloak but for more of a winter look. Lilith wore something that was given to her by tera, it was a ushanka that was black and grey. Along with that, she now wore black boots that were slightly below her knees. The ushanka fitted nicely on her head as her now silver pinkish hair flowed underneath it. She also had her hair cut by Tera, a personal request by Lilith. Now having short hair again and looking more tomboyish than ever. It seemed that the ushanka was made from the same stuff as my clothes, I believe Tera also said the hat was made of wolf fur.
Speaking of wolves, Today was the day Kale and the rest of us joined in on a quest in the bounty hall, think of it like an adventurer's guild. Kale never really bothered with showing us it since he thought we lacked any training, but since me and Lilith have some knowledge under our belt, he showed us it. We managed to have the university give me a three day break just for this, Tera assisted with this.
We walked through the snowy road of Prusha, kale in the lead as I trailed behind Lilith. Over the months, I did notice some changes in Liliths behavior. After my first day at the university, it seemed she started to talk with me more and more, sometimes I'd even wake up later than her.
And she never wakes up early.
She'd always strike up the conversations first, she's even gotten more confident with chatting with griffin and sura whenever she needed to hang with tera. Those two always ended up going to Tera's class. I have a feeling Tera is very involved with how much Lilith has changed, but it never bothered me. In fact, I quite like it now.
Tera wasn't able to come with us on this quest since she was busy with organizing the Universities upcoming festival. See, during the winters in Prusha, they have a festival known as Lucian festival. I guess it was in celebration of the king and his generation, they held a dance of some sort inside of the university, so Tera volunteered for it.
"Okay, here's the bounty hall!" Kale snapped me out of my thoughts as I looked ahead to see the building.
We've seen this building before every now and then when we went shopping in the market, it was pretty distinct from the rest of the building, which was odd since all the buildings here look identical. It was a large two story building, made with logs and looked like a cabin. It was built around the time the kingdom began, so its original design was kept out of respect.
Kale walked to the doors of the hall, looking behind himself as if he was inviting us to join him.
Lilith turned around and looked at me, the ushanka on her head fluttered with snow as she did. "Let's go do some jobs for the city, kota!" She grabbed my hand and dragged me with her.
"Hey, easy with the grip!" She didn't respond to that as her iron grips didn't change. Seriously, Tera must've taught her what SHE would do with Kale and Lilith just applied it to herself.
Kale watched in amusement before opening the doors, a warmth blasted out of the building, hitting us all as the roaring noises of adventurers blew out.
Walking inside, it really reminded me of one of those taverns you'd see in those anime or RPG games. You had adventurers of all kinds sitting at tables or standing, drinking and babbling to each other.
"Welcome to The Zealot." Kale said to us, Lilith stared around in awe at the adventurers and their weapons. "This place acts as a hub for them, They eat, Drink, Sleep and join quests made by others." Kale pointed at a board that was off to the side. It was a large board that was filled with papers, ranging from imagery of an animal to just text. I saw a couple of people gathering around one paper and talking about it. "Usually, quests are ranked from beginner to Emperor."
"Emperor?" I don't think I've heard that form of ranking before? From what I've gathered from being here is that most who train in magic or swordsman are only able to reach King ranked, and that's just a slim amount of people. So if I'm guessing correctly….that's mean…
"Emperor is known as the highest ranked difficulty for a quest, It's not common at all. They usually range from hunting a very Rare monster or clearing out a dangerous Dungeon, sometimes even asking to kill someone"
I frowned at the last part, it's been awhile since that incident in the carriage. I'm fine with understanding that killing is something of a normal thing here in this world. Hell, I've even decided now that if I needed to, I would kill. I can't help but feel that it was just morally wrong. But if their names were on a bounty list, they probably did something bad that put them on that bounty.
Lilith didn't seem to mind killing, Having killed someone and didn't even react to it at all made me sure she didn't care. I wasn't sure about anyone else though.
"Kale, have you killed someone before?" That question perked Kale's ears as he scratched his chin.
"Oh, yeah. In my adventuring days with Tera, we ran into bandits and such. Hell, I even saved your father from a robber who was taking rubees when I was training him." Kale answered.
"Has my Father killed too then?"
"You'll…need to ask him that yourself when he comes to visit." Kale avoided that question with a swift turn as he changed the topic. "Anyways, back to the bounty hall!"
To simplify what Kale started to explain to us, hear what he explained and showed us.
Bounties are quests that are akin to ones in a RPG. When we take a bounty off the board and give it to the receptionist, they'll evaluate us and the team to see if we are capable and then verify us and let us off to the person or group who listed it. But since we were new to this, we would need to actually get an ID for adventuring. The ID we got was actually pretty impressive for what it was. The ID was on a piece of paper that had my name and Profession in the group. Kale was a swordsman and same with Lilith, and I was given a mage profession. Once those were inscribed the wording was then traced over with a magical pen. The receptionist explained that they used Magical inking made in Prusha that enabled them to permanently mark it and erase it with a specific tool, this was to ensure that only those at other bounty halls across the continent could edit and add things such as ranking and counts of completed quests. They also put in your age, Height and description in case they needed to verify the person.
When I gave mine, I found it really weird that it had my name in this world. I still found it weird even when I wrote it since I was so used to seeing Travis on everything. Lilith looked at me in confusion as I suppose I was giving a weird face.
"What's wrong, Kota? Did they spell your name wrong?" She leaned in to look at my card when she said that. And that's also when she spotted something too.
"Aren't you twelve years old now? It says eleven years." She was correct actually, I sort of forgot about that when I gave her my age. So me and Lilith were twelve now.
"Huh, guess you're right." I decided that it was just better off as is since I really didn't want to change it. It didn't bother me. So now I have an ID that says I'm a year younger.
Kale showed us his ID, which impressively shows him as a King ranked adventurer.
"During my time as an adventurer, I got to king rank when I was in Ithryll. I believe Tera is Almost king ranked. Last I checked, Gerald was intermediate…which means I'm the best out of them! Haha!" Kale bragged about it as the receptionist in front of us watched him with disinterest.
"Kota, let's get to kale's rank! Oh, we should make an adventure group!" Lilith shook me, bubbling with excitement at the thought of it.
"Hey, you two could make one with those other two. Eh, what were their names?" Kale scratched his chin, thinking.
"Griffin and Sura? I don't think they'd want to." I answered, I could see Griffin wanting to do some adventures, but Sura was a mystery to me.
"Can't hurt to find out." Kale then pointed at the board full of bounties. "Alright, let's pick something easy for us.
When we got to the board, Lilith immediately spotted something to her liking.
"Look, that one!" She pointed at a bounty that was off to the left side of the board, when Kale went to grab it, he immediately gave her a weird look.
"Really? I know you're only picking this one because I brought up goblins in our last training." Kale held up the bounty which read: 20 RUBEES FOR EVERY GOBLIN EARS.
"Let me kill some Goblins!" Lilith insisted. She turned to me and shook me again. "Come on Kota, we haven't seen any cool monsters out here yet! We can also see if your magic is doing better!" Lilith was trying to persuade me, she gave me some pouty eyes but I averted my looks to kale.
"Are Goblins dangerous?" When I asked that, Kale shook his head.
"Most are brain dead, they're pretty easy unless you are over confident. If it was us three then it'd be fine. But I'd rather have You guys start off easier a-."
Lilith released me and she ran towards Kale, shaking him now. "Come on! Let us!"
"Alright, fine! Damn…We'll kill some goblins." Kale pushed her off gently, pointing at her. "Behave yourself, you're letting Tera rub onto you too much." Swiping the bounty off the board, Kale then walked to the receptionist, sliding it towards them.
The receptionist eyed the three of us for a moment before nodding her head. "Granted. You three bring the Goblin ears back, no limit on how many, just as long as you don't die."
"With pleasure! Thank you, beautiful receptionist!" Kale bowed at the lady as he turned to us. "Alright, since this bounty doesn't have a destination. I guess I can show you guys where most adventurers go for monsters."
"Where's that?" I'm wondering if the Kingdom has a sort of designated area for monsters? Or there are just hit spots around here with them. We haven't really explored the outside of the kingdom at all since we got here.
"You know where you two came from when coming into the city?"
"The south entrance?"
"Yeah, along the area is a forest. Not GreyHill forest but another. This one is the opposite direction of that one. The forest has no name, but it's a hot spot for monsters if you go deep enough."
Which way was GreyHill forest? I know from Shanford we came from the south and went north to here…I think Grey hill was just on the east side when coming into the south entrance of Prusha, which means this new forest was on the west side then.
"Alright! Let's get going kids! To the forest I'll have some goblins!" Kale walked to the entrance of the bounty hall, Lilith tagging along with him.
As I started walking, I heard an adventurer gossiping with another adventurer. It seemed like the first adventurer just came back from the forest we were going in. He sounded somewhat worried when he spoke.
"Yo, any of you guys going out in the forest?"
"Nah, we're finishing up our Wolves bounty right now. What's up?" The second adventurer sipped his beer as he said that.
"Nothing much, but it seems like a kid out there lost his Group. I didn't pay much mind to it though, hah. Sucks to be a beginner." The first adventurer laughed as the two of them began to gossip even more.
"Shit, that kids good as dead if he's out there on his own. Probably going to be ripped to shreds or either cooked for meat for the goblins."
"Hmph, some of these new adventurers ain't shit."
"Yep." The two adventurers then started babbling about the receptionist and female adventurers in the room.
Once I overheard them, I felt a disgusted feeling in my stomach. This world doesn't fuck around if kids are even dying out here in that fashion. Luckily we have kale and Lilith is already strong on her own.
But the kid they mentioned…Not that it isn't our business, but I feel I should tell Kale about it since he might help with that.
"Come on Kota!" Lilith yelled from the entrance, she was hopping with her ushanka bouncing up and down in excitement.
"Coming…" I gripped my staff a little more tightly as I walked to the entrance.
Either this Quest is a piece of cake, or somehow it'll get worse. One of those two.