Near a small lake half the way up mount du shan.
Appearing from one of the bushes near the lake a girl with short pointed ears and an attractive body came out, wearing leather armour that clung to her body. "Damn those monsters were a pain in the as*. It thought the 2nd stage monsters were further up."
Following closely behind her, a scrawny looking man cloaked in a green robe held out his staff as a green light flew out gradually healing the wound on the girl's shoulder. "That's what you get for blindly rushing in against that 2nd stage viper wolf."
"If the tank actually did his job then it would have been fine." She retorted as a completely uninjured armoured man came out behind them.
"Hmph. You're just a waste, what's the point in protecting you." Unlike the two who had previously come out the armoured man seemed to be wearing extremely expensive equipment far better than what the other two wore. This made it clear that this man was probably a noble and he had hired those two to explore with him.
Confidently the man walked towards the lake as if he had nothing to worry about.
"What the hell is that idiot doing. If he's not careful he's gonna get himself killed." The girl said as she put her red rapier back on her waist.
Both the girl and healer sighed as they knew that they had no choice but to follow this idiotic person if they had any hope of getting paid for this job.
"Why'd you have to suggest this job. Nobles are such a pain to deal with." The girl muttered as she continued to look around in case that very noble ended up setting off some monsters.
The unarmoured man shrugged. "They give easy money and there were no other good jobs to pick from anyway."
"Huff. Let's just get this over with. I need to finish soon so I can visit that annoying sister of mine." The girl rolled her eyes just remembering how annoying her sister aggravated her, but they were sisters so what did she expect.
After travelling around the lake and making sure that there were no monsters nearby the group of three ended up taking a break as the noble had been running the two ragged and they needed a rest.
The tents didn't take long to set up and of course, the noble forced the two most exhausted of the group to set up the tents, as he sat down doing nothing but sharpening his sword.
The group had tried to persuade the noble to camp somewhere away from water but no matter how much they tried he wouldn't listen so in the end they stayed quite close to the lake, although they were lucky enough to at least persuade the noble to hide the camp behind some rocks that were close by.
A smile grew on the face of the noble as he looked towards the two adventures he had hired. "I'll leave the night watch to you two peasants, since I'm paying you it shouldn't be a problem, right."
"Of course leave it to us." The healer said as he smiled at the noble.
And just as the noble entered his tent the girl couldn't help but stomp her foot on the ground in anger. "F*cking nobles. All they can do is order people around and they can't even do that right most of the time."
Putting his hand on her shoulder the healer smiled. "Calm down Iris. We only have to deal with this for one more day then we can head back and never have to worry about that noble again."
"Huff. You're right…. I'll take the first night shift, you go and rest."
The sound of rustling could be heard as the mage entered the second tent and went to sleep, leaving Iris to keep watch on her own.
As Iris kept watch she heard the constant noises of different creatures. Sometimes it was the clashes of different monsters other times it would just be the howls of creatures. Thanks to being in the mountains for so many days she began to get used to all of the noises and could distinguish which ones could be a threat and which ones were nothing serious.
5 hours had passed since Druak and Isaac had started to climb mount du shan and they had luckily only encountered one 1st stage poison fox which had already been wounded. After taking care of the fox they continued their journey, only stopping for a moment to get any valuable parts that the fox may have.
As they continued up mount du shan they started to hear the laughter of two individuals, which seemed to be slowly approaching them from further up the mountain.
"Ha ha ha ha ha. I can't stop laughing… Did you see her face... Priceless."
"Ha ha. I know right. It was worth working with her for two months. I wonder who it was that gave us that mission… They must really hate her." Slowly Druak could see who had just spoken those words. A short haired man wearing a robe slowly came from around the corner.
Druak and Isaac had already hidden behind a tree so they were lucky enough to be able to be unseen by the two individuals, it also allowed Druak to now see the armour clad person without being seen.
"So do you think she'll be able to survive. You have the most knowledge about her so you must know her strength."
The robed man rubbed his chin for a second before answering. "She is strong for a 2nd stage aura swordsman, but she's got no chance against two 2nd stage monsters so you have nothing to worry about."
The armour clad man lifted his helmet revealing a man with a face covered in scars, the man's smile grew as he heard the words of the robbed man. "Good, that means I can report the mission as a success and say she died, and we didn't even have to dirty our hands to do it."
As the two of them passed the mage seemed to notice something from within the tree line, but when he turned around he saw nothing. After looking for a few more seconds and believing that it was nothing he ended up just leaving it and catching up with the armour clad man who had already gone on ahead.
Now that they had gone Druak released his hand from Isaac who had been breathing too heavily and almost got them revealed.
"Who the hell were they… The aura they gave off… was insane." Isaac said as he tried to catch his breath, after feeling the extreme pressure from those two.
"I'm not sure but it seems like they were hired to get rid of someone. We should probably go and have a look. There might be something valuable we can get." Druak said as he started running up the mountain to see what was actually going on.
After 30 minutes of running Druak and Isaac began to hear the sound of a massive battle.
*Bang*
*Crack*
*Bang*
The sounds seemed to be quieting down and were happening much less frequently.
"We should probably hurry. It sounds like the fight won't…" Druak froze as he saw the face of the one fighting and he muttered. "Iris."
Surrounding Iris were two giant great arm gorillas who had poison infused into their armoured arms. They were constantly flailing their arms at Iris who continued to dodge and deal out as much damage as possible.
'I need to find a gap that I can escape from.' She thought as she continued to clash with the two monsters before her, the beautiful pink aura which once covered her entire weapon was now but a flicker.
As she continued to fend off attacks and find opportunities to strike an opening was finally seen. 'This is my only;y chance. I have to take it.'
Leaping through a small gap in the gorilla's attacks she rolled to the ground, but she made one mistake, she turned back and looked at the gorillas which was more than enough time for one of them to switch their arm straight at hers.
"If it costs an arm to get away it's worth it."
*Crunch*
The sound of bone breaking echoed in Iris's ears, but for some reason, she felt no pain. Then the sound of someone shouting brought her out of her stupor. "What the hell are you doing. RUN!!!"
Not bothering to look back at who spoke she sprinted as far away as possible, soon passing Isaac who seemed to be chanting in order to cast some kind of magic. Seeing this caused Iris to suddenly come to a halt as she turned around to see who had saved her.
"What on earth." She muttered as she watched the battle that was unfolding before her.