TBATE - Strings of Fate

19 - Speeches

--TESSIA--

I stepped out of the carriage and arrived at the Guild Hall. It had been three days, but it felt longer as I had done so much in the meantime.

I slept through the first day completely, as we had gotten back late that day. I had chatted with the student council, Gran, and Amara during the second day, and fit in some training as well. I spent the third day training all day, making full use of the time I had to spare in my mana-rich training room.

I spent a large portion of my third day off improving my core. While, I made substantial progress, I was still in the middle of the dark yellow stage, and it would take me a while to advance to the next stage, but I knew the high amount of mana in the training room would boost the speed of my core's refinement up immensely. I could practice mana manipulation later, but I could only train at this speed in this training room.

My attention was drawn to Helen, who was standing outside of the Adventurer Hall and waving at me. Around her, the rest of the twin horns were standing around and waiting. I noticed that Art was here as well.

"Looks like I was the last one. Sorry for keeping you all waiting."

"Eh, we didn't wait too long, we pretty much just got back from picking up Art. We waited longer for him to finish eating than we did for you to arrive after us."

"That's good. Art, what were you eating that took you so long?"

"A lecture."

We all laughed at this until Helen waved to get our attention back.

"Alright, everyone. We got paid to fight monsters, not joke around. Our quest this time is a routine clearing of the woods around this area." She pointed the area out to us on a map. It was an area near a teleporter.

"This type of job is quite common. The point is to patrol the area and kill any monsters above a certain power level so that new adventurers aren't in danger and the kingdom keeps control over certain regions of the beast glades.

"This area is reasonably close to the teleporter, so its minimum power level is low, the mission's difficulty is low, and the rewards are low." We all groaned.

"Our job is to kill all monsters at or above C class. There shouldn't be too many because this area is cleared often. The hard part of these kinds of jobs is to cover the entire area. This will take us quite some time, maybe about a month.

"During this month, there will be very infrequent fighting, a lot of time, and a lot of walking. I'm sure you know what this means."

I did, and judging by Art's grateful expression, he did too.

"I know you two have a lot to work on in terms of mana manipulation. Tess, you made some realizations in our last excursion, yes?"

I nodded.

"And Art, you have just unlocked two new elemental affinities. I'm sure you have a lot to practice."

He nodded.

"This month will be a great opportunity for you two to practice mana manipulation while also making money. This is also meant to tech you the types of adventuring jobs that are done in the fields that you haven't heard of.

"We'll spread out in a wide line and do sweeps of the area to cover more ground and get this over with as quickly as possible. If we finish too fast, we can always just take another of these jobs. During the job, anything you run into, you should be able to kill easily. If you can't, just make a loud noise and we'll be over to help you soon."