TBATE-ONESHOTS

A Royal Heart

Tessia Eralith POV

"Ugh," I groaned, looking at my new adventurer's card in my hand. "I can't believe I only got B class."

I was currently at the adventures hall in Xyrus, where I has just completed my assessment. It had taken forever, but I was finally able to convince my parents to let me get some life experience by becoming an adventurer, with a bit of help from Grandpa, that is.

The sound of someone giggling caught my attention, and my head snapped to the left. My gaze fell on the girl named Sarah standing beside me. Sarah was a little older than me, with brown hair and brown eyes. She was wearing a set of brown leather armor, and a green hooded cloak, like me. Grandpa suggested having us dressed similarly; this way, it looked like we were adventuring partners.

Sarah was assigned as my bodyguard while I went adventuring. She was a trusted member of my family as she was trained by Aya, who was a lance. Lances were elite warriors with white cores and held great power. As far as I knew, there were only six lances, with two assigned to each family. I myself have only met our two lances, Aya and Alea.

Sarah looked at me amusingly, "You heard the lady who did your test. They thought you were A class, but they couldn't give you that since you're new."

In terms of adventurer rankings, it went from E, D, C, B, A, AA, S, then SS class. The adventure ranking coincided with the beast rankings in the Beast Glades. It was designed that way so that you didn't end up going into a dungeon that was too high of a level for you.

I nodded and sighed, "Yeah, I know, and I understand. Just would've been cool to tell Grandpa that I got A class right from the start."

Sarah shrugged, "From what I've seen and heard about Elder Virion, I have a feeling that he'll be proud of you either way."

My lips curved into a warm smile, "Yeah, I'm sure he will be."

"So," Sarah began. "Now that we have our adventurer cards, what do you want to do?"

"Hmmm," I hummed, tapping my chin with my index finger. I looked back at Sarah, "We could go to the quest board we passed by earlier and see what's available."

Sarah's eyes narrowed, and her gaze fell like she was contemplating what I just suggested. I mentally sighed since I was worried about this. I had a feeling that Sarah would be overprotective, all because I'm the elven princess.

Father and Mother wanted to make it so no one could tell I was the princess. Which is why the armor Sarah and I were wearing was of human make, and we both had charm necklaces that cast an illusion on us and hid our elf ears.

"I don't know, quests can be dangerous," Sarah said. Her eyes flicked to me, "We could just go to a low-level dungeon and get some experience."

I sighed, "If we go to a low-level dungeon, we won't get that much experience since it'll be below our skill set." I smiled and gave her a small tap on her shoulder, "Come on! A quest can be fun, and we can get some good experience. Besides, we can pick something simple."

Sarah looked at me a little worried, "But Pri-" Her eyes widened, and she quickly covered her mouth. She turned visibly pale, and her eyes darted around at her small slip-up.

I gave her an amusing smile, "Sarah, relax. Obviously, no one heard you. You don't need to be so tense."

Sarah slowly took her hand from her mouth and nodded, "Thank goodness. And I'm sorry if I'm tense. I just don't want you to be put in danger because I slip up."

I laughed a little, "It's fine. Now come on, let's go see if there is a mission we can take."

Sarah opened her mouth like she wanted to protest, but she just sighed and nodded. I turned and began to walk through the guild hall, with Sarah following right behind me.

As I walked around, I noticed adventures of all shapes and sizes walking around. Some were decorated more than others wearing shiny armor and holding their heads up high. It wasn't hard to deduce that they were probably from noble families. Other adventures, however, wore simple leather armor like mine and seemed to move more freely since they weren't restricted by the weight of plate armor.

Another thing I noticed was that most of the adventures were either dwarves or humans, as there weren't many elven adventurers. The few elven adventurers I did see made an apparent attempt to avoid the human adventurers since the human and elven races didn't get along that well.

"You ok?" Sarah asked from behind me.

I nodded, "Yeah, I'm fine. I was just taking notice of how the elven and human adventurers are avoiding each other."

"Perhaps for good reason," Sarah commented behind me. I looked at her from over my shoulder with a raised brow. Sarah caught my look and shrugged, "It's no secret that humans can be cruel and hold no regard for nature. If you ask me, we're better off just avoiding them."

My gaze fell, and I mentally sighed at her words. Unfortunately, most elves felt the same way she did. It was a mindset I was hoping to get rid of in the future and bring our races closer together.

I looked back forward and continued my way through the hall until the quest board came into view. The quest board was a giant corkboard with several sheets of paper pinned to it with different missions. In front of the board were several adventurers looking at the abundance of missions.

I approached the board and eyed all of the missions individually, trying to see if there was something easy to take but could also give good experience. The missions ranged from escort missions to scout missions, collecting, and monster hunting.

I decided to avoid the escort and scout missions and focused on collecting and monster hunting. My eyes eventually fell on a hunting and collecting mission. The summary of the mission was to go to an A-class water dungeon called Sunken Depths and hunt down water spiders and collect their venom.

"This one's interesting," I called out.

I reached out and grabbed the paper when another hand from my right grabbed the same paper simultaneously. My head snapped to the right in surprise, and my gaze fell on an auburn-haired human male about my age with deep azure eyes.