Reluctant Hero | Amaki Ren

Chapter 17 | Melty

"Real friends are hard to find."

A few days after Ren and Sakura's joint mission, Sakura was back traveling around with her own party. The Sword and the Dagger concluded that they will be linking parties from time to time if there was a need to do so in accomplishing complicated missions. It was also Sakura's discrete way of helping Ren in leveling up since it was said that the both of them work well together. Their synchronized movements from the dungeon quest made her realize that their attack skills are compatible together and deals great damage when combined.

Not only that, they also found out something rather intriguing on their way back to the inn that night. It may only be available to them, seeing as their legendary weapons were rumored to be a pair in the battlefield. It may be a skill that only the both of them can acquire, but they were not sure of it just yet. So far, they haven't seen Itsuki or the other heroes use them, and it was the first that they found out about that skill that was not in the game they used to play back in their own world.

"Sakura-sama, dinner is ready."

Haru stands a few meters away from the cliff where Sakura stood, her eyes gazing at the setting sun with the golden glow landing on her skin so lightly. She looks over her shoulder to nod at her party member. "I'll be right there in a few minutes." She says.

The latter only nodded back in response and turned back to enter the forest once again. They have been venturing all around the country to level up and acquire village misions for awhile now. Sakura took it as an opportunity to have all of her squad members hone skills, not just in fighting. She turns back to see the sun barely peeking through the mountains. At that, she made her way to their camp and found the four already digging in on their meals.

"Sakura-sama, I don't get why we have to practice cooking." Nami whines.

"You'll die of hunger if you're to go off on your own." Sakura sits on the log where no one else was sitting and leaned forward to have some soup cooking from the campfire. She takes a bowl nearby and poured herself a single portion.

"But, we can always buy in pubs."

"You need to learn the value of money, Nami. Everything around this place is expensive. It's already hard to get by." Sakura sighed. "The only reason why we've been taking it lightly is because of the King's rewards."

"You got it in the bag. You managed to make him reward all of us 4,000 silvers per Wave." Freya laughed. "It's still cool how you got to make the King himself comply to your terms, Sakura-sama."

And because of that, Sakura needs to be more vigilant. Myne will most likely try on her again to get rid of her existence. Sakura is in for the challenge, but Myne was becoming more of a nuisance from her duties as a hero now. Her focus was to protect the people, yet the first princess of the people she's protecting didn't even look like she wanted the best for her subjects. Thinking about it only irked Sakura more.

She didn't notice that she already finished her bowl of soup and scooped on invisibile food.

"Sakura-sama,"

"What?" She glanced up from her empty bowl.

"I hear footsteps." Ria's voice came out quietly. Sakura was immediately on high alert at her warning.

"Keep the fire running until it dies down on its own." She said. "Don't leave anything behind. Hurry up."

She stands from the log and helped her party members clean up on their stuff before leading the team to move away from the group of people Ria was able to detect ahead of time. Sakura had a feeling that they weren't there for them. "Where are they headed, Freya?"