As the sun began to set, it painted the sky and the forest below with a beautiful orange tint.
A creature that was short in stature, covered in dark fur, looked up. Its ears twitched as it listened to its surrounding.
It frantically sprinted towards a certain direction in the forest. It approached a figure crouching in front of a tree gathering something at its roots.
"It's about to go dark nya." It spoke to the figure and ended its sentence with a meow.
The figure then looked back.
The figure was a young woman.
She was around nineteen years of age. She had long black hair and beautiful green eyes. She was wearing an armor that seemed to be a mix of leather armor and blue fur and hide of some creature. Her helmet had cute bear-like ears. At her wrist was a small round shield and a short sword was strapped at the back of her waist.
She looked towards the sky and spoke in an exasperated tone.
"It's that time already? Jeez, time does fly when you're enjoying yourself."
Her furry companion shook its head and rebutted.
"What do you mean "It's that time already"!? We have a quest to finish! Remember this is a hunting quest, not a gathering quest Nya!"
The young woman merely patted her companion who was basically fuming.
"Easy now, my felyne companion Midna."
Midna, the felyne, had a reason to be angry. They took a hunting quest to hunt monster. They did manage to find the monster and dealt considerable damage to it, but before they could finish the job, it ran away. Instead of tracking it down, the young woman opted to gather resources.
"You do realize that if we fail, all those stuff you gathered will be confiscated by the guild staff?"
The woman scratched her head as she heard this.
"That will be troublesome. But don't worry, there's a high chance that monster will go here."
She pointed at the spot she was gathering. The felyne looked at it and noticed there was a small puddle of honey at the ground. Th felyne's gaze traveled upwards to the source of the honey and saw a hive.
"That monster loves honey, it is its main food source. While there is surely a few more source of honey in this forest, I found out that this one gave the most in terms of quantity."
Then as if on cue, a monster howled as it entered the area they were currently in.
Both of them looked towards the direction in which the howl came from and saw a monster looking straight at them.
It had turquoise colored fur and had a ursine body structure. Tough hide that is quite similar to a carapace was on its back. The forearms was protected by a brace covered with spikes and its claws were long and sharp.
It was a fanged beast, Arzuros.
Midna couldn't believe it. Just as her companion said, it appeared right into the area they were in.
The arzuros was covered in wounds and looked at them with raging eyes, confirming that this was in fact the one they fought earlier.
The young woman put down the jar that she was using in order to gather honey and stepped forward.
"Be ready, Midna."
Hearing this, Midna pulled a boomerang and put on a stance.
The young woman then grabbed the short sword at the back of her waist and pulled it out. She brandished her sword and shield and glared directly towards the arzuros.
After a howl, the arzuors charged towards them with its fangs bare. Because of its wounds, it was quite slower that it usually is. The young woman didn't move and waited for the arzuros to reach her location. As the arzuros reached her location, it raised its right arm and swiped with its sturdy claws. Even when injured, its swipe was still powerful. The young woman evaded the claw swipe by ducking downwards. The arzuros then proceeded to swipe continuously with both its claws. Like it was dancing, the arzuros didn't stop swiping its claws. The young woman evaded every attack. She was waiting for the right moment. After the flurry of attack, the arzuros began to tire and its claw swipes began to slow down tremendously.
This was the moment she was waiting for. As the arzuros swiped with its left claw tiredly, the young woman deflected it using her round shield. Usually this would send the woman staggering, but the monster was too tired and the power in its attack was really low. As the arzuros was out of balance due to its attack being deflected, the young woman ducked in towards the monster's torso and with her sword, attacked. She plunged her sword towards the arzuros chest, the sword pierced through its hide and embedded deeply into the monster's flesh.
After a minute of wailing, the monster fell unto the ground.
The young woman looked back at midna and grinned.
"See? Told you it was alright."
"Ethea! What took you so long?"
Midna was surprised at the loud voice as she and her companion entered a certain building.
Her companion approached the woman who just welcomed them with a loud voice at her desk.
"Sorry, the quest was more difficult than I expected."
The woman then punched Ethea lightly on the shoulder.
The woman Ethea was talking to was a guild receptionist. She handled low rank to high rank quests for hunters. She had yellow-blonde hair and golden eyes. She was very cheerful and was quite popular to the hunters in the guild.
"Yeah right! Knowing you, you just focused on gathering instead of actually hunting the arzuros, didn't you?"
Right on the nail.
Ethea couldn't do anything in response but smile.
She then pulled out a roll of parchment that had something written on it.
The receptionist accepted it and stamped the words "Cleared" on it and smiled.
"Quest clearance has been confirmed. The guild will now take care of the procedure of informing the client of its completion and the rewards will be handed to you shortly."
Ethea smiled.
"Alright. I'll wait then."
Ethea then looked around the guild hall and noticed a group of hunters sitting around a table looking all dark and grim.
Perhaps Rumina noticed the puzzled expression on Ethea's face and explained the situation.
"They're a party of rank 3 hunters. They wanted to advance to rank 4 and finally reach high rank, however something went wrong with their urgent quest."
Ethea looked at Rumina and saw her sad expression.
"We warned them that the monster they will be after is no pushover. We tried to convince them to hunt other monsters first and change their weapons and armors or at the very least upgrade their current ones."
The response Ethea could only muster was a silent nod.
"In their urgent quest, they lost one of their party members."
Rumina continued.
It was a common thing to happen to hunters, especially to low rank ones.
Low rank hunters tend to be quite excitable and rush things. It is much worse when they plow through quests in low rank, it makes them too overconfident. They think that the difference between low rank and high rank is small, hence why they tend to rush certain quests, thinking that it will be just the same as the old ones they cleared.
"Here you go."
The sudden voice of Rumina brought back Ethea from her thoughts.
She looked at Rumina and noticed she was handing a wooden tray to her. On top of the wooden tray was a copy of the quest paper that she just accomplished and just beside the quest paper was gold coins stacked quite high.
Wanting to cheer up Rumina whom was now wearing a sad expression on her face, Ethea brought up a new topic.
"I heard there was a rusted Kushala Daora that was wreaking havoc somewhere close."
Rumina nodded and put on the expression she wore when discussing important stuff.
"Indeed. It was filed as an emergency quest and only G-rank hunters could only accept the quest."
"G-rank hunters huh?"
The hunters in the guild had a ranking system, from low-rank to high-rank and then finally to G-rank. Low-ranked hunters could only accept low-rank quests and the monsters they could hunt and the locations they can visit is quite limited hence why most low-ranked hunters want to advance to high-rank as soon as possible. Being in high-rank means that the number of monsters they can hunt and locations they can go on expeditions on will increase. That means that they will also gain access to additional items and materials that were unavailable in low-rank. After high-rank there was the G-rank and only the most experienced hunters could advance to it.
Most experienced hunters get satisfied after reaching G-rank.
However, there is something after G-rank and only a select few hunters have ever managed to reach it.
It is called "Crowned G-rank".
Hunters that managed to reach Crowned G-rank are called Crowned hunters and they are regarded as heroes. Advancing to the so-called Crowned G-rank was extremely difficult and even most G-rank hunters couldn't reach it. The crowned hunters are divided into three classes; bronze crowned, silver crowned, and finally gold crowned. Even managing to reach bronze crown was the stuff of legend among the hunter world.
"So did a party of G-rank hunters accepted the quest and slayed the rusted Kushala Daora?"
Rumina shook her head.
Seeing this, Ethea couldn't help but tilt her head in confusion.
"No? What do you mean? Nobody hasn't taken on the quest yet? But it's an emergency quest."
"It's not that. The quest has already been accepted, but it wasn't accepted by a party."
"What do you mean?"
"It was accepted by a single hunter... A gold crowned hunter."
"What!?"
Ethea couldn't believe what she was hearing and yelled in response. All the people inside the guild looked at her and wondered what she was excited about.
"Ethea, hush now."
Rumina couldn't help but understand why Ethea was so excited. Crowned hunters were incredibly rare not just in their village but to the entire country. There's only a select few known active crowned hunter, more specially gold crowned. It was normal to be surprised and excited after hearing this, even more so when the gold crowned hunter in question took on the quest alone.
Elder dragons were extremely dangerous, and the elder dragon in question was a Kushala Daora. Not just a regular Kushala Daora, but a G-rank rusted Kushala Daora.
"The higher-ups in the hunter's guild association has already declared the emergency quest cleared right at the moment they heard the hunter's name."
"W-who took on the quest?"
Ethea wanted to know the identity of the crowned hunter who alone took on such a dangerous quest, but Rumina merely shook her head in response.
"I don't know, I wasn't here in the guild when the hunter accepted the quest. They said it was really late when the hunter arrived here in the guild hall, so only a few have heard... I only know the details through rumors."
Ethea nodded as she listened.
There was no helping it.
Even though the guild hall didn't technically close, there was a time when they post quests and process them. They start posting quests at morning and put them down at around late evening. Those who didn't manage to find the quest they like or just didn't get to grab quests had to try the day after.
But crowned hunters were treated as exemptions since they are regarded as heroes. They can accept quests any time they like and the guild would process them with joy.
After their talk has concluded, Ethea grabbed her reward and waved goodbye to Rumina.
Ethea's home was at the outskirts of Pokke village. She had some neighbors, but they were quite few. Since it was quite far from the center of Pokke village, not many wanted to live there.
After walking for a decent amount of time, she finally reached her destination.
It was a wooden house. The house wasn't big, but it wasn't that small either. It had two floors. A big sign was in front of it that said "Elderblight Shop".
Ethea stretched her arms and sighed in relaxation.
"Finally home."
The first floor of her house was shop where she sold the stuff that she made using the resources she had gathered. Behind the counter of the shop was a room where she did all the crafting and mixing. The second floor was where she actually lived. She lives here with her felyne companion, Midna.
Ethea has a very unusual way of living as a hunter. Instead of solely focusing on hunting, she focused more on gathering and crafting. The main reason she decided to be a hunter was due to their access to locations where normally average people are prohibited in travelling to. This gave her access to gathering spot that was gave her resources that cannot be found on the farms in the village.
Even though there are stores that regularly sells hunter necessities, she still confidently opened her own shop. This wasn't unheard of before, in fact there are a few hunters who has a shop of their own in other villages, but unlike Ethea, they only did so after retiring as a hunter.
She unlocked the door and entered her house. Midna went straight to the second floor to rest, but Ethea went directly to her crafting room. She was indeed tired, but she wanted to atleast organize the resources she had gathered on her previous quest.
Looking at the ceiling, she thought deeply.
...Crowned hunter huh.
Ethea herself was just hunter rank 3 but she was already qualified to advance to high rank. She just needed to accept an urgent quest and finish and she will reach hunter rank 4. But she was too occupied in gathering materials and crafting, so she just pushed the idea of advancing to high-rank to the corner of her mind. Rumina actually talked to her about this and brought up some solid facts about the benefit if Ethea ever advanced to high-rank. The first and most important thing that Rumina pointed out was that the area where Ethea could gather materials on would increase and she will gain access to more rare materials.
She remembered the group hunters at the guild who just lost one of their party members.
They looked so sad and depressed.
The life of a hunter is very dangerous after all.
Maybe she could just stay in low-rank.
But the idea of having more materials to harvest is like candy to Ethea.
Going on an urgent quest alone is suicidal, so it was out of the question for her.
Suddenly two faces popped inside her mind.
They were the faces of the two hunters she made a party not long ago.
I wonder how they've been doing?
Maybe I should try contacting them and ask if they can help me with my urgent?
She shook her head trying to erase the distraction flowing inside her mind, she looked down at the table in front of her.
Seeing the stuff she gathered on her desk, she smiled in content.
"Time to get crafting!"
To be Continued
Characters:
Ethea Elderblight: A hunter with a unique way of living. Instead of solely hunting monsters for a living, she prefers to gather resources and make new things out of them. Such things include; Potions with higher recovery rate, Antidote that completely negates poison in a set amount of time, etc. She is has a low hunter rank due to her not being able to hunt efficiently because she tends to get distracted by resources.
Midna: The felyne companion of Ethea. She tends to be the one who sets Ethea straight when it comes to doing quest properly, as Ethea tends to shift her focus on gathering instead of the quest objective.
Rumina: The guild receptionist that handles low-rank to high-rank quest. She is bubbly and cheerful, making her quite popular to hunters and villagers alike. She has a close friendship with Ethea.
Afterword
Hey ya! I've been a fan of Monster Hunter ever since playing Freedom Unite on the PSP. I've always wanted to write a story about it for a long time and had decided to finally go do it.
I'm going to make some changes to the elements of monster hunter in order to fit my story better and make writing it much easier for me. I apologize if it will confuse some readers.
In any case, hope you enjoy it.
See ya~