"Elsword never falls down. He merely befriends the ground."

My name is Elsword. Ever since I was a little boy, I've been aspiring to become a strong warrior like my sister. I loved my sister because she was the only family I knew. From a young age, she's been training me to be the strongest I can, and it finally paid off when I became the youngest member of the El Explorers. I'm not a knight yet, as I've never had the opportunity to get to one of the major cities in Elrios, like Elder, despite its relative closeness to my village. Due to training, I simply didn't have enough time to go there. Besides, being 13, I feel like I'm still too young to become a knight. Don't get me wrong though, I am fully capable of becoming one.

What am I doing now? To be honest, I have no idea. Our village's El has been stolen a couple of minutes ago. 'My' party tried to stop bandits from getting to it, but we obviously failed. They're surprisingly agile and managed to slip out of our grasp. Without the El, life would cease to exist, and those bandits... Ugh... We thought they were perfectly good men and welcomed then into our village, and then...

Today's lesson: Never trust grown ups.

Anyway, our chief has discovered that the nearby forest ruins is being under attack by woodland creatures called phorus. I would much rather chase after those bandits, but Lowe, my new instructor, is apparently on the case. So now we're here, traveling to these ruins to protect it. I personally don't see the importance of preserving this place, since nothing lives in it, but I won't dare say that out loud in front of Rena. She's normally a cheerful elf, but I have a bad vibe that there may be something evil underneath that happy exterior. No I don't mean evil evil, but I don't want to be around her if she gets ticked.

Oh, I guess I should introduce you to each of us. I'm Elsword, you knew that. Aisha is this purple-headed magician. She used to be one of the most powerful mages in the world when she was what, six? I forgot, but she had all her powers taken away so she has to start from square one. Rena is an elf who has to find the stolen El so her race doesn't dissapear. Raven is an odd man. He used to be a soldier in the Velder army, but the nobles didn't like him. He had his arm severed and was forced to get a Nasod replacement arm that drives him crazy. Literally. Oh yeah, Nasod is a word used to describe these weird mechanical organisms that we used to live in peace with, but I'm pretty sure they're all dead now. Speaking of Nasods, Eve is the queen of them. I know I said they were all dead, but, uh, nevermind. Last but not least, there's Chung. Don't mention that he looks like a girl and you should be fine. (He really does though.)

Where was I going with this? Oh right, the forest ruins. When we got there, what do you know, we found phorus sacking the darn place. Some of them looked really hungry too, and I felt really bad about them. However, some of them didn't look so hungry, and they looked like they were having a blast looting whatever they could.

Rena was understandably upset about all of this, whatever the reason each phoru had for being there. She knocked an arrow into her bow and shot it. It missed and sailed straight over one phoru's head, but I'm pretty sure that was intentional. All eyes are on her now. She shouted at them, "Hey, just what do you think you're doing to the previous home of the elves! I demand that you return all the belongings that you have stolen back to their rightful places!"

The phorus all looked at each other and laughed. One of them, what appeared to be a youngling with a bulky blue bag on his back, just stood up and shouted back at her, "And why would you think that we're stealing from the ruins? We're just looking."

Rena twitched. "Looking for what?"

"Why, for the uh, misplaced El of course!" That is just stupid on so many levels. "The El has been misplaced and all the guardians of this place are just going insane! We offered to help look for it, and they gladly agreed!" the phoru said with a smirk.

Rena, "And may I ask where the guardians are?"

I heard rustling sounds behind us and unsheathed my sword. Raven noticed too and was getting ready to unsheath his sword too. Wait, did I mention that Raven uses a sword? I think I did. Uh. Um, then out jumped out a couple of what appeared to be cut logs with funky leaf hats and little stubs for arms and legs. "We're right here of course! These phorus have agreed to help us search the entire area for the El. We've lost it, and we can't even feel the El, so we're having these native animals help."

Next to me, I heard Aisha mentally squee. "Oh wow! You guys look so adorable!" Quickly, her expression turned to one of confusion though. "One thing I don't get, if you can't feel the El, what makes you think the El is in here?"

Those knights looked stumped. "Uh. We didn't think about that."

A phoru landed right in front of them with a fairly audible thud. We heard screaming from behind us, and we saw a giant grass monster. It had a white face with two eyes, but those eyes looked empty, like it had no idea what was going on. The rest of it appeared to be covered in leaves and grass, but it looked BIG (and when I say big, I mean relatively big. They're definitely bigger than the knights and phorus, but it's about the same height as us. It's rather, um, wide-waisted too). It roared and said in a commanding voice, "These phorus are trouble. Two of those animals tried to eat my grand coat of leaves! I noticed that a couple of them weren't even looking for the El. They were putting ancient relics into bags like robbers! They cannot be trusted!" The guardian pulled back his arm to punch a phoru and all of them dispersed like little babies I guess?

The knights took out shields and a giant vine (like that would do any real damage, but it would probably sting. A lot.) and charged at the phorus. We heard many pleas along the lines of: "No, we're sorry! We'll give all the relics back!" and "I was just looking for food!" along other words.

Eve looked on with that stoic expression of hers and said, "Well that escalated quickly, now didn't it? These creatures are so unintelligent."

Chung gazed on and said, "So much I didn't see. Man, I never got entertained back in Hamel!" I couldn't help but chuckle at his expression of pure joy at these phorus getting dominated by the guardians. He mumbled to himself more quietly, "Hamel. I feel like I should be there, but at the same time I don't. What's this..." He was probably just homesick or something.

The phoru that stood up to Rena earlier was running straight towards us. Raven tripped him and pinned him down against the ground. Eve asked the phoru coldly, "I see you are in a lot of trouble. Let me ask, do you have a leader responsible for this? Don't lie, I can detect when a being is lying, and I don't deal kindly with beings that lie." Her two drone pet things Moby and Remy transformed into menacing spears and went straight towards him, stopping just a few inches from his face.

He gulped and quickly replied, "His name's William! William's the one who had this idea to go loot this place! I was a bit skeptical about it, but I only went along with it for the food, I swear! I just got a bit carried away, that's all! Please let me go!"

Raven replied coldly, "I hope you learned your lesson scum. See what happens when you steal?" He lifted his arm off the phoru, and he started running as fast as he could away from us.

Aisha looked after him and said to herself, "William..." She looked at our group and said, "Well Rena, at least we have a lead!" She looked around a bit and said, "Guys, where's Rena?"

That's when we all noticed Rena was in fact, missing. Where she ran off to, I would assume to get more leads on William. "Come on guys, let's go find her." I looked at the entrance to the ruins and heard rather loud screaming inside. "And let's avoid the ruins. I'd rather not go in there." The others all agreed that would be a bad choice.

We went around the entrance into a more open field area. Things seemed much more quiet around here, so maybe the phorus and guardians here haven't heard the commotion. "Hey, it's those pricks who told the guardians what we've really been doing! Get them!" Spoke too soon.

It took me a second to process what 'prick' meant, and I got really angry and getting called a prick. "Hey, who's the real prick here? We were just trying to find the El and we find you pricks sacking this place!"

The phoru that called us pricks shouted back, "Hey, you're a bigger prick! Do you see what those pricks of guardians are doing to my friends!"

"Those pricks are literal pricks, unlike you, who when referred to as a prick, is an insult. What they're doing is just justice."

"'Just' justice for stealing is murder? I'd like to see where you come from prick."

"You're a real prick, you know that phoru?"

Suddenly, an explosion came from behind the phoru and launched him quite a way forward. He rolled on the ground a lot grunting sounds of pain the whole time. Raven stepped into the phoru's old spot and glared at me. "Are you two kids done arguing about who's a bigger prick? Come on Elsword, everybody's waiting for you."

I looked around me and saw that the rest of my group was gone, so I decided to go to Raven. He coughed and said to me, "Elsword, you can't let your emotions get in the way. Imagine if that was a real fighter who was just taunting you. You would get angry and get more focused on killing the person when in reality, you're making yourself more prone to mistakes." I grumbled because I knew he was right.

Following the road, we saw Chung waving to us. I started to wave back, but then he said, "Guys, you've got to check this out! Miss Rena is totally shouting really loudly over there! I'll admit, she's scaring me too, but I don't think I would like to say that in front of her."

Rena being scary? I have to check this out. I heard shouting coming from further down the road, so I ran there. However, two of those grass monster things from before stood menacingly with their arms crossed. It looked really funny because they looked like bouncers, but at the same time it was really intimidating. "Halt," one of them said.

"We won't let anybody pass because now we can't trust any outsiders after those phorus betrayed us," the other one said.

Eve walked up to it and said, "My name is Eve, queen of the Nasod race. May I ask if you saw an elf female go past here a while ago? I can hear her voice from here."

The first guardian said, "Yes, we did see an elf pass by here and we let her through, now leave."

I walked up to the second one and asked it, "Why does she get special treatment, huh? How come she can walk by here while we're stopped by you freaks?"

It said, "We are guardians of the elves. Of course we would let an elf through!"

Aisha spoke to us and said, "Come on guys, let's just leave." She barely whispered this so the guardians couldn't hear her: "I have a plan."

When we were out of hearing range of those guardians I asked her, "What did the genius Miss Aisha come up with now?"

"We walk around them!" she replied with a smile.

I asked her back, "That's it? We walk all this way just so you can tell us that we just walk AROUND the two monsters?"

Aisha looked rather irritated at my remark and replied, "Well, it's certainly more efficient than trying to teleport you all to where Rena is. I can teleport myself long distances relatively easy, but when I have to teleport other people? I just can't do it for that long before I pass out. Magic is some tiring stuff." Despite still being rather irritated at HER, I decided to go with the plan.

Turns out, it actually worked, and we found Rena not too far from them. She was shouting really loud in what I assume is William's face. I looked at Aisha and Eve, and they were standing quite a distance back with their hands over their ears. I wouldn't blame them for covering them up; damn, Rena's loud when she's angry.

Rena is really scary and I was right yet again? Check.

I couldn't listen to what she was saying because it was just so damn loud, but when William started tearing up, she softened up a little. "There there, Mr. Phoru. I know you didn't mean to do these ruins harm," she said in this caring mother voice. "Now, I want you to apologize for setting up this little PRANK-" she was trying her best to maintain a sweet smile ,"-and write on this sheet of paper!"

Rena pulled out a sheet of paper and ink and a quill from who knows where (I'm pretty sure her skirt doesn't have pockets) and gave them to the still trembling William. He whispered more to himself than Rena, "Yes, ma'am. I won't do something like this again, I s-swear." He trembled as he wrote and after a while he gave it back to her.

Rena beamed and said to him in her normal cheerful voice, "Good~ I hope you learned your lesson today, Mr. William!"

She noticed us and walked towards us. She said, "Oh hey guys! I just got to the bottom of this. Turns out William felt like pranking his fellow phorus into thinking there was lots of loot at the ruins so he didn't have to go himself. The phorus got a little carried away, and since William is the cause of the problem, I had to go and teach him a lesson~"

Chung pointed at the letter in Rena's hands and asked her, "Miss Rena, what is that?"

Rena held up the letter and said, "Oh this? It's a letter of apology from William. I figured the chief would want some evidence that we stopped this, and this is perfect!" She pulled the letter out and showed us. It contained really poor handwriting (maybe due to how much he was shaking when he was writing it)... and quite a bit of money. Rena smiled and said, "All mail gets better reception when you attach something to it~" she laughed. It was cunning to get the money out of William, but is she really better than him? Questions questions questions.

Then we began walking back towards the village after a somewhat long day of nothing. Along the way, guess what happened to us? Nothing. Those walks are SO BORING.

When we finally got home, I went to my room, put on my PJ's and lay down on my bed. I had trouble sleeping though as I still didn't get word of how the chase after the bandits was going. Looks like I was going to have to wait for tomorrow to see how it went.

The next day when I woke up, I ran straight towards Chief Hagus's house as I knew Lowe and his search party were back. They were always back the next day. I knocked on the door and sure enough, Lowe was there. He was conversing with Chief Hagus about something, and the chief didn't look too happy. I could already see what Lowe was going to say to me next.

Chief Hagus looked at me and invited me over. Lowe said to me, "Agh, sorry Elsword. We just couldn't catch the bandits."

It took me a moment to process that Lowe failed. Then I simply said, "What?"

Lowe replied, "A guardian of the El blocked our way. We couldn't just get rid of him because he was just doing his job. The disappearance of the El must have made him crazy. If he keeps this up, well then..."

Anne, the store merchant in Ruben village was listening to our conversation from the living room (how did she get there?) and jumped up in shock. She said, "You can't just kill the Ancient Phoru! He's just doing his job! Chief Hagus, maybe Elsword and his party should go. They might be able to reason with it."

Chief Hagus looked at me and sighed. "I suppose you're right. The Ancient Phoru is just delusional from a lack of the El. Very well. Elsword, I'm sorry for giving you little to no rest, but your next mission is to go and find a way to get past the Phoru and retrieve our El."

Lowe looked fairly jealous. "But Chief Hagus, Elsword and his party is inexperienced, and now you're sending them to deal with the Ancient Phoru? Are you kidding?"

My tutor was calling me inexperienced. Jerk. With quite a big smirk on my face, I said to him, "Hey, maybe we just might be able to do something useful for once."

Lowe was silent. Chief Hagus said, "So it's decided. Elsword, ready up now. You may leave when you want to."

I put on a smile now that I was getting a mission that wasn't stupid. "With pleasure, Chief!" As I walked out of his house though, I groaned on the inside. Thanks to Lowe's uselessness, I was stuck with a job that should have been done yesterday.

Today's lesson: Never trust grown ups.

A Phoru screamed in the ruins. "Dude, that's just gross! I didn't even know a log could throw up that much!"

The knight looked at the phoru and said, "You don't know that much about the Tree Knights then. Uh oh! BLERGH!"

Across the room, another phoru took a drink and said to the grass monster, "Dude, come on, I thought you guardians were better than this!"

The grass thing said, "We have to have something fun to do too!"

Glave looked himself and said "Oh man. I should stop drinking when I know I have ADHD. No wait, I mean a real addictive personality trait. Damn."

The party in the ruins could only be heard in the forest area, as the walls of the ruins blocked out most of the sound. The most that ever got out was the yelling from the bar fights and people exclaiming their disgust at barf all over the place. Who's going to clean that all up anyways?