"Why can't anybody take me seriously? At least I'm not Adam..."

Chief Hagus sent me away to deal with the bandits that stole our village's El while he sent Elsword and his gang to deal with a more menial task at hand. Elsword's task wasn't useless, but it's a heck of a lot less important than what we're doing. However, due to the weight of my mission, we had to get this done as fast as possible to beat Elsword in time.

Today's lesson: Keep moving.

We were scrambling about the place, looking for clues on where the bandits were. Eventually, one of us turned something up. One of the older trainees spotted a lead around the White Mist Swamp north of the Tree of El. He said he heard shouting and scampering about. That's a problem. First of all, as the name suggests, the swamp is filled with mist and fog, making it extremely difficult to even see where you're going. Secondly, the El is gone, so all the animals are going insane. There's also a certain ancient phoru there, much bigger and scarier than any other phoru in the region, and it's probably very angry at the El disappearing. I really didn't want to have to deal with it, but we had no choice.

I shouted at my men, "All right, let's go to the swamp north of the Tree of El. Yes, that swamp." Naturally, they didn't want to go there given the situation, but they had no choice. I'm pretty good with my words if you know what I mean. Yes, I did threaten to fire them, thank you for asking.

When we got to the swamp, I remembered how big it was. I divided my party into 3 groups: one went searching along the east side, another along the west. I put myself in charge of the group that went in the middle, which consisted of exactly 1 person. It was a dumb idea going alone, but I view all my missions as training. There's also an unspoken rule that goes around my party: I'm left alone when there's a mission. I don't understand why, but I can only get my serious face on when I'm alone.

The rest of my party went off charging as fast as they could. I decided to reduce my pace to a moderately fast walk. Unlike them, who have strength in numbers, I had to conserve my energy so I didn't get caught off guard in battle. I walked past a pond and decided to unsheathe my sword. What pond it was, I have no idea. I couldn't give a landmark of everything in the swamp; it's too foggy. Besides, I'm no geographer.

After about half an hour, I thought I saw somebody behind me. Could it be one of the party members running to ask me for help? My men are good men, so I doubted that would be the case. I turned around and caught just a little glimpse of movement. The air stilled to a halt while I looked around. Nothing. I guessed it was just my imagination. I guessed it was also my imagination that as soon as I turned around, I heard a faint giggling noise. I turned around again and said, "Who's there?" to nobody in particular.

Once again, time stopped as I examined the surroundings. This time, I observed every little detail that was set in front of my eyes. Of course, there was mist everywhere. There was a brownish tree to the left, a couple of mossy rocks right under it. There was the remains of a road, now overgrown with really green grass. There was a boulder right next to the road, but something about what you could make of its shadow seemed off. I walked over to it and it moved. It jumped out even. And when it jumped out, BAM, the shadow hit me right in the face. I stumbled backwards and returned my eyes to the scene. Now, there was an elf in front of me who seemed rather pleased with herself.

"Took you long enough to notice me," she said with a grin.

I felt the place on my face that she kicked me in and asked her, "What the hell did you do that for?"

She replied, "That's how I greet everybody," in that same smile characteristic of elves. Then her expression turned rather annoyed as she added on to it with a shrug, "Except elders and people of importance."

That's how an elf greets people? I asked her for confirmation.

"Of course not," she said. "I only do that to people who seem kind of strong. If they're able to stand up again within 10 seconds, then I believe they can help me."

So she's asking me for help by kicking me in the face. Of course, being the ever helpful one, I asked her, "OK then, what do you need help with? And please don't say as a punching bag."

She looked at me with an expression that said she was in slight thought. "I need you to help me find our forest's El. Some bandits stole it from us a while ago. Although, judging by your uniform and the fact that you're out in the middle of a giant swamp, I'd say you already knew that."

I chuckled to myself. "Of course I did, and I guess I should have known that's what you wanted me to help you with."

She held her hand out and said, "Name's Lime."

I shook her hand. "I'm Lowe, captain of Ruben's El Search Party."

Lime and I went off in the swamp to find any abnormalities. Lime said she could sense out people and aggravated creatures. Using that sense, she led us further into the swamp. I've never seen this place before. The swamp's not that big, but it's almost always foggy there. In all honesty, it looked exactly the same as the rest of the swamp.

Lime looked over near some limping tree and said, "There should be humans over there." She looked at me and said, "Come on, let's sneak over there. Let's see what's up."

I looked to where she was pointing and saw some weird figures in the fog. Must be the bandits then.

Lime got on all fours and started crawling towards the encampment, and I put my sword on my back and followed. We snuck close and closer until we could finally hear the voices. I also couldn't help my self from sneaking a peak under Lime's skirt. When it's literally the only thing you can look at that's not the ground, you can't help yourself. ANYWAY, we could mainly hear out two voices. One of them sounded a little more panicked than the other.

"-you have to help us!" said one voice.

The other was more 'big' sounding and replied, "Would you mind telling me how you got found out?"

"Some guys were just charging aimlessly and found us!"

"Where did you hide?"

"Near the road!"

"That might explain why you were found, sir," the other one said with a snarl.

"Please, we're all getting arrested! I don't want to spend another damn day in prison!" the panicked one shouted. Suddenly his tone got calmer and said, "If you ever get caught, I highly suggest that you try not to drop the soap. Ick. Some people in the bars are just weird."

We decided to take a look at the bandits. Lime signaled me to get in a position that we can easily surprise attack them. I nodded and started crawling away again. Unfortunately with all the gear I was carrying, I was making a lot of noise. The bandits noticed this and instead of me getting the drop on them, they got the drop on me. I jumped up and took my sword off my back and prepared to face off against them.

I could hear Lime hiss, "Damn," as she let loose arrows from her bow. A bandit tried to swing his club at me, but it was slow, clumsy, and with horrible aim. I easily rolled passed it and hit him with the hilt of my sword. He was knocked out instantly, and I realized just how inexperienced these bandits were. I almost felt sorry for them, but they bought this upon themselves. I let my guard down, and some big guy took a swing at me and sent me up in the air. I gasped for breath as soon as I hit the ground and groaned. Despite their inexperience, they sure were strong.

I tried to stand, but a bandit flew right into me. "Sorry Lowe!" I heard Lime say. The bandit groaned on top of me, and I just pushed him off and punched him right in the mask to make sure he was out for the fight. All the bandits were preoccupied with Lime, who was now kicking and punching whoever got too close to her. I fumbled around the ground trying to find my sword and noticed that a bandit was trying to get a clear shot at Lime with a throwing knife. I got up and decided to punch him in the back of the head to screw with his vision. 1 bandit down.

He landed right next to my sword, so I went over to it and grabbed it. Getting back into the fight, I swung my sword at a couple of bandits trying to get out of range of Lime. Some bandits noticed me and took their attention off of Lime to focus me down. For whatever damn reason, instead of trying to surround me, they lined up in a straight line. Whatever rocks these guys boats. I would have beaten them all anyways.

The first one raised his dagger and tried to slash at me, but I expected this and easily countered it, sending the poor guy flying. The second one in line raised his club, but before he had time to swing it, I turned around and yelled, "MEGA SLASH!" knocking the guy into the rest of the line. Seeing this display reminded me of bowling, and to add insult to injury, I decided to shout, "And it's a spare!"

There was an explosion of fire right next to me, and a moment after, a couple of bandits were sent flying through the air on fire. One of my friends, N.U., walked up to me and did a twirl. N.U. stands for Name Unavailable because he refuses to tell anybody his real name. He's got blond hair and wears a red blindfold over his eyes, but he says it doesn't affect his vision. He said in his cool, or dare I say it, groovy accent that we've come to expect, "What's up dude? Sorry for taking so long. We've got some bandits on the run though! The rest of my guys should be here soon." He readied up fireballs and sent them flying towards bandits around Lime. N.U. noticed her and asked me, "So what do we have here? Did you finally find yourself a girlfriend?"

I replied with a more annoyed look on my face, "Hey, I just met her. You're crazy; she's just looking for the El that was stolen, like us."

He smiled and said, "I see. She's pretty cute though. I wouldn't mind asking her out," as he sent more fireballs exploding onto the bandits. I rolled my eyes and backfisted a guy that was trying to sneak a hit behind me. I didn't know he was there, but I felt like doing something that would have looked cool in the movies.

The odds were now in our favor as the rest of N.U.'s men came down, along with screaming bandits, disarmed of course, because they more than likely found their weapons too heavy to carry with them. N.U. smiled and said, "Ha, looks like things are getting way more interesting." He sent more fireballs to catch the retreating bandits while I decided to go help Lime out.

I cut down some bandits surrounding her and made my own way into the circle that Lime was in. She was currently kicking at some short guys, but others were about to smash her in the back. I made my way to them and slammed the face of my sword into them, knocking them all aside.

"Glad you could join me," she said. "I was worried I'd break a fingernail back there."

I asked her, "Do most girl elves care that much about their appearance?"

She smirked and replied, "As if!" and kicked another bandit in the face.

I saw the last team of the El Search Party come from the opposite direction of the battlefield, but they looked like they were running from something instead. And suddenly, all of us heard it.

A big giant roar, which was fitting a for a big giant animal, which was exactly what we got. It stood up on its hind feet and enlarged itself, looking bigger than the hill was. Granted, the hill wasn't that big, but still. All of us knew that was a guardian, and a really ticked off guardian at that.

The phoru launched several people aside with its claws and breathed fire into our general direction. We all ducked and the majority of us, bandits and search party members, started running away. Lime stood wide-eyed and tried to block off the creature. She extended her arms and said to it, "Please stop! What's wrong, creature of the forest?"

The phoru roared in reply.

Lime said to it, "You don't need to hurt all these people. There are some you can pummel into the ground, but not all of these humans are bad! Some of them are trying to retrieve the El from the ones who stole it!"

The phoru grumbled.

Lime lowered her arms and looked down. She scratched her head and said, "Well, I don't really know, but I could always just read their emotions to see if they're lying or not."

The phoru roared again. This time, Lime started running back. She grabbed my arm and we ran away from the beast together.

She hissed, "Damnit, it's still pissed at you humans for stealing the El."

I questioned her, "But why? Only minority are responsible for this."

She said, "I don't know either, but he looks like he doesn't care. He was probably driven insane from the disappearance of the El stone in that tree."

I looked through the mist (which was now clearing up) at the Tree of El. I noticed that it looked slightly weaker than before, with leaves falling off and branches starting to droop.

I asked Lime, "What do we do now?"

She let go of my hand and said, "We just wait until the guardian calms down. When that will happen, I don't know. The longer we wait, the worse this situation is."

I clenched my fist. "This is bad."

Lime looked into my eyes and asked me, "Hey, are you really trying to return the El to its rightful spot on the Tree of El?"

I said right back a little annoyed, "Of course I am! Who the hell do you think I am?"

Lime looked a bit skeptical, then she called out, "Airelinna!"

A huge burst of light appeared right beside her, and out of it was the voice of a fairy, smooth and delicate. "Oh hey Lime. What would you like right now?"

Lime pointed at me and said to Airelinna, "Read his mind for me. See if he's lying to me or not."

Oh crap, I thought. She's reading my mind. Don't think about Lime's panties. Think of how I'm not a liar, because I'm not. Jeez, is her trust in me that low? Low. Heh, that's how my name's pronounced.

After that, I felt a presence leave my head and the fairy whispered into Lime's ear. She looked at me with a look that would make any grown man wet himself.

Today's lesson: Keep moving.

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

Elsword simply said, "What?"

I 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 was listening to our conversation from the living room 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 Elsword 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."

I was getting replaced by a kid? I've only been training him for a little while now and now he's getting a mission even I couldn't do? I had to speak up about this. "But Chief Hagus, Elsword and his party is inexperienced, and now you're sending them to deal with the Ancient Phoru? Are you kidding?"

With quite a big smirk on Elsword's face, he said to me, "Hey, maybe we just might be able to do something useful for once."

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

Elsword smiled and said, "With pleasure, Chief!" He looked confused about something though. Almost like I was leaving some details out. I would never hear the end of it when Elsword finds out that Lime beat me up. He just shrugged and walked out the house though. With that, I released a breath I didn't even know I had and painfully trudged back to my house.