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When I was given light to, my mother always looked at me with worry, at the time I never knew what she was always worried about. That question stayed in my head until I finally got permission to exit my house from my father, an elf.
Although my father was an elf, my mother was a half-bear kin. While my ears were of a bear, they were extremely sharp in the edges like an elf. But one thing from me scared the other kids from my village. It was my arms, even though half-beasts normally just have the ears, tails, mouth or vision of the animal they originate from, my body was different. I had arms of a bear while having the rest of my body of a normal elf. Back then, I didn't have a single friend until I became an adventurer.
I knew that I was too young to be one, so I hid that fact from my parents. So while they gave me permission to play with my "friends", I sneaked out to the guild. Of course, the kids from the village never tried to befriend me because they were too scared if I would go wild like a bear, so nobody beside the guild master and the adventurers who were there in my registration request knew about what I was doing.
I discovered about the adventurers and guilds in the books and stories from my father. When I heard that there is a guild in my village, I didn't feel like continuing playing with the wood toys that my father made for me. I grabbed the little money that my mother let me have and ran towards the guild.
At first the guild master and the adventurers there freaked out or laughed at me when I requested to register as an adventurer in the guild. But the guild master kept looking at me like he was bargaining with a merchant. Finally, after much pleading to the guild master, he accepted me as a pupil and after many moons and suns of training with a bow and arrow, daggers, spells and swords alike. I was ready to accept requests.
Between those many moons, my parents grew suspicious to where I was going to with so much excitement when I was "going out to play with the other kids". But after telling the guild master that I was hiding from my parents the fact that I was training to be an adventurer, he scolded me lightly and helped me with the secret by requesting my help in attending the adventurers in his guild with my parents. Somehow, they brought it and let me go with Ghuil (Gil) to the guild without the need for me to lie about where I was going.
Finally, after more moons and suns, my guild master saw that it was time to register into the guild. While we were eating some boar meat, i requested my father permission to let me register officially into the guild.
Of course, my father freaked out when I said that and my mother fainted. Rather exaggerated reaction if I say so myself. But after Ghuil talked with them and asked forgiveness from them because "The work I was doing might have done some impact on my decision of career" and said that he would personally have me as an apprentice.
After a while my parents accepted it and finally I turned into an adventurer. After the fact that I turned into an adventurer ran through my village like it was wild fire, the previous kids that were afraid of me began to try to talk with me while I went walking towards the guild in the mornings because I no longer needed to sneak out to the guild.
My village was like any type of village that you would find in the country in safe forests or plain fields of grass. Houses made of stone and woods with the numbers of houses being around eleven or thirteen houses with a smith, a church made of complete slab stone and the guild house.
The village was in the middle of an evergreen forest where monsters didn't seem to be a problem. The highest level monster to get near of our village was a Wild Boar of level 9.
But the problem with the village was the merchants and security. The village was almost hidden by the forest, so merchants were scarce. So if you wanted to shop for supplies or materials, you would walk ten thousand steps north to the big city of Korita, a city famous for the big wall that protects it, and commercial influence.
The problem with security was that our village was only protected by adventurers, which meant that we had to pay for our protection with medium taxes from the guild. I'm not complaining about my parents having to pay taxes, no. The problem was with the adventurers who were about level 11 to level 22, which meant that if a strong monster came in contact with our village, at least half of the village would be killed until the monster was subjected or we evacuated the villagers.
Guard duty for villages was famous request for beginners in adventurers. I did multiple night shifts and day shifts for guard duty for my own village because I didn't get permission to leave the village by my father.
At first I thought that I was going to kill at least one monster between the shifts, but to my expectation, no monsters appeared between the shifts, and I practically began to sleep in the night shifts after the third guard duty request from my village, because no monsters appeared, and even if it appeared we were instructed to not engage combat if it was possible.
My body grew to almost a full grown adult and I was still level 5, which was the level I began my adventurer career. Even though I did between three - five requests per seven moons and seven suns, I almost didn't get any extermination requests or hunting requests.
Back then, I didn't have a clue that my parents were controlling the attendants that give requests. So for numerous moons, I only did herb gathering from the village's small rivers that had no monsters at all. I did some wood crafting requests. I learned to craft various tools and miscellaneous things from wood because I learned from my father, who loved to wood crafting, an art that is apparently forbidden between the elves for some reason and, of course, guard duty requests.
Finally, after many moons, I grew tired of no action on my requests and complained about the requests to Ghuil, he scolded me by saying that it was what happened to adventurers ranked beginners and that I only just started as an adventurer meaning that my name wasn't well known outside the village and that extermination requests for beginners were rare. I understood that, because the only monsters that I could actually kill were goblins, which were given to intermediate adventurers only since they only walked in groups of six to ten and that gave a lot of work to beginners.
I began to sulk while ignoring the guild master which was confused about how to handle me. He was a man who only had girlfriends but no wives since he thought that taking care of newborns was a hassle. I didn't change that way of thinking of his, since I always acted like an adult when I was with him, well… I tried to act like one. So this was the first time that I acted like one to him, so he didn't know how to handle me.
But to my hopes, while we were having this situation, a request giver lady raised her voice in the middle of the guild. It was a goblin subjugation request from the village two thousand steps from ours.
It seems like the village storage was raided by the goblins there and the local adventurers failed to completely exterminate them when they got there. But since the adventurers were also guards to the recently found mine there, they could not leave the village because they were already doing a request.
The village elder seeing this, gathered a small tax from the members of the village that wanted the goblins gone, and set up the group request and send to this guild.
After the lady stopped talking, the guild grew back the same noise filled that it was and I looked back at Ghuil with full excitement in my eyes and he only gave me a sigh.
He tried to talk me out of it by saying "You can go if your parents give you the permission to go", but I complained that my father wouldn't let me go out of this village even after he died. After I asked him if all that training that I did was for me to sit home and look at the trees until a monster comes out of it.
He gave a deep sigh and finally gave me permission to go, but I needed to get prepared to see people die and kill a monster that will try to kill me.
I nodded and gave my registration card to the lady, the group would meet up in the next sun rise and that if I get any late to the meeting I would automatically get kicked out of the request.
I accepted the usual terms which was that the guild is not responsible for any adventurer's behavior while going or in the request. If I decided to not go to the meeting, I need to ask the request lady to mark me off before the meeting time so I wouldn't cause any inconveniences because of a missing party member.
After leaving the guild house with expectations and excitement going through the roof, I had one request of herb gathering so I could do something while waiting until the moon shows up. After overdoing the request because my mind was gathering herbs while thinking about the subjugation request, so I grabbed more than the requester wanted, but he didn't complain about it. He gave me the complete pay and I walked off towards my house.
I devoured my dinner which startled my parents and ran towards my bed and threw myself into it. But I was too excited to sleep, so I began fletching and making some stone tipped arrows. After the moon was in the middle of the sky, I slept like a rock.
I made around a hundred stone tipped arrows and woke up before the sun showed itself. I sneaked my way out of the house because my parents were sleeping and went to the guild house.
It seems like the guild was about to open, so I helped them because I didn't have anything to do until the meeting time.
After the lady called me over and told me carriage that I needed to get on.
After I got on the carriage, I practically jumped while sitting in the carriage out of excitement, making the carriage shake.
I calmed down after waiting until the sun rose and nobody got on the carriage. At first I was afraid that I got into the wrong carriage and that I would get some expert adventurer request carriage. But the guild master calmed me down because he was worried about me.
Apparently the village elder gave the group request to multiple nearby villages and that my teammates would come from another carriage. After a light scold from the Ghuil because I shouldn't be that excited in combat or I would be killed.
After Ghuil got out of the carriage, the carriage began to move with only me inside of it. I was pretty sad that I didn't get to meet my party members right away, but the excitement from finally doing a decent request kept me away from the boredom of the long ride until the village.
The ride was short even though the carriage horses were walking steadily. After finally getting to the village that gave the request, I get out of the carriage and walk towards the village elder's house after asking around where the house was.
Finally after timidly entering the house, the old man gave me his warm greetings and urged me to sit in his living room. He gave me a cup of tea and left me after saying that I was the first one to arrive and that four members were still coming.
I expected as such, since this village and mine were practically one because of the short distance between them.
After I slept there until the sun was in the middle of the sky, a lady woke me up and called me outside. I felt embarrassed because it was my first request and I slept in the requester's house.
After awkwardly giving excuses for my behavior to the lady we arrived in to the stables.
There was the village elder and four more armored looking people.
The first noticeable person was a normal human with a great sword as his weapon and basic leather armor. Why was he the most noticeable? Because of his uncommon hair color, green a common hair color between elves, even though he had no noticeable elven features in his face or body.
The second was lady that almost made me sleep on the spot. She had a calm expression with no redeeming features on her or her body which was complete normal human. She didn't have a weapon, that why I noticed her second. But I won't judge her since priests and mages were famous for using accessories instead of a large staff which most of the time, would get in their way when they needed to run away. And as armor she had a simple white dress.
The third person looked like an adult but his air was one of a childish. His weapon was a long bronze sword and a wood shield, with the same basic leather armor as mine, the first person and the last person.
Which kind of was a comrade in weapons, a half-cat beast, and her weapon was a white wood short bow with a quiver made of brown leather, while mine was an iron long bow while I had some spare bronze knifes in my waist.
Everyone except the lady that showed me the way look at my direction. My assumed to be party members looked back at the elder and the elder explained about the request in more detail with enthusiasm. While I was too excited to listen to the elder's complains about the problem, I just got the location of the goblins in my head and waited until the elder stopped angrily complaining about how they have to buy another storage room and bargain with the merchants for more supplies and so on.
Finally, the previous lady came back to the stable and asked to us to follow her while the old man kept complaining to himself still. We left him behind while some of us sighed and followed the lady outside the village.
She pointed the direction of the goblins went and walked back into the village.
We looked at ourselves and began to walk towards the designed direction until I suggested setting up camp and introducing ourselves first, and then doing the rest tomorrow.
Everyone agreed and after walking until the sun began to hide and began setting a simple camp for us.
After the introduction, we began to small talk until one of us got tired and went to sleep.
The human with the green hair was Weilo, he was a swordsman of level 18, and the boring girl was Sabia, a healer of level 21. The half-beast girl was an archer of level 12 and her name was Yula and finally there was the adult of the group, he was a tank of level 28.
When I said with a embarrassed voice that I was a no class, level 5 girl which got trained by my village's guild master, the boy gave a concerned look while scratching the back of his head while the girl gave a surprised look and the "adult" of the group laughed his ass off while I sat there in the grass with embarrassment through the roof. But the only one who stopped the "adult" of the group from laughing himself to death was the half-beast girl, Yula.
I and she became practically best friends after that and we hit off pretty well. We both had bows and almost identical strategies to kill enemies. While she got close and personal, I sniped while watching for monsters that were trying to get close with my daggers.
After a while we had to see who was going to share a tent since Weilo forgot his tent at the village. I and Yula decided to sleep in the same tent since we became friends like the second we knew our names.
I slept after talking with low voices with Yula until she literally fainted in the middle of the conversation which at first I almost screamed of laughter. I calmed myself down and went to sleep while thinking about when the sun is going to rise.
How naïve I was…
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