Despite being a seemingly underground Labyrinth, once they passed all the way through the tunnel, the party found themselves in what appeared to be a wide open field underneath a clear sky.

There were a few hills to obscure vision, but the grassland had few trees, and from the top of a hill, one could see a good distance.

"So, this is a Labyrinth?" Shirou said, looking about, his bow in one hand and an arrow in the other. "Not what I was expecting."

"I'm sure everyone thinks that exact same thing. Though every Labyrinth is different and even the different floors of the Labyrinth are drastically different. Not that we should even think about going to the next floor until you are at least level 3, and that usually takes months." Madoka said. "So let's try to find ourselves some monster."

"Got it. Theresa, we're counting on you." Shirou said, looking to the Demihuman girl.

Theresa didn't say anything in response but lifted her hand and pointed in one direction.

Shirou turned his head to see what looked like a ball of bouncing brown, cottony fur about fifty meters away that was moving towards them. ...It didn't look like a monster, so he asked Madoka for confirmation.

"Yeah, that Furball is a monster alright." Madoka said nervously.

Shirou frowned, but his disbelief took a hit when the furball suddenly accelerated, jumping twenty meters in an instant, right at Madoka.

The girl gave a squirk of terror, but was saved by Theresa, who dived into her, pushing her out of the way of the bouncing monster and using her own body as a shield.

Theresa's back was hit, with a large slamming sound, and the Furball bounced off the girl, going off course until it hit a tree. All Shirou doubts about the danger disappeared as the tree splintered from the impact, as if a car had rammed into it.

The Furball started to spin, rushing towards the girls again, but Shirou didn't let it get close this time.

Even with the creature being a fast moving target, Shirou had years of experience in archery and had been clay pigeon shooting with Raiga more than a couple of times to learn to deal with fast moving targets. He hadn't missed a shot in years. The arrow struck the center of its body, and the monster fell to the ground, dead.

"You two alright!?" Shirou said, rushing over to Madoka and Theresa.

"I'm okay. Theresa protected me." Madoka said with a shake of the head. "Is she alright? I thought I saw her get hit in the back."

Shirou looked the Demihuman girl over, but even though she took a hit that could break a small tree in two, she didn't seem to have a scratch on her.

Shirou glanced at the battle record in his ID, which confirmed that not only had Theresa been hit, but that she hadn't taken any damage from said hit.

"Wow! To not even take damage from a direct hit like that! That buff that you gave her is really something else!" Madoka said in amazement.

Reducing damage from a hit by 10. So unless the blow has enough power to instantly kill someone who was level 1, the damage is reduced to 0.

Shirou was glad he had taken the time to put that skill on the girls' equipment.

"You also took the furball out in a single arrow. That's really cool too." Madoka said, approaching the dead monster.

Now that it wasn't moving and Shirou could see its twisted, demon-like face, it was much easier to understand why people called the thing a monster.

Madoka took out the arrow that Shirou had fired before reaching into her pocket and bringing out a key. Shirou could sense a little magic energy from her as she pushed the key down on the creature and it disappeared, moved into her storage.

"Alright. Let's keep going." Madoka said cheerfully, as if there had never been any danger at all.

"...Yeah. Lets." It wasn't even noon yet. They couldn't stop after just a single target, could they?


Over the next half hour, Shirou and Madoka followed Theresa's monster detection sense around and Shirou shot at every monster she found for them.

In that way, they quickly added 15 more Furballs to their collection, as well as 6 Giant Bees.

"Alright… Got it…" Madoka said, panting a little as she moved the latest kill into her storage.

"Are you alright?" Shirou asked the girl.

"Yeah. I'm fine. Moving items in and out of my storage just takes a tiny bit of MP. I'm starting to run low." Madoka said as she wiped sweat from her brow.

She'd already taken two swallows of her mana potion in order to be able to continue to use her key to move things into her storage, and about three quarters of the potion still remained. The extra money made by the bodies they would bring back wouldn't come close to paying for the potion.

A Furball's fur was a cotton like material, which sold for 5 copper coins a piece and a Giant's Bee's stinger would be two for a single copper coin. The mana potion cost 2 gold coins or 200 copper coins. Which was equal to approximately 150,000 yen. While not really that expensive, it was an uncomfortably large amount of money to her.

Even if she allowed herself a 10% cut of what they were bringing back, they would need to sell 400 Furballs just for her to break even, and she could probably only transport 150 of them before being bled dry, even with the help of the mana potion. And that was assuming that Shirou could actually hunt down that many.

Knowing Shirou, he would probably have wanted to make it 50/50, or give her more, so she would have to put her foot down when the time came. She was already using him enough as it was. She'd feel too guilty to sleep at night if she took more.

Well, it was too late for regrets. After being opened, the potion would start to degrade. By tomorrow, it would be useless anyways.

"Are you sure you don't need to take a rest?" Shirou asked the girl.

"No!" Madoka shouted, before blushing a quieting back down. "Please, let's continue. I don't want to be holding you back."

The Furballs were worth 5 contribution points a piece, while the Giant Bees were worth 8. In just a half hour, their party had earned 112 contribution points for her. As much as she had earned in her last four month as a Merchant put together.

She hated thinking like this. She hated that she was using Shirou's kindness in order to raise her own rank. But she had no way of hunting for herself.

When you first show up on the scenes of being a Merchant with nothing but the clothes on your back, it is next to impossible to get started, especially when there are some well established groups who were actually born in this world and had generations of advantage over her. Her being just a kid didn't help her case. Even after a year, she was extremely poor, and since no party wanted to have a useless Merchant with them, she was still a level 1.

The one time she had attempted to explore alone out of desperation, she had almost died.

After that, she had tried to focus on gaining experience and contribution points though being a Merchant, but the rate she was gaining experience barely matched the rate that it decayed, and the same applied for her contribution points.

In order to gain a single contribution point as a Merchant, you had to either make 1 gold profit or donate 1 silver worth of money or items to the Guild. For those who were born in Labyrinth City and inherited an established business, this was easy and they could get over 10 points in a single day. For a twelve year old girl who had been dumped on the streets with nothing but the clothes on her back and a single silver coin, it was hell.

She had struggled to earn even a single point on a good day of being a Merchant, and since at the beginning of a new week, 20% of your current points disappear and you lost 2% experience every day, she had never had more than 31 points total, and she was no closer to leveling up than she was when she started.

In the beginning, she had gotten a boost to her contribution points from investing what little they had given her to start with and joined the Merchant's guild, which had rewarded her with 30 contribution points. As of that morning, Madoka had 9 contribution points, and with the way the rounding went, it couldn't even go any lower.

She hated it. She hated her own stupidity for picking this worthless job when she first came to this world, wanting to open a shop like her parents. She hated that there was no way out of it, since you couldn't change jobs until you accumulated 2000 total points earned and became a 2 star Seeker. She hated this world and often wished that she hadn't been reincarnated at all, often believing that oblivion would be better than this.

She would cry almost every night, wishing she was back in Japan with her mom and dad, helping out at the family store and enjoying her mother's home cooked meals.

She'd spent most of the last year sleeping in the barn and skipping meals so that she could invest the little money she had on her trade. She was starting to believe she would never escape her current situation, when she had spotted the familiar rust colored hair.

She was desperate.

Emiya Shirou, the odd and helpful boy who had often visited her family's shop with the rather scary old man. She had remembered how incapable he was of turning down a request for help, and how legendary his skills with a bow were, and had jumped at the opportunity, hoping that Shirou would be able to drag her out of her current slump. Though even she hadn't realized just how effective Shirou's abilities would be.

While most Seekers were heavily reliant on their Combat Skills in order to even land a solid hit on a monster, Shirou's Skills were an apply and forget kind of long lasting buff. While not as fancy as imbuing your attack with lightning, moving at sonic speeds or bending time and space so that your attack hits twice or can't be dodged, his Skills allowed his arrows to do enough damage and he depended on his near inhuman talents with archery to take care of the rest.

Because of this, he didn't suffer the same shortcomings as most Seekers, in that they had to spend two or three skills in each battle, even if the enemy was a weak one. With Combat Skills costing about 2~4 MP a piece, and each Seeker having 10 x level MP and HP, a party of four level 1 Seekers would have to pack things up and go home after fighting just five or six monsters.

Shirou had already taken down 22 by himself, through his archery skills, and hadn't spent a single more MP since they had entered the Labyrinth.

"Well, just tell me if you need a break." Shirou said, concerned for the girl, but not about to argue with her. "That goes for you too, Theresa. Just let me know if you need to rest."

The Demihuman girl nodded, before turning her head and pointing in yet another direction. Indicating the closest enemy.

The three moved in the direction that Theresa had indicated, circling wide in order to aim for a hill where Shirou would have a good vantage point.

But as they drew near, they heard the sounds of battle.

"Is someone else already fighting this one?" Madoka said quietly, a little disappointed. It was bound to happen occasionally, but it did mean that they should probably head off in another direction so that they wouldn't have to compete with this other party.

Though the sounds of battle were awfully loud.

When they got to the top of the hill, both Shirou and Madoka gasped as they looked down at the scene. Three Seekers fighting against a much larger furball with dark red hair.

"A named monster!" Madoka squeaked, looking down at her ID for confirmation.

=Warning!=

=Enemy Monster: Red Face (Furball): Level 1=

Named monsters were monsters summoned by the dungeon either every 3 months or so or in retaliation against changes in the dungeon. Their strength, defense, speed, health and abilities all far surpassed the unnamed variety of the same species. They also caused other monsters to become stronger and more aggressive.

If memory serves, the last time Red Face appeared, it wiped out two entire teams of level 3 Seekers before being put down by the Guild, despite being a level 1 itself.

If the monster noticed them, they would be done for. Their best bet was to run back to the city and get help.

Too bad Shirou didn't have such common sense.

Shirou had already put an arrow to the string.

He had no concept of what a named monster was. He only had eyes for the three Seekers. The three familiar individuals wearing the same school uniform he was.