Chapter 17: Wolves are handsy, Violets are red…

The voice startled Edward who was kind of lost in his own thoughts. Turning around, he saw a handsome looking young man, dressed in simple leather armor, which seemed to be the norm for adventurers, staring right at him.

“Do I know you?” asked Edward, unsure why a random man will all of a sudden approach him.

The man shook his head and said with a chuckle: “Haha, you don’t, but I kept seeing you look at the low rank quests while sighing and you reminded of my old days,”

As his words ended, he turned the badge plastered on his chest around to show his name and rank.

<Orion Zerd>
<E rank>

Edward took a look at the badge before breaking out of the man’s hold on his shoulder and saying in an unfriendly tone: “Did all your praisers die out or what? If you don’t have anything important to say and just wanted to show off you can go away and stop bothering me.”

The man was quite surprised by Edward’s cold tone and scratched his head in embarrassment as he retreated backwards towards one of the tables while muttering: “I just wanted to help him, what a ungrateful prick..”

Edward snorted and, putting the whole thing out of his mind, turned back to look at F ranked quests. It took him a quite a while to look through each and every one of the quests but, not finding any single decent one, he decided to just come back tomorrow and see what he had to do to increase his rank.

Without picking a single quest, Edward left the adventurer guild building and headed outside the city. In a small forest, not that far away from the city gate, Edward walked up to Minx who was sleeping quietly at the base of a tree. The wolf also felt Edward and perked up her ears before lifting her head to look at him.

“Come here, Minx. I missed you.”

The wolf quickly got up and came to rub her head against one of Edward’s legs, prompting him to bend down and pat her head as well. After spending some time telling Minx about everything that happened today, Edward laid down on her soft belly and closed his eyes to sleep, only to be disturbed by Fenrir’s words.

[Azure said you should spend your mana as well before going to sleep. It will help with your control and draining it completely will also slightly increase your maximum mana.]

Edward nodded and started his old exercise of spinning two water balls in totally different directions while laying down on the ground. As it was not that hard to do, he soon added another water ball and started trying with three of them. As expected, he failed right from the start but didn’t feed discouraged and kept practicing until he was completely out of mana.

Once he started feeling drowsy, he let himself fall asleep and woke up inside his mind. Azure swam up to to him and said: “Don’t feel discouraged, using three spells at the same time is not easy. It will take quite a lot of practice until you are able to make it.”

“I’m fine. Thanks, Azure.”

“Edward, I have a question to ask, that is if you don’t mind?” said Azure all of a sudden.

“What is it?” asked Edward, curious what the little fish was going to ask him.

“Why were you so rude towards that man in the adventurer guild? You’re not usually like that..”

“I don’t think I was rude. He was the one who approached me first without any reason.” Replied Edward, obviously displeased at being questioned by the little fish.

Azure looked like she wanted to ask something else, but held herself back until Fenrir said: “If it was a pretty girl he would have behaved nice to that guy as well, hahaha. Don’t you see the way he talks to that innkeeper and his master?”

“I see, now everything makes sense. Thank you, Fenrir.”

Azure’s serious acknowledgment of Fenrir’s explanation brought another round of laughter from her. Edward didn’t feel like bickering with her so he just sat down and chose to change the subject: “Azure, do you think you can help me try to create a new spell?”

“That won’t be a problem, but it will have to be a basic low ranked spell since you’re mana total is still low.”

Edward nodded and, ignoring Fenrir, started talking about a new spell up until it was time for him to return to the real world.

Waking up inside a bear carcass, surrounded by intestines, Edward held back his nausea and quickly got out. After cleaning himself up using a water ball, he rode Minx back towards the city.

“Minx, be a good girl and wait for me to come back in the evening.” Said Edward as he reached back in the place he stored his clothes. After getting dressed, he walked in the direction of the adventurer guild once more.

On the second floor of the adventurer guild, Edward approached the information desk once more and was pleased to see that woman he met the first time, bringing a smile on his lips which became kind of stiff as he remembered Azure and Fenrir’s conversation from last night.

“Hello, did you register for a class yet?” asked the woman while also putting a professional smile on her face, obviously remembering Edward from last time.

“I registered as an adventurer as well, just yesterday.”

“Oh, it was my colleague’s shift yesterday. What can I help you with this time?”

“I wanted to ask you about the procedure of increasing one’s adventurer rank. I browsed the F rank quests and they were a bit… lame.”

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“There are two ways to increase one’s adventurer rank. The first one is the most used one, to do quests of your current rank and after finishing 15 quests with a completion rate of over 70% you are qualified to take a promotion quest from the guild. That quest will be of a rank higher and if completed successfully you’ll be able to officially increase your rank.”

“And what about the second method?” asked Edward a bit impatient. If he had to complete 15 labor quests, he felt he would die of boredom before he would be able to promote.

“The second method is to increase your level past a certain point. For E rank you only need to reach level 3, but from then on, that lever requirement increases to ten per level. D rank is level 10, C rank is level 20, B rank is level 30 and A rank is level 40., but you will also need to take a promotion quest at those levels to increase your rank.”

“What’s the fastest way to increase my level?” asked Edward with excitement. This was like shooting two rabbits using one bullet.

The woman pondered for a moment before saying: “That would be exploring a dungeon, but even the first floor would be too dangerous for a lone level 1 adventurer like you. I would suggest forming a party before deciding to venture inside a dungeon.”

Edward nodded with a pondering look, thinking this was indeed a good plan since there was no point in increasing his adventurer rank if his level remained this low, the only problem being he didn’t really have a party to go with.

“Is there any good way to increase my level if I don’t have a party then?”

“Yes. You can always hunt for low rank magic beasts in the forest or mountains around the city. It would be slower, but also a lot safer since magic beasts in the wild don’t usually stay in large groups, making it possible for you to hunt them down one at a time.”

Edward’s thought ran to Minx and figured that it might not be a bad choice. He could use Minx’s sense of smell to find magic beasts a lot faster than the average adventurer and also rely on her if any beast proved too difficult for him.

As a plan took form in Edward’s mind, he thanked the lady for the help and walked out of the guild.

‘I’ll go check up on Violet and then see if I can find any magical beasts to hunt with Minx’s help right after.’ For some reason he didn’t actually understand, he grew up quite fond of the timid and cute wolf girl, a desire to protect her slowly blossoming inside his heart.

Once he entered the inn Violet Flower, he found the innkeeper, Violet, sitting behind her counter with her head lowered and a small frown on her forehead.

“Hey, Violet. Why are you frowning? Did something happen?”

Edward’s words startled the focused wolf girl, causing her tail to suddenly stand straight behind her back and the coins she was holding in her hand to fall to the ground.

“Sorry for startling you.” Said Edward as he started feeling bad and bent down to help her pick up the coins.

Violet quickly grabbed one of his hands to stop him in a panic as she said: “There’s no need. It was my fault for not paying attention. I’ll pick them up, you don’t have to bother.”

Edward stopped his action and took a look at his hand that Violet grabbed. Her warm and calloused palm brought him a feeling of nostalgia and made a simple smile appear on his lips.

Seeing his nostalgic smile, Violet followed his eyesight and just then she realized she was holding Edward’s hand. She immediately blushed and wanted to pull her hand back, but also didn’t want to make Edward feel bad so she just froze, not really knowing what to do next.

Edward was a bit lost on memory lane so he didn’t even notice the continuously changing expressions on Violet’s face.

As Violet felt her face and entire body getting warmer and warmer, Edward noticed the heat coming from her hand and finally looked up, only to see that her face was beet red and her eyes were misted over. There were also tears forming in the corner of her eyes and she looked like she will start crying at any moment. Quickly taking his hand back, he said in embarrassment: “I’m sorry Violet, you reminded me of someone dear to me from the past.”

Violet, seeing the trace of deep sadness and loss on Edward’s face, felt her heart also hurt a little and mustered her courage to grab his hand once more while saying quietly: “T-t-t-then you can hold it. I don’t mind.”

Edward smiled once more as he held her hand and looked at her head lowered in embarrassment, finding all her reactions especially endearing.

The sound of a whistle came from the table area of the inn lobby, startling the two of them that were lost in their little moment. Violet quickly let go of his hand and started picking up the dropped coins as Edward scratched the back of his head, wishing he could kill that idiot who ruined the moment with his whistling.

“Violet, I wanted to ask you if you had any more trouble with those idiots?”

Seeing that Violet just shook her head refusing to look up at him, Edward sighed and continued: “Good. I’m going to be out of the city for a day or two. Please take care in the meantime.”

Violet nodded without lifting her head once more, prompting Edward to just stand up and leave the inn.

Once he was gone, Violet stopped picking up coins and ran to the back of the inn, closed the door and rested with her back against it. Her face was completely red, tail swinging wildly against the door and she lifted the hand she held with Edward to her heart while breathing heavily.

“Why is he making me feel like this? He’s not even one of us…”

Edward, unaware of Violet’s actions and thoughts, headed towards the forest, excited to go hunting for some pray together with Minx. He also came up with the form for a water blade spell together with Azure, but didn’t have the chance to actually try it in real combat yet. 

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