22—Balanced Party

The next morning I woke up surprisingly refreshed. So refreshed it was weird, actually, given how busy the previous day had been, and how hard it had been to fall asleep. The sleep hadn't exactly been of the best quality, either.

Out of curiosity, I looked out the window, but I didn't see the sun, only the clear sky, an endless blue expanse devoid of any clouds. My window was facing to the east, which meant that, if I couldn't see the sun from my bed, it had to be at least 10 am.

'I slept until so late, no wonder I'm not tired.'

I rolled off the bed, slowly and carefully so as not to wake Aina up, and approached the window. As I got closer, I started to panic. I still couldn't see the sun. In fact, I only saw it once I leaned out from the window and looked directly upwards.

That's right... it was noon already.

And we were supposed to meet up with Nika at noon.

Panicking slightly, I shook Aina awake and cleaned us both with a full-powered Rinse, using up every dredge of mana I might've regenerated overnight, since there was a lot that I hadn't been able to take care of the night before.

We changed in a hurry, fumbling as we threw our clothes on and immediately departing without even having breakfast first.

I carried Aina in my arms, my sword strapped to my back, as I ran with all I had, which was the only reason why we got there at an acceptable time. Nika was already waiting, of course, but at least she told us she had only been there for a small while. I chose to believe her on that.

After a brief introduction, we turned towards the guild, but before I could start moving, Nika handed me a bag.

"This is your compensation for taking me in to your party, Ray. I just want you to know, this is nowhere near enough to repay your kindness, but I promise I will be able to fully make it up to you in the future,"

I barely heard anything she said after the first sentence.

I was staring, wide-eyed, at the bag. I was a duke's son, and an adventurer that had caused quite a stir in the capital's adventurers' guild due to how fast I completed quests. Still, a single gold coin was quite a lot of money, even for me, a frankly valuable thing that I wouldn't spend carelessly.

I'd expected her to give me a considerable amount, maybe a gold coin or two, perhaps as much as four, since there was no such thing as a poor mage, but this was beyond any of my expectations.

The bag was filled to the brim with glittering gold coins, easily forty or fifty of them inside it. I gawked. This alone was far more than all the money I had made from adventuring up until now.

"Wh-what the hell? You're telling me this is all a mere part of your allowance!? This is a fortune! I can't possibly take all this in good conscience. Here, have it back for now."

I pushed the bag onto her hands, but she outright refused to take it.

"This is the payment for accepting my offer and for helping with increasing my adventurer rank this coming month, it's really not too much. Do you even understand just how hard it would be to get accepted into a party that I could trust to protect my back if it weren't for you? Please, if I don't give you at least this much, I'll feel like I'm taking advantage of your kindness."

Something told me this was say more than just half of her allowance for a month, but her face was dead serious, resolute, as if she wouldn't take a no for an answer.

I reluctantly accepted the money and put it in my pack, but I felt like I was being seriously overpaid. After all, she could probably get a decent combat slave, perhaps not as strong as a D Rank adventurer but close, for this much, which came with guaranteed obedience, and she wouldn't have to keep paying that amount every month.

'I'll have to get this girl to D Rank within a month. I don't want her to have to pay me any more money.'

After that exchange, we registered her into our party without an issue, and then picked a suitable quest. With her in the party, our rank average dropped to E, but we could still pick D Grade quests.

The one we chose was quite a bit easier than the ones I usually did with Aina, despite it also being D Rank, and we were also only going to do this single one today, but that was because we were going to focus on working out our positions and capabilities, in order to maximize the party's fighting power.

Aina was by far the weakest in terms of raw fighting strength, but with her improved senses, which we found out were slightly better than mine, and with nimbleness and speed that rivaled mine and even surpassed it when inside a forest, she was perfect for a scout.

She would go ahead and look for traces of monsters, and tell us in advance if one was nearing us. She even seemed to be able to somehow feel minute vibrations in the ground through the roots of the trees by 'empathizing' with them, as she called it. I had no clue how that was supposed to work, though.

Nika had a big variety of attack spells of both wind and water elements, most of which used its variant, ice. They ranged from basic spells, which she could cast almost instantly and in batches of eight, to huge deadly gales or hailstorms that required long chants and drained big chunks of her mana, and everything in between.

She also had some other types of water spells such as a basic healing one which did little more than mend bruises and scratches, along with a wind spell to lighten her body, but she still hadn't learnt how to cast it on anybody else.

So, basically, she was much more proficient in pure attack. Apparently, mages were usually only talented in one or a few aspects of magic, apart from their elemental affinity. Nika was extremely good at creating magical water and ice and at controlling and compressing air, but not so much at 'body modification' spells such as healing and buffs.

Finally, she could produce some basic fire spells, but they were much less efficient than with her other two elements. In terms of party position, she would be the backline damage dealer and crowd control.

Lastly, I was of course the frontliner and tanker, even if that concept didn't really exist in this world, and also the physical damage dealer. We were only three, but we had all the main roles more or less covered.

And thus, we set out to complete our quest.