28—A Normal Quest…

There was an awkward silence between us as we made our way to the adventurers' guild, after having scared the crap out of each other (save for Aina). I'd immediately left her room and shut the door after that, and tried to awkwardly explain what had happened as she prepared to go out, but it helped little.

Fortunately, I could always count on Aina to completely ignore the tense mood and break the ice.

"So, Nika, did you think yesterday's proposition over?"

Suddenly being addressed, Nika was jolted out of her musings, and she awkwardly responded, scratching her cheek, "Yeah... actually, the reason why I slept in today is that I was awake until late mulling over it..."

I nodded. "Of course, such an important decision can't be made in just a few minutes, or even hou–"

"No, actually," Nina interrupted me, "if it were up to me, I'd say yes in a heartbeat," I gulped at that, "but once I reach D Rank, I'll have to go back to my master, and there's no way she'll let me stay here..." She trailed off, her gaze lowering to the ground. She was so distraught she didn't even noticed she'd let her master's gender slip.

To her credit, I didn't, either.

'Ah... well, that complicates things. How the hell did I not realize this earlier?'

I tried to search for a solution in my mind, but obviously, there were none. If there was an easy one, Nika would have thought of it already.

"Sorry... I should've thought of that. That sucks. And since I can't meet your master, there's no way I'll be able to convince..." The next word came naturally, "...her"

Nika looked at me, wide-eyed, brought both of her palms up to cover her face in what was perhaps mix of embarrassment and anger at herself.

"Aaaah, I'm such a blabbermouth! Why can't I stop spilling secrets I not supposed to!?"

I tried to reassure her. "Hey, come on, it really isn't that big of a deal, plus we already promised we wouldn't tell anyone, and that promise still stands. Our lips are sealed, right, Aina?"

She nodded, completely serious. "Of course. Anything you ask, Master."

I would've stumbled were it not for my superhuman physique. 'This girl's dedication is really something else...'

Luckily, we were spared from further awkwardness as we finally reached our destination; the loud, rowdy atmosphere of the adventurers' guild immediately drowning out any conversation we might've been having.

We went to the mission board and, after some deliberation, picked a D Rank mission which entailed bringing the poison sack, liver and fangs of a vine viper, a nasty monster which had the habit of camouflaging within the treetops by taking advantage of the greenish pigmentation of its scales and getting the drop on unwary adventurers before killing them with its deadly, paralyzing venom.

Their physical attributes and upfront fighting strength wasn't anything to write home about, more on equal with an E Rank beast, but they were slippery bastards and hard to spot, to boot.

Fortunately, we had Aina with us.

_ __ ___________ __ _

The Eastern Forest might be called monster-infested by most, but if one was simply wandering around, they were unlikely to run into most types of beasts.

What adventurers did was follow tracks, be it footsteps, trampled vegetation, or others which were more specific to some kinds of creatures, to search for specific monsters and hunt them, and complete the missions they had set out to do.

Unfortunately, that wasn't possible for every type of monster. Wormoles, for example, whose name would make any space or science enthusiast look twice, made underground nests and sealed off all entrances and exits, and the only way to find one was stomping around as loudly as possible until one noticed the vibrations and came to you, at which point you would have to constantly move around to prevent it from popping up underneath you, until you got a clean, deep cut or whittled them down enough with shallow ones.

They weren't very smart, at least, so retreat wasn't really a consideration for them. Instead, their wounds just made them more aggressive.

Anyway, as one might expect, something similar happened with vine vipers, where one could only run around areas with dense trees where they were the most likely to be hiding at.

And so we did. Once we were deep enough in the forest that the mana density was high enough for D Rank monsters, we began moving slower, with Aina constantly keeping a lookout, her head raised high, all three of us near each other so I could bisect anything that got a drop on us, and so the Wind Barrier that Nika had on a hair trigger would cover the three of us.

It took much less time than we'd expected for her to whisper, "There's a snake in the tree around ten strides to the southeast."

I looked at the tree in question, trying not to make the movent too obvious, and it didn't take me very long to spot what Aina had.

Its scales several different shades of green, creating a pattern not unlike a tree's canopy, the long snake's body curved around the thick, sturdy branches of the tree, making nary a sound as it stayed perfectly immobile.

I nodded at the girls, then lowered my sword to appear as unprepared as possible and walked over to the tree, not looking up once.

The viper pounced.

It aimed for the unprepared swordsman's neck, opening its maw wide, poison dripping from its fangs–

–and I yanked it out of the air, my hand not nearly large enough to fully close around its neck, but more than enough to hold it in a vice-like grip.

Then, I threw its squirming body to the ground while I raised my sword with my other arm, quickly put my foot on its head, and cleanly severed it from its body in one downwards slash.

I waved for Nika and Aina to come over, before taking a small carving knife out of my belt and using it to pry its fangs loose and cut a bloody line through its abdomen, and soon enough we had our spoils and were heading back to the city.

Which was when disaster struck.