I was in another world, you know, the one with magic and monsters. I was ordinary during my time on Earth. Now? Still ordinary, haha. Anyway, today I'm going to take on another quest, as usual, as an adventurer. Why did I choose to be an adventurer? I don't know either, lol.
I walked inside the familiar guild hall. In front of the quest board, my party member was lounging as usual. Let me introduce him.
He is Rex, the tank of our party. He uses a large shield and a hammer. With brown hair akin to tree bark, he always shouts, "Charge!" when running toward the enemy.
Anyway, I approached him and waved my hand. "Rex! Any good quests?"
"Oh! Dumb, nope, no good quests," he shook his head.
I sighed to myself; this is the problem with Rex. He always has high standards for picking a quest. I approached the quest board and ripped off a random quest paper. "Let's take this one!" I smiled.
Rex frowned but soon followed me to complete the registration for the quest.
After finishing the registration, Rex told me, "Dumb, I'll go tell the others about the quest!"
I smiled. "Sure!"
I waited lazily on one of the guild's sofas. Just as I was getting bored, I heard a small girl's voice. "Dumb! What quest did you pick?"
The one pulling my neck was Miya, our party thief. A thief is quite useful; she can find traps and steal enemy items. Miya is attached to me because I saved her from thugs before.
"Hey! Don't ignore me! Tell me! Tell me!" she began to bite my head.
I ignored her and lazily ate my dried jerky. "Jerky! Give me some!!!" Miya pounced on my beef jerky, but I swiftly dodged her and stuffed the whole thing in my mouth.
Miya's eyes started to water, and she punched me over and over again. "Jerk! Jerk! Jerk! Dumb Dumb!"
Well, I don't care about what Miya thinks of me because my beef jerky is more important. Soon, Miya calmed down and stopped talking to me. Whenever I looked at her, she would quickly look away while huffing. Lol.
I began to talk. "Where's Emir? You guys are usually together."
"..." Miya.
"..." Dumb.
"Geez! Miya! Are you ignoring me?"
"Hmph!" Miya puffed her nose.
I sighed to myself and took out a beef jerky from my pouch while sneaking glances at her.
"Hmm?" Miya asked.
I smiled. "Here! You can have one," I tossed her a piece of jerky.
Miya looked at me happily and hugged me. Soon, she fell asleep after playing some random game she created, but both Rex and Emir still hadn't arrived yet. Did something happen to them?
I should check on them. I walked out of the guild hall, leaving Miya sleeping there. Usually, Emir would buy magic tools for her collection, so this shop should be it. I entered the small shop and saw Emir with Rex.
"Look at this magic brooch! It has a scratch; you need to cut the price down, shopkeeper!" Emir, with her silvery-white long hair, screamed.
"B-but! Emir, the scratch won't affect the magic tool's effectiveness!" The shopkeeper tried to refute her.
"Do you know how important appearance is to a girl?!" Emir aggressively haggled.
"..."
"Sigh, have it your way." After a back-and-forth of haggling, the shopkeeper relented.
"Yes! I saved 5 copper!" Emir shouted while giggling.
She turned her head around and saw me leaning against the door, smiling.
"Dumb!? When did you get here?"
"Must have been because we're late," Rex replied instead of me.
"Correct," I said before continuing, "If you guys are finished here, let's go back to the guild."
"Sure," Rex put the hammer on the floor on his shoulder.
Well, Rex is pretty big; carrying a large shield and hammer, even three grown men isn't hard for him.
I smiled. "Let's go, Emir."
"S-sure!" Emir embarrassedly twirled her silver-white hair.
Soon the three of us headed back to the guild building.
"So what do you think?" I asked Emir and Miya.
"Well, it's a fine reward, I guess?" Emir calculated the quest.
"I go! I go! I go to any quest Emir and Dumb go to!" Miya enthusiastically jumped around.
"Sigh, isn't there a more difficult quest?" Rex was still reluctant.
"It would be good exercise, right?" I asked Rex, whispering in his ear.
"E-exercise..." Rex looked dazed.
Well, knowing Rex, he must be imagining things I don't understand; don't ask me, everyone in this party is weird.
"Okay! Since no one is objecting, we will take this quest!"
"This rescue quest!"
And the party departed to the location where the bandits had taken the lord's daughter hostage. If this is like in a novel, I will save the lord's daughter heroically before she falls in love with me! Hehehehehehehehehehe... I can't wait. Wait for me, my love!
After two days inside a carriage, we arrived at the bandit stronghold. The stronghold was made of stone, and from afar, I could already see bandits roaming around the stronghold.
The four of us hid behind a large stone before Miya complained, "I'm bored; when are we gonna attack?"
Rex, still polishing his shield, spoke. "With that many bandits, we need a viable strategy to save the lord's daughter."
Emir adjusted her wizard hat. "I agree."
A strategy... I thought, but all I considered was charging straight ahead. Rex also thought the same, as he started speaking, "Well, screw the strategy! Let's just charge!"
"Hahaha!" He laughed loudly.
"Let's do a surprise attack." Emir spoke and explained the strategy.
"First, I will turn the stronghold floor to ice, and you guys finish off the bandits. Can you do it?"
"Won't the ice affect us too?" asked Rex.
"No." Emir pulled out a necklace and gave each of us one.
"Wear this; it has anti-slip magic, effective for 1 hour. Enough to wipe out the bandits, I think."
"Great! With this advantage, even a toddler can defeat them!" said Rex.
"A toddler is too much..." My smiling mouth twitched slightly.
"Let's go! Let's go!" I could see excitement in Miya's eyes, at the opportunity to kill people?... Sigh, I guess I'm the only normal one here, but wait for me, princess, your prince is coming. I started to fantasize, and my party looked at me strangely, but I didn't care at all.
We approached the gate of the stronghold, and Miya would sneak in and open the gate. The three of us waited as Miya climbed the wall nimbly like a ninja. Soon, the gate opened amidst the confusion of the bandits.
"What?! How did this open?"
Emir wasted no time as the staff she held glowed with a soft blue light, and a wave of ice spread throughout the stronghold floor. "Now!" Emir shouted while panting. Even for her, freezing the whole stronghold floor is exhausting.
All of us wore the necklaces and charged into the stronghold. The bandits panicked and shouted, "E-enemy!"
"Wait, what's going on with the floor?"
Most bandits slipped on the ice, while some walked slowly to avoid falling. We took care of the standing ones first. I unsheathed my iron sword and stabbed through a bandit's heart. Even though I had experience killing humans before, the feeling of killing still made me dizzy, but I pushed through and ignored it.
Meanwhile, our tank—well, not so much a tank, more like a bulldozer—smashed the heads of the bandits as if they were watermelons with ease. Each attack from the bandits was blocked by his giant shield and then countered with his large hammer.
Miya also provided support with her poisoned darts. We continued killing the bandits until the bandit boss appeared. A hulking figure with a beard as thick as a bush angrily shouted, "Who is killing my subordinates!?"
"The gall!!!"
His steps cracked the ice floor, and our necklace duration was almost over. "I handle him!" shouted Rex, who charged in without fear. "Charge!" He swung his hammer at the bandit boss, who was somehow using only his fists. The bandit boss was outclassed while the rest of us watched Rex fight against the unknown bandit boss after all the other bandits died.
"How sad!" The bandit boss started screaming akin to wailing. "All my friends died!"
He started to ignore the pain and injury with the sole goal of inflicting damage on Rex. Rex parried each of his strikes with his giant shield, and an opening appeared. Miya threw her poisoned dart at the bandit boss.
The bandit boss's movements grew sluggish, and Rex smashed his heart, which literally exploded with bits of flesh and blood.
"It's a firework..." I awkwardly laughed to myself.
"Well done, everyone!" Rex spoke calmly.
Though disappointed I'm not the main contributor to this battle, I am still satisfied.
"Then let's find the princess!" I gleefully said.
"Princess? Who is that?" Emir, who had now recovered, overheard me as she entered and asked.
"I- I mean the lord's daughter. Haha..." This time I'm really embarrassed. Why did my fantasy leak out? Really, brain!
We searched through the stronghold filled with the blood and corpses of bandits before finding the lord's daughter in one of the prison cells.
The lord's daughter, with her pink hair smudged with dirt, looked pitiful to me, so I approached her as gallantly as I could.
With a serious face, I uttered words as charming as possible, "Are you alright? Don't worry, I'm here!"
She looked at me with excitement before her face scrunched up in disgust. "Who is this fugly?" She swore at me, and I felt my fantasy and effort broken like a mountain crumbling.
"E-excuse me?" I blurted.
"Haha! Ophelia, you never changed." Emir, who's beside me, spoke.
"Oh, it's you, small titty?" She spoke disdainfully from behind the bar.
"Haha..." Emir seemed a little gloomy now, or is it my imagination?
"Well, now that we've found the lord's daughter, we just need to escort her back to town." Rex, ever so calm, seemed unaffected by Ophelia's rude mouth.
All of a sudden, Ophelia started talking; her behavior changed as if the swearing had never happened. Is it just my imagination?
"Ah! My foot. I hurt it; is there a brave, big, handsome knight with brown hair akin to tree bark to carry me?" Her eyes turned innocent.
"Huh? Is that me?" Rex bewilderedly pointed his finger at his face.
Well, I won't deny Rex is quite handsome, but why did I get called ugly?! Is my look that bad?!
"She seems to be hurt; carry her, Rex." Emir rubbed her glabella.
"Kyaa!" Ophelia screamed cutely while being carried by Rex.
Hmm... The quest is almost completed, but this lord daughter's personality strikes me as strange. But no one seemed bothered by it.
Amidst Miya pestering me for my jerky, Rex carrying Ophelia, and Emir playing with her magic tool, we returned to the carriage that brought us here. The coachman was sleeping, and we had to wake him up before finally departing back to town.
We took a stop in the middle of the road to camp. Rex started the fire while Emir prepared food ingredients to cook, and the rest of us, except Ophelia, set up the tent.
While sitting before the campfire eating the stew from the rabbit hunted by Miya and some carrots I gathered in the wild, I gazed at the face of Rex sitting across from me. He is handsome, I guess...
Why did I feel a little bitter about it? Rex noticed me looking at him and spoke, "What? Is there something on my face?" Look at this guy, what a hateful face!
Perhaps I should have bought that suspicious potion I saw in town before. It said it could make you more noticeable? Did it mean more handsome? Yes, I should find that shop when we return and see if that girl can say "fugly" again to me. Hehehehehehe...
The night turned quieter, and most of us were going to sleep. Just as I was gonna bury myself on the soft pillow, the light from the campfire snuffed out, which literally gave me a heart attack. What is this? A horror movie? I grabbed my sword and warily readied myself to unsheathe it. Just as I was gonna scream for everyone to wake up, Rex was before me with his big body.
He spoke quietly, different from usual, "Dumb... Why did you do that!" And he charged at me with his large hammer, without his shield.
I panicked and blurted out, "What are you talking about? Why are you charging at me!?"
This situation seemed strange, but worse things happened with Emir and Miya joining the attack on me...
"Why did you do that!" Emir shouted.
"Why did you do that!" Miya shouted.
"Why did you do that!" Rex shouted.
The three of them charged at me, Rex holding his large hammer, Emir holding a ladle, and Miya holding a stone.
At this point, I became calmer than I normally was and thought rationally. Seeing the crazed bloodshot eyes on their faces made me realize that my party was being manipulated.
And I had to find the caster now, or else we were all in danger.
To be continued...