Beginner Quests 3
Han Sea and Grace adapted quickly.
Grace already had experience running quests on the lower floors to scrape by, and Han Sea had solid talent as a gamer. She started putting my advice, Grace's war stories, the game system, and intel from other streamers to use in all the right places.
If there was one minor problem—
"Hanna, you know that kind of stuff too? You really are a mage."
"Huh? Oh—ahaha, right? I've been studying a bit."
"No way… You study back at the inn too?!"
Grace had started sticking to Han Sea a little more clingily after seeing how sharp she was. Of course she would—Han Sea could whip up something like Horned Wolf lure scent, even though she had no idea what hygiene products for female adventurers or desserts actually cost.
Thanks to the "worldly-innocent little genius witch" image Grace had of her, it mostly slid by. And that was how I learned Han Sea had zero talent for acting.
Her eyes would spin around looking at empty air, then she'd jump and go ah, yes—ah, right— buying time to cook up a lie. It was so blatant it was practically transparent; looking at her, you really understood what people meant by "written all over her face."
Still, whether it was the game system's assist or pure luck, Grace didn't seem to suspect a thing. Knowing the party wouldn't fall apart from internal strife and leave our tower climb dead in the water was a relief.
"You've gotten used to the plains, so today we're hunting Horned Wolves. Look for related quests. The guild buys Horned Wolf byproducts, but impatient mages and alchemists will pay a premium for them on the spot."
"What kind of byproducts does a Horned Wolf have?"
"Horn, eyeballs, fangs, hide, and claws, mostly."
"Ah… So they really are just byproducts."
"They're animal byproducts, sure, but they hold as much mana as Mana Stones, so alchemists buy them up. That's why the income gap between adventurers working floors one through nine and those running the tenth starts getting real."
No player had taken down a Horned Wolf yet, apparently—Han Sea nodded along as Grace explained the byproducts in more detail than I would have. Fair enough. In terms of timing, she was probably just about ready to meet party members and start syncing up; the boss was still a ways off.
Grace and Han Sea glued themselves to the quest board and started scanning the postings. Herb-gathering jobs were a free-for-all with too many competitors, but once you got to Horned Wolves the competition thinned out fast—they could take their time picking.
"This one requires delivery all the way to an alchemist's workshop, and the pay's barely better than the guild buy rate, so skip. Eyeballs are a rare drop among the byproducts, so this one's out too."
Grace weaved past quests that paid too little for the legwork and shameless ones that demanded more Horned Wolves than you'd reasonably bag. She'd never hunted a Horned Wolf in her career, but she clearly knew how to read a quest board.
Had she memorized every material price on floors ten and below? Not bad.
Honestly, I was about as clueless on lower-floor material prices as Han Sea. My body was so broken that most of the combat I'd needed to adapt to the Tower had happened on floor eleven and up. What was there to practice against a Horned Rabbit that couldn't even pierce leather armor?
So I didn't know what herbs looked like, how to find where they grew, which ones lived in symbiosis, or which parasitic ones needed to be cleared out. That kind of thing I'd always left to the party's scout.
A priest for emergencies and we'd be set.
I already covered the offensive frontliner role, so that wasn't urgent. Looking at 3-star Grace, her stats were higher than expected—probably some kind of balance patch to make lower star ranks usable—but that didn't mean Roland's body, a tank with the raw attack power of a melee DPS, had gotten nerfed.
Bluntly put, if a 4-star or lower offensive frontliner joined the party, my mace would still hit harder. So what the party needed right now was a priest who could fill my gaps the way Grace did.
"We've picked the quests! Let's go."
The ones they'd chosen were a herb habitat near the passage I'd scouted yesterday, plus several Horned Wolf byproduct quests. Grace beamed as she selected them—the clients were impatient types, but their pockets were deep enough that they'd set the prices high.
We passed through streets still thronged with adventurers and headed for the Tower. Same daily routine on the streets, with just one difference.
Something… There are more women with clear, fair faces around.
Novice Adventurers who were saving for their next gear barely managed to wash properly, let alone care about beauty. Greasy, matted hair and grimy skin were the average adventurer look—yet some of the female adventurers were turning fair-skinned.
Not exactly knockouts that stopped you in your tracks, but they were keeping up basic hygiene. Probably 1- and 2-star adventurers. Well, Grace was around, so other women getting a bit of an appearance buff made sense.
"We'll enter straight away, hunt the tenth floor's Horned Wolves first, then handle the other quests on the side."
I'd been looking around sightseeing, and before I knew it we were at the Tower entrance. Matching the flow of people coming and going, I stepped into the Tower. Whatever magic it used, the Tower sent party members to the same place. No unfortunate scatterings—the plains welcomed us.
I'd told her the party leader was her, not me—Hanna—and she remembered, immediately starting to act the part.
"Grace unnie, is there anything we should watch out for when tracking Horned Wolves?"
"Horned Wolves live up to the name—they've got a great sense of smell. So when you're chasing one, sometimes it turns around and ambushes you instead. If you see tall grass, always keep a shield spell ready. Not that a Horned Wolf could break through our frontliner and reach the back line, of course."
The moment she finished, both of them looked at me. Their eyes were full of absolute faith that something like a Horned Wolf would never get past me. Part of me wanted to let one slip through just to test their reaction speed, but I'd save that for when we had a different frontliner.
I gave a small nod, and they smiled and fell back into formation. "Formation" just meant walking side by side with a bit of space between us. The path to the tenth floor was peaceful as always.
We ran into other adventurer parties now and then, but there was no need to approach and chat, so we passed at a polite distance. The Tower was vast and full of adventurers; on the lower floors, familiar faces were rare. Everyone I was on good terms with was camping out at something like a tower-conquest forward base up on the thirtieth floor and above.
And so we arrived at the tenth floor.
"Grace unnie, how do you track Horned Wolves?"
"Same way you look for tracks a Horned Fox leaves in the brush—we look for the tall grass where a Horned Wolf would hide. If one's there, great. If not, we follow the trail and use that lure scent you made."
"Then you hold onto the wolf lure, unnie."
After talking with Grace, Han Sea pulled something out of thin air. A fist-sized round lump wrapped in cheap paper. Grace broke off a small piece to check, crushed it between her index finger and thumb, and a rank smell billowed up.
Had she mixed herbs with reagents to produce a stench like blood?
Even if they'd popped into existence inside the Tower, their traits weren't different from monsters outside. Horned Wolves were still wolves, sensitive to the smell of blood, and often targeted wounded adventurers. A disaster for novices—but for mid-rank adventurers and up, they were basically free pocket money with their middling combat power.
"So I just smear this on my armor?"
"Uh… yes! It's made from animal fat mixed with herbs, so it won't damage the armor. It just wipes right off."
"Like this? …This is getting a good reaction. They're coming already."
Hearing Han Sea's answer, Grace immediately crushed the lump against the belly of her armor and rubbed it in. It looked like some kind of herbal medicine ball, but it clung to the armor like ointment or shoe polish. Then Grace looked at me, flashed a bright smile, and drew her bow.
…Was I supposed to call Han Sea lucky for this?
"Wha—what?!"
"Stay sharp!"
A bewildered Han Sea spun around just as a Horned Wolf that had been lying in ambush charged with its head lowered. Less a wolf and more a vicious ram—like a goat or deer trying to gore someone with its horn. The charge that should have punched through Han Sea's lower back and shattered her spine was, of course, stopped in my grip.
Combat training would have to wait for another time, then.
"…Did that thing actually die?"
"Whoa, that startled me."
Grace had drawn her bow with cowboy speed and nocked an arrow. But the wolf had been dead long before she could shoot. Worried Han Sea wouldn't get a shield up in time, I'd caught the wolf's head in both hands—and the rebound must have cracked its skull.
The silver lining: my palms weren't soaked in wolf blood and brain matter.
"Grace, trusting me is fine, but from now on, say things clearly enough that Hanna can follow too. And Hanna—for someone caught off guard, your magic was fast. That was good. But in a situation like just now, where the frontliner can intercept, use an attack spell instead of a shield."
I held up what had been a Horned Wolf—now a low-grade Mana Stone in my palm—and delivered a mild scolding. Han Sea stared at me blankly.
"That… uh, that was the tenth floor's boss monster, right? Oh my god… I thought we'd be hunting a moving wolf together—Grace unnie and me, arrows and magic in a coordinated attack. But if it goes like this, does the mission still count as a success? Sensei caught it, but it was still our party that succeeded, so…"
So that was why she'd been zoning out—she'd taken a viewer mission related to Horned Wolves.