Novel Full Chapter 1904 D-Rank Missions
Chapter 1904: Chapter 1904 D-Rank Missions
— Kat —
It wasn’t even lunchtime yet, so they still had a few hours before the meeting with the mayor. Kat was splitting a cupcake with Lily, and Hedera had chosen a fancy looking sandwich to save for later. Kat still wasn’t entirely sure what to think of the baker… but right outside of her bakery wasn’t the place to discuss it. Instead, Kat lead them over to the lakeside. There were a few other people around, but nobody was paying them much attention so Kat found a nice set of rocks to set on and asked, “So… what’s with the worry over Villea? I wanted to ask more before but obviously right next to her wasn’t the place,”
Hedera sighed, hand twitching over her storage device for a few moments before her canteen appeared in hand. A few sips later, and Hedera sighed again. “Well… it’s a few things. I guess it makes me wonder how much of what we’re taught growing up is true. The second thing… is that it makes me worried in regards to what she’s doing here. How old is she meant to be? Like, would she KNOW Weaver? Personally perhaps?
“What about the name? Surely she could’ve picked any name… and just going with her nickname seems silly. Then again, basically nobody can see auras the same way I can so maybe she expected it to fly under the radar? It’s not like I know exactly what she looks like, and… she’s lost some weight compared to the pictures I saw.
“Then again, they were paintings and she was royalty. It’s entirely possible, perhaps even likely, that she was made look better in those. I just… urgh I guess I’m sort of lost. It’s entirely possible she’s a relative or just someone with a similar name… but she does look it as well so…” Hedera shrugged.
“Alright…” said Kat slowly. “So what are our main concerns?”
“Um… definitely how old she’s meant to be in character, if we need to worry about the fact she’s here as a baker or if it’s a hobby… and I guess as an elf I have a more selfish desire to find out if she’s actually who I think she is… and what it means that she looks like she’s all skin and bones,” explained Hedera.
“Well… Lily might be able to investigate her a bit… but if she’s really Rank 4 she might have good enough senses to work out she’s being watched. Especially if she has experience to go along with that power. Though… if she’s allowed to act on it or not is a different matter,” pondered Kat.
Hedera shrugged, “I don’t want to get Lily in trouble… I think… I think I’d rather wait until we speak with Weaver again. Perhaps I can ask her if she knows ’Villea’ and if she does… well that’s the least risky way to get that sort of information.”
“Alright… in that case what do we want to do for the next…” Kat glanced up at the sky. “I want to say four, five hours maybe? No reason not to go a bit early to get a more concrete time. Actually, we could also head over first just to double check on the exact time but I don’t have anything for that on me right now…”
*Lily, we should make a note to try and get a pocketwatch or something for situations like this. Even if it’s not perfectly aligned with the sun the translation seems to deal with time conversion so ’an hour is an hour’. *
[Not a bad idea. I wonder if it would be best to find something enchanted or if mechanical would be the way to go? I guess the worry is that mechanical ones would be stopped in our storage ring.]
*Ah… that is a concern. Well, something to think about later.*
“Hmmm… I sort of want to explore the lake… though I understand that would annoy a lot of people in town. So… maybe we just ask around for who needs help?” mumbled Hedera.
“Sounds good,” stated Kat. “Want to split up? We can meet up back here or the bakery… or wherever really,”
“Um… I think I’d rather stick with you,” said Hedera.
“All good, let’s get going!” said Kat as she hopped back up off the rock.
From there, the three travelled around and asked anyone they could spot if they needed any help. Kat didn’t bring up any payment but basically everyone they did little chores for did offer some orbs for the trouble. Though the effort didn’t always match the pay.
The first job they ended up on was helping out one of the fishermen. They’d managed to catch a huge fish… bigger than they could carry properly. Kat was tasked with taking it back to his house without killing it along the way. The reason for this was revealed when Kat got there. They were set up on the far edge of the tents, and outside they had a number of pools all filled with fish. They were small looking down, but distortion from the water only explained so much. They were definitely bigger than they should be.
The fish Kat was delivering got a pool all to itself for now… and immediately tried to escape despite that. It leapt for the opening Kat had dropped it through and smacked into an invisible wall, sending it back down into the water. It tried again a few more times to no success, with the fishermen just sighing the whole way through.
“The big ones always do this. They like to test the boundaries, so just… yeah don’t worry about it,” grumbled the fisherman. “Sometimes they kill themselves… but if they’re too stupid to live I’m not going to keep them around.”
The fisherman actually handed them a full five orbs for what wasn’t even ten minutes of work. That was by far the best deal they’d be offered for the rest of the day. The next thing they did was painting a fence. It was a few ’doors’ down from the fisherman’s house. It was just being painted white so it was a simple matter of putting the paint on.
They killed around an hour and a half doing this… and the reward? Two orbs. That was an hour and a half of all three working at full capacity. Kat utilising her speed, Hedera not far behind… and Lily carrying the day with shadows capable of painting multiple posts at once. The fact it was identical motions for each plank made controlling three at once easy. Lily could’ve done more, but they didn’t have any extra brushes.
For anyone else, that would’ve taken at least three times as long… and it was only worth two orbs. Still, nobody complained they just moved on. Technically it was a net gain of thirty minutes so they didn’t lose any time. It did mean that when they saw a second person painting their fence, they collectively decided to ignore them.
Instead they ended up weeding a garden for around forty-five minutes. The garden wasn’t too large but after Kat tried to speed through and accidentally pulled up one little weed and half of the other plants nearby they had to slow down a bit. Lily couldn’t just use infinite shadow hands this time, instead she was stuck with just two as she had to modulate the strength.
Hedera was actually the MVP here. She just… had a good feeling for how best to move through the process. Sometimes she dug around the weed and pulled it out alongside the dirt before brushing it off. Other times she grabbed it by the base and twisted it, somehow taking all the roots along with it. Hedera just seemed to know what to do.
They got some cool drinks and three orbs for their trouble, which was probably about right. If they’d been working on it individually it would’ve taken about that time, and with practice you could speed that up probably finishing in two and a half hours, maybe two. Hedera though could’ve probably managed it in a bit less than two hours and for such easy work that wasn’t dangerous at all… good value.
This immediately lead them into their next job where they had to move some pots around for a gardener. They apparently maintained quite a lot of the gardens around the place, and had spotted the three working. The three signed up for the job and spent the next two hours running around delivering various things to everyone, ending with a delivery of a set of five pots to the mayor’s house. It meant Kat might be a bit late… maybe? Checking the sun showed they were probably early but Kat was just guessing.
“Anything I need to be aware of?” asked Hedera. She was carrying just the one pot. They weren’t too heavy but the little trees inside them were awkward to carry and if you weren’t keeping them straight were liable to fall out.
“Not that I can think of?” said Kat with a shrug. She had two pots. Which meant Lily was carrying the last two in her shadows. Much less likely for them to spill over that way.