~ Chapter 47: Bucket Head ~

[Illsyore's point of view]

 Thanks to Serya, the registration took no more than a couple of minutes. To our surprise, she wasn't just an ordinary receptionist, she was actually Perto Town’s Guild Hall Assistant. The Manager was currently away on a business trip, so she was currently the one in charge of all the paperwork. Of course, the Watcher dude was always glaring our way, or to be more precise, at Nanya. He wasn’t taking her out of his sight, and I was starting to think of it both as creepy and annoying. As for her, she didn’t really care.

In regard to the registration, we were offered each a metal card on which our name, species, Adventurer Rank, and Guild Rank were written down. The words weren’t magical or enchanted or anything like that as I read in those novels back on Earth, they were actually plain ol’ dog tags.

On mine, the following information was written:

[Name]: Illsyore

[Species]: Human

[Adventurer Rank]: Godlike

[Guild Rank]: Beginner

Apparently, they didn’t add the family name unless we specified it or actually had one, however, we could put it down as an initial. This was great because Ayuseya only added a P for Pleyades, Shanteya a D for Dowesyl, and Nanya a D for Demonarkiar.

The one thing I found odd was the fact that they saw me as a human. While true that I didn’t have any slit eyes or weird appendages, instead of a sternum, I had a big green crystal, but she didn’t make me strip to prove I was completely human. If that happened, I had a feeling Serya would have had to deal with an angry demoness, dragoness, and el’doraw at the same time. Therefore, I remained fully clothed. From an outsider’s point of view, without using any magic or other means to reveal the truth about me, I looked pretty much like any other tall human being with green hair.

Once we were done with the registration process, we were told what the rules for accepting quests were.

The Questboard was basically a wooden board behind the counter where you could order something to drink. On it, the Guild Manager or Assistant pinned up all the town’s quests as well as those sent by the Headquarters in the capital. I wasn’t told how they kept in touch, but Serya pointed out that the process was almost instantaneous. A fact which made me believe that maybe they were using some sort of enchanted item capable of transmitting either written or verbal information over long distances.

Each quest request had a title, which represented the main objective, secondary objectives, details about each objective if needed, reward for completion, time limit if there was any, recommended Adventurer Ranks, and minimum Guild Rank.

In other words, something like this:

Local Quest

Title: Hunt the goblin pack North of Perto.

Objectives: Kill all the goblins in the pack located North of Perto. (bring a tooth from each goblin as evidence)

Time limit: None

Reward: 2 goldiettes

Recommended Adventurer Rank: Intermediary

Minimum Guild Rank: Beginner

Oh, and if the quest was regional or somewhere random within the kingdom, instead of Local Quest, it would have said Regional or Kingdom. If the quest required multiple adventurers to confront a bigger monster like a boss, it became something like this: Local Raid Quest.

Either way, it was a pretty simple system, and we already picked up our first quest. It was the goblin one.

At the moment, we were walking through the forest outside of the small town. We let Nanya scout ahead of us, since she was the fastest. Shanteya was technically the best tracker we had, but she couldn’t match the demoness’ speed. She was practically flying through the forest. No pun intended since Nanya technically had wings, which for the most part, she didn't really like showing them around. That reminded if maybe back in the desert she just flew around rather than jumped over dunes, or did she just act out on a whim? Meh, these were details.

“This is quite exciting!” said Ayuseya with a giggle.

“Our first quest together, indeed.” I said with a smile while looking at the dog tags representing my admittance into the Adventurers Guild.

“Unfortunately, we start from Beginner Rank. I never was part of the Adventurers Guild, but I had to pretend I was one once or twice. The Beginners don’t have too many privileges. It’s sort of a trial rank until you get to Intermediary. Once you reach Master Rank, people begin to pay attention to you, but with our Adventurer Ranks, it shouldn’t be a problem to advance quickly.” explained Shanteya.

The el’doraw was in front of us, following Nanya.

“I’m surprised they don’t restrict us from taking quests of a higher difficulty.” I told her, remembering that in some of the novels I read and even games, you usually couldn’t take a quest higher than your current level or at the very least ten levels above it. Here, you could be a Beginner Rank in the Guild, but as long as you had a high Adventurer Rank and no restriction was added to the quest, you were free to take it.

Speaking of which, it would be important to mention the reason why the Minimum Guild Rank option was added to a quest’s description. That was because some quest givers required a certain credibility from an adventurer. Technically, anyone could become a member as long as they had enough coins, but going up in ranks required one to complete multiple quests. The higher the difficulty the better, or so Serya explained. As for our current quest, we took it more as a trial to see how the system worked and also because the reward could afford us a few days at the inn. Afterwards, we planned on taking higher difficulty ones in order to quickly jump through our ranks and earn myself a pass at the library in the capital or any other city out there.

“I found them!” said Nanya.

She landed behind me and wrapped her arms around my neck.

“Oh? Where?” I asked the woman while she was rubbing her cheek against mine.

For some reason, she was now much more affectionate towards me.

“That way.” she pointed with her tail without letting go of me.

Shanteya and Ayuseya were looking at me accusingly.

“Alright, then how should we do this?” I asked while pretending to look away.

“Let Ayuseya try. I already pulled their teeth out while I was there, so she can go all out on them.” Nanya suggested and pulled out a bunch of bloody canines from her own Inner Mind.

“Well, Ayuseya?” I asked looking back at the draconian.

“I will do my best.” she made a small bow with her head.

“You are coming too, you need to show us EXACTLY where the toothless goblins are.” Shanteya said pulling Nanya away from me. “And you, here.” she tossed me the notice of another quest.

“When did you?” I asked surprised.

“Trade secret.” she cutely poked her tongue out at me.

“You know I can make you tell me, right?” I reminded her, raising an eyebrow.

“How daring of you, Master. But if you desire my body for tonight, then so be it.” she made a bow.

“Huh?” I blinked surprised.

Before I had the chance of rejecting her offer, as if I would, she already turned around and left together with Ayuseya and Nanya.

“Meh, big boobs me hugsy tonight. Me liky.” I shrugged and looked down at the quest request.

It was a simple one. I had to gather mushrooms.

I was Godlike Dungeon Lord with over 1500 points in every stat who was gathering mushrooms. Yup, this brought memories from my gaming days when I had a max level character, all the best gear I could get, and I was doing a daily quest of planting flowers in a senile old lady’s backyard.

By the time I finished my quest, the ladies finished theirs as well. I cheated a bit and expanded my Dungeon Territory to search for the mushrooms better. When we met up, I saw Ayuseya had her right fist soaked in blood and tried really hard not to stain her dress.

“What happened?” I asked while holding the basket filled with mushrooms in my hands.

“Mou~! Goblins are too squishy!” the draconian princess complained and looked at me with imploring eyes.

“Sigh… OK, here.” I said and created next to me an opened stone square box with a length of one meter.

I filled it with water and then stepped away to let her wash her hands.

“So, how squishy exactly?” I asked and looked back at Nanya, who was snickering.

“She punched one, and it literally burst into pieces. The one behind it died as a result of the shock wave, then the other two tried to attack her in a desperate attempt, and she did a quick draw on them. The sword went straight through them. Hehe! Then she saw a big ol’ spider looking up from the ground, she got scared and jumped back, smashing straight through a tree!” Nanya explained, trying hard not to burst into a loud laughter.

“BWAHAHAHA!”

‘Try’ was the right word.

“You have no idea how dangerous spiders can be!” the draconian glared at the demoness.

“Yeah! So scawy! HAHAHA!” she couldn’t abstain.

“Hmph!” Ayuseya wasn’t happy about it, and I just stood there with a furrowed brow, trying hard to understand what was going on.

“Master, to be fair, the spider was the size of your palm and quite deadly for Beginner Adventurers or those without Magic Armor in general.” the el’doraw pointed out.

“There are many things those without Magic Armor need to watch out for!” said the draconian.

“Sigh…” I shook my head and then walked over to Nanya. After patting her on her head, she quieted down “You had your fun, now let her be.” then I walked over to the draconian and gave her kiss on the cheek. “You did great for your first quest, now let’s head back and give these to Serya.” I told her.

Ayuseya blushed as a result of what I did, and we were all pretty quiet on our way back. Before we entered the town, Nanya used her enchanted ring to hide her demonic appearance from the locals. It was a good way to avoid unnecessary trouble, although, there still were a couple of idiots who looked our way. I blamed that on the human-like appearance of the illusion and Shanteya’s beauty. Ayuseya, on the other hand, was a bit looked down upon, almost as if they had something against draconians in general. Unfortunately, I didn’t know the language and could only guess what they were talking about behind our backs.

Once we reached the Guild Hall, Nanya took it upon herself to complete the paperwork in order to mark the quests as completed and receive our rewards. It was basically a written declaration through which we all testified to have done as requested by the quest giver and that we didn’t mind a subsequent verification if it was ever required or asked for.

Serya was a bit surprised when she saw that we were already done with the subjugation and the gathering one. In my opinion, I saw no reason as to why she would be surprised of something like this, after all, back on Earth, it was both efficient and quite common to usually pick up all the quests you could and then head off to complete them. Then again, I didn’t exactly follow that rule either, since the gathering quest was picked up in secret by Shanteya.

“What are you looking for, exactly?” asked Ayuseya when she saw me squinting my eyes at the scribbles on the board.

“I’m wondering if my eyesight is just bad or if I really don’t know how to read…” I replied.

“It’s Kalish, so no wonder you can’t read it.” she explained with a small smile.

“Well then, can you look for one that’s suitable for our ranks? Is there something like subjugating a powerful monster, warlord, god, or anything like that on the board?” I asked while looking around for some sort of character or mark that was remotely familiar to me, but no such luck.

Speaking of which, why didn’t any of the idiot Dungeons inside of me learned Kalish and Kendarian? This, I really wanted to ask them, however, I had no intention of returning to my Inner Mind too soon, besides… there was no guarantee that they would answer me anyway. Most likely they would make fun of me instead.

“Hm, let me see.” she said as she began to scan the Questboard.

Meanwhile, I looked over at Nanya or to be more precise at her round bottom. From the corners of my eyes, I noticed another fool of an adventurer looking in that direction as well, so I threw him a glare and then pointed my thumb at my neck and made a slitting motion. The man gulped and looked away.

“What are you looking at?” Nanya asked with a raised eyebrow after she realized what I was doing.

“Ehehe… erm… if I tell you, you’ll get horny and the girls will get mad.” I explained.

“Sigh~” she shook her head, but I was willing to bet that her tail was swaying happily left and right.

“I found one!” announced Ayuseya with a smile.

“What did you find?” asked Nanya as she walked over.

“A quest Illsy requested. This one pays quite a few goldiettes, and it’s from the capital too.” she pointed at it.

“What? What does it say?” I asked with a child’s excited look on my face while staring at the undecipherable scribbles.

“That one? Are you sure?” asked Serya as she walked over and looked at what Ayuseya was pointing at.

“What’s wrong with it?” I asked, getting a bit impatient since they weren’t telling me what was about.

“Well, it’s actually a rescue and escort mission, but it’s been a few days since it was put up there. Chances are the giver already gave up on it.” Serya pointed out, shaking her head.

“Rescue? From what? Bandits?” I asked.

“No, a dungeon. It’s written like this: Party of five sent into Mehalom Ancient Dungeon. One cleric, two warriors, and two mages. Presumed dead or gravely injured. Send help at once then report to Deroak, the Slave Merchant in the city Elora. Reward is 20 goldiettes for each surviving member, and 10 goldiettes for any slaves recaptured/retrieved alive. The reward for slaves may drop if they are in a bad state.” Ayuseya finished reading and then looked back at me with a smile.

“Thank you, and I guess I know what quest to take now! Hehe! So, where’s this dungeon at?” I asked Serya.

My eyes were sparkling from excitement and the urge to go dungeon exploring. There was also the desire to completely smash and obliterate other Dungeons, but that was more of a passive-aggressive self-defense sort of feeling.

“Oi Oi! That’s a very difficult quest! I think you should take another.” spoke out one of the adventurers who happened to overhear us.

“Let them take it. Fools need to learn early on when not to chew more than they can handle.” said the Watcher, but his remark didn’t stop there, with a whisper, he commented “If that accursed demon dies there, even better…”

“You are starting to seriously piss me off, Bucket Head.” I retorted.

“B-Bucket head? This helmet is an honor for any adventurer of this Guild! Not a bucket!” shouted the Watcher.

“Ah! Please knock it off you two, don’t destroy my establishment!” Serya said and immediately jumped over the counter and placed herself between us. “Seriously, DON’T do that!”

“Hmph! The newbie needs to learn some manners, but I’ll teach him some other day.”

“Oho? I could squash you like I bug if I wanted to, Bucket Head! Just make me!” I growled at him.

“Enough, Illsy.” Nanya said giving me a karate chop on the top of my head.

I broke through the floor and landed in the basement.

“Arara~ Nanya.” said Ayuseya covering her mouth.

“I’m OK!” I called out from below, then a broken wooden board hit me on the head. “Ouch!” and here I thought that sort of thing only happened in the movies.

“Oopsie! Hehe! We’ll fix it?” the demoness said with an awkward smile.

“M-My floor…” Serya was staring at the destruction with a clear expression of shock on her face, but that display of raw power was sure to calm down any future idiots who would have wanted to mess around with us, since it appeared as though breaking those boulders back then wasn’t enough.

“Tch! I told you letting this demon inside was no good.” said the Bucket Head.

“Sigh, yeah yeah, I heard you already.” Nanya waved him off.

“Do not worry about the damage, Master will fix it. As for this dilemma, it would be wise not to further inquire our wrath, otherwise, unfortunate… accidents might befall upon you.” Shanteya said while walking at a relaxed step towards Bucket Head and showing him a kind smile, the type that sent shivers down your spine when you knew you angered the wrong person.

“I-Is that a threat?” asked the man after he gulped.

“No, a fact.” she declared.

“Hey now, we’re all comrades here… more or less. You said demon, Watcher, but all I see is a blonde human woman.” said one of the mage adventurers who got up from his table and walked over in an attempt to stop a possible fight.

“I can SEE she is a demon.” he declared.

“Even if she is, she hasn’t caused any trouble for us, well… only for the kitty at the inn.” he shrugged, and Nanya blushed.

Meanwhile, I finally managed to haul myself out of that hole.

“Hmph! I still don’t agree to having her here! She is bound to bring us trouble! Who knows? Maybe she can even summon a Dungeon in the middle of this peaceful town!” the Bucket Head declared.

She is already a Dungeon, why summon another? Oh, wait! I’m also a Dungeon! I thought and then shot a glare back at him.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Dungeons can’t leave their territories! Besides, a young Dungeon suddenly appearing here would be destroyed almost immediately by all of us, so please, Watcher, calm down!” said the mage again.

“Do not worry, we weren’t planning on staying here any longer. We’ll take that so-called difficult quest and be out of your way.” I said crossing my arms on my chest.

“That being said, Lady Serya, how much would the damage caused by Milady Nanya costs by your estimates?” asked Shanteya with a calm demeanor.

“Huh? I don’t know… three, maybe four goldiettes?”

“Master?” said the el’doraw while looking at me.

“Yeah, sure…” I rubbed the back of my neck and then tossed a small gold sphere her way.

“There you go.” said Shanteya, offering it to the woman.

“This… This is worth ten times more! Are you sure?” she asked surprised.

“If Master said so, yes.” she nodded.

“Erm… Thank you.” Serya was overjoyed with the payment.

The shiny ball was nothing for me, but apparently, it was quite something for the locals. I rubbed the back of my head and gave up on starting a fight with Bucket Head. Well, he was no danger to me anyway. I could easily crush him like a bug.

“We’ll take the quest and be on our way then.” I told Serya, who nodded approvingly.

Tucking the gold sphere in her pocket, the woman went over to the counter to complete the request. My wives and slave placed themselves between me and Bucket Head to avoid a possible fight, which wouldn’t have lasted more than a second or so.

While we waited, I used that time to ponder about whether or not I should just expand my Dungeon Territory and secretly build an entire underground cave system filled with boot-loving imps, snakes, and maybe even Minotaurs. The idea made me snicker to myself.

“Don’t.” Nanya said simply.

“What?” I blinked surprised. I didn’t say anything, did I? I thought.

“You know what. Besides, if I lost my cool every time I met an idiot like that Watcher, I would have been long dead.” she said with a sigh.

“You’re telling me you’re used to this?” I asked her raising an eyebrow.

“I’m telling you to ignore pointless trouble. You know the saying, right? Spells and swords may break my bones, but the words of idiots will never do.” she smiled and patted me on the back.

“They can get you in trouble though…” I commented.

“Listen, as long as he doesn’t actually DO anything, there’s no reason to act against him. If we were on a political delegation or something like that, yes, that sort of behavior is unacceptable because we need to assert the power of the country that sent us. In this case, however, it’s like seeing a wolf pup bark at a Dayuk pack leader. It’s kind of funny to see a weakling like him acting like that towards us. Hehe.” said Nanya and then wrapping her invisible tail around my waist, she pulled me into her arms and kissed me. “But thank you for sticking up for me…” she showed me a cute smile and then two strong hands gripped both of her shoulders.

“Nanya?” said both Ayuseya and Shanteya at the same time.

“Hehe! Don’t worry, I was just giving him a small thank you, I’m not going to mount him here.” the demoness poked her tongue out at them and stepped back.

I don’t think that’s the problem… Wait you were thinking about that? Huh? I thought a bit surprised.

The girls let out a sigh and shook their heads.

“I don’t mind you kissing Illsy, just do it in a more… restrained manner, please?” asked Ayuseya. “At least when we’re in public?” she showed us a small smile.

“Sure, but it’s not my fault I act like this. It’s like erm… instinct?” Nanya replied smiling and scratching her right cheek.

“Instinct?” I asked.

“Yes, my kind is very very very possessive of their mates. I sort of see Ayuseya and Shanteya as a threat to my time in bed with you.” she bluntly explained.

“That sort of thing…” the draconian blushed.

“I admit, I did feel a bit… jealous, but…” Shanteya blushed and looked away for a moment.

“Here, lovebirds.” said Serya giving us the small document entitling us to the quest.

“Thank you. Speaking of which, how can we be sure someone else didn’t take this quest already and failed or succeeded with it?” I asked.

“Every Guild Manager has the obligation of reporting this sort of stuff right away. Local Quests don’t require this, but all the others do. When a quest is taken, unless specified that more can do so, it will be taken off the Questboard. If the quest giver believes the adventurers died while trying to do this quest, the guild sends out a scout to check their status. Their job is also to assess the difficulty of the quest. There are times when the quest giver underestimates the danger level. In the capital, some quests even have magic trackers to notify the Guild Manager of the progress of the quest in real time.” Serya explained to me with a big smile on her face.

Now that she knew we were loaded, her attitude suddenly changed. Why wasn’t I surprised? The pattern of greed I often witnessed back on Earth was now baring its ugly snout on this planet as well.

On another note, it should have been expected. Humans and basically any sentient being out there had their own needs. These needs were more than often achieved through the miracle one called money.

I smiled back at her and kept my thoughts to myself. As long as I could settle difficult situations with a bit of gold, it wasn’t that bad, but then again, this wasn’t our fault to begin with. Bucket Head was to blame for everything.

After we took the quest note, we left the establishment and headed off to the inn.

“You are leaving, nya?” Neyalin said with a sad look on her face as soon as she heard the news.

The way she held her ears flattened towards the back of her head was kind of cute.

“I’m sorry, we sort of ran into a difficult Bucket…” I said with a forced smile as I handed back the two keys.

“He’s talking about the Watcher.” Shanteya explained.

“Oh? Nya! That bastard did it again! Every now and then good people with lots of coins come, and he gets into a fight with them over one reason or another! Nya! They always leave too early… Ugh… I apologize, nya.” she said lowering her head.

“No worries, but… has this sort of things happened before?” I asked raising an eyebrow.

“Yes, nya.” she nodded. “The Watcher at the guild is known to be a good fellow with the folk in town or the adventurers at the guild, but once he sniffs out an outsider, he’s bound to get in trouble with them for one reason or another… Eventually, things settle down after the outsiders leave, nya. But that’s bad for business, nya!” Neyalin said. At the last remark, she stabbed her sharp claws into the counter. “Nya, not again…” she sighed and carefully pulled them out.

“Here’s for the trouble.” I told her and left her a small gold sphere.

“What’s this for, nya?” she asked twitching her ears.

“To keep the business running.” I shrugged.

“Thank you, nya! You are kind, nya! But do come back sometime, nya? Maybe when the idiot Watcher isn’t here?” she showed us a warm smile.

“Maybe.” I said, but I highly doubted we would ever return.

“Take care, Neyalin, and thank you for your hospitality.” Shanteya showed her a small smile.

“Anytime! Anytime, nya!”

We left the cat with her new shiny ball and walked out of the inn. A few minutes later, we were out of the town and heading down the road towards the quest dungeon.

“Well, that was a short stay…” I grumbled.

“It’s not your fault, Illsy.” Nanya shook her head and patted my shoulder.

“Besides, after hearing Neyalin’s story, I have a feeling that Watcher fellow isn’t just randomly starting fights with all outsiders.” said Shanteya rubbing her chin.

“What do you mean? He looked just like an annoying Bucket Head to me… Oh, wait!” my brain started ticking and the gears turned “Rich outsiders, fights, early departures?” I said and narrowed my eyes.

“I bet a night with Illsy that he’s going to ambush us.” smirked Nanya.

“Reaaaly?” I asked with a big grin.

“Unless he simply hates rich outsiders, then he is part of a bigger ploy.” pitched in Shanteya.

“Let him come! I want to punch that Bucket Head for insulting Nanya like that!” I said and then picked the demoness in a princess-carry hold.

“What the?! Hey! Illsy! Stop it or… achaaa.” she smiled wryly.

“What’s wrong?” asked Ayuseya.

“My armor is rather spiky… Tehe!” she giggled.

“YAOUCH!!!” I screamed while sharp metal spikes poked at my hide.

Another minus for me for constantly forgetting to keep my Magic Armor up.