Morning in the Tide’s Rest tasted like warm cedar, ocean breeze, and some unfortunate sea beast the innkeeper had smoked sometime around dawn.
Emil woke to birdsong.
Sica woke to habit.
Luna woke because she didn’t sleep, but enjoyed pretending.
By the time they reached the Adventurers’ Guild, the sun was already high over Rivamar, light glinted off ship masts and mana lamps while the docks buzzed with early commerce. Dockhands shouted, cranes groaned, and somewhere, something large splashed with intent.
Inside the guildhall, Luna immediately zipped toward the job boards.
“Iron rank interns!” she sang. “Working for pennies and experience!”
A handful of adventurers glanced over, nodding in agreement with the sentiment, whatever a pennies was supposed to be.
Sica scanned the listings, eyes moving like a hunting cat.
“Three options stand out,” she said calmly. “Simple work. Good warm ups.”
She pointed them out in turn:
Pest removal—barn rats.
Gathering—dandelions for a tea shop.
Labor—digging a water trough trench.
Emil made a face. “Do we all do the same quest, or split into teams?”
“Split,” Sica said without hesitation. “More efficient.”
“Divide and conquer!” Luna chirped.
“Never split the party,” Emil muttered, but he didn’t argue.
They accepted all three contracts. Rats and dandelions went to the Luna and Sica team while the trench quest went to Emil alone.
The guild receptionist waved them through with a pleasant smile. “Good luck, Lunantics!”
The barn was quaint in the way only rural structures could be. It was stacked produce crates, sacks of grain, and loose straw underfoot. Unfortunately, it was also alive with skittering sounds, visible scratch marks, droppings, and loose nesting materials that suggested the rodents had fully committed to the space.
The farmer paced nervously. “Somethin’ got ’em breedin’ like demons in there. I swear they’re…”
He stopped mid-sentence.
Sica and Luna were staring intently at the barn floor.
“…What are you doing?”
“Counting,” Luna whispered cheerfully.
“There are ninety-three,” Sica said. “One of them is currently giving birth though, so more very soon.”
The farmer went pale.
With their combined perception, they could see every rat through the floorboards. Heat signatures, mana disturbances, tiny hearts beating with fear, hunger, or maybe even ambition.
Luna drifted to the center of the barn.
“One,” she whispered.
A mana bolt cracked into existence, snaking around crates and beams with surgical precision.
*You have slain Level 1 Barn Mouse.
“Two.”
Another bolt slipped cleanly through a knot in the boards.
*You have slain Level 1 Barn Mouse.
“Three, four, five… oh, these pop beautifully.”
What followed was less extermination and more a laser guided heavenly smiting. Luna’s bolts curved and danced, while Sica covered every escape route, flicking throwing knives with merciless accuracy whenever a rat tried to flee the bolts.
Ten minutes later, the barn was quieter than a zombie free graveyard at midnight.
The farmer stared at the now pristine structure.
“…I don’t…there wasn’t even…how are y’all Iron Rank?!”
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
Sica retrieved her knives. “Late bloomers.”
“We offer premium pest control services at budget prices,” Luna added helpfully.
The farmer signed the completion form with shaking hands.
S-plus.
Highly recommended.
Definitely overqualified.
The tea shop owner, a kindly older woman wearing glasses shaped like teacups, met them outside her garden.
“Oh, thank you for coming. I only need a few bundles…”
“Found them,” Sica said.
“All of them,” Luna clarified.
They produced a truly unreasonable mountain of dandelions they had gathered on the walk back from the barn.
The plump ones hiding behind stone walls.
The sun fat ones in open fields.
The rebellious ones growing from rooftops.
Even the probably peed on ones sprouting bravely between pavement cracks.
Surely she’d wash them.
The tea shop owner stared, horrified and delighted in equal measure.
“Oh my sweet leaves… this is, this is years worth. I’ll have to cancel my other harvest orders…”
Sica handed over the quest sheet.
The woman signed it with trembling hands.
S-plus.
Emil’s task was even simpler. Or so it was supposed to be.
The farmer gestured toward a crude sketch in the dirt.
“Just need a small trench dug so the livestock trough drains better. ’Bout two meters is fine. I’d do it myself but…” He gestured to his bandaged leg “Doc said nothing strenuous for at least a week.”
Emil’s eyes glazed over as Architect Mode engaged.
“Two meters?” he murmured. “That’s surely not adequate livestock facilities.”
Thirty minutes later, Emil stood proudly before a marvel of rural engineering.
The now completed trough featured individual livestock bays with self-flushing and auto-refill functionality, fed by a reservoir powered through a gravity based check valve system controlled by a stone counterweight pulley. The entire structure was reinforced, safety checked for animals and humans alike, and even subtly repelled low level monsters thanks to basic monster warding runes. Wastewater passed through a variable gradient filtration system before returning cleanly to the surrounding ecosystem.
No environmental code violations in this design.
The farmer stared at the flowing channels and carefully regulated mechanisms.
“How much did…how…HOW?”
“Uh…?” Emil said, casually cleaning himself of dust and rubble with a burst of earth magic. “Just standard work sir.”
“This is worth more’n my whole fall harvest!”
“Good thing the quest reward is capped at three iron coins,” Emil said, holding out the sheet for the farmer to sign.
The man wept as he scrawled a signature and marked S-plus.
Back at the Guild, the receptionist blinked at the returned forms.
“…You already finished all three?”
“Of course,” Luna said. “We synergized.”
Sica laid the sheets out across the counter like an unbeatable poker hand.
S-plus.
S-plus.
S-plus.
The receptionist adjusted her sapphire rimmed glasses.
“You do realize this qualifies you for accelerated promotion.”
Luna squeaked. Emil blinked. Sica smirked.
“You’ve met a threshold that normally requires at least a hundred Iron quests,” the receptionist continued. “But three consecutive S-plus evaluations? That’s a red flag for excessive competence.”
The badge printer whirred to life.
“With guild approval,” the receptionist said, firing up the badge printer, “you are now Copper Rank.”
She promptly upgraded the party’s badges, returning them across the desk.
The Lunantics stared.
“Congratulations,” she added. “Please inform us if you need anything.”
Outside the guildhall, Luna immediately began humming a victory fanfare no one here would recognize.
Emil turned the copper rank badge over in his hands. “We… really leveled up. In one day.”
“Less than,” Sica corrected. “We started just after breakfast.”
“And finished before lunch,” Luna added. “We’re prodigies.”
A pair of clearly high level adventurers passed by, giving them the kind of look usually reserved for baby animals learning to walk. Emil waved shyly. Luna sparkled. Sica pretended not to notice.
The trio grabbed lunch at a beach side wagon based food stall in order to better enjoy the lazy afternoon. The day truly ran away from them, before they knew it, the sun had begun to tickle the waves.
Finally rousing their bodies, they walked through the late afternoon streets of Rivamar. The horizon fired painted rays of gold and red that danced on the building faces of the many shops and taverns giving the impression that the party was the only real thing in a world of colors.
“You know,” Emil said slowly, “I think we’re actually doing this.”
“Doing what?” Luna asked, floating upside down and then righting herself.
“Adventuring,” he said. “Helping people. With the incentive of money…but still.”
“Different from rogue work,” Sica said quietly.
They reached the Tide’s Rest just as the innkeeper rang the dinner bell.
The rude Copper party from the night before glanced over, eyes popping as they noticed the new badges.
One of them, the bow guy, choked on his ale.
Sica didn’t even look at them as she passed.
It was the most devastating social attack Luna had ever witnessed.
They settled into their usual corner table. Fresh stew. Warm bread. Soft lanternlight.
Emil sighed. “Today was… good.”
“Tomorrow,” Sica said, “we push the new rank.”
Luna bobbed eagerly. “Tomorrow we get dangerous.”
And again, the trio ended another day feeling almost burdenless.
