These quests and the ones that Kiana can currently take range from F rank to D rank. The lower rank ones, F rank, are basically lost and found, just like the cat one as I said before. These ones give out the least rewards however, they give the same rank points as the E and D rank. The middle one, E rank, are mainly to gather items, they can be in extremely high quantities even, for example, gather 30 Cecilia’s. A funny curiosity about them, these quests often give out more rewards than the D rank quests as they normally are quested by shops and the liking. Because of this, not only do they ask for quite a good quantity of items, they end up paying quite well because of it. However, for someone like Kiana, someone whose strength is at A rank, this is beyond boring.
The last one, D rank, they are “exterminate X monsters” type of quests, rarely they will be gather quests, but if they are, you can expect to meet monsters while doing so as you will be tasked to gather X item in a place that it has monsters nearby or right in there. Lucky all of them give out rank points, ones that, over the time and once you reach the requirements, it will rank you up. Let’s pray that it won’t take much for her to reach C rank as from there, the “real” quests start to appear.
Kiana- I will take this one then. I have never been to the forest so this might be a good time to explore it, get familiar with my second home, I guess.
She chose the E rank quest, the one to gather herbs, twenty Cecilia’s to be precise. For someone to post a quest, the guild will verify the validity of it, while doing so it will choose the appropriated rank and the guild can have a bit of saying in that regard, the rewards however, the final decision will be for the client as he will be the one to give out said rewards. In this case the quest that Kiana accepted is for a shop in the commercial area, a potion shop to be exact.
Receptionist: Alright Miss Eris, the job has been officially accepted! However, even though you were at A rank before, and even though I don’t doubt your strength, I still have to warn you about the forest dangers. Here’s a quick run around of our grand forest…
She will yap about for quite a bit, but I can tell you that she actually is somewhat worried about Kiana. It seems she’s having troubles going past her physical features, but let me give you a resume about it. The forest itself has an area of 10 square kilometres, in other words, it’s quite big, seriously enormous even. The forest is separated from the city, this happens thanks to a river that divides both of them. The river itself is nothing special, in a sense that it’s not magical or anything like that, just a boring natural river. Though, thanks to its wideness, it is more than enough to keep the “natives” of the forest out of the city. From the city anyone can go to the forest by going through a manmade bridge, after that, you still need to walk for a few minutes until you actually reach the entrance of the forest, easily being above 2 km of distance between the bridge and the forest. This path as you can expect, it’s well taken care of, it is paved and even illuminated, quite nicely to be honest, but at the same time expected as this path is used basically to get in and out of the city. However, you don’t need to go through the forest, in fact, the forest is further up north, having a separated path to it. This path takes almost 10 minutes of walking to get there, roughly 1 km.
Once you are there, things get more interesting. Right as you get to the entrance you are almost immediately greeted by a dungeon next to it, an underground dungeon as the receptionist said. In this dungeon the monsters spawn infinity and so do the rewards, however there is an order and rules to all of this. The dungeon will only respawn the rewards if they are cleared and, in some cases, once the monsters are defeated, while in others dungeons, you have to fully clear it, defeat the boss of the dungeon and only then, the rewards will respawn. The dungeon of the forest is divided by floors, this can mean several things, but as the receptionist explained, in the case of this dungeon only said floor needs to be fully cleared for the rewards to respawn. The other important factor that she said is the difficulty, as the higher floors, or lower since it is an underground dungeon, the harder everything will be, the monsters and even the environment will be much harsher and hostile to anyone that is fool enough to adventure down there alone. In the lower floors the monsters there can reach B rank and above, reaching A rank right at the last floor.
The Forest has somewhat the same properties as the dungeon, the monsters there also seem to spawn infinity thanks to the forest being magical. However, the difficulty of such monsters is divided in a circle rather than in a straight line just like the dungeon, in other words, the further from the centre, the weaker the monsters will be, while the closer to it, the stronger they get and even the forest itself starts to give out quite the challenge. Unlike the dungeon, there are no rewards there, yes, the monsters will drop loot and the forest itself will “offer” its resources, but rewards like a chest for example are none existent. From what she told Kiana, there really isn’t any incentive to go to the middle as there haven’t been any reports of anything valuable in there. In fact, what makes the forest even more dangerous is the fact that you can easily get lost in there, the further that you go towards the centre, a thick fog decides to appear from what seems to be out of nowhere, reducing the visibility drastically. To make it even worse, said fog has a few anomalies to it as it can block magic communication for some inexplicable reason and combine that with the increased strength of the monsters, you have the perfect and deadly combination.
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Kiana- Thanks for the tips, Miss! And, you can call me Kiana, no need to be so formal. I’m not used to it…
Katarina- In that case, you can call me by Katarina, and don’t worry about it, it’s the least I can do for you. Good luck with your first quest Kiana!
And so, Kiana leaves the guild and goes to the forest. The guild is situated at the commercial area as I said before, the commercial area is around the middle of this side of the city and a bit down in the south. There is a “line” that divides the city in two parts, being this part of said city is much smaller than the other one however, big enough to be considered a town by itself, but we will talk about this more once Kiana visits that side of the city. From here to the forest, it is roughly 5 km, 3 km to the bridge at the end of the city and from there, another 2 km to go. The trip took roughly 2 hours, although Kiana was walking slow, she was a bit occupied looking at the sights of the city otherwise it would've taken her between 45 minutes to an hour. The city as expected, it is packed with people and the trip there was the same. People walking around doing their business, others are simply enjoying their times in the nearby parks that she ends up walking by, all those coffee shops, restaurants and so on, all of them filled with people, ones more and others less. Carts pulled by horses occupy a good part of the streets and even some of them are moved by magic and or engines rather than horses, showing just how advanced this city really is. Extremely busy, but still not enough to make it impossible to live there. Things only calmed down once she diverted her walk towards the forest, but nonetheless, it was a nice walk in the city per say.
“So, this is the forest... I actually like it! It feels so magical, well it is, but now I understand why Katarina-san bothered to give me that detailed explanation about the forest. Oh, there is the dungeon too!”
It seems the forest is more impressive than what she was expecting it to be and she also found the dungeon in an instant. Although it’s nowhere near her or even to be seen, it seems she was able to find it out by using her Magic Sense skill. Everything is filled with magic so no wonder she was able to find it that quickly, but the magic energy here is quite pure. This means several things, but the main one is that, someone has to be the owner of this forest, the caretaker should be the correct description.
“Hmm… From what she told me, this forest is rather large, but I still think I would be able to sense the caretaker from here. Is it possible that he has been defeated? It does not seem that possible from how peaceful this forest seems to be. Is it hiding somewhere then? Maybe inside the dungeon?”
Let me explain what Kiana is trying to say. A forest like this, one that is filled with magic energy, said magic creates several consequences to its environment and surroundings. The major one, at least for the humans, is the presence of monsters, that thanks to the magic of the forest, they have the tendency to spawn once the requirements are met. The denser the magic is and of course the higher the quantity of it, the stronger the monsters will be, and I do mean that. They can reach the power of A rank, making a forest like this basically a stationary calamity. The other consequence is the resources of the forest itself, as everything will be exposed to magic. What I mean is that, fruits, vegetables and everything that you can forage in a forest, they all suffer some type of mutation thanks to it, and the majority of times, it is for the bad side as they have the tendency to evolve into monsters. Quite the thing, no? The world sure works in an odd manner.
Basically, everything that is inside of the forest from living to non-living, can and will mutate into monsters. That’s why the forest itself creates someone or something to take care of all of this as these monsters can and will destroy the forest itself. Therefore, the forest creates a caretaker/s, the most powerful monster/s that the forest can create. Normally they are Dryads, a monster that evolves from the vegetation, flora and or trees. However, these three possibilities do not affect the Dryad abilities or strength, the amount of magic that is present in that moment, will affect. These beings, with their special magic and skills, prevent anything that habitats in the forest from evolving into monsters, though there is an exception to this, the monsters that are created “out of thin air”. For some reason, they have the tendency to not interfere with them, unless said monsters start to create chaos in the forest or if they attack the Dryads directly. These Dryads have several forms, from humanoids with or without animal or monster characteristics, to trees, yes, trees. Not only that, they are spirits, in other words, quite strong. The weakest one, the tree variants, are easily between B- and B+ rank, while the humanoids are A rank and above.
This is why Kiana is a little confused and taken back when she sensed no caretaker in the whole forest. A being like that even at B- rank, she would instantly sense it, at least that’s what she thinks. Katarina did mention something about a fog, one that seems to block magic. Maybe it’s interfering with Kiana's Magic Sense skill? Maybe the caretaker is right in the middle of the forest doing its thing and thanks to the fog blocking the magic, Kiana is unable to sense the caretaker. Hmm, or maybe there really isn’t any caretaker in there. Anyway, this is something that Kiana needs to keep in mind, so that, unexpected things that can happen there, they won’t be that unexpected.
“That seems possible, I have to check it myself later. Though, the dungeon could also have the caretaker, or maybe, the forest itself is a by-product of the dungeon? Depending on how high level the dungeon is, it might actually be a possibility. Either way, I will have to check both of them later.”
With all of this in mind, she casually enters the forest to look for the Cecilias. To be honest, it should have been something really simple, and in a sense, it was, not only are there quite a few of them just laying around, they also are quite easy to spot. However, just as Kiana was gathering the last three of them, some uninvited guests happen to stumble upon her.
