The door of the Hunting Guild burst open. "We’re back!" shouted a man at the front of a big hunting party. He had multiple scars on his face and showed a victorious smile. Behind him, a gigantic two-handed sword hung, thoroughly drenched in blood. Seven people with different weapons stood behind him.
Most people in the Hunting Guild released a loud "Heeeeeyyy!" in unison and lifted their jugs of ale. The group walked in, triumphantly. The leader of the group noticed that things were a little different. Usually, everyone would stand up and cheer, but many kept quiet this time. The leader furrowed his brows.
He walked to one of the guys he knew. "Did something happen? The cheer this time seems more... subdued," he asked. The guy he asked was the same person that called Gravis a newbie on his first day.
The person smiled bitterly. "Well, something happened when you were gone, but that’s not important right now. So, I take it you succeeded?" He asked with a grin.
The leader smiled again and nodded. "Yeah! The Earth Salamander has been slain!" He sat down at the table and took a swig from the man’s beer. "Man, that took forever! It put up one hell of a fight. Only when it bit and devoured Mensk, did we finally have a chance to injure it majorly. It fled, and we had to track it for nearly two weeks. Sadly, Jacob got ambushed by a ferocious beast snake and died too. Someone always dies in a hunt for low-grade demonic beasts." The leader sighed.
The man in front of him also sighed. "They were good men." He took another swig of his mug, but it was empty. "Hey, you drank all my booze, Anthony!" he shouted and stood up.
The leader, Anthony, just laughed loudly and ordered more beer. "Calm down! The next one’s on me. We made it big this time. The corpse is pretty complete, and we should all make a couple of gold off of it. With this, I should have enough money to buy a Skin-Pill for my son." Anthony leaned back and looked out of one of the windows. "If he can get into the Elemental Guilds, he will get much further in life than his father."
The man in front of him lifted his new mug. "Cheers to that," and he took a swig.
Anthony looked at the man and felt like something was wrong. "So, what happened? You all seem kind of downtrodden," Anthony asked the man.
The man just bitterly smiled. "Well, we have a new guy," he said as he took another swig.
"So?" Anthony asked, confused. "That sounds more like a good thing."
The man sighed. "Why don’t you look at the mission board. Then you’ll know."
Anthony furrowed his brows, stood up, and walked to the mission board. When he arrived, he gasped. It was empty. Why was it empty? There always were tens of missions up for grabs. Anthony walked back to the man. "Did the new guy do all this?" he asked, concerned.
The man just nodded and took another mouthful of beer. "Not only that. When everyone realized that the missions for ferocious beasts have grown sparse, a group formed to hunt a low-grade demonic beast. Guess what happened."
Anthony furrowed his brows further. "What?"
The man laughed bitterly. "That guy had finished all the low-grade demonic beasts before he finished the ferocious beasts."
"Impossible!" Anthony shouted at the man and stood up. "No one can hunt that many low-grade demonic beasts in such a short amount of time, especially when they hunt them solo. Even someone with tempered muscles only has a 50/50 chance of winning. Even less if they wanted to kill it!"
The man just laughed bitterly again. "It’s true. If you don’t believe me, ask Simone." The man gestured to the lady behind the counter.
Anthony didn’t believe him and walked over to Simone, who just sat on a chair behind the counter and read a book. "Hey, Simone. Could you please show me the missions for low-grade demonic beasts?" he asked her politely.
The lady just waved her hand nonchalantly. "All gone," she said as she continued reading.
Anthony’s face whitened. "But, it’s only been two weeks!" he shouted.
Simone looked at Anthony with a frown. "Don’t shout at me! It’s not my fault. The Demon cleared all of them."
"The Demon?" Anthony asked with a raised eyebrow.
Simone sighed. "Yes, that’s his nickname. At least, that’s what we call him." She gestured toward the tables, where all the hunters sat. "Look around! Everyone’s just waiting for new missions to come. It’s even harder to find any ferocious beasts in the surroundings since the Demon also kills them. What else would you call someone that basically destroys a whole Hunting Guild while keeping to the rules?"
Anthony nearly couldn’t believe it. He was gone for just two weeks, and now, everything had turned upside down. He walked back to his drinking buddy and sat down. He clenched his fist and hit the table. A loud boom echoed, and the hunters looked at Anthony, startled.
"Why did no one do anything about this?" He shouted at the whole guild. Everyone looked away from his eyes. When Anthony saw this, his teeth clenched. "Look at you! One guy is taking all the meat for himself, not even leaving us any soup, and you all take it like some abused kids! Does the guild not have any men left?" he shouted in rage.
Anthony’s drinking buddy just smiled bitterly again. "We would if we could. You haven’t seen the guy." He took another swig from his beer, emptying it. "We can only wait until he leaves. Someone like him won’t be staying here for long."
Anthony sat back down with fury in his eyes. "When I’ll see him, I’ll-"
BANG!
The doors of the Hunting Guild opened loudly, and the whole atmosphere changed. Every hunter looked deeply into their mugs, uncomfortably. Silence descended across the entire guild, and only light footsteps could be heard coming from the man that just entered the hall.
Gravis was pissed! The deadline for the Elemental Guilds’ entrance exam was coming closer, and he still needed more pills. He had finished every mission he could find, but only made around 90 gold in total. He was still missing around 50 gold! That was an equivalent of approximately three low-grade demonic beasts with missions.
He had killed four low-grade demonic beasts since joining the Hunting Guild. The first one was the tiger. The second one was a boar. The third one was a snake, and the fourth one was a wolf.
The fight with the boar was the easiest since it made its habitat near a river. Gravis could fully utilize his elemental synchronicity in the battle. The boar had to continually fight against the water that was trying to pull it down, so it had no time to evade Gravis’ attacks. The fight was over in a couple of minutes.
The snake was an issue since its attacks were fast and venomous. After a long fight, Gravis decided to risk it all. He let the snake bite him in exchange for his saber to penetrate the inside of its mouth, right into its brain. Even with tempered organs and blood, he would have died to the venom. Luckily, he had a plan. He had spoken with Orpheus about it when he was still in his world, and Orpheus said that it would work.
Gravis had quickly made a fire and jumped into it. He let the heat of the fire course through his veins, changing the liquid venom into gas. The composition of the venom changed, making it less effective. He still felt enormous pain for many hours, but he had survived.
The last demonic beast, the wolf, didn’t even have a mission. Gravis just saw it while hunting a ferocious beast. Wolves were faster than tigers and lions, but they mainly used their bite as an attack. Gravis got injured and nearly lost his arm, but he was able to sever a tendon of the wolf’s front paw. The fight then completely went into his favor, and he had slain it after a while.
In the past couple of days, he was just running around the wilderness, trying to find any beast, even if it didn’t have a mission. He still needed 50 gold, which equated to around 100 ferocious beasts. This constant searching around made him cranky.
Gravis walked to the mission board and didn’t see any missions. Then he walked to the lady behind the counter. Without him even needing to say anything, the lady just shook her head. "Tch," Gravis spat and walked to the entrance, but about seven people blocked his path when he arrived.
"We need to talk!" said Anthony.
Gravis narrowed his eyes.