Chapter 167: Assemble
Following behind Masters to what Masters had called the barracks to meet who he would be working with on his first few missions. Lake had been kind of mad at first but after a few minutes he had already gotten used to the idea of working with others. Of course he had mainly gotten over it because Masters had told him he wasn't responsible for his teammates' lives.
If they were to die on one of their missions he wasn't going to be punished or anything so the main downside of being with people who were weaker than him was gone. He still hoped they wouldn't be sharing the money evenly though because there was no way that would be fair to him.
"Ok it's in here, you'll be part of team eight so go in and find them." After Masters said this he left so Lake guessed he would be responsible for his own introduction. This wasn't really a problem because he was an adult but he had just kind of expected Masters to break the ice for him.
Walking inside Lake saw there wasn't anything telling him which team was the eighth so he just asked the first person he could. "Which team is the eighth?" The lady pointed to the back corner where a group of four were talking while sitting on a bunk bed. Thanking the lady, Lake walked over and went to introduce himself only to be cut off by the biggest of the four.
"Are you our new member? That was pretty fast. Master said it might be a while before he was able to find someone to replace Jeppy." Lake took the opportunity that had been given to him and just nodded. He could tell with just this one sentence he wasn't going to need to do anything other than respond to whatever they said to him.
"Well I'm Peter and this is Grendia, Julie, and Freed." Lake could tell he was meant to say his name here so he did. "My name's Lake. Nice to meet you." As Lake was saying this he was doing his best to remember these fours names because he had always had a hard time remembering peoples names who he didn't care about in any way.
"Well now that we are back to a full team I guess we can go ahead and look for a job. Freed, go get one from Master. I want to ask Lake more about how he fights." Freed quickly did as he was told and Peter continued talking. "I can see your dagger and bow so I can assume your highest stat will probably be Agility, but are you someone who can actually be used in a fight or just a scout?"
"I'm not a scout." Lake knew this was a weird way to answer this question but he really didn't know how to describe himself in words people in the fighters guild would use. Lake guessed Brawler would be the best answer he could give but people would probably not believe that if they were to see how fast he was.
"Well I'm a swordsman and Grendia uses a hammer, Julies a mage, most of the time, and Freed is a Healer. We tend to take on small groups that are hiding in the city so a lot of our time is spent on reconnaissance so I was hoping you would be a scout." Lake thought about it for a second and said. "I can scout, I just don't consider myself a scout."
"Oh good I guess." After that the conversation ended until Freed came back with a mission. "Master gave us the same old mission again. Oh sorry I guess you don't know what the usual would be for us."
"Actually, Peter told me what you all usually do while you were gone getting the mission. It's a search and kill mission in the city right?" Freed nodded and said. "That's right, here you guys can look at the information." Lake was about to reach out and grab the sheet the mission details were written on but Peter got to it first and after taking a while to read it he said. "We got to go talk to someone on the fifth tier to get the rest of the information that they didn't want to write down so let's go."
Peter handed the sheet to the next person to read as they were walking and after a while it finally made its way into Lake's hands but they had already made it to where they were going so Lake put off reading it because he wanted to be alert in case anything happened inside the building they were walking into.
Inside the building Lake quickly identified it as a house but it was empty other than the stone furniture that was part of the building itself. On one of the chairs near the window Lake saw a man in a black robe whose face was covered by a black mask. Lake had seen this exact outfit before while watching fights from his balcony on various Demon Worshipers so he quickly realized they were dealing with a spy that had probably been placed in the Demon Worshipers by the Fighters guild.
With this he understood why Masters had said he couldn't be trusted to work alone just yet. If it so happened he was a spy from the Demon Worshipers this spy would be dead and he would disappear having done his job of running interference. It seemed his expectations of running into a dark cave and slaughtering forty people in dark robes had been off and there was going to be a lot more stuff going on in these missions compared to the ones he had been taking back at the other guild.
It made him wonder if what Master Dean had said about making more money here was even true. After Lake thought this he remembered he could tell when people lied so Master Dean had to have believed he could make more money here.
Seeing the robed person holding out something in their hand for them to take Lake just wanted for Peter to go and get it. He didn't see why he would take the risk of approaching such an untrustworthy figure if he knew someone like Peter probably wouldn't even think about it before they grabbed it.
After a few seconds Lake saw Peter do exactly what he had just said he would and grab onto the paper. As soon as Peter had it the person in the robe jumped out the window and almost out of habit Lake braced himself for an explosion but it never came and all that really happened was Peter started to read what was on the paper.
"Three days, we have three days to find whatever the Demon Worshipers are here for or something bad is going to happen." After Peter said this he handed the paper to the person he was closest to who just happened to be Lake and he was able to read it for himself. "That's literally all it says."
Lake couldn't believe how bad this information was and handed it down to the next person in line who was Grendia so she could read it. "It's good we finally know how much longer this is going to go on for. I've been getting tired of running up and down the city's stairs." Lake guessed that was true but he wanted to know how they were supposed to find the people they were going to kill with info like this.
"What's the rest of the mission? I mean do we just go back now?" Peter started to nod and said. "Yeah we need to deliver this to Master so he can start to form a plan. With a deadline we're going to need a more focused effort to find anything before whatever's going to happen happens."
Lake nodded and followed Peter and the others out of the building and pulled the first paper out of his pocket to read since he hadn't had the chance earlier. After he read it, Lake realized their original mission had been assumed to be a kill mission because Masters hadn't known what the spy was going to give them.
He wasn't worried about wasting his time though or if they were even going to get paid for this because it sounded like he had gotten here at the right time and it was about to get a lot more bloody in the coming days and with the increased pressure he was sure he would be given a good mission worth a lot of money as soon as Masters realized just how much of a waste it was to stick him in a group like this and give him such small tasks.
Lake had also realized he might be able to find the thieves guild here in this city and make more money by doing what he was meant to. Back in the capital the Thieves guild had pretty much disappeared because all the thieves in the city had run to get away from the war but here he was sure they would still be active.
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