Driving off the goblins

"Who's Sanderson?" Yanxi asked, a little surprised.

"Is this mentor of yours famous?" Lamore pressed.

"Is this mentor of yours strong?" Kana was just as eager.

Dean felt his head swell as he listened. After a whole year together, don't these three know how much this Magic Apprentice can actually do?

"You're getting carried away. My mentor isn't strong or famous. He's just an ordinary teacher." Of course, he looked utterly ordinary on the outside, even rather weak. How powerful he actually was, or in what ways, even Dean had no idea.

"Just ordinary..." All three sighed. Dean had the hardest life in their party. Being a Mage was part of it, of course, but having no family support was another.

"Still, my mentor's pretty rich. He knew I didn't have much saved up, so he gave me a gold coin as pocket money." As he spoke, Dean tossed a gleaming gold coin into the air.

The instant the Gold Coin went up, hundreds of pairs of eyes seemed to appear around them, "bouncing" along with the coin as it rose and fell.

"Hey, you idiot! Run!" Sensing trouble, Kana immediately snatched the Gold Coin, stuffed it into Dean's clothes, then grabbed Dean and Yanxi by the hands and ran.

Lamore, the Priest, had first-rate survival skills. He had already slipped far away, a step ahead of Kana.

Good heavens, this is the slums! A place packed with poor people, every last one driven mad by poverty. These paupers would not dare get any ideas about someone rich and powerful, but Dean was just a lowly Level-One Magic Apprentice.

Even with three other level-one young men and women alongside him, they could not withstand hundreds or thousands of paupers willing to risk their lives.

Kana swore she would not set foot in the slums again anytime soon, because these people now knew the four of them seemed to have a little money.

That was not the point. The point was that none of the four was anyone formidable. They were cannon-fodder level... no, a little stronger than cannon fodder... still cannon fodder.

Before long, the four appeared at the town gates, panting for breath. Lamore was combing his flowing emerald hair. The blue-green strands looked quite beautiful in the sunlight. Of course, the fellow was a man.

"Forgive me for fleeing fir... uh, no, for withdrawing from the slums first. As a Half-Elf, I must maintain my perfect appearance at all times." That preening peacock Lamore still had not stopped combing his long hair.

The other three, however, paid no attention to Lamore's vanity.

"Wait, aren't we supposed to pick up a quest? Don't tell me you've already taken one?" Dean looked at Kana. She was perfectly capable of doing something like that: deciding on a quest she wanted without asking for their consent.

Or rather, Kana deliberately ignored Dean's opinion. Sometimes she even specifically chose quests where Dean could contribute little, leaving him to serve as the party's pack mule.

"That's right. Who told you to sleep so late? It's already noon. Heh, I tore down that rotten wooden box of yours. You don't mind, do you?" Kana said cheerfully, without the slightest embarrassment over having demolished someone else's home.

Dean glanced at Kana, then turned away, unwilling to look at that smug face any longer, though she did look rather pretty when she smiled.

"Let's go. Our quest this time is to drive off a few Goblins." Kana handed their party badge to the guard. Once they were allowed through, she led the other three toward their destination.

"Dean, why don't you move in with us? Then Kana won't tear down your room." On the way, Yanxi tugged at the hem of Dean's clothes and spoke to him in a tiny voice.

"You're not short on money anymore, are you, Dean? Then you don't need to live in the slums." After saying that, she gazed at Dean with her big eyes.

Already small and delicate, Yanxi also had a pair of beautiful blue eyes that seemed to hold the stars and the sea. How could Dean withstand such a plea? Besides, he no longer had any reason to live in the slums.

"All right, I'll move in. Let me think. There are plenty of things I'll need to buy new, like..."

Beside them, Kana had long since pricked up her ears. Though she pretended not to hear, her heart was pounding wildly. At last, her party would finally be living together.

An hour later, the four reached their destination, a small village northwest of Blue Town.

Calling it a small village was not quite right. It was a fairly large farm, so vast that its edges were almost impossible to see at a glance. Supposedly, the grain it produced could feed all the residents of Blue Town for half a year.

Right now, however, there was not a single person on the farm, only a dozen or so exhausted-looking Slimes bouncing about.

It made sense. With such an enormous stretch of farmland to tend and only a dozen or so Slimes, they really did have far too much work.

"Leave the Slimes alone. The farm owner told us in the Guild hall that they'll finish their work. Our job is to find the Goblins hiding around the edges of the farm and drive them all out," Kana told Dean.

Clearly, Yanxi and Lamore already knew the details of the quest. Only Dean, who had slept until noon, was still in the dark.

"What about the farm owner? Isn't he going to show us the way?" Dean asked, puzzled. With such a vast expanse of farmland, it would be dark by the time they made one circuit, let alone searched for the Goblins' hiding place.

Kana gave Dean a pretty roll of her eyes. "One look tells you everything. This farm owner has been squeezing the Slimes dry to make more money for himself. Now he's hiding in town to avoid Goblin attacks, and he still hasn't forgotten to order the Slimes to keep farming. Do you think a farm owner like that would guide us?"

Dean was speechless too. Did that not mean that, if their luck was bad, they might spend days searching? The Goblins might even have left already while they were still foolishly wasting their efforts.

Besides, a Goblin was not necessarily stronger than an adult human. A small wandering band of non-elite Goblins like this might not even be a match for three or five ordinary grown men. Yet this farm owner was actually afraid of being ambushed by them.

"Dean, do you know Basic Life Detection Magic? The spell that lets you sense all large creatures within a hundred meters?" Kana suddenly turned back to ask him.

"What are you talking about? Of course not. Why would I learn it? That spell is basically useless. It never detects what it should, and it nails everything it shouldn't." Dean waved a hand. "That's how our magic teacher explained it. Basically, no normal Mage would waste time learning that spell. What, did you want me to use it to find the Goblins?"

"But you don't know it, do you? I knew counting on you was useless. Hmph!" Kana huffed at Dean, her cheeks puffed out. "Besides, you're not a normal Mage anyway!"

Dean: "..."

Indeed, with dark elements as his main affinity, Dean hardly counted as mainstream, however one looked at it. He could only be considered a niche Mage, so he did not quite fit the usual standards for a normal Mage.

(End of chapter)