"So!? Are you going to join our team!? We will buy you the best equipment we can get you, and you can even keep 50% of all our earnings! Please join us!" More and more outrageous offers like that keep being thrown at me while I try to take control of the huge crowd of group leaders, all desperately trying to undercut their opponents for my alliance.

  I suppose if you're a teamless adamantine adventurer, which is supposed to be the strongest category, then you automatically gain popularity cause, Oh my gosh, I was being squeezed! However, one guy, in particular, caught my attention even more than every other guy, which was a guy wearing blue gear drinking in the corner while only side-eying me.

  Why was the guy so calm and not trying to get me into his team? If I am able to make assumptions, he looked like the type of guy who was just the chill, strong adventurer who didn't like attention and just wanted to get their job done without the drama.

  With my most utter curiosity, I soon began pushing toward the man drinking in the corner along with what I assumed were his teammates, who turned out to be a girl and another younger guy. The gal looked around her late twenties with blonde hair, blue eyes, and incredibly white skin.

  The lady was wearing a more mage-like clothes style, with her clothes being green, which meant she was incredibly new, while her male companions were both blue. The main guy, who looked to be in his early twenties, looked around six feet tall with black hair, brown eyes, and brownish skin.

  The man's skin was interesting; it looked like the color of a latte, more than actually brown. Finally, he had an interesting armor that resembled the light armor used by the Vikings in ancient times, you know? The type of armor that is meant to withstand a single slash before it lets the sword cave into you.

  I bet the speed benefits would be worth it, I suppose. In the end, I was the second younger guy who had animal ears resembling those of some kind of big cat with black spots on them. The younger guy's hair was a weird combination of brown with red tones, and his eyes were the most bizarre, with him having pupils shaped like a cat's with a silver color.

  The younger guy's thing next to him also looked very strange, with the thing being around his size looking like some sort of sword or something shaped like it. The thing next to him was so weird I failed to describe it really; it was more like a pile of bones in the shape of a sword, which was around his size.

  "Alex, she is looking at us, do something!" I hear the older lady say to the older man, who just chugs some more beer and sighs as he turns around to look at me, stopping me right in my tracks. "We don't have any good offers to throw at you, so it's better if you pick another party; we're broke."

  The man is straight-up honest with me, and I almost turn around right then and there, but the demi-human guy suddenly says something to both of his teammates, making me stay just a little while longer. "Hey! Don't go just yet! We can talk and maybe be friends! Right Alex?"

  The demi-human says while smiling at me, which seems to piss off both the lady and the regular older guy. "You, you know what? Yeah! We should have a chat." The older guy finally comes to his senses once the animal-eared man says something else to him right in the ear, which I couldn't even hear very well.

  "I will not pick a team today, guys, so why don't you let me have a chat with these people in peace?" I was personally more inclined to go with a team that didn't lick my feet so much because those are the people that will dump you the instant you fail to deliver, which would probably happen right away when they realize I am not as uber-powerful as they think!

  "AAAW! Goddammit!" "It's not fair!" "Fine, we will wait until tomorrow!" A lot of disappointed leaders don't hesitate to throw around their frustration with my decision. Still, I couldn't care less at the moment as I finally got time with the interesting group of new adventurers who seemed very mysterious.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  "Alright, welcome to our booth, little one! I am Nero, my comrade here is Alex, and that grumpy old hag is Seras!" The demi-human is the one who presents me to his group, causing offense to the lady who is quick to smack him in the forehead. "Who are you calling a hag!? I am not that old, you jerk!"

  "Forgive their bad behavior; they're just weirdos like that. So tell me, why did you come here to us while having so many other options?" Alex is straight and to the point, forcing me to come clean about my prejudice against people who lick boots too much.

  "Because I hate it when people expect too much from me; it forces me to deliver. I want a team, not a bunch of cheerleaders who want me to do all the fighting while they just watch." I had to be honest; even though the card said I was a high-rank adventurer, the truth could not be further from reality. To be fair, I was probably at a green or blue level since the stone probably read the magical reading of the goddess curse and not my actual power.

  Joining a team that thinks I am a max-level adventurer would probably pick harder commissions to earn more money, but that would also mean I would be under severe stress trying to deliver on those expectations, which could prove fatal to me. "Uhm! Fair enough, but you should know that we are just a beginner team. We probably can't all match your power either."

  "That's where everyone is wrong. My stamina isn't very good, and my technique needs a lot of work; I need all the help I can get." The demi-human old lady duo finally stops fighting in the background once Nero ends up with a big red palm mark on his face as Seras angrily looks at me.

  "You're so mean to me!" Nero says as he massages his face with his hands. "That's because you're always teasing me about my age! I should cut your dick off next time; maybe you'll learn!" "Alright, you two enough! Stop pretending like you don't totally like each other and have sex already!"

  {Duo together} "BOSS!?"

  "See what I mean? Our team isn't perfect; you might seriously regret joining us." Alex tried to hush me again over and over with little comments like that, always making his team sound like a dysfunctional party, but what I saw was just a good beginner team.

  "Who is perfect in this imperfect world? How about a deal? We go on an adventure together, and if you don't like me on your team, I just leave!? No commitments, no strings attached!" Alex finally gives up and just lets me sit in their booth, completely caving into the pressure from Nero, who really wanted it to work.

  "So! Now that you will be on our team, could you finally tell us what royal clan you are from?" Nero asks right away as he pushes his way toward me, altogether avoiding Alex and Seras, who continue to drink for now. "I don't belong to any royal family," I tell him, almost making Seras and Alex spit their drinks.

  "Come again? You're adamantine but not a royal!" Alex is the one asking me now, completely changing his attitude toward me instantly. "Yeah, I am not part of any royal family. I'm but the daughter of a peasant farmer." Alex seriously changes his tone and even his attitude toward me, while Seras doesn't seem to believe me and just keeps drinking.

  "Why the sudden change of attitude? I press Alex in his more relaxed state, and he responds with something I wasn't expecting. "Well, it's just that I thought you were just playing a prank on us. Everyone knows that only royalty is born with enough power to reach adamantite levels of power. I've never heard of a non-royal powerful person."

  "Yeah, I can't really believe you're not some sort of royalty either. Are you sure you're not a royal? You can tell us! We won't tell." Nero says, which makes me curious about that whole thing. Buster did say he was unusually powerful in the KP art he learned from his father, but he also said he was magically not that strong. Could that mean that royalty has an advantage?

  "I am not lying. I am really the daughter of a woodland forager and farmer. I come from the empire territory." Alex's reaction changes again once I say empire, slightly angering him by mentioning the place. "You come from the Empire, too?" To my surprise, the older lady intercepts me right there as she carefully looks at me.

  "Yeah? Are you as well?" I ask Seras, who basically responds the right way with her story. "Yes, but I don't like to talk about it. I don't have many good memories of that place, but I am just glad I left it for good." By the tone of her voice and her demeanor, which was now a little less hostile toward me, I could tell she had gone through something traumatic, so in the interest of building a bond, I chose to share some of my stories as well.

  "I know that feeling. The government killed my mother just a few months ago. All because she wouldn't surrender me as a gratitude payment to the wolflords of the land." Seras also suddenly changes her attitude toward me, followed by Nero, who pets my head as he interrupts my bonding with Seras.

  "Well, with us, you got nothing to fear! We might not be outstanding, but we support each other very well!"