"Ah, a slime!"

  Suddenly, one of the villagers shouted. In the grass a dozen steps away, a small blob of jelly like creature could be seen. Green in color and semi-transparent. If it didn't move and someone walked by, then it's very likely that they would mistake it for grass and just walk past it.

  The green slime is a very common creature that even a child could defeat. It was that weak.

  The villager headed towards the slime to quickly kill it. It's recommended by the adventurers' guild to kill slimes on sight because they cause destruction to the environment and multiple really fast. And also because they are free money as they have a small core that the guilds pay money for. Very little money, but free money is free money. And no one refuses that.

  And all it takes to kill a slime is a knife to split it in half. Even a dull knife works.

  "Wait!"

  Suddenly Janna said.

  "That's not a slime."

  "Really? Can you tell it's a mimic?"

  "Yes, I have a good nose. It's a mimic, so let me handle it."

  The villagers immediately understood Janna. When she said it wasn't a slime, they knew it was a mimic.

  A mimic is a one star monster. Sometimes there is a golden variant mimic that goes up one rank. The characteristic of a mimic is to transform into lower rank monsters and this usually is a slime. But they still have the power of their original rank. Many normal humans get tricked by the transformed mimic and die as a result of unexpected counter force.

  There's a lot of scary folk tales passed down in villages about mimics. Usually, it's a way to scare kids into never letting their guard down against a monster. No matter how weak it may seem.

  Mimics usually drop something of value as they are a very rare encounter, things like armor pieces, gems, gold ore and many more. These things can usually fetch for a good price for a normal person.

  As for the rest of the time, mimics drop something of such high value that they change the life of the person who kills it. A normal person becomes a mage from drinking an elixir or gains the strength of a boar. Or they gain mystical abilities like talking to creatures or going through walls.

  The possibilities are endless. But the chance of such a drop is miniscule. It's a once in a hundred years kind of drop.

  Janna quickly dealt with the mimic. A single slash from her sword down the middle, swift and fast. The slimy body of the transformed mimic fell to the ground. For Janna, who had reached the four star status, it was easy to deal with it.

  "That was amazing, Janna!"

  The villagers praised Janna, who shyly hid her warm face. Janna was really bad at taking the compliments from others.

  "Hahaha."

  The villagers laughed at how cute Janna looked.

  "Oh, check the drop!"

  One of the villagers said.

  "Go check it, Janna."

  "Hurry up."

  "Maybe you got something amazing."

  The villagers urged Janna to pick up the drop.

  "What? No, no. I don't need it. You guys should take it."

  But Janna was against it. She really didn't need it.

  "You can sell it to Silas and get some money."

  The villagers were smiling warmly at Janna's kindness.

  "Darling. Yesterday, you protected us from those soldiers and now you helped take down a mimic that could have hurt us. We have nothing to offer you in return so please take it."

  Caity's mom patted Janna on the back.

  "You killed it in the first place so we don't have a claim to it anyways."

  "Yeah, that's right. If it were an adventurer, they would pick it up immediately."

  "You'll make us feel bad if you don't take it."

  "Thank you everyone. I'll pick it up now."

  Janna reached out and picked up the mimic's dropped loot. It was a white helmet.

  "Is this good?"

  There was no way to tell if it was valuable or not. It would depend on the material that were the composition of it. There were a lot of materials that were used to make the equipment of adventurers. But a pure white color metal wasn't one of them. At least one that Janna knew of.

  "I'll show it to Thea later. Let's keep moving. everyone."

  So Janna lead everyone to the river. And then to the forest for material gathering.

  "This place is so dangerous."

  Janna realized that the surroundings of the village were dangerous for the common people. Even the common monster she fought along the path were one star monsters that the weak commoners would struggle to kill.

  It required someone to protect them as they went to gather resources. Otherwise it would mean their death. But it wasn't a popular job among the adventurers in the guild. Of which there were a couple dozen.

  "Miss Thea usually accompanies us."

  "Yeah, she makes these barriers that the monsters can't get through."

  "But we never get to use them because she kills the monsters with one attack-not that I want to get hit though."

  The villagers started talking about Thea.

  "She always sings praises about you, Janna."

  "What? Thea does?"

  Janna was listening in and suddenly the topic switched to her.

  "Yeah, she calls you a great friend. And a very cute one."

  "S-she said that?"

  Janna was blushing a bit.

  "Her words, not mine."

  Janna felt very shy from learning that Thea calls her cute in front of other people. There was a visible smile on her face. And she felt giggly in her chest.

  "Where is Miss Thea today?"

  One of the villagers asked. Everyone was curious.

  "She got a sudden quest to help someone."

  "Must be that dwarf we saw earlier?"

  The villagers looked a bit annoyed when talking about the dwarf.

  "Why? What's wrong?"

  "We don't really like dwarves."

  "What? Guys, they are people just like us. You can't be discriminating against them just because of their race."

  "No, no. We're not racists. Don't get us wrong."

  "Thank goodness. I didn't want to deal with an issue like that."

  "Don't worry. There's some people in the village that hate them, I'm sure of that. But the majority of us are just normal folk that think of them as fellow intelligent people."

  Caity's mom explained to Janna.

  "We don't like dwarves because they always cause a mess. They drink all the time and have a bad smell. And they always leave the place dirty."

  "Oh, that would make you dislike them."

  "Yeah, if Miss Thea wants to have them live here, please have her talk to them about their behavior. Otherwise, it'll cause a lot of discomfort among the villagers."

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  "Will do!"

  Meanwhile, Thea was slowly walking through a thick forest. The grass was a dark green and the air was heavy to breath from the high moisture. Every step took some effort as the knee high tall grass needed to be pushed aside.

  "Are you sure it's this way?"

  Thea asked. Behind her was Hauford, the one who lead Thea here to rescue his people.

  But the target of the question wasn't Hauford. It was the white wolf following behind Hauford.

  "Woof."

  Gwyn let out a bark of confirmation.

  "Alright, I'll trust you."

  A few minutes later, Thea and the two walked out from behind a tree. They followed some noises to a big open area in the middle of the surrounding trees. It was fully blocked from the sky by the tall trees. But it was the only place that was open like this in the forest.

  "Haa!"

  Gwyn found it really pretty because in the air, there were hundreds of fireflies floating around.

  In the center of the opening were the dwarf brethren of Hauford. It was as if a festival was going on. They were dancing and laughing. Half of them were passed out with a mug of beer besides them.

  The other half held a mug in their hand, taking a chug or ready to drink more.

  It was chaotic. It was also a really weird thing to do in the middle of a dense forest where monsters lurked everywhere. Just on the path that Thea took to get here, she met so many monsters.

  "Hauford?!"

  The partying dwarves noticed the newcomers. They saw a person that was familiar and called out.

  "What are ya doin' here? We thought ya left us?"

  The dwarves gathered around the three.

  "Did ya \*huck* come back for \*huck* booze?"

  One of the dwarves said while hiccupping. His breath was also terrible. Thea could smell it from a distance.

  It was worse for Gwyn who had a wolf's nose.

  "Sorry, Gwyn. Here."

  Thea cast a magic and a water ball formed around Gwyn's nose.

  "Bear with it for a bit."

  Gwyn nodded his head.

  "Who's the lass?"

  The dwarves asked.

  "Hello, my name's Thea. I'm here to get you guys out of danger."

  "A human? But yer a strange one."

  One of the older dwarves said out loud.

  "This is no place for a human. Get out."

  "Yeah! Strictly dwarves only!"

  The dwarves drunkenly started chanting together.

  "Pipe down, ya drunk fools!"

  Hauford shouted at the dwarves.

  "Yer goin' to die here if you don't leave."

  "This again? What was it....a wyvern? There's no such thing 'ere."

  An old dwarf with a long white beard and bald head walked up. He wore some bland clothes.

  "Bezurd!"

  It was the old chief of the dwarven clan.

  "How can ya say that? You didn't even check the place like me."

  "Well, it'll be fine. Don't worry."

  Bezurd said with a smile. He waved his hand up and down.

  "It won't be fine! The wyvern could attack at any moment."

  Hauford was getting impatient. The wyvern could indeed be just around the corner and wipe out the whole dwarf clan with a single breath attack.

  "Whatever, we're not goin' anywhere with ya. This place is perfect for settling down."

  Bezurd and the other dwarves seemed to have made up their mind. They would not leave this place.

  "Why this place exactly?"

  Thea asked.

  "Hmph. We don't have to explain to a human like ya."

  "Really? So you settled here for no reason?"

  "What?! No reason?!"

  Thea was trying to take advantage of their drunk minds and incite them to reveal their secret willingly.

  "No reason she says! All that sugarcane we found is the no reason. Haha."

  One of the drunk dwarf revealed the reason.

  "Shucks! Why did you tell her, you fool?"

  The dwarf who spoke the secret was struck in the head.

  "Sugarcane? It's used to make rum, right? Is that really the reason you guys settled here?"

  "So what if you know? We won't hand over our rum to you!"

  It seemed the dwarves thought that Thea was after the rum.

  "I don't want your rum. And if it's sugarcane, you can just plant it somewhere safer, can't you?"

  "Hmph, you dumb human. This sugarcane can't just be planted anywhere. It's a special kind of sugarcane."

  Now that they knew Thea wasn't after their rum, they revealed more about the secret.

  "How is it special?"

  "It's a variety of sugarcane called gold mango sugarcane. It only grows in forests with high mana concentration."

  "That shouldn't be a problem then. Come on, take some of it planting and we can leave this place."

  "We're not leaving with you human. How can we trust your word?"

  "That's right, humans are untrustworthy. What if ya force us out of our home again?"

  Hauford had explained before that they were driven out from their home by humans. It's understandable to hold grievance against humans.

  "My village isn't like that. All the people are refugees so they'll understand your struggle. You guys can become friends."

  "We don't want to be friends with humans anymore. Go away. We have nothing more to discuss."

  The dwarves started to walk away from Thea. There was no convincing them to go with her. They had made up their mind.

  "You can take Hauford with ya if ya want."

  The dwarves didn't seem to want to leave.

  "W-what can we do now?"

  Hauford nervously asked. He really didn't want his clan members to die here.

  "I don't know. They seem to have a lot of hatred for humans. So they won't listen to me. Can you try to convince a few of them?"

  Thea only had this plan left.

  "It's no use. Everyone listens to the chief. If he doesn't leave, then they won't either."

  But the plan was quickly shot down.

  "...I could forcefully take them with us?"

  "How would ya do that?"

  "Magic."

  "Oh right, yer a mage. I forgot. But magic don't work on us."

  Following Hauford's words, Thea remembered she was taught in the academy that dwarves had a natural resistance to magic.

  "What if I flood them with a lot of water? They'll flow out of the forest with the water."

  "We would drown first."

  Hauford explained that dwarves are really bad at swimming and holding their breath because of their regular alcohol intake.

  "Plus, ya'll be attractin' monsters too."

  "That's true...I really can't think of anything else."

  It seemed like a lost cause. The dwarves started drinking again in the meantime.

  But at this moment, Thea felt a rise in the amount of mana in the air.

  "Gwyn!"

  Thea, Gwyn and Hauford quickly ran away to a corner of the area.

  A few minutes later, the mana level in the air had risen significantly. Only now did the dwarves notice something strange. Heavy thumping sounds could be heard. And they felt vibrations traveling through the ground.

  "Huh? What's goin' on?"

  "Is it a boar?"

  "A boar? How could a boar make such heavy steps?"

  "It's...a very big boar?"

  "Hahaha!"

  The dwarves burst out laughing. Oblivious to the incoming danger. But their laughing stopped when a massive draconic head pierced through the dense wall of trees to look at them.

  Crude black scales all over its body, the wyvern stared at the dwarves with its eyes. A mouth full of sharp fangs. Wyvern are huge in size. This one was about eight meter tall with a length of twelve to thirteen meters.

  Its red predator eyes continued to stare at the dwarves as it walked through the trees to show its whole body and its large wings. And also its sharp claws.

  "Wh-what is that?"

  "A-a dragon?!"

  Some of the dwarves mistook it for a dragon. But if it were a dragon, they would already be crushed under the draconic aura of a dragon. A wyvern didn't posses this characteristic of a dragon.

  "Hauford was right?"

  Some of the dwarves despaired as they realized the warning was true. They thought that they should've listened to Hauford when he said that there were traces of a wyvern nesting in this place. But it was too late to be regretting now.

  The wyvern stood in front the dwarves. Ready to decimate them with a single breath. The wyvern started to gather mana in its mouth.

  An orange colored fire started to form in its mouth. Dragons had special fires of their own, called draconic fire. While wyverns weren't dragons, they had some fragments of this power, making their fire breath significantly stronger than other monsters.

  "Stop right there."

  Before the wyvern could spit out the fire, a voice sounded out. The wyvern turned its head to look immediately. To it, the voice was familiar.

  It was Maple, Gwyn's mother who lived in this region as a protector and the one who held the highest position among the creatures. Even above the wyvern.

  "You're not thinking of hurting my friends over here, are you?"

  Maple's voice was sharp and piercing. It carried a domineering aura with it. The wyvern shuddered in response.

  "Leave them alone. Or..."

  Maple glared at the wyvern. There was a moment of defiance from the wyvern but it left the place afterwards. The wyvern was strong but it knew it wasn't stronger than Maple. It didn't want to fight a losing battle.

  "Haaa~"

  The dwarves fell to the ground one by one. They felt relieved that they lived after meeting a wyvern. They turned to look at the white wolf that had saved them, looking to express their thanks.

  But instead of a big white wolf of six meter height, there was a smaller version of the wolf a little less than one meter height. It was Gwyn, who was panting heavily.

  Besides Gwyn was Thea.

  "Hauford?!"

  There was also Hauford right next to Thea. He had a face that seemed to have seen a ghost.

  "D-did Hauford save us?"

  One of the dwarves suggested.

  "But what about the wolf?"

  "Isn't it right there?"

  "But it was bigger just now?"

  "Ma grandpa said that strong creatures can change their size whenever they want."

  "That must be it!"

  The dwarves came forward to Gwyn and bowed one by one, expressing their gratitude. It confused Gwyn but he took it all in. Gwyn was feeling like a king from the dwarves' gratitude.

  "Don't let it get to your head, Gwyn."

  "Awoo..."

  Gwyn's elated state and self-confidence meant that he didn't listen to Thea's words. But it was quickly brought back down by Thea's next sentence.

  "If you become too engrossed in getting compliments, Nem won't like you."

  "KA!"

  Realizing that Nem wouldn't like a Gwyn that was hailed as a king and complimented by others all the time, he quickly shooed the dwarves away from him.

  "But savior..."

  The dwarves felt like they were being shunned by their savior, which they were indeed. They just wanted to express how thankful they were to be rescued by Gwyn.

  "If you want to hail your savior, then look here."

  Thea called out to the dwarves. She pointed her hands towards Hauford.

  "If Hauford didn't come to me for help, all of you would be dead by now. So you guys should be showing your gratitude to him."

  Once the dwarves came to their senses and realized that Hauford saved them, they apologized for not heeding his earlier warning and thanked him for still saving them.

  After everyone had done so, they discussed among themselves.

  "You're making him the chief?"

  "That's what we decided."

  The dwarves claimed that Bezurd was now too old and retired him from the chief position.

  "So you're the chief now?"

  Thea asked Hauford.

  "I guess so. I don't think I be deservin' of it though."

  "You'll do just fine. The most important thing in a leader is to have heart, which you showed you have tons of. Even when your people had abandoned you and there was looming danger, you didn't abandon them."

  "I...couldn't just let them die."

  "That's what the chief of the dwarves would say. So what are you going to do now?"

  "Leave, obviously. But can I ask ya something?"

  "Of course."

  "How did ya make the wyvern go away?"

  Hauford had been curious since earlier. While he was standing next to Thea, she drove it away. But Hauford didn't see anything that happened because he blanked out because the wyvern was looking towards his direction. He couldn't remember anything as a result.

  "I used magic, specifically illusion magic, to cast a projection of Gwyn's mother. And Gwyn here used his beastly aura at the maximum and spread it out. We were able to trick the wyvern with that, thankfully."

  "Ya mean there was a chance that you wouldn't be able to trick the wyvern?"

  "Look, I'm only a four star mage. Going up against a wyvern is already suicide. There wasn't much I could do except bet on the chance that the wyvern wouldn't find anything suspicious."

  "Y-ya were willin' to do that for us?"

  Hauford felt emotional. Thea was risking so much to help his people. He didn't even understand before.

  "Hmm, I said I would help you, didn't I? I don't go back on my words."

  With that, Hauford thanked Thea again and explained to the other dwarves. They all felt grateful to Thea. When they wanted to thank Thea, they were met with murderous words from Thea.

  "If anyone bows to me, I will drown them in lava."

  Scary words for sure but it assured that no one bowed to her. Thea didn't like people bowing to her as she thought of everyone as equal.

  "Alright, everyone. Let's get out of this forest."

  The new chief Hauford asked the dwarves to pack up their things and leave the dangerous forest where at any moment a strong monster could suddenly attack. But everyone had a sad expression.