📍 Road to Lifo Village | Noon
The cart wheels complained over every stone.
Five hours of road stretched between the city and Lifo village — 50 kilometres of farmland, thinning trees, and sky that got quieter the further they travelled from the city's noise. Kiyoshi sat in the back of a hired cart with his arms resting on his knees, watching the road behind them disappear. Sakura sat across from him, eyes forward, saying nothing useful.
He spent the time going over what he knew.
E rank. One hundred mana. Three skills, one of which was called Healing Kiss. A sword he still hadn't had assessed. Twenty-five silver coins. A world that ran on power.
By the time Lifo village came into view, evening had pulled the light down to amber.
A wooden wall enclosed the whole settlement — solid, practical, built by people who understood that the world outside didn't care about their crops. They were met at the gate and led to the chief's home, where a fire was already going and the smell of something cooked and simple filled the room.
📍 Chief Joru's Home | Evening
Chief Joru was a man of around forty-five — small in stature, unhurried in manner, with the particular stillness of someone who had been responsible for other people's lives for a long time and had stopped being rattled by it. He stood when they entered and bowed his head with a sincerity that felt heavier than ceremony.
"Thank you for answering the call," he said. "I feared no one would accept a quest at two gold coins."
"It's our job," Kiyoshi said.
From behind the chief's shoulder, a boy of about fifteen looked them over with the frank assessment of someone who hadn't yet learned to hide it.
"They look weak, Father," Garu said.
This one, Kiyoshi thought.
"Garu." The chief's voice carried a specific weight. "Apologise."
"It's fine," Sakura said, before Garu could speak. Her tone did not invite further discussion on the matter. "Where is the hive?"
The plan was straightforward: fire arrows into the hive at night, thin the swarm, engage what remained. The bees ran one to two metres in length. Their wax burned on contact. The chief outlined it with the efficiency of someone who had been living with the problem for months and had thought through every variable.
Kiyoshi listened. Noted the two village soldiers — capable enough, from their posture, but not comfortable with the numbers they were about to face. Noted Garu, who had stopped pretending to be casual and was checking his sword with the focus of someone who had done this before.
He activated Eye of Wisdom quietly.
[ Eye of Wisdom — Active ]
On the chief —
[ Rank: Unable to determine. Target exceeds skill ceiling. ]
The skill hit its ceiling and returned empty.
On Garu:
[ Name: Garu ] [ Species: Human ] [ Rank: — ] [ No hunter classification found. ]
Not awakened, Kiyoshi thought. So how—
He looked at Garu again — at the way he held the sword, the way his weight was already distributed before the fight had started. He learned it. The old way. From someone.
📍 Forest Edge — Near the Hive | Night
The fire crackled low between them.
Six of them in the dark — Kiyoshi, Sakura, the chief, Garu, and two soldiers who had already identified the best bush for cover and were standing slightly too close to it. The hive was a dark mass in the trees twenty metres out, the low hum of it audible even now.
Garu sat close to Kiyoshi, not quite deliberately.
After a moment, unprompted, he said: "It's tough, managing with only two soldiers. Most quests we post sit on the board for months. Adventurers say it's too far, too little coin, not worth it." He kept his eyes on the hive. "If we spent more on adventurers we'd be in famine by winter."
"Not all adventurers are like that," Kiyoshi said.
Garu made a sound that wasn't agreement.
Then, after a pause — quieter: "I want to be one. An adventurer. Travel, help people, protect this village." He turned his sword over in his hands. "My brother was one. He awakened and left. Years later I found him in the capital — ran to him." A beat. "He looked at me and said: Why are you here? Your brother died years ago. Don't come back."
The fire popped.
Neither Kiyoshi nor Sakura said anything. Some things didn't need filling.
Garu didn't look at them when he finished. He was looking at the hive.
Chief Joru stood. "It's time. Garu — ignite."
📍 The Hive | Night
Three arrows, fire-tipped, arced into the dark.
The hive caught. Ten bees dropped in the first wave, the fire spreading faster than they'd planned. The rest came out angry.
The two soldiers found their bush immediately. Efficient decision.
Garu moved forward without hesitation — sword out, weight low, engaging the first bee that reached him with the clean economy of someone who had trained this specific fight in his head many times. He was E-rank capable without being E-rank classified. The distinction, Kiyoshi noted, mattered less than the result.
Sakura was already gone.
Not retreated — gone. Hide active, she had simply ceased to be visible, and the bees that turned toward where she had been found nothing. Then she reappeared in the spaces between them, dagger moving with a precision that had nothing accidental in it. Six bees. Six strikes. Target-skill confirmed on each one before the blade landed. She fought the way the skill description had suggested and hadn't quite prepared him for — like someone who could see the end of each movement before it started.
Kiyoshi activated Luck and moved.
[ Skill: Luck — Active ] [ Duration: 10 minutes ] [ MP Cost: 40 ]
What happened next was difficult to describe with dignity.
A bee locked onto him. He ran. His foot caught a root, he stumbled, he hit a rock shoulder-first — and in the exact moment the bee fired its wax, another bee crossed its path from behind. The wax hit the second bee. Both insects tangled in their own burning mess, stuck to each other and the ground.
Kiyoshi looked at them.
Looked at his sword.
Drove it in.
The remaining bees fell to the others. When it was done, they stood in the quiet of a forest that had gone still, picking through the aftermath — magic stones, honey, wax. The bee carcasses would ash out within a week, clean and odourless. Standard D-rank biology.
Kiyoshi sat down on the ground because his legs suggested it.
"How did you do that?" he asked Sakura. "The fighting. You moved like — please tell me you were an assassin in your previous life."
"No," she said. She wasn't even breathing hard. "The rank gives you the body for it. Speed, strength, precision — they scale upward as you climb. You'll feel it when your rank moves."
"I'm not worried about it," he said.
She looked at him.
He was very obviously worried about it.
He turned to Garu instead. "You're good. Better than most people with an actual license."
Garu looked at the ground. "Thanks, bro."
📍 Chief Joru's Home | Later That Night
The chief set two gold coins on the table.
Then he set beside them the collected honey — thick, amber, smelling faintly of something burned and sweet.
"Take the spoils as well," he said.
Kiyoshi shook his head. "We only need the coins, Chief. You fought with us."
"AMO law," Joru said simply. "The quest reward belongs to those who accepted it. I cannot take it back." He pushed the honey forward. "But I can give you this. It's a strong energy source. Use it when you train."
Kiyoshi looked at him for a moment. Then at the honey. Then he accepted it, because the chief's expression made clear this was not a negotiation.
"If you post another quest," he said, "we'll come back."
Garu, from across the room: "Thanks. Both of you." A pause. "Brother. Sister."
📍 The Road Back | Two Days Later
Kiyoshi sat with his back against the cart wall, watching fields pass, and worked through the arithmetic.
Two years.
That was what he had calculated, running the numbers against what he knew. Monster Island opened once every few years — the next window was two years out. To reach A rank in two years from E rank required a pace that most adventurers spent a lifetime attempting. Daily quests. Nightly training. Every skill sharpened until it cost less and gave more.
There was no other path he could see.
He turned it over and over the way he turned all systems over, looking for a gap, an inefficiency, something that could be shortened. The calculation kept returning the same answer.
Two years. A rank. Then the island.
No one had claimed the treasure yet. That was either a warning or an opening, and he had not yet decided which.
He looked at his hands.
Then we start tomorrow, he thought. And every day after that.
✦ CODEX — Chapter Six ✦ World Archive: Entries Relevant to Chapter Six
ENTRY 024 — ON LIFO VILLAGE
Population: approximately 25 families. Primary resource: the Onzi plant — a rare flowering crop used as a core ingredient in healing potions. Cultivated outside the village walls due to the scale of the fields required. Defences: a single wooden perimeter wall, two soldiers, one chief.
The village cannot afford to post high-reward quests. Most of their AMO listings sit unclaimed for months. This is not unusual for small settlements far from city centres — adventurers calculate travel time against reward and decline. Lifo's harvests run close to subsistence. Allocating more gold to quest rewards means less food in winter.
ENTRY 025 — ON CHIEF JORU
Age: approximately 45. Role: village chief, primary defender. Rank: unknown. Eye of Wisdom returned — rank too high to read. Ceiling exceeded.
He does not hold an AMO license, or if he does, it is not publicly registered. He has never submitted to formal classification. Whether this is deliberate is not established.
What is established: he subdued two D-rank bees simultaneously, bare-handed, mid-air, after undergoing a physical transformation — increased muscle mass, visible vein activity, steam. This places him well above C rank by practical measure, regardless of what any stone might say.
He lives in a village of 25 families and does not appear to have considered leaving.
ENTRY 026 — ON GARU
Age: 15. Species: Human. Not awakened. No hunter classification. Combat ability: E-rank equivalent by practical performance, achieved through training alone.
His brother awakened, left Lifo, and by the time Garu found him in the capital, had severed the relationship entirely — denied the connection, dismissed him. The reasons are not recorded here. Garu has not discussed them further.
He called Kiyoshi and Sakura brother and sister at the end of the night. He did not appear to notice he had done it.
ENTRY 027 — QUEST RESULT
Quest: D-rank. Village of Maren / Lifo. Bee-type monster nest. Outcome: Completed. Reward collected: 2 gold coins, bee honey (bonus).
Kill breakdown: Sakura — 6 (Target skill confirmed) Chief Joru — 2 (unarmed) Garu — confirmed kills, number unrecorded Kiyoshi — 1 (circumstantial)
Monster stones collected: D-rank (blue). Value to be assessed.
Bee wax: commercially viable. Useful in crafts and heat-resistant applications. Bee carcasses: will ash within one to two weeks. No odour. No contamination risk.
ENTRY 028 — KIYOSHI'S CALCULATION
Time available before Monster Island opens: approximately 2 years. Rank required for entry: A. Current rank: E, Level 6.
The gap between E and A has no standard timeline. Most adventurers who reach A rank do so over five to ten years. Kiyoshi has set two years as the target.
Whether this is possible has not been determined. He has decided it is not a useful question.
End of Chapter Six Codex."First quest done. Two gold coins heavier. The distance to A rank unchanged — only the time left to cover it."