Dungeon of Niflheim

132 Chapter 132: Long term quests

“Long term quest? What’s that?” Frost checked pretty much all the quests available to him on the board and never spotted any that could be considered ‘long term’ at least not long enough for him. A few of the E-rank quests granted 2 weeks or so but he didn’t plan on returning to Furano for months not weeks.

“We keep certain quests off the boards, they have to be either specially requested or offered. Since you plan on leaving for an extended time and given the amount of trust the guild master has in you, you qualify.” Kamey explained before heading to a small room in the office, she went to retrieve the appropriate quests and returned a couple minutes later with a thin stack of paper.

The Glacial mountains was a thriving place for quests, whether that be hunting, escorting, mining, botany or even scout work. Normally E-ranks wouldn’t even be given a forethought in regards to quests involved in this area, but Frost was a special case, his strength was more than sufficient. Other than ranked quests that require an adventurer to be a certain rank in order to accept the commission there are quests that are classed as special which don’t have such requirements. The [White Claws of Niflheim] would be able to accept such a request regardless of their E-rank level.

Special quests usually gain such a status when they’re either, emergency summon quests wherein the guild summons all possible members to defend the affiliated town or area regardless of rank, its all hands on deck. Or when a private sponsor requests their submission to be special rank in order to either facilitate weaker parties to utilise numbers to get the job done or grant the quest to a certain party that aren’t a high enough rank to accept it the normal way. There’s also situations wherein the danger is unknown such as scouting missions. Monster lair investigation are usually classed as special rank.

“I’m guessing that you wouldn’t be interested in any escort or guarding missions to the area so that leaves a scouting mission as well as a couple hunting missions.” Kamey looked over Nanna and Loki as she put the escort and guarding missions to the side. The party in question wouldn’t appreciate being guarded by children. She withdrew 3 papers from the stack and laid them across her desk.

“All these missions have a minimum 3 months allotment time, would that be enough?” She really wanted Frost to accept a mission, desperately clawing onto the chance of winning that bet she made. Special quests always count as a minimum 2 quests of the adventurer’s rank, the amount is usually determined by the top brass of the local guild.

Frost frowned as he pondered, he could feel Kamey’s strong intent to have him accept a quest and the time was acceptable.

“Let’s take a look first then we’ll decide.” His initial plan to quickly notify the guild of his leaving and get on the road home was put on the back burner.

“Great!” Kamey smiled brightly and fist pumped internally before moving the 3 choices towards Frost.

.....

“First off are the two hunting quests.” Kamey highlighted the far left sheet. “This one is to hunt a polar bear for its paws, you can keep the rest of the bounty. The requestee is the Phoenix fledgling restaurant, only high quality specimens will be accepted with the payment being 6 silvers per paw with an upper limit of 12 paws. The second one is to capture a frost mare and deliver it to the guild, unharmed. The price ranging between 25 to 60 silvers depending on the quality of the specimen.” Kamey spoke in a serious tone. The first hunting quest of polar bears was usually an upper D-rank quest, over their party’s on paper abilities but it was designated special rank by request of the Phoenix fledgling restaurant so they could accept it. The pay wasn’t bad even more so if they could preserve other parts of the bear i.e., the pelt and bones. The second quest was a little special but was still considered E-rank level. Frost mares were ice aspected horses that had rather mild temperaments for monsters. Rich people liked to tame them for all manner of things like racing, carriage pulling, battle steeds etc... they were pretty easy to kill by E-rank monster standards but capturing one without damage was difficult, they were fast and elusive.

“The first one has a time limit of 3 months and requests that you return the paws once acquired within two weeks, preserving them with ice. Any longer and it’d affect the meat quality. The second has a limit of 6 months, the client requires some new horses for the races as well as breeding with his stallion.” Kamey explained the particulars, long term quests usually had a few extra stipulations.

Frost picked up the quest sheets and looked them over himself.

‘Both of these monsters should be present in the external regions of the Glacial Mountains otherwise, Kamey wouldn’t have brought them up.’ Frost knew what polar bears were and how strong they were, he owned one after all. The frost mare however he didn’t have access to within the dungeon menu, not yet anyway. He put the idea of hunting the polar bear paws out of consideration, it had the shortest time limit and poised the most risk. He didn’t wish to stand out anymore than he already did.

‘The frost mare hunting sounds interesting though, perhaps if I capture one or kill one, they’ll become available in the menu.’ Frost was keen to expand his repertoire of monsters, especially one such a frost mares. If they were present within his dungeon, it would provide another type of lure, like magic devices. He placed both sheets back down.

“What’s the scouting mission about?” This quest also intrigued him, seeing the 14 adventurers from the other night work together and communicate seamlessly made him realise he needed to learn many diverse skills to become a fully-fledged adventurer, scouting should be one of those skills.

Kamey frowned and showed a despondent expression, this scouting mission always cropped up around this time and its outcome was very important.

“This mission is fairly simple, you need to go to the assigned sector and record the monsters present, in particular upper D-ranks and any C-ranks and report your findings to the guild. Simple but very important and possibly dangerous considering the timing. The time limit is 4 months after that it’ll either be irrelevant or too dangerous for even someone of your capabilities.”

“Hmmm why? What’s specific about this timing?”

“Haaaaaaa we’re overdue for a monster stampede, it could kick off at any time, therefore the area you’d be scouting could become very hostile. Because of that however the price is very lucrative, a starting payment of 1 gold coin with bonuses if you uncover signs of the stampede and record any C-ranks.” Kamey sighed before explaining.

Frost frowned slightly and placed his hand under his chin. ‘Another mention of the upcoming stampede, I need to shore up the dungeon’s defences and fast.’ He did however notice a slight problem with this quest. There was nothing to bring back as proof of completion.

“I see, what’s to stop me from reporting false information for an easy pay out?”

Kamey released a mocking chortle before responding, she didn’t believe that Frost would lie for a second but not everyone was as trustworthy as him.

“Mr Frost, we take this scouting mission very seriously, when you or another adventurer returns with their report, we hook them up to a lie detector and if we find that they provide false information well, lets just say the punishment is, very serious.” Kamey stroked her thumb across her neck, capital punishment.

Frost’s mouth twitched in response ‘That’s quite harsh’. He took hold of the scouting quest sheet, looking over the details, and the boldly written section about being tested by the guild lie detecting magic device. He felt his neck as he imagined receiving the outlined punishment. Any notion of relaying false information was promptly extinguished.

Frost put the polar bear hunting quest to the side, eliminating that as an option, and took the remaining two quests in each hand trying to pick one. With Kamey’s strong urging as well as enjoying the idea of killing two birds with one stone Frost was keen to accept at least one long term quest. He’d already decided to journey into the external regions of the Glacial Mountains after the family gathering so he’d be there anyway, might as well get paid for it.

He thought for a good few seconds before eventually making a decision.

“I’ll accept the scouting quest.” He added the frost mare hunting to the bear hunting sheet and placed the scouting one before Kamey. He chose this quest over the frost mare quest for a few reasons. One the pay is better and easier to accomplish. All he needed to do was scout the area and note the amount of monsters prevalent. Two the area to go would be given so he didn’t need to fervently search for a certain target and three he was already worrying about the monster stampede, by performing the scouting himself he’d get a jump on the stampede.

Plus, with the frost mare hunting or rather capturing quest he’d not only need knowledge in regards to where they lived- which thanks to his new repertoire of books shouldn’t be that hard- but would likely also need some special tools in order to complete, which he did not have and didn’t really wish to go back and shop for them i.e., nets, bait, possibly sleeping tonics etc...

Of course, he could always capture with force but that came with risks of injury- to the target- plus trying to catch a horse on foot without using traps would be an ordeal in itself, Frost was fast but even he didn’t think he could outrun a frost mare.

“Great choice, I’ll get the details sorted for your targeted area, it’ll just take a minute.” Kamey took the quest sheet with a smile before skipping into the back office. She needed to see what areas were still available for someone of Frost’s strength. It would be fruitless to have too many people assigned to the same section, so the guild kept a very detailed track and in the back office was a highly detailed map of the Glacial Mountains, well of what was known. This was a prized asset of the guild, and it was created over decades of research by adventurer’s and the Northrend army. Similar to the map Ron showed Frost back when he first signed up with the guild, each area was split up into sections with a complicated number and letter system.

The Glacial Mountains were far, far more expansive than the Northrend forest therefore the system was much larger to compensate. The map showed pretty much 90% of the external regions and almost 50% of the inner regions with a very, very small amount of the core regions wherein the truly horrific monsters live. Ones that could squash the entire empire if they so willed it. This tiny amount of data was retrieved by an S-rank party many years ago. Even they with all their abilities were forced back when they came across an ancient ice dragon. No one since then has ever made it to the core regions or rather no one has tried. Dragons were the king of monsters and ancient ones were practically unkillable gods, it was a miracle that the party made it back alive.

Kamey asked the keeper of the map a few questions while he asked for details regarding the strength of the party. It was the keepers job during this timeframe to allocate those who accept the quest to the most suited area and from Kamey’s answers he was not pleased.

“So, we’re forced to ask help from unproven groups far below the expected skill level haaaaaaaa this stampede may be the end of us.” The keeper was an elderly man, a long retired adventurer who had avid knowledge of the Glacial mountains. All he knew about Frost was that he was E-rank, been an adventurer for less than a week and had just formed a party that technically contained one other member, the rest were useless, G-rank kids. The keeper knew the horrors of the monster stampedes and knew how important scouting was, to leave such an important job to a bunch of untested newbies, what was the world coming to.