Kerii woke up with a start as a loud crash of thunder rang in her ears. Her heart pounded, but progressively slowed down within a few moments. She sat up in her bed and rubbed her eyes. What time was it? She looked at the clock in her room and realized that it was three in the morning. She groaned out loud. Why did the thunder have to wake her from such a good sleep? In addition, she was just starting to dream. And from what she could tell, the dream was a good one. So not only did the thunder wake her up from getting rested up, it woke her up from a good dream as well. Kerii shut her eyes and laid her head back down on her pillow. Just as she was about to fall asleep again, another loud clap of thunder sounded. Kerii rolled her eyes and turned on her lamp. She reached for the book on her night stand and opened it up. She started reading it. If the thunder was going to keep waking her up, she might as well read until the storm blew over.

About twenty minutes into the storm, the thunder subsided and all that Kerii could hear was the sound of the rain pounding against her window. It was very soothing. With a sigh of relief, Kerii closed her book and turned off her lamp. As soon as Kerii's head hit her pillow, she instantly fell asleep. In her sleep, she her dreams resumed. In the dream world, time worked weirdly. Sometimes her dreams would seem like they lasted hours when in reality they only lasted minutes. However, there were those times when her dreams seemed to be short when in reality, they were much longer. Unfortunately, in Kerii's case, her dream had barely begun before it stopped. Apparently her body thought she had enough rest and decided to wake itself up instead of letting Kerii enjoy her dream.

Kerii woke up naturally this time. It was a day after she had finished her request with Videns and she was all ready to take another request. Rather or not it was with Videns was up to fate. If he showed up while she was selecting a request or vice versa, then she expected that they would take the request together just like they did every time. It was strange how often the two of them ran into each other. They always seemed to be at the request board at roughly the same time even though they never planned for it to work out that way. Kerii would actually be surprised if she didn't see Videns standing at the request board when she went over there. She would be even more surprised if she arrived at the request board and selected a quest without either seeing Videns or hearing him call her name. Kerii was fairly certain that she would be questing with him, but for some reason, her gut told her otherwise.

WC: 502/2000

Kerii got out of bed and went into the bathroom. She stripped her clothes off and hopped into the shower. She took a long and hot one. She didn't want to get out. The hot water felt so nice and relaxing, but she knew that the hot water would run out eventually and she also knew that if she stalled any longer, she may not have enough time to complete multiple quests. Well, she hoped to complete multiple quests at least, but who knew? Some requests take all day to complete. For example, when Kerii and Videns decided to look after Khalash's Mag Drug Magic Shop. If they had taken that request first, they wouldn't have been able to do any more for the rest of the day because when they came to the shop to let Khalash go do whatever business he had to take care of, he came back at midnight. Granted, he may have taken longer because Kerii and Videns came a little later in the day, Kerii still didn't know if he would have came back at midnight either way or not. Regardless, that was still an example of a request that could have lasted all day. Kerii just hoped that whatever one she decided to take wouldn't take all day.

Once Kerii was done with her shower, she dried off her body and her hair, which was followed by her folding up her pajamas neatly, which was followed by Kerii getting dressed. She chose to wear a comfortable pair of shorts made out of cotton. They were pure white without a single stain on them. She also threw on a scarlet red tank top. She put on a pair of white socks and a pair of white sneakers. As Kerii brushed out the few tangles in her hair, she debated doing anything with it or not. She could clip it back or tie it in a very short ponytail, but the elf ultimately decided on just leaving it down for the day.

She left her room at the inn and proceeded to go towards the request board. Upon arriving there, Kerii looked around. She didn't see Videns at the request board and she didn't see him coming from any direction either. She shrugged and went to look at the the available quests she could take. Kerii read through a lot of them and decided that she would take on a quest sent out by a new client. She assumed he was a Rune Knight because his name on the paper was Guard Captain Devon. He simply wanted her too look for recruits, but was willing to pay her a good sum of money to do so. Kerii wasn't overly fond of working for Rune Knights, especially since she was in a guild that seemed to trouble them a lot, but the quest seemed simple and resulted in a high payment. Well, she'd seen other requests that paid more, but this one seemed as simple as the low paying ones she was used to taking.

WC: 1011/2000

Kerii took the quest off of the board. She fully expected that by now, Videns would be within either ear or eye shot of her, but he was nowhere to be heard or seen. Well, that was his loss. With the request in hand, Kerii began to make her way towards the South Gate Park. She had been there a couple times. The first was when she met Kon. He was a blonde haired neko who used supportive magic like her, except he claimed to only be able to do very few things with it. Kerii really could only do three things with her magic, but that was all she needed to do. She knew that other healers could put detriments on others by placing debuffs on them or using defensive spells to protect their allies, but Kerii was fine not doing that. It just made her more focused on her other spells and would probably make her other spells more powerful in the long run. At least, that's what she hoped. That's what made sense at least. She wasn't spreading out her attention to another kind of spell.

The healer went to the South Gate Park. There were quite a lot of people there, but one stood out like a sore thumb. There was a man standing firmly but calmly in the shade of a tree. He wore armor from head to toe. The only space that wasn't covered in dark gray metal was the man's lower parts of his face so that he could talk and breathe easily. If it was anyone who was Guard Captain Devon, it would be that guy. Either that, or she was wrong and that man was just a random cosplayer who for some reason didn't have any friends with him to cosplay with. In any case, Kerii still went up to him and talked to him.

"Guard Captain Devon?" she asked. He tilted his head down a bit and asked, "Yes?" Kerii tucked a piece of hair behind her ear as she said, "I'm here to round up some recruits for you." She flourished the request he sent out. "I'm Kerii Virrel, a member of Lamia Scale by the way." She could see the man's expression slightly change when she said that she was a member of Lamia Scale, but Kerii didn't say anything to the guard captain.

"Excellent." Kerii could hear a slight tone of bitterness in his voice, but it was almost unnoticeable. "I want you to look for people who would be good candidates to be members of the guard. I would do it myself, but I have to make some rounds and then go do some more work before I evaluate everyone who shows up. I don't care who you ask to come. Any race, any gender, any sexuality, any shape, any size, any anything. I can make anyone into a good soldier. Got it?" "Yes, Captain Devon." "Good! Now, get to it."

WC: 1506/2000

With that said, Guard Captain Devon left his spot in the shade of the tree and began to make the rest of his rounds in the blazing heat of the summer sun. How he could wear all that armor and not pass out or get heat stroke, Kerii did not know. It was impressive, really. Kerii knew that she wouldn't be able to spend more than a few minutes in a set of armor like that. The shade the tree provided probably helped a little, but definitely didn't make it all one hundred percent better.

Kerii decided that it would probably be best to start asking people if they wanted to be members of the guard. From what she could see, there were quite a few people who looked like that, with a little training, they could already be good guards. However, Kerii wasn't supposed to be just looking for people with good or even great potential. She also had to look for people who didn't look like they had potential because, as Guard Captain Devon said, he could whip anyone into shape to be a guard. He may have been able to do that. Kerii had no doubt that he could The only thing was just that some people had very little motivation and either wouldn't take being a guard a big deal or would just be lazy and drop out early on. It would be unfortunate if Kerii chose some people like that to talk about being a guard to, but she wasn't a mind reader. She wasn't a psychic and Captain Devon knew that too. At least the bad, unmotivated people would be weeded out early on.

She ended up talking to various people about the guard and how it would be beneficial for them to join. She talked to men and women of all ages and of all shapes and sizes. Some were rather fit. Some were thin, but had low muscle tone. Some were overweight. Nonetheless, she ended up getting a good sized list down. When she talked to people about joining the guard, she made it sound as appealing as possible. If they agreed to at least talk to Captain Devon about becoming a guard, they would write their full names and addresses on the piece of paper Kerii had on her. She was surprised how many people wanted to be part of the guard. She didn't know how many of them would make it, but at least Captain Devon would be happy. There were some people who didn't want to be part of the guard, which was understandable. It wasn't everyone's dream to work with Rune Knights. Some people who denied at first though, eventually came back to Kerii after reconsidering and wrote their names and addresses on the list as well. By nightfall, Kerii went over to the gate where Captain Devon was and showed him the list of names she gathered. He was very pleased with her work and rewarded the young elf with some jewels as promised.

WC: 2013/2000