“Help, please! I’m injured!”

Rania’s and Kenzo’s journey to the Sieghart Mountains came to a sudden halt, when the duo came across a wounded man who was lying nearby the road. He was calling out for help, and Rania quickly signaled her friend to stop his horse and once he did, the woman jumped off and ran towards the injured person. “Are you okay? Wait–,” she shook her head in disbelief and kneeled next to him, quickly undoing his top so she could take a closer look at his injury.

“Of course you’re not, what am I saying. Hold still now,” Rania spoke softly and placed both her hands onto the open flesh wound on his torso. A bright light radiated from the palms of her hands and once they came into touch with the man’s skin, it began kneading itself back together. The bleeding stopped and the wound closed eventually. “See? All new!” She said proudly and took a step back to take a better look at him.

“Thank you,” the man got up, stumbled forward, but managed to hold himself together. “You guys must be from the guild! I’m Cameron, chief of the village,” he pointed into a direction behind him and Rania followed up a few steps, noticing that there were blood splatters all over the ground. “Please, you have to help us. For many years, I’ve had an agreement with the local werewolf packs not to harm each other, but one of them must have gone rogue and now its hunting the people from my village!” The Paladin almost choked when he said ‘local werewolf packs’ – clearly this wasn’t anything unusual here. The South was way different, she realized that now.

“Well, you can’t continue now, so why don’t you let us take you back to the village and point us into the right direction? Kenzo and I will take care of the rest from here on, right?” Rania glanced over her shoulder and nodded at her companion.

As soon as the couple entered the Sieghart mountain ranges, their adventure was due to begin. Laying in the ground, a wounded man groveled in a pool of blood as he tried to ask for help. Even before they approached him, Kenzo knew that their quest was starting at the moment. As the warrior saw the gashing wound in the older man’s chest, he shook his head in pity. His years in the battlefield had shown him the kind of wounds men could recover from. This wasn’t one of them. However, Rania had different plans. Jumping off from the steed, the girl instantly sprung to action.

As she tried to get a better look at his wound, the warrior chuckled at her words. She was an earnest girl, that was for sure. As light came out of her hands, Kenzo’s eyes widened with the sight of the wound closing rapidly. In an instant, the old man was as good as new. Rania had said she used light magic, a strong power against dark races. But healing magic? That was something Kenzo had never heard about before. Impressed by her display of skill, Kenzo jumped off from his Dhuilin and approached the two of them. Apparently, the swordsman’s hunch was right. The man was the village chief, the very same guy that posted the job request. From what he said, a local pack of werewolves had an agreement with them to not attack the village. But now, one of them had gone back on his words and started hunting the people. Kenzo grit his teeth in anger at the sound of this. He hated non-human races, they were an abomination of nature and not to be trusted. This was just yet another confirmation of that idea.

”Don’t worry old man, we’ve got this.” Kenzo added once his guildmate looked at him. Returning her nod, the male looked once again at the leader. ”Let me help you up so you can show us the way” Carefully, Kenzo lift the chief from the ground and helped him mount Shadow Runner. Soon enough, the three of them were on their way to the village.

[361/1000]

They returned to the village with Chief Cameron on horseback, and once they’d arrived, Rania could see the real damage that had been done. It was a small village, the houses were what you’d expect them to look like so far off in the mountains, and while everything could have looked very cozy it was easy to spot the chaos that had ensued every since the werewolf had attacked. The Paladin watched as Kenzo helped Cameron off the horse and went around to see if there were any more injured who needed immediate medical attention. Some of the villagers were injured, it seemed that especially the men who went out to hunt for food had suffered from this attack.

Rania took her time with the people and gathered some information before she returned to Kenzo’s side and nudged him towards a quiet corner. “I don’t understand this,” she spoke quietly to him, and while her voice held no judgement it was clear that she disagreed with the lifestyle of these people. “If a single werewolf can do this sort of damage to an entire village, why would the whole pack agree to leave them alone? And how could they be so naive to believe that they’d always live in peace with one another?” A sigh rolled from her lips, and she shook her head. “It just doesn’t make any sense to me, but anyways,” pausing for a moment, then using her golden staff to point towards the forests east from the village, Rania shared the information she’d collected from the villagers.

“It’s been spotted in that direction, opposite from where the pack is, which is why they think it has gone rogue. I suppose we should get going and try to catch it before nightfall?”

Following the old man, Kenzo and Rania arrived at a small village hidden in the mountains. It was surprising the kind of places where people would decide to live, and this was not an exception. Torn beams of the wooden houses littered the village center, while huge claw marks hugged the trees as a reminder of a horrible attack. From the looks of it, the werewolf that attacked the village was definitely out of control. While Cameron and Rania looked around to search and help the wounded, the mercenary got closer to one of the half-destroyed houses. The claw marks were definitely fresh, given the color of the wood compared to the parts on the exterior. This was undoubtedly the job of a werewolf, and Kenzo and Rania were in luck, he couldn’t have gone far.

Getting closer to her far from other villagers, the male listened to her words with crossed arms. ”As expected from beasts… They’re simply not to be trusted” Kenzo replied with a stern expression. ”There must have been mages in town in the past, capable of keeping them in bay. Even if they’re physically strong, most of them are fearful of magic. I guess that now that the townsfolk are left without mages, they decided to strike at them” The warrior shook his head at the thought of the victims. They needed to find the culprit.

”Sounds like a good plan. Let’s go” Rania and Kenzo left the place before it got any darker. Even if the mercenary was sure there was nothing to worry about, they would be at a disadvantage if they fought at night. Furthermore, he didn’t know how capable the black-haired girl was. Shifting his gaze at her discreetly, Kenzo weighted the idea of asking her to stay behind and let him take care of the situation. However, that would just be going back to his old ways. He’d promised Alisa he’d try to adapt to Blue Pegasus’s style. Either way, it would be a way to gauge her potential, right? He’d just need to be ready to step in if the situation got dangerous.

As these thoughts raced in his head, the sound of twitching twigs alerted the warrior of the beast’s presence. ”Heard that?” Kenzo whispered. Getting closer to Rania, the male spoke softly, trying to not raise the werewolf’s attention. ”You ambush him, I’ll stay back and support you. Consider it your guild baptism” A cheeky smile escaped his lips.

[772/1000]

Kenzo’s theory on how the village and the pack of werewolves might have started out and eventually ended up here, where they shared a hostile relationship, made a lot of sense to the young Paladin. Rania’s eyes searched the village for more injured, but this time she didn’t move from her spot. Her emerald gaze focused on a woman whose husband was among the injured, and even though they could make things a lot easier for themselves by simply giving up on this life, she kind of respected their hustle. “You are probably right,” she finally responded and sighed. “But that doesn’t give them the right to eat these people,” shaking her head in disagreement, Rania tightly grasped her staff and together they headed out into the dark woodlands.

Rania did a much better job at blending into the thicket than Kenzo did; the petite woman was clad in an all black attire, and as they entered into the forests she pulled a hood deeply into her face. At some point the sounds of other animals, such as birds and insects and whatnot had disappeared entirely and that’s when Rania knew they were close to the beast. Crouching down and hiding behind some bushes, the Paladin stared into the darkness, but it was hard to see much even though it wasn’t night time yet.

Still, the observant woman’s ears perked up the same time Kenzo’s did, when they both heard faint movement not too far from their spot. It was then when the warrior decided to speak up, and rolling her eyes at his suggestion, Rania bumped the headpiece of her staff against Kenzo’s forehead hard enough for it to make a *clonk* sound. “You see, this is why you lost your first fight against a werewolf,” she scolded the man while keeping her eyes on where she thought the beast was. “Basic Werewolf 101: They will hear you, no matter how quiet you think you are!" And with that out of the way, Rania jumped out of the bushes, tapped her solar circlet and from its center, a white light fired out and blinded everything and everyone (except for herself of course!) in the area.

Much to her horror, the werewolf had been much closer than initially expected, but this wasn’t a challenge the young woman couldn’t handle. The lionhearted Paladin took a courageous step forward, smacked the blinded and disoriented werewolf with her staff as hard as she could and quickly cast two spells to defeat the monster. Rania couldn’t tell if it was simply exhausted from all the previous hunting it had done, but the poor thing didn’t put up much of a fight. Very satisfied with her work the woman put a hand against her hip and turned back around towards Kenzo.

“You have to carry it back to town, it’s too heavy for me.” She said in a matter-of-factly way. And with that, all the werewolf troubles and problems of the villagers should have been resolved, but things would turn out to be much more complicated than that.

Once Rania reacted to Kenzo’s voice, the male had to keep himself from chuckling. The eye roll she gave him as well as the bump of her staff with his forehead was quite amusing. Adding once again to the list of clever and sassy remarks, the girl scolded him for making noise. ”Yeah, that must have been the reason I lost.” Kenzo added with a condescending tone, just before she jumped out of the thicket and charged against the beast. Meanwhile, he couldn’t wait for her to meet Noel. He was definitely remembering that line for when the two eventually met each other. After all, they were guildmates from now on.

Once Rania left their hiding spot, she casted a blinding spell out of the blue. Kenzo tried to cover the bright light with his right hand, dazzled by the brightness of her spell. Normally, he would have been blinded too, but his right eye allowed him to see as clear as the day. Placing his right hand as a loudspeaker, the male yelled at her. ”At least give me a heads up next time!”

For all her cheeky attitude, Rania was quite capable of taking care of a werewolf of that caliber. To be honest, it was far better than what the mercenary had expected. As he saw her beat him senseless and make a victory pose, Kenzo rolled his eyes as a smile formed on his lips. ”Whatever you say, your highness…” The girl was quite full of herself, but that wasn’t something that bothered the male. On the contrary, he found it quite amusing. Without wasting more time, Kenzo approached the fell beast and lift it up with one hand as if it were weightless. ”I wonder if they have some alcohol at the village”
-EXIT-

[1070/1000]