"Perfect?" The hero sneered, annoyed by the word.
"The average payment for a goblin subjugation quest is 50 copper coins. That is if the number of them is five or below. For every armored goblin, it would add 5 copper coins."
"Yes, that's right, hero. We already gave 40 copper coins to the guild and that one has 30 more." The chief replied. "That should be more than enough."
"Playing dumb?" The hero asked, raising a brow. "We all know there were more than ten of them. I can ignore the other five, but the other five? No."
"You knew there were more of them, but didn't warn me at all. I had to fight more than fifteen of them. Not only that, there were five armored goblins among them. Three close combatants, an archer, and even a spell caster. This quest would have killed people if I hadn't taken it."
"AND YOU'RE TELLING ME! THIS! IS! THE! PERFECT! AMOUNT?!"
"Do you know what I can do? I can go back to the guild at this moment and tell them what happened here. That the village lied about the numbers being only five. And that there were more of them. That there weren't only three armored goblins, but also an archer and a spell caster."
"If I go back and say this, the guild can make it so that you and everyone part of this village can never submit another quest. So the next time your village is in danger, no one will come and save it."
"Now, are you going to say this is a perfect amount? Or are you going to give more? Because this is not enough for what I have done today." The hero said.
Hearing this, the chief along with everyone else were terrified. What he said was the absolute truth of the matter.
They already knew what they did was wrong, and had tried to cover it up by making a celebration to take his mind off of it.
Seeing he was not being fooled by this, all the heads of the houses went back to their homes and took their saved up money and pooled it together.
"Please," the chief begged, his head bowed along with some others. "This is all we have, please don't report our village. We know what we did was wrong, but we had no choice."
Taking the other bag of money from the chief, he said:
"You guys might be wondering why I'm doing this when I'm a hero. But unlike the heroes you know that are all rainbows and giggles in their adventure, I'm not."
"If you all had told the truth in the beginning this morning, I would have ignored this matter….. No, if any of you had just asked for forgiveness the moment I came back, instead of doing all of this, I would have taken this bag of money and not asked for more."
"You guys already knew I was a low rank hero from my aura alone this morning, and still did this." He said one last time, turning around and leaving the village.
Leaving the adults who had agreed to making a false quest report bowing their heads, while the kids and those about to come of age judged them.
"I'm sorry." They said one last time, as the hero's shadow finally left the lights.
***
Current time: 9:42. Two hours away from the village, the hero set up a tiny camp for the night.
Looking what he had gotten from this quest, he found himself staring at three mana cores. One from a spell caster goblin, and two from the goblin warriors.
Checking the things he had taken from them, he had one head, chest, and boot armor piece each. Along with a bow, three arrows, two daggers, and a short sword.
Not bad, if he had to say so. Especially with the mana cores he had taken from them.
Taking them into his hand he said, "Experience." A second later, a white energy engulfed the cores in his hand before they completely disappeared.
[Hero rank: 56% to 58%.]
"Nearing there," he said, before pulling up his status.
[Status screen.] [ - ]
Name: Gale Sunren.
Level: 4/20.
Class: Seer.
{-}
Stats:
Strength: 14. Agility: 21. Defense: 12.
Vitality: 17. Stamina: 22. Mana: 10.
Intelligence: 22. Mental power: 22. Divine power: 4.
[ + ) Press to expand.]
Pressing the plus sign at the bottom, he looked at his skills and titles section.
[Status screen.]
Skills: Hot finger.
Class skill: Third eye.
Talent: Breathing.
{-}
Titles: Hero (f), Adventurer.
Hero rank experience: 58%.
Level up experience: 98%.
{-}
Church: Goddess of fire.
Summon time: 4 months, 3 days, 14 hours.
[-) Press to close the screen.]
Looking at the fully opened screen, Gale couldn't believe it had already been four months since he was summoned to this world.
When he was summoned, he was with 199 other people, from both his world and others.
He was specifically summoned in the church of fire, where his dark pupils turned red.
From what the people of the church told them, he learned that depending on which church they had been summoned at, the skills they received would be tied to the element of the Goddess they serve.
Which in Gale's case, gave him the skill:
[Hot finger — heat up your index fingers, enough to start a spark.]
A skill so weak it didn't help him, and instead burdened him. Because he still had low defense, he could only use this skill for ten seconds before he felt pain.
And depending on what rank your title is, the class you receive will depend on that as well, which in Gale's case was only F, giving him the class:
[Seer — increases your Sight sense, while gaining insight into your enemy's information.]
Which alongside gave him a class skill named:
[Third eye — summon an eye that can move in an area of 5x5 meters around you in both latitude and altitude.]
While his talent:
[Breathing — increases recovery rate by 3%.]
Useless and pathetic. That was what he said, and what the people summoned along with him said back then.
The Goddess of the church they were in descended herself and spoke the words:
"Go, heroes, explore this world with your own strength. Get stronger with your abilities and power, and finally take down the enemy of this world. If you don't want to, that too is fine. Just living in this world alone will help it survive."
Since then, everyone had applied to the guild and began exploring the continent.
While others joined together to complement each other's classes and abilities, he was left alone, making him a Solo in both adventurer and hero life.
"This world is too much." He said, finally letting his tired body rest after a day of running and fighting goblins in the village.
As he tried to sleep, he recalled why heroes were summoned into this world.
In this world, the natives couldn't have a class from the beginning, unlike them.
Unlike heroes who could learn a new skill every five levels, the natives could only have 1 skill until they reached level 20, which allowed them to receive a class.
The Gods and Goddesses, knowing this, found the best answer they had.
That was to summon people from another world, granting them a class from level 1 in exchange for a limited level up range.
And to give them the blessing of rank level ups, which could increase their level up range.