Task

The tasks that are given by a teacher to his or her disciple would be made a quest by the system. This was one of the perks of the relationship since some of the rewards would come from the system itself.

Of course, this also came with some restriction, or everyone would want to enter such a relationship. The biggest restriction was, of course, the fact that the number of disciples a teacher could take was limited by his or her skill.

Besides that, a quest would only be created once a week for each disciple and the reward would, of course, be dependant on the difficulty of the task. This stopped the teachers from just throwing out easy tasks with huge rewards.

"First learn the technique I have just given you, then collect the ingredients needed to refine the 'Smaller Strength Pill'. The recipe, you can easily find online. If you can manage to refine at least a normal quality pill, then this task will be fulfilled and as a reward, I will give you a low-grade herb ring."

"A herb ring?", Ivan asked in shock. From his understanding, these were quite expensive, so getting them for such a task seemed very generous.

Miss. Klein laughed lightly, "They are only low grade and can only be used to store herbs. Still, it is something you will need in the future. After all, you will have to collect your herbs by yourself, so if you don't have a good way to store them you will soon run into problems."

"Still they are too expensive.", Serge said. Unlike Ivan who had only a vague idea of their worth, he knew about it. Even the kind of ring she had talked about would cost nearly as much as his father's store.

"Don't worry about the price. They aren't that expensive to me and I can get them surprisingly cheap from the guild."

Since she was insistent and the ring would truly help them, they could only accept it. At least it was the reward of a task and not just a gift, which made it easier for them to accept it.

<< New Quest: First steps to real Pill Refining

Task:

Learn Bea Klein's pill refining technique and use it to refine a 'Smaller Strength Pill' of at least normal quality.

Rewards:

Low-grade Herb Ring, capable of only storing herbs.

A slight increase in soul strength.

A random low-grade herb.

Time limit:

Unlimited

>>

After she gave them the task, she then continued teaching them about what to look out for while refining pills.

After the normal lessons had finished, it was time for dungeon training. They had slowly progressed through the first four floors, which all had the same enemies, rats. Of course, each floor was more difficult than the one before. But this came from larger groups of rats as well as new variants of rats. For example on the third floor, they had encountered a type of rat, that was able to spat small balls of acid towards them.

They were quite hard for them to handle since you could only evade them or block them with a mana shield. If you tried to block them, then you could only watch as your weapon slowly got reduced to slag.

Of course, their group had it still good, since they had a magician in their group. For those who were so unlucky to only consist of fighters, they had an even harder time fighting these rats.

Fortunately, there were only a few of them and these were sparsely distributed throughout the catacombs.

Now that they had reached floor five they would meet a new environment and foes. This time Ivan had looked it up beforehand, so he would know what to expect. The floors five to nine would be an open grassland, which was inhibited by different species. The most dangerous ones would be the wolf packs, but the vultures weren't far behind.

"Hey everyone.", Tina happily greeted the others. She had come a bit later, which was surprising since she usually clung to her boyfriend.

"So is everyone prepared?"

"Of course."

"Yes."

Everyone responded affirmative and then formed the party.

"Great, then let's get started."

As so many times before, they then entered the dungeon.

<< Congratulation, you have reached Floor 5 in Nightmare mode. As a reward, all open spaces will have an increased amount of plants to be harvested.

Reach Floor 25 in Nightmare mode for the next reward.

>>

The first thing, that greeted them after entering was this status message.

"Wow, I didn't know that there would be rewards for clearing floors in Nightmare mode.", Lars said in surprise.

"But it seemed kind of useless.", Susan commented.

"For you maybe, but for me, it is the best.", Ivan retorted. He had just gotten the task from his teacher and was in dire need of herbs he could collect. The one entry to the Herb Dungeon just didn't cut it. As such finding more herbs in this Training Dungeon would be a great help.

"Besides, who knows, maybe the next reward will increase the amount of something else. It seems to be related to what is coming next in the dungeon."

"That may be, but just this one instance isn't enough to prove it."

"Well, we will see when we reach floor 25. Until then it is senseless to speculate."

"Alright everyone should we get going?", Tina asked, interrupting their discussion.

They appeared on a stone platform in the middle of an endless grassland. Above them, there was a blue sky, with sparsely distributed clouds, slowly moving along. A light wind blew and rustled through the grass.

Seeing that there was only endless grass in all direction Ivan and the others looked bewildered.

"So anyone knows how we know where we should go?", Tom asked.

"From what I have read, there should be something on this platform, that will trigger the quest.", Tina explained, "The quest should then lead us towards the goal. But first, we have to find it."

They searched the platform for anything, that might trigger the quest, but weren't able to find anything.

"Nothing?"

Everyone shook their heads.

"There should be something here. Although it is something different most of the time, according to the records there has always been something."

"So where didn't we look?"

"Hm, we have searched the complete platform, so there is no way it is on it."

"Then what about the side?"

"I already checked them", Lars said.

"Then what is left?"

The others didn't know the answer either.

"Do we have to go without the quest?"

"There is no use. We won't be able to find the right way."

Susan looked at the sky, "Damn, why the hell are we so unlucky?"

Tina looked at her and then suddenly exclaimed, startling the others. "That's it!"

"What?"

"The sky. Maybe the item is above us.", she explained her thought.

"But why would it? Shouldn't it be somewhere accessible for us?", Tom asked hesitantly.

"I guess someone here does have the ability to go up there.", she answered and looked at Ivan. Everyone else too turned towards them. From all of them, he was the most likely to have a way to get up into the air. During their explorations, he had always managed to surprise them.

Ivan could only grimace in response. Why the hell were they always looking at him, when something weird happens. Well, maybe this time it was really his fault.

"So do you have a way?", Tina asked sternly.

"Yeah", Ivan reluctantly admitted. He didn't want to show Vlada. Although she was technically part of his strength, according to the rules of the Alliance, at his status he shouldn't show her. Not only that, he too preferred to use the time in the Training Dungeon to train himself. Especially his teamwork. Bringing Vlada into the mix would only reduce the effect.

Sadly this time, the system seemed to have made up its mind to force him to reveal her. Since they had searched everywhere else, he could only agree with Tina's conclusion. Especially since he knew that he had the ability to go up into the air.

He called out Vlada. When the bat appeared in front of the others, they released gasps of surprise. Although she wasn't in her largest form, she was still quite big.

After she appeared she first surveyed the surroundings, to determine if there was any threat and after having determined that the surroundings were safe, she cuddled into his side. This was something she had started to do, ever since she evolved. While she liked sitting on his shoulder in her smallest form. When in her slightly bigger form, which was her normal form, and she was just about the same size as him, she loved to cuddle whit him.

Ivan softly stroked her head, enjoying the feeling of her soft pelt under his hand, while he looked at the astonished looks of the other party members.