Side Quest.

Instead of going back out hunting again, I couldn't get that spell sword out of my head. Or… More specifically his magic. Light beam… Incredibly high capacity, high range storage, insight… The enchantments were so potent they radiated heat… And even that sword, the feeling of the metal made my hands all tingly and brought me close to tier 3 metal magic.

Nope, no hunting… Instead, I spent the rest of the day training. In the end, I did technically achieve the ability to use Metal Bullet… But that was all I achieved. Although on the upside I could now much more freely control a throwing knife, making it move with decent speed, rather than just make it float slightly or change trajectory after thrown. 'Imagine if I could make all my weapons fly with magic at the same time… That would be so cool…' I brought my mind back to the present, staring at the small ball of metal I conjured and sending it straight through the target dummy. 'It takes a ton of mana… It's cool… But will I ever even use this?' I let out a heavy sigh. 'Well progress is progress…'

"Ah! Chika! The minotaur slayer has returned! Although not after some new trials I hear." Ted yelled with a hearty laugh as he and his crew greeted me once again.

"You guys look like you've been doing… Well… Kind of terrible actually… What the heck happened?" I took a closer look to see Ted's armor with a large puncture hole in the lower right side. Dabi's robes were torn revealing his troll-skin markings from the current of mana in his blood. Roarens fur was stained red on his left hand, and his boots were gone. Tarkin though, drunk as ever… Was totally fine. His black plate armor was flawless under his slightly worn-out black overcoat that matched the dark blue hair on his arms and face.

Ted sighed as he let the tension leave his shoulders. "Let's talk over some drinks…"

Regardless of how they looked, they were not in particularly poor spirits, that said, they didn't exactly seem overjoyed either.

"Right, you first then. Tell us about this new armor of yours, mighty fancy. I only recognized you by your horns."

'Why do I have to go first…' I sighed. "Well… Let's see, I mean, I got quite a bit of compensation from Alden's Trial." I rubbed my fingers together, lifting a hand for a moment as I sat down at the open table in the back of the inn. "I took down about 30 bandits or so, and I got quite a bit of compensation from that too since it was mostly the guild's fault they captured and tortured me for a while… Let's think… I pulled my money together and bought some land on Heaven's Road along with a whole bunch of junked steel and magic crystals, then I used that to forge this. OH! I also accidentally invented a new kind of Vethrian steal that's red, instead of blue, after I coughed some blood into the smelter. Mochi, right, she's the halfling I sort of adopted. She took care of me while I was basically killing myself with manna exhaustion from enchanting it."

They all blankly stared at me.

"You astound me," Dabi said.

'Does he mean that for real? I've never heard someone say it unironically… It's harder to tell the difference than I thought… Usually that's a bad thing right?' "Uh… Yeah, yeah whatever… What's up with you guys?"

Roarens face suddenly sank and the mood turned serious. "There was a group of adventurers that went into the forest a few days back, we warned them not to with their level of equipment, but…

"I take it they didn't listen…" I finished his thought, resting my chin in one of my hands. 'Well… It's not a big deal… We can add a few more to the death tally…'

"They haven't come back to town, and we can't find them. Just feels like a waste you know."

Ted crossed his arms and leaned back. "Well… We did all we could at this point… But we'll keep an eye out as we go back tomorrow." He looked at the other three closely. "The little buggers seem to finally be thinning out, so tomorrow we go in deep…"

I felt my face slowly relax. "Hold on… It sounds like you're still looking for them…"

Taggart laughed. "Yeah well, what are we supposed to do when we see a party of pretty girls wander into the forest alone without a fire mage."

Ted shrugged. "I admit… I would be less worried if they were men…"

'Oh yeah, I forgot they only let guys tag along with them. Well, to be fair most groups are like that with only a couple of exceptions, like if you are an ogre or an orc, or if the girl is a mage it's usually fine too… Isn't that a bit much though?' "I mean, it's true that men tend to be stronger… But is that really a reason to assume they need help?"

Ted raised an eyebrow, setting his mug on the table again instead of taking a swig. "Yeah I get it…" He sighed, pulling out a torn leather jerkin from his belt. "When you start losing your armor it's probably not a good day aye? Talking about one person being as good as the next is great, but at the end of the day men are stronger, arrogant adventurers are more likely to die, and Steal is better than Iron. Besides, It's a man's duty to protect a woman, even if she's stronger mind you."

I just tried to ignore what he was saying and grabbed the jerkin to look at it more closely. 'It's… What's going on here? Why take it off? They really headed into the forest with iron weapons? I bet he'd lose it if I told him I was a girl right now…' I chuckled thinking about it as I looked at the armor. It was split open by a blade, but not bloodied.

He slapped me on the shoulder. "Of course, I can say that because I'm a dwarf, our women love being protected… If you say something like that to a human girl they might bite your head off!" He laughed.

'Is this… Why you aren't supposed to take relationship advice from adventurers? What kind of reputation do humans have exactly…' "Hey, have they been declared missing yet? I mean officially."

"Yeah, this isn't the first piece of gear we found, but the trail is chaotic, Roarens nose is our only tracker… And it's hard to sniff them out when spiders are getting cooked."

'Makes sense…' "In all likelihood, they cut this off after getting caught in some webbing. Although, it could have just been panic… Either way, it's clear they got away from where you found this at least. Although, like you said, running around without armor is no good, Being a girl is whatever, but this armor is small, so whoever was wearing it is going to be pretty susceptible to poisons or toxins if the webbing touched their skin."

"Haha! That's my boy! See, I knew you'd understand. Any man would get why you should try and save a girl when she's in trouble."

"Even if they get pissy about it…" Taggart mumbled.

'That's… Not what I said…' I sighed. 'I mean hey… At least they're good at fighting…' "I never said I was going to help looking for them…" 'or that I was a guy, for that matter… Maybe I should have made form-fitting armor after all… No… The metal would have been wasted if I did it wrong… You can't really reforge metals created with magic…'

Ted slapped me on the shoulder again. "Come on now! Remember? We were always going to go hunting together sometime, might as well stick with us for a while right? Or were you planning on sticking to the outside and taking out small fry with all that fancy new gear of yours?."

"It's not fair to the spiders, honestly," Roaren smirked.

"UGH… You have a point I guess… I was going to head deeper in myself since I cleared the perimeter… Do you guys have a map? If they are in trouble… It would be better to plan now and leave in the morning as early as possible… And they better pay me when we find them…"