(Book 1 Complete!) Side Quest [Isekai / LitRPG]

Logan arrived early, but Alden was still there before him.

The mage lifted a brow and pursed his lips.

"I take it you heard I'm to be part of your team, then?" Logan asked.

"Unfortunately. Don't slow us down with another of your disappearing acts, please."

Alden buried his nose in a journal and began writing, leaving Logan to let his eyes wander.

The meeting room exuded a sense of quiet efficiency, blending practicality with a touch of refined craftsmanship. A long polished oak table stretched across the center, its surface gleaming under the warm glow of hanging crystal lanterns that cast a steady, natural light. The chairs were sturdy yet comfortable, their deep blue cushions embroidered with the guild's sigil. A large map of the region was pinned to a sideboard, secured beneath a glass cover, while a set of finely-crafted brass instruments for measuring distances sat nearby. The air carried a faint scent of parchment and freshly shined wood, and despite the room's formal purpose, it was clear that every detail had been carefully designed for both function and comfort.

Logan paid special attention to some loose cards pairing each type of mana with a color. Red for fire, blue for frost, gold for radiant… Logan asked Alden if he could take one, and the mage merely grunted.

He pocketed it.

Shortly after the others arrived, the wood elf officer, Thessin, entered. Short as he was, he lifted his chin as he met Logan's eyes. "Welcome back, Mr. Vitali." He checked his list and confirmed everybody was present. "Mr. Rhyne, Ms. Varesh, Ms. Hewett and, er..."

"Just Bromlin is fine." The dwarf elbowed Logan with a grin. "Mr. Son of Bramlin doesn't quite roll off the tongue, does it?"

"I suppose not," said Logan with a smile.

"Now then," said the spectacled wood elf, "the bureau has asked our branch to extend some of our resources to Farrowstead, the next town over. Multiple sources have contacted us about problems with hearth fires dying. While there are no reports of this in Gnashridge Heights, we wish to investigate this matter further, as it could relate to a mana imbalance."

Cassandra frowned. "How many people have experienced this issue?"

Thessin tilted his head down slightly as he smiled, acknowledging the perceptiveness of Cassandra's question. "Most of them."

"Then why are you sending us?" she asked. "Wouldn't this be something for guild officials to look into?"

"Normally, yes. However, we are stretched thin. We already assigned a party to the new Boundary limits you exposed, and another group is delving deeper into the valley for signs of the blight's true source." He raised a placating hand. "This shouldn't be too difficult a task. Strange occurrences like these sound more alarming than they usually are. If there is a mana anomaly, it would take time before the ambient fields scarred and risked a monster breach."

Cassandra nodded slowly, and Logan could tell something weighed on her mind. But she outwardly seemed to accept the officer's answer. He would have to ask her about that.

"This," said Thessin with the air of a kindergarten teacher, "is a mana imbalance detector." He retrieved a rod that looked like a baton an aircraft marshaler might use to direct planes on an airstrip. "If it detects any imbalances in ambient mana, it will alert you by glowing the color correlating to said mana." He sighed. "It will not say if it is an absence or excess—" he brightened "—but it is an exciting development in guild technology!" He handed it directly to Cassandra without considering passing it to any others.

Cassandra took the baton with an arched brow before securing it in a loop at her belt.

With their briefing concluded, the team gathered their items from the inn before setting out. As they left the town for Farrowstead, the packed dirt roads of Gnashridge gave way to paths traveled often enough for recognizable wagon trails, yet not often enough to prevent new weed growth from sprouting in those ruts.

The journey started smoothly, the drakla trees and mavenberry bushes growing further apart until the trees disappeared altogether. The bushes lined the path as the low hills led them to rolling fields, and they stopped for an early dinner.

"They could have given us horses," muttered Alden as he ate plain crackers. Logan's mouth dried out just watching him.

"Bah," said Bromlin, between mouthfuls of mutton. "I'll trust my own two feet over a wild giant."

"I suspect you would be more likely to throw yourself into the saddle than the horse would be to tolerate you as its rider."

At Alden's snide comment, Bromlin simply laughed and agreed.

After they ate, Logan sidled up to Cassandra, who fidgeted idly with the baton.

"You okay?"

"Hm? Oh, yes." She pulled the baton free and examined it. "But I don't think that officer was telling us everything."

Logan glanced at her, and the others turned their ears. "You think he was lying?"

Cassandra shook her head. "Not lying. But whatever the guild is investigating deeper in the valley, he downplayed it."

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"What makes you think that?" Logan asked. Logan himself was wondering about the implications. If the monster alarm had been tampered with recently, why would the guild direct resources away from it? Was the village safe now? Thessin seemed confident, at least, that any potential mana scars weren't a problem in the immediate vicinity. And when they had left the guildhall, Logan had seen a bored Vellia filing documents in one of the side rooms.

Senna chuckled. "I guess you really don't know her family if you're questioning her rationale."

Cassandra shot Senna a glance. "I am my own person, you know." She flipped her hair over her shoulder. That reminded Logan of the captain's gift for her, but given the not-so-subtle family-tie innuendo's Dalia had given off, Logan decided this wasn't the time.

"Anyway," said Cassandra, "when the guild sanctions an expedition to manage unknown events, they send a team of five. I don't know if you noticed, but there are sixteen officers stationed at Gnashridge Heights, including Captain Krett. That allows them at least three minimum teams with someone able to stay back at the guild itself for emergencies.

"Five, then, would be investigating the boundaries, which especially makes sense given the unknown terrain. And if beetles are down there, there could be more creatures.

"Another five would be tasked with the valley expedition. But that should leave a final team of five left to investigate Farrowstead."

Logan considered that. "It didn't sound like this was high profile yet." He wasn't challenging it to be contrarian, but to better understand her reasoning.

"True. But even if so, where are the other officers?"

Alden nodded, his chin in its customary upraised position. "You think, then, that they have sent a third team elsewhere?"

"That, or simply bolstered one or both of the other two teams with reinforcements."

"Leaving us to take care of the children," said Senna, waving her arm in Farrowstead's general direction.

A rustle in the bushes nearby made them all pause, the recent mention of heightened danger working on all of them, even Bromlin. Logan clenched his fists and his gauntlets snapped into position.

A flicktail squirrel hopped out, licked its paws, then scampered across the road into a different bush.

Bromlin broke into merry laughter and Alden rolled his eyes.

Logan chuckled and lowered his fists, but not before Senna strolled over and tapped the wobbly claw. "Here," she said, grabbing his wrist and flipping it front and back with one hand as she reached into her pouch with the other. She pulled out a small multi-tool with one attachment looking like a crochet needle and bit her lip as she hooked it around one of his tightening vines, twisted it, then pulled it through his drakla pit setting.

"Hey, you're undoing it."

Bromlin clasped Logan's shoulder. "Don't question her, laddy. She can work wonders, but you have to trust the process. Saved my life, she did."

Senna rolled her eyes, but said nothing as she pulled out whittled carapace knuckles and a length of leather. Logan watched as she swapped his rough drakla pits with the beetle armor.

"There I was," said Bromlin. Bravado filled his voice as he extended an arm. "Trapped beneath a cart. I had joined a caravan guard—"

"Enough, Bromlin. I made a simple winch to hoist you out, and I haven't been able to ditch you since."

She patted Logan's gauntlet and he made a fist. Not a single claw wobbled.

"I can't tell you how long that's been bothering me."

Logan flexed his hand multiple times. "Huh. Thanks." The gesture touched him. She must have custom-shaped those beetle bits in advance just for him.

Bromlin grunted, hefting his axe with one hand. "What about my axe? I thought having a crafter on my team would have improved it by now." Nobody seemed to find the dwarf's drastic change in tone unusual.

Senna shot him a pointed look. "I told you, I need a good monster core to work with. War would be best for it. Unless you want me to reinforce it with a squirrel spine?"

Bromlin scoffed, shaking his head. "Bah. I'll wait."

Senna clearly had a way with crafting, but something still seemed missing. When Logan had complimented her after the beetle incident last night, she looked dissatisfied. She seemed more excited by using beer as a catalyst in her explosive than by the bomb's design itself. He joked she should be an alchemist, and she only nodded, thoughtful. He hadn't pressed the joke further, sensing more nuance lay beneath his observation's surface.

A stretch of quiet followed as they pressed deeper into the hills. Trees sprang up once more. No drakla fruits, but there were giant oranges. Twice the size of any he had ever seen. Analyze told him pretty much everything he already expected of oranges in his old life, but with the only added note being that oranges apparently contained raw mana that could be adapted into any other mana when it came into contact with the air.

Logan activated Aetherlens as he peeled one open and watched the mana-infused juice droplets dance into the air, evenly distributing among the various colors.

He frowned, though. Something looked off with the dispersion of mana. Logan found it difficult to define; the best he could do was to describe it as desaturated in color, particularly when contrasted with the mana-color chart he had swiped from the guild. He glanced at the baton at Cassandra's side, but it wasn't lit up.

He looked left and right with Aetherlens still active. Perhaps it was just the sun setting, but…

"What if we branch off this way?" He gestured toward the trees for a bit.

Bromlin raised a brow. "But this road is a straight shot to Farrowstead."

"And I already have to tolerate camping with you all," said Alden. "Bromlin snores, and I would prefer to camp near the road so I can lay my bedroll further from him while staying in view.

Logan hesitated and peered into the thicket, then shrugged. "Call it a gut feeling. If something is affecting the area, it might not be in Farrowstead itself. It probably wouldn't be directly on the road to Farrowstead, either. Maybe we'll get a better sense of things taking the long way."

Alden studied Logan with a keen expression. His gaze lingered a second too long before he simply said, "Fine."

The others exchanged glances, but no one outright objected.

"If it adds more than a half day to our time, you owe me a drink," Senna said, already veering into the trees.

With a wordless agreement, the group followed the detour, pressing into the orange grove. The trees stretched taller over the next hill, the canopy thick enough to cast long shadows in the day's golden hour. Logan couldn't shake the sensation that something was subtly off.

He kept activating Aetherlens, letting it take his mana down to 10% before allowing it to recharge. The headache lessened once he hit the low-hanging threshold of level 10, but after that, the same method took an hour before it finally hit level 11.

When evening set in and they made camp in a clearing, though, things got interesting. The moment Bromlin struck flint to kindling, the flames crackled to life before snuffing out immediately.

Logan quickly checked the ambient mana and then it clicked. The desaturation he noticed was due to a lessening in the amount of red fire mana, and an increase in quantities of blue frost mana.

Aetherlens is level 12!
Aetherlens is level 13!

A sharp chill prickled Logan's skin.

They all went still.

Logan slowly exhaled, watching his breath fog in the suddenly frigid air. Not a single day had gone by here that Logan hadn't appreciated the moderate temperatures, making the gust of cold wind unnatural in its crispness.

And then, emerging from the trees, a hulking figure stomped into view. Its face was like a tiki mask, red and brown with deep holes inside which were presumably eyes. Its breast and legs were streaked with frost, and its gaping maw exhaled plumes of icy mist.

They had found the source of the dying hearths.