Ashton initially wanted to travel back to the quest to hunt the Gorillan queen. But there was a problem he couldn't solve either with money or influence. He didn't know the complete details but the requirements for entering the quest related to finding the hidden breeding ground of the monklins had been changed drastically.
Earlier, Silver ranking adventurers could participate in the quest, but now only gold and above ranking adventurers were allowed to do so. Upon inquiring about it, it was revealed to him that the squad containing 10 Silver rankers was found dead after a search operation was organised to look for them.
"Their death did not seem to be painless or quick either." The receptionist informed him, "Sorry, but I can't give you any more information about it as you don't have the rank nor do I have the authority."
"Don't worry about it…" Ashton smiled wanly and headed back to the bulletin board, "I guess the gorillans are out of the picture then. Guess I wouldn't get to test my level 16 strength anymore."
Ashton kept looking for something new, but no suitable quest appeared in front of him. He wanted to keep levelling his adventurer rank but taking low ranking quests was not going to help him in that.
'My vampire and zombie genes are stuck at level 14. I need to get some monster hunting quest to get them to evolve.'
Just like continually hunting and consuming the same species over and over again did not give him an extraordinary amount of exp. Consuming the same rank monsters had a similar effect. Although Ashton had been relentlessly participating in quests, most of these quests had him hunting low-levelled monsters.
That essentially meant despite killing dozen upon dozens of monsters, he was only getting a small amount of exp. Hell, sometimes he had to kill more than 5 monsters at once to get a 1% exp increase for werewolf Genes. It was the same with the rest of his genes as well.
"This should work."
He picked a quest and at the same time he received a call from Duncan, and it wasn't something Ashton wanted to hear.
***
Meanwhile, Members of Ashton's team which had been named 'Zero', were having a discussion of their own. About how they met him, it was supposed to be their ice-breaking conversation but Baiter's ass-kicking kinda already did it for them.
"Well, I only met him once before today." Baiter explained it to them, "Someone who helped me told me to go and see him for something. He gave me an opportunity to make some money while also helping with my wife's treatment so I couldn't say no."
"Would you mind telling me who this person was?" Suddenly Seven was intrigued by Ashton's background as he didn't know anything about his new lord.
"It's a man kid Vince. I think about the same age as master Ashton. They are supposedly good friends and when the master was looking for someone to join the group Vince recommended me to him." Baiter explained to Seven.
"Intriguing. I never knew Lord had such mysterious friends."
At that moment they saw Ashton making his way towards them. He was supposed to brief them about the quest he had accepted, instead, he simply shared the information through their watches and told them to follow him.
"We're going to the swamps?" Fae couldn't help but get surprised, "That place is like the hub for high-levelled monsters! What are we going to do there?"
"I have a better question. Why is there a swamp quest available for mid rankers like us in the first place?" Renee jumped in but both of them had missed something that Virgil and Seven didn't.
"It's not a quest." Virgil said while tapping his bald head, "It's a request from someone. Specifically the director of the academy. Ashton mentioned he was a former student right? Maybe it's something related to that?"
Since Baiter had next to no knowledge or experience when it came to guild things, he didn't know what was the difference between a quest or a request. When he asked about it, Seven was more than happy to educate him.
While quests are open for any adventurer to take as long as they met certain mentioned requirements, requests were something different. Basically, it was a quest but instead of asking for the guild to help, they ask help from certain adventurers.
Whether the adventurers accept the request or not would be a completely different thing. In case the adventurers who had been requested for acce[t the quest the guild would take a 10% of the reward as compensation of basically acting as a broker.
However, in the event the adventurers don't accept the request, the guild would be free to send in someone else to complete the quest for them. But it seemed like Ashton had accepted the quest.
"Wait, it's not in the swamps but in a city close to it." Baiter pointed it out, "I know it because that's the city my wife is from."
"Hm… you're right." Virgil confirmed after taking a closer look at the map, "But I have one question. How did a weirdo like you score a wife in the first place?"
Instead of getting pissed or angry about it, Baiter placed his hand on Virgil's shoulder and whispered in his ear, "That my friend is the greatest mystery of my life."
While the rest of them were chatting amongst themselves, Seven was busy reading more about the quest. The quest wasn't anything extraordinarily dangerous, just him and Ashton would have been sufficient to take care of a bunch of goons.
However, there was something else. Although they had only been clearing dungeons together for a week, Seven knew this kind of quest wasn't something Ashton would have usually accepted. After all, he liked fighting and killing night creatures more than anything else.
But the moment he looked at the rewards, Seven immediately realised why Ashton was going in for this quest. Or at least he thought there was a possibility.
[Reward(s):
Rare equipment of choice (for up to 6 members).
Information regarding a sensitive topic.]
"Everyone, let's get going." Seven reminded them and they left but as they chased after Ashton he thought of something, 'Just what the hell could this sensitive topic be?'