Ganersam Volume 1

It isn’t.

I managed to exit the library with no real issue. After making my way out of that book-filled dungeon, I walked back to the guild, alone. Emma decided to continue reading. She said she will return alone later.

I hope she didn’t sleep there. For some reason, the library is open 24 hours. I looked up to the sky. It’s midday now, and I have nothing to do. Emma may be useless in battle, but I really don’t want to do solo grinding.

Besides, underestimating enemies may get you killed. These monsters may be low level, but having a shield is always better compared to leaving your left hand, or in this case the party slot on your left, empty.

Back then, when I grind a game, I would usually grind while on a call with a friend. Even if they weren’t in the game with me, talking random things with them is still pretty fun. Grinding alone is boring, so I really can’t understand people who could spend hours doing that.

Should I just rest? Bearing that thought, I entered the guild. My teacher is sitting in front of the bar table, drinking a glass of beer.

“Ah William, you’ve finished your quest?”

He said as he lifted the glass in his hand.

“Yes. Delivered safe and sound.”

“Care for a drink? This one’s on me.”

“Don’t mind if I do.”

Teacher raised his hand and ordered me a can of beer. I chugged the cold beer down my throat.

“Anyway, what are you doing here? You don’t have any classes to teach?”

I asked my teacher. He shook his head.

“Nah, I don’t. Sundays are holidays, you know? There are no classes during the holidays. Even the guild is half staffed.”

I looked around, it is indeed true that there are fewer employees than usual.

“The guild staff who work on holiday usually are the single ones, since they don’t have anything else to do, like that one over there.”

He said as he pointed toward one of the employees. His target is the guild lady.

“Don’t look at me like that, Raben.”

The guild lady replied with a smile.

“You really should find a man, Lisya. You don’t want to stay single forever, do you?”

Raben said while taking a sip.

“Well, there’s no decent man around here.”

Lisya shot back. Is there something between these two? I ignored the two who were having a staring match while smiling and continued sipping on my beer.

“Ah, I just remembered something. Are you two interested in a quest?”

We looked at Lisya.

“What kind of quest?”

And now I’m in the middle of an open field. We’re pretty far from town. As if one isn’t enough, In front of us there is a pack of wyverns currently resting. There are six of them.

“Let’s get closer.”

We were tasked with spying on the wyverns, gathering as much information as possible. I don’t really know why Raben would take a newbie like me with him, but I guess he probably thought two is better than one.

Wyverns aren’t supposed to be around Alpha, meaning that there’s probably a reason why they are here.

Raben pulled out his binoculars and continued observing.

“By the way, where’s the other girl?”

... You didn’t even remember her name?

“Emma? She’s reading back at the library.”

“I thought you two would always be together.”

Well, she did say we need to stay in the same city, but every city is different. One is larger than the other, so that is a very vague way to describe the distance.

And there’s also the issue like when I’m outside the city and she’s inside, would she still stay inside because I’m not too far?

As I was thinking about that, Raben gave me a sign to follow him. Crouching, we made our way closer to the pack.

We try to keep our footsteps as silent as possible while hiding behind the nearby bushes. We would avoid alerting the wyverns at all costs. You could barely hear the grass under us being pushed aside by our feet. But when we stopped, I realized the final step we took was a lot louder compared to any previous steps.

It’s as if someone else is here with us.

...

I looked to my left.

“Why hello there.”

And there she was. I gave Emma a greeting, which she replied with a sigh.

“I was just about to start another novel... anyway, what are we doing?”

Seeing us crouching, Emma immediately kneeled close to the ground. I pointed towards the group of wyverns. Raben is still focused on them, so he isn’t aware of Emma’s arrival.

“Wyverns again, huh?”

I nodded to Emma’s words. Hearing the voice of a girl, Raben looked behind.

“Oh, hi Emma.”

Raben said as he gave the binoculars to me. He doesn’t seem surprised at all. After a while, I gave the binoculars to Emma.

“They seem... normal.”

The wyverns looked as if they were just resting. Nothing suspicious about them, other than the fact that they’re here. The six wyverns rested side by side, forming a circle. Maybe there’s something in the middle of the group?

We moved closer to the group of wyverns. They haven’t realized our existence, yet.

Raben then pulled out a camera and started taking pictures of them, probably for the report.

We looked through the gaps, there was nothing in the middle, nothing that we could see, at least.

There are some trees surrounding the field, a small forest, if you will.

We climbed up one of those trees and observed the wyverns from above.

Turns out there really was nothing in the middle of the circle, just wyvern’s heads sleeping peacefully beside each other.

“Should we kill them now?”

“No. Our power won’t be enough to finish them all. The survivors would hunt us down.”

As I and Raben continued having a conversation, we could hear the sound of leaves and branches crashing into each other, and a loudbumpfollowed it.

“What is that? Did something ambush us?”

Raben whispered while looking around, his voice in a tone of slight panic.

“No, just a certain girl falling off the tree.”

I pointed towards Emma, who was holding her head while crying in pain. The both of us jumped off the tree.

“You alright?”

I asked as I approached Emma.

“I’m fine, it just hurts a bit.”

She said while holding her head. I thought she had good luck?

... Good luck, huh...

If this world’s idea of good luck is what’s going to happen next, then we’re seriously fucked.

“Not again!!”

Emma’s scream echoed through the forest.

“Don’t scream, you idiot! They’ll find us!”

“What do you mean ‘they’ll find us’!? They already did, and they’re chasing us right now!”

We’re currently running through the forest, being chased by the pack of wyverns. They woke up after hearing Emma’s fall, and are now trying desperately to kill us. We tried escaping to our carriage, but our way was blocked by one of them.

We tried using the forest for cover, but the wyverns spotted us and attacked from above, destroying the trees with it. It’s really concerning just how powerful these wyverns are.

“Dead end!”

Emma yelled. In front of us is a wide-open field. It isn’t really a dead end in the sense of a ‘dead end’, more like a dead end because there would no longer be any cover.

To be fair, the trees did a terrible job at covering us anyway, but it would be far more dangerous to run in an open field like that.

“Keep running, we don’t have a better option!”

Raben ran past us. We continued, following Raben out of the small forest. As expected, there’s absolutely no cover around here. The wyverns caught up to us and surrounded us.

“Guess we’ll be forced to take them out!”

Raben gave his order and pulled out his staff. Neither I nor Emma have weapons, so we were forced to fight empty-handed.

Just as the wyverns were about to attack, a fireball came and hit the wyvern in front of me. It let out a loud scream, before getting hit by another fireball. Seemingly stronger than the first, the fireball dealt enough damage to knock out the wyvern. It graciously fell to the ground.

Surprised by this sudden development, the wyverns diverted their attention to the origin of the spell. Standing there, a young girl wearing a dark green robe with her hood down, holding her polearm at the ready. She has bright skin, red eyes, short purple hair tied in a ponytail, and cat ears.

Cat ears...

The wyverns let out a loud roar before soaring toward the young girl. The remaining five wyverns flew high and disappeared into the clouds. It was cloudy, so using the clouds as cover is pretty smart for a monster. With a roar, the attack started. One wyvern dived down and headed straight towards the girl, another wyvern followed not far behind.

The young girl jumped up, dodging the first wyvern’s attack. High in the sky, she turned her body around and aimed her polearm at the wyvern flying below her. She threw her polearm straight down, the sharp tip pierces through the wyvern’s skull, killing it instantly.

She landed on the dead wyvern’s body. The second wyvern zooms in. Seeing that, she grabbed her polearm and threw herself to the side. She barely dodged the wyvern’s sharp right wing, but she used her close proximity to her advantage. She pointed her polearm up and pushed through the wyvern’s wing that passed above her. The polearm did critical damage and sliced off the wing of the unfortunate wyvern.

The wyvern crashed onto the ground. She jumped off the first wyvern and ran at the second wyvern. She thrusts her polearm through its head, killing it.

Seeing their two comrades fall, the remaining three wyverns surrounded her and attack from different sides. They swoop in at the same time, trying to block the girl from dodging. They come in from different heights, trying to block the girl from using her jumping trick, but the girl ignores that.

She once again jumped upwards, somehow higher than all three wyverns, and sent a spell down. A yellow ray of lightning appeared from her hand. The lightning hits the wyverns at the perfect moment, when all their heads are above each other, hitting all three wyverns at the same time. The three wyverns then collapsed to the ground.

She gracefully landed on top of the wyverns and hopped down, her hair playing in the wind.

“Woah...”

We approached the girl. She is now kneeled, observing the dead wyverns.

“Get back to town, quick, it’s not safe...”

The girl looked toward us, but her words stopped.

She put her polearm in front of her as she guarded herself against us. She took a step back, adding the distance between us. Seeing her reaction, we also stepped back.

“Wait, we’re not hostile...”

I paid attention to her gaze and found it to be locked on Emma. Emma, on the other hand, is also staring sharply at her.

She lifted her polearm, and Emma lowered her stance.

“Hey, cut it out.”

I said as I pulled Emma’s hair.

“Stop it! Ouch, ouch! It hurts!”

I let go of Emma. Seeing what I did, the girl gave a slight chuckle, before looking back towards the forest.

“Are you leaving?”

I asked her, still impressed at her display of skills.

“There’s no reason for me to stay here.”

And with that answer, she disappeared into the forest.

“Who was that?”

I asked on our journey back to Alpha. Emma has been silent the entire trip. Did she envy the girl’s skill? But if that was the case, she wouldn’t be that hostile towards her. Or at least I don’t think that’s enough reason for Emma to immediately be hostile towards her.

I mean, if you envy someone, you either learn stuff from them, or you steal those things from them. But since Emma envies the girl’s skill, beating the girl up makes no sense.

Emma looked at me and shook her head.

“No, it’s not envy.”

She said silently. She remained silent for the rest of the way. We arrived at the guild. Raben needs to fill in a report, so we excuse ourselves and head back to our room.

“Don’t pull my hair like that! It hurts, you know?”

She yelled after closing the door. She shot me an angry glare.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m sorry. Besides, it’s your fault you showed so much hostility to the one who rescued us.”

“I was just surprised, that’s all.”

“Surprised? Because you’re being rescued?”

“No, but because of who the rescuer is.”

“You know her?”

“No, but I do know she’s a cademon.”

“Cademon?”

“Cat-demons. The demons manage to create artificial humans. These humans are built for a purpose, making them extremely skilled in their respective fields. She is one of them. I’ve read about it in the library and heard some stories about them too. We were told to always be careful when meeting one in the wild. Other than that, they’re often found holding key positions in the demon’s army.”

First wyverns and now cademons? I know we survived the wyverns twice, and got rescued by said cademon, but isn’t this cutting it a bit too close?

“You’re talking abouther, right? If that’s the case, why is she protecting us?”

“That’s what I’m curious about. Cademons usually hide their ears under a hood, so for her to expose her ears like that... also, the wyverns immediately put their attention to her the second she attacked. Usually, wyverns would put their attention on who they thought was the most dangerous, and would split forces if there are multiple targets with the same strength. The fact that they immediately ignored us means she’s probably pretty powerful.”

I wonder if that wyvern we fought before thought that Emma is the strongest, thus attacking her first, or maybe it’s a property of her holy blood?

“Also, the two seem to be hostile towards each other, which is highly unusual.”

Emma continued her explanation.

“You’re also hostile towards her, are you not?”

“Yes I am, a bit... but that’s because I wasn’t expecting a cademon to help us. I immediately assumed she had some deeper intentions, but she immediately left after that.”

“Deeper intentions? Like what?”

“I don’t know, maybe she’s trying to seduce adventurers? like... say... cat girls in maid outfits?”

“You pervert.”

“Hey, it’s you humans who made those kinds of stuff!”

Emma said as she sat on the bed. She then pulled herself down, laying on the bed.

“Anyway, we should go find her tomorrow.”

“I thought you disliked her?”

“Not really. Cademons have not only human intelligence, but also a human heart and soul. It’s not uncommon for them to betray the demons and side with the humans.”

“So is she dangerous or not?”

“I don’t know, that’s why we’re going to go out and find her tomorrow.”

She said as she turned around to face the other side of the bed.

“Good night.”

And with that, another day ends in this weird adventure.