The Dragon's Guild (Part 5)

I immediately stood up, knocking my chair down in the process. After I picked it back up, I started walking towards the center of the guild.

“Gather everyone together right away. Tell them to meet me at the podium in the center of the guild,” I said to Pac as I passed him. He nodded and hurried to do just that.

When I got there, I started pacing around nervously, waiting for the rest of the guild to arrive.

I usually wasn’t one to worry, but I had very good reason to in this case. Ten stars was the highest difficulty a quest could be assigned. It was more commonly called a “full guild” quest since it usually required an entire guild to complete successfully.

Furthermore, it wasn’t really possible to turn down a ten star quest. Of course, technically, a guild could always turn down any quest. But these ten star quests were tricky to deny. That’s because they’re only able to be issued by members of the royal family. And it’s never a good idea to get on their bad side.

As more people trickled in from their work, I forced myself to stop pacing. Even if I felt nervous, it wasn’t a good idea to let the guild members know. If they saw, it would seriously decrease morale. So, despite my nervousness, I stood tall, waiting for the last few members to arrive.

When they did, I stepped up to the podium, took a deep breath, and began.

“Hello everyone. I’m sorry to have interrupted you all from your busy schedules. But, unfortunately, this is a very important matter that needs to be handled immediately.”

I looked around the room at everyone’s expectant faces.

I’m not stalling because I’m nervous to break the news to them, I told myself. I just need to gauge everyone’s reactions to this. See if they’re ready.

After I had mostly convinced myself of this, I continued.

“This morning, we received a full guild quest in the mail.”

This shocked everyone, of course, but not as much I was expecting. The majority of them kept looking at me, waiting for more information.

When I think more about it, it’s hardly a surprise they weren’t fazed by the news. After all, compared to a full-fledged dragon breaking into the city and attacking us, a full guild quest seemed all but mundane.

I coughed once and continued. “The contents of the quest were deemed too important to be delivered by letter, so the King has requested that a group of us be sent to the palace to personally hear what it is.”

This caused a bit more of a stir. Everyone started whispering to their neighbor, speculating about who would be chosen to meet the King. Well, everyone except Ran and Han, anyways. They knew I would bring them along, since they were just about the strongest members of the guild.

I held out my arms and waited for everyone to quiet down.

After a minute or two, they did. “Thank you,” I said. “I will be picking a party of five of you to accompany me to see the King.”

I looked around the room again, briefly, in order to make sure the ones I wanted were all here. They were.

“Ran, Han, Bell, Ella, and Yole. You five will be the ones to meet the King with me.”

Ran, Han, and Bell were the top fighters of the guild. There were a few now that were getting close, almost able to match them. But for now, they were definitely the strongest.

I included Ella and Yole because they were the most promising new recruits. It was a good idea to include them in a mission like this, mainly to assess their performance to see how much responsibility I should give them when the time of the quest actually comes.

The five of them nodded, slowly getting surrounded by friends that wanted to congratulate them and wish them luck.

“We will leave in three days time, so the five of you head home to pack. Everyone else, if you don’t have any work that can’t be pushed off at the moment, start training. We need every single member to be at their peak for this quest.”

Everyone nodded in acknowledgement. With that, I stepped off the podium, signaling the end of the meeting. Bell, Ella, and Yole went to the door to pack and say goodbye to loved ones. Ran and Han lived in the guild with me, so they went off to get more training in. Everyone else broke up and went to begin training. The weapons users went to the armory and the mages went out to the back of the guild. We were trying to build a facility to house the mage’s training, but we didn’t have the funds for it, as of yet.

Maybe the reward for this quest will allow us to get just that.

But to get a reward, we first had to complete the quest.

And that could pose a serious issue for us.