Chapter 233 Hunting the bandits
"A grade three elemental weapon?" Max exclaimed in surprise and understood why she was so sure that he won't be able to complete this mission.
"That's right." The Elder nodded and rubbed her sleepy eyes, and continued, "I've already asked the academy to change the rank of the mission. So, you can choose to give up on this mission, and the academy won't give you any punishment."
Max thought for a second and asked, "If I do that, will I be considered to have completed this month's mandatory mission?"
If this were the case, he didn't have any problem giving up on this mission. After all, after learning how dangerous a bandit-killing mission in the sun feather city could be, he had decided that he would give up if it was too dangerous for him.
The Elder looked at him and shook her head. "I'm afraid not. At most, You'll be given some compensation for wasting your time coming here and then assigned another mission."
"Is that so?" Max was disappointed. He knew that if any situation where mission difficulty was higher than mentioned in the mission details or some other anomaly were to occur, the academy would compensate the disciples who took the mission and went to complete it.
However, this ‘compensation' was ten, only percent of the promised reward of the assigned mission. Since this silver-ranked mission was worth only a thousand Mana stones initially, he would be given only a hundred, which was too low for him, and he would have to waste more time to complete another mission.
The Elder noticed his disappointed expression and frowned unhappily. She hated disciples who acted like this the most and said, "If you don't like the situation, you are welcome to go and try to complete the mission. No one is going to stop you."
Max could see that the Elder seemed somewhat angry from her tone, but he didn't care and asked, "If I were to complete it, how much reward would I receive?"<sub>pᴀɴᴅᴀ-ɴ(0ᴠᴇ)ʟ.ᴄᴏᴍ</sub>
"Hm?" The Elder looked at him weirdly. She hadn't expected him to ask this despite knowing that the difficulty of the mission had gone up and the previously hard-to-complete mission for a solo two-star mage had become even more difficult.
‘Could he be aiming for the grade three weapon…?" She suddenly realized this. First, she became surprised, then disappointed, and lastly, a mocking expression appeared on her face. ‘Your greed will be the cause of your death.' She sneered inwardly and laughed,
"Hehe, if you can finish this mission, I'll reward you with 5000 Mana stones, and everything you get from the bandits will be yours. However, it won't be my responsibility if you were to die."
"Are you sure?" Max's eyes twinkled upon hearing that he would be able to keep everything he got from them.
He would have tried to complete this mission since he didn't want to waste more time. Moreover, it didn't matter much to him if they had a grade three weapon as long as they weren't peak two-star mages with some of their Mana converted to three-star Mana.
However, after hearing that he could keep everything, his resolve to complete this mission became even more firm. It should be known that a three-star weapon's rarity and value were at least a dozen times more than grade two weapons. Moreover, it wasn't a normal grade three weapon but an elemental one.
If he could get this, the wealth he could gain after selling it should be close, if not enough, to buy the required medicine for Flavia. After hearing that girl's plea in front of Flavia's room, he didn't want to wait until the inter-academy competition to heal her scar if he could.
The petite woman standing beside him looked at him in surprise, which soon turned to disappointment. ‘This guy is too greedy and overconfident.' On the other hand, the Elder stopped laughing and gave him a deep look before nodding, "Of course."<sub> pᴀɴᴅᴀ ɴ(O)ᴠᴇʟ</sub>
Although she also thought that he might be underestimating himself, seeing that he didn't show any signs of fear all this while, she felt that this youth might have some means to complete the mission successfully, and this caused her to become hopeful.
This one-eyed bandit group had been causing too much trouble lately, causing the city lord's mansion to be flooded with complaints and requests to deal with them as soon as possible. This made her head hurt.
She even considered going out herself and killing them off, but she knew that these bandits had a strong information network in the city and would flee after finding out that a three-star mage was heading toward them.
That's why she requested the academy to send a peak two-star disciple to deal with them. Unfortunately, the bandit leader happened to acquire a grade three weapon, causing her to send another request to modify the mission and cancel the old one.
She knew it would take a few more days before some other disciples accepted this mission, if at all. All this while, these bandits would cause more trouble. However, If he could deal with them, that would solve all problems.
"Okay then. Please give me all the necessary information." Max nodded and asked.
"Come here and sign this form first." The Elder gave him a form titled ‘consent form.' Signing this mission meant that he would be responsible if anything were to happen to him and that the Elder had informed him of the current situation.
After he signed that, she told the petite woman to lead him to the bandits' hideout and tell whatever she knew about them.<sub> ρꪖꪕᦔꪖꪕ(ꪫ)ꪣꫀꪶ</sub>
…
Whoosh! Whoosh!
Two figures flashed through the forest and arrived in front of a small canyon.
"That is the one-eyed bandits' hideout." Hiding in a tall tree, the petite woman pointed inside the canyon.
Max glanced ahead and noticed more than fifty caves some distance in the canyon. His brows furrowed, and asked, "Didn't the information say that there were only fourteen members in this group? There should be fourteen caves at most. Then why are there so many?"
The petite woman smiled and explained, "The information is correct. There are indeed only fourteen people if they hadn't managed to recruit more in the past few days. The purpose of creating so many caves is to trick and trap the enemies. Most of these caves have trapping formations that can trap anyone below the three-star realm and alert the bandits at the same time. After that, the bandits can easily take care of them."
"Oh? That's really troublesome." Max murmured.
If anyone attacking the bandits didn't know about the exact cave where they were staying, they would be trapped and killed by bandits without much trouble, and Max was in the same situation. He didn't know about the exact cave they were in, and even if he knew, it wasn't like he could just charge in and kill them.
"Yes, that's indeed troublesome. Therefore, I advise you to wait here, and when they come out, you can consider attacking." The petite woman advised.
"I'll have to do this." Max nodded.
"Okay then. My job here is complete. I should head back. Good luck." She bade farewell and went away.
p-ᴀ-ɴ-ᴅ-ᴀ ɴ-0-ᴠ-ᴇ-ʟ、ᴄ(ᴏᴍ) Max watched her leave and then sat down on the tree branch, waiting for the bandits to come out or come back if they were out robbing people.
…
Very soon, it was evening, and Max had started to feel hungry. Just as he was about to take out something to eat, he noticed three figures in black clothes walk out from the caves.
He immediately became alert and started to prepare [Calidus Brachium] in advance. He didn't use his three-star Mana because even if he used the two-star Mana, it was strong enough to kill some early or middle-stage two-star mages.
Moreover, he had only had a limited amount converted, and it would be best if he saved it in case he suddenly encountered some other danger.
After coming out of the cave, they headed in his direction. Max didn't make any movement and waited for them to travel a few miles away from the canyon before attacking so as not to alert other bandits.
Shua! Shua! Shua!
The three bandits rushed past the tree on which Max was hiding and headed in the direction of the sun feather city.
Max stealthily followed behind. When they were more than five miles away from the canyon, Max closed the distance between them and raised his hand.
Swoosh!
Fiery arrows materialized above him and shot toward them at lightning-quick speed due to him using some extra Mana.
"Watch out!" The bandit at the back suddenly heard something flying toward them from behind and called out to the other two as he jumped to the side.
Although his reaction was quick, an arrow still pierced his leg. While the other two were taken completely off guard and were pierced by multiple arrows. HSHDA AHHFAH HADFHAS HAHFAS
