Reincarnated As A What?

Chapter 20 - An adventure, almost

I woke up having dried out from the heavily rainy night and found that it was still raining outside despite the sun having already risen. I transferred into my human form and got dressed before setting off. The space under the floor had been a surprisingly pleasant sleeping spot. The ground was relatively soft and I didn't end up getting wet from the rainfall.

I then headed off towards the adventurer's guild to take a quest. I had received my adventurer's badge claiming that I was a C rank Destruction mage born on the of the 4th May 4A 3E 31 meaning the 31st year of the 3rd era of the 4th age. Which must have been 14 years before this year. I just hoped I wouldn't age all that much while I was doing the quest. It also stated that I was from Pelia.

There was a board covered completely in quests, but it was virtually impossible to get to with the tightly packed huge people sprawled in front of the board. After all, I was just a small girl and these huge bodybuilder men were blocking the way, it was impossible to see. I had enough strength to push through but I didn't want to start a fight and waste energy when I wouldn't even be able to kill them. As it wouldn't be good for my image if somebody picks a fight with me and I straight up kill him. So picking a fight and not even being able to harvest XP from it seemed like a waste of time and mana.

But eventually, I got to the board regardless. The C ranked board was quite high up so I was only able to reach the bottom ones. I briefly thought of using fire nova to grab a higher job but obviously, the tendrils would be on fire so it wouldn't really work particularly well and I wasn't even sure why I had had such a stupid idea. So I grabbed the bottom one.

It read to go to a town which had been taken over by some Powerful fire elemental. Supposedly it was holding the people hostage. It seemed easy enough as I remember coming across a plant elemental previously and he didn't seem to be much stronger than the lamia I had fought and defeated. So I took the job and set off.

I walked for a few days in my human form through the grasslands until I came across a small town with quaint stone buildings arranged in concentric circles but nobody was in the streets or anything despite it being midday on a pleasant but not overly hot day. I wandered into the town and walked around but there was nobody in sight that was until I heard call out.

"Ohohoho. Is that a strong foe I sense? You have a strong aura. Why don't you take your own town this one is mine!" I couldn't tell where his voice was coming from.
"Come out of the shadows and fight me then, if you want to keep this town as yours!" I yelled back at him.
"Oh come on, I'm not that stupid. I can sense that your aura is at least as powerful as mine. If we fought I could be seriously injured or even killed, I'd really rather not... How about this. I show you a town and help you take it over and you let me keep mine. Yours could even be bigger"

"You seriously think that I need help doing something you did singlehandedly??"

"Well yes. After all, you're clearly inexperienced. Letting your aura leak out like that. Your human disguise really won't fool anyone. That aura is clearly monstrous and probably upper tier or even Top tier maybe. Anyway... what do you say."

"I refuse I came here to defeat you for money"

"Ok ok, how about something else then. I can show you how to hide your aura. How about that? Then you can leave me alone. Say you were defeated or something."

"You do realise that if I fail here they might bump up the class of the job?"

"Oh, no they won't. Trust me. This town is of very low importance to the capital. Most of the population are former slaves after all. They probably want to get rid of the slaves. It makes them look bad. So... what they do is give the job to a low-class adventurer who can't save the town, so that it looks like they care and are trying to get back the town. But in reality, they want the civilians dead, probably even more than I want them dead."