“I can’t do this anymore. I’m not good enough.”
There I was, pleading with my fellow Grieving Souls, my childhood friends.
One year had passed since we’d started hunting—no time at all in the grand scheme of things—but that one year had been filled with trials and tribulations for me.
Treasure vaults, overflowing with mana material, were packed to the brim with phantoms born of the stuff. Dangers like these lurked around every corner, along with vicious monsters on the prowl for power and countless traps ready to swing shut on your life. Not even fellow treasure hunters there could be trusted. I’d heard it all before, having read heaps of tales on the great hunters of the past, so I had thought I knew all there was to know.
That half-baked resolution of mine had been shattered with ease once I became a hunter. I lost count of how many times I had nearly barfed myself blue in the face. This life of day in, day out life-or-death adventures had worn me down to the bone.
“I can’t keep up with you guys anymore. There’s no way you don’t know this by now, but I’m the one holding us back from this gig.”
Every member of a treasure-hunting party had an important role to play. Offensive types, for example Swordsmen and Magi, were tasked with dispatching incoming monsters; those in supporting roles, such as Thieves and Alchemists, disarmed traps and scouted for enemies; and healers, more often than not Paladins and Clerics, treated injuries and defended the party from harm. As someone with none of these skill sets, I was nothing but a burden.
I had tried. I, in the search for something I could actually do, had knocked on the doors of many a mentor. But at the end of the day, when someone without talent puts in the same effort as someone with it, the latter will always take the lead. And all of my friends—Luke and the rest of them—sure put in the work. They worked their butts off. As long as there were only twenty-four hours in the day, I would never catch up to them.
A conventional party consisted of five or six members. If they would just replace me—take in another hunter or two that matched up to their skills in my place—they would make much better progress.
Luke Sykol nodded sullenly. “I get it, Krai. We’re weak.”
“Excuse me?”
“Sorry, Krai,” Liz Smart added from her seat beside me. “You wouldn’t have had to worry about us if we were stronger.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
They were strong. Too strong, even. Enough to keep beating vault after vault of increasingly higher levels while lugging around this Krai Andrey dead weight. Taking on vaults with just the five of them would have been much easier for them.
Luke stared off into the distance, my desperate pleading falling on deaf ears. “What are we doing? Heh. If we slow down now, becoming the best will just be a pipe dream. Thanks for the wake-up call, Krai. I’m gonna go train under this ‘Sword Saint’ or whoever and hone my skills from scratch.”
As if merely going on an afternoon stroll, Luke sauntered off to seek mentorship from the Sword Saint renowned throughout the capital. The others, too, piped up with ideas on how to improve their own skills.
It was then that I realized—these guys were hopeless. Every one of them thought getting stronger was the ticket to solving any problem. Somehow, they just couldn’t grasp the fact that no matter how hard they trained, I’d still be mincemeat.
And so, I scrambled to find any way out of these adventures, and came up with the perfect ploy: I’d establish a clan. If I kept following this lot into harm’s way, I would meet my end in no time, or at least have a big chunk taken out of me. Instead, I’d start a clan, roping in other up-and-coming parties to scout out a new Griever or two—anyone who could keep up with those freaks. That was how I ended up founding First Steps, dodging a treasure-hunting bullet or two with the pretext of managing the clan.
It had been a whole three years since then.