Niels was a man of passion, eager to prove his worth and shout his accomplishments into the heavens. He dreamt of owning the town he had grown up as a gutter brat in. Of proving he was more than what all those people had derided him as. A sneak thief, bastard child of a dead mother. And along the way he would lift every child growing up like him out of the dark depths of the back alleys. Give them a chance to become more as well.

It took him years to find an adventurer willing to teach him anything about the lifestyle. It was worth every second of searching, though, when she first taught him how to properly use his magic. Wind magic was the most amazing thing he had ever experienced, and it suited him perfectly. Silent, swift, free, and deadly when pushed to the extremes. His master said it was the perfect element for a free spirit like him.

When she eventually left, it had hurt. It had felt like a betrayal. Then he learned she arranged for him to take the Adventurer Guild Basic Training and paid for his first year’s membership in the guild. She had left a message with the guild to have delivered to him. She expected him to make her proud and that she would be back in a year to see how much he had grown.

She never made it to their reunion.

Three and a half months after leaving she had been recruited for a mandatory mission to subdue a B rank monster. She hadn’t been assigned a part of the fighting. She’d been asked to help with citizen evacuation and warning population centers of the monster’s approach. During one of the evacuation missions the monster had shown up earlier than anticipated. While the citizens and her fellow adventurers fled, she had gone back to save a young child after their older brother said she was missing.

He had told her the girl had likely fled to their secret hideout, a hollow tree just outside of town. When she had found the spot, the girl had refused to leave her hiding place. His master had been forced to bodily remove her. The girl’s screams had attracted the beast, which had already been tracking the child’s scent. The girl made it. His master did not.

A week later the monster was dead. The country had a new group of heroes and a long list of people who had sacrificed themselves to keep the people safe. Niels wept for most of the day after the ceremony for the fallen, but he resolved to grow stronger. If he had been strong enough, maybe he could have helped her.

It taught Niels something he saw as an important lesson. If he was weak, those he cared about could be taken from him. So he just had to be the strongest thing around, that way they would be safe.

The entire incident left him with a drive none of his compatriots could match. A need to train during every free moment. To never waste a minute when he could be improving. That, combined with his natural talent and the solid base his master had worked hard to help him build, made all the difference. Where before he was an above average young adventurer, afterward he quickly became the undisputed best in their class. Surpassing even those that had come from Career Families.

He graduated F+ rank and his instructors believed he could hit E- within four years. He did it in two. His mad dash to improve cost him though. Many of his fellows saw him as either too stuck up and hording secrets that could make all their lives easier if they came from the same background as himself or a cheating bastard burning his future potential for immediate growth in some unhealthy ritual if they were from more privileged families. The small minority that saw the truth, that he simply worked harder than any of his peers - to obsessive levels past the point of healthiness - were cordial with him. His reclusive and obsessive nature prevented him from truly making friends with any of them though.

Even beyond these social difficulties there were sources of tension. Simply put, no party was willing to put up with the risks he would recklessly take. Most who did a contract or two with him came out believing Niels was suicidal at best, insane and a danger to his teammates at worse. They would refuse to ever work with him again. Niels himself didn’t understand their attitude. If they were scared of potentially dying, why would they become an adventurer? A few scars were a low price to grow strong.

Eventually even he hit the limit of what he could do alone though. He decided to make the perfect team to support him. To truly unlock his potential and capitalize on what he could accomplish. Ideally, he would find individuals capable to standing beside him, but those sorts were exceedingly rare. At least if he wanted anyone even close to his own age. He just needed people with the right attitude.

Then he met Mathias. The man was ten- or fifteen-years Niels’ senior and everything Niels wasn’t. Charismatic, educated, and a natural leader. Mathias was slightly Niels’ superior in combat capabilities, but markedly weak for a Career Family adventurer of his age. Instead, he excelled at all the little things a team needed to have proper cohesion, resources, and information.

He was also the first person since Niels’ Master to work to befriend the boy. The first person to truly gain his trust and help Niels find ways to improve himself. The man became Niels mentor in a way entirely different than his master and together they established the Hidden Opportunities party. Niels would be the brawn, the backbone of their growing team, while Mathias was the brain.

Together they assembled a team capable of supporting Niels in his fights. The first was an Alchemist named Theo. The man was known for producing decent health potions, a major benefit for any team. While his methods might have been more expensive than most party healers, it also meant that Niels was far freer to move at his full speed and range out as far as he wanted. A mage applying some form of healing magic would need him to stay close by and move slow enough for them to keep an eye on if he wanted to get any affect out of their magic.

The second member was Seba, a rogue with powerful poison magic at his disposal. Niels magic was perfect for dealing with almost any monster, but he suffered while dealing with opponents that could absorb a lot of punishment. His magic simply was not made for breaking through powerful defenses and took extreme amounts of time to whittle down such enemies. That would change eventually, he knew, but for now he needed someone who could make up for this weakness. Seba was perfect, as he could apply escalating debuffs and damage over time to help deal with such opponents.

He even had the added benefit of specializing in creating a poison capable of interfering and blocking an opponent’s mana veins. In other words, he had the perfect weapon to prevent opponents from using all but the simplest magics. The fact he could apply his toxic magic to allies’ weapons and even spells meant he was an excellent addition to Hidden Opportunity.

From their first job they were everything Niels had hoped for. He didn’t have to worry about them complaining about unnecessary risk because he was the one taking on all of the risk while they supported from far away. He didn’t need to worry about them slowing him down because they did not need to stay close to be effective allies. Even Mathias helped in his own way, using his earth magic to help trap and slow down opponents until Niels could reach them.

It was exactly what he needed to push himself even harder. Where before he would throw himself into battles that he knew would end with black eyes and scarring cuts, now he would take fights that were sure to result in deep stab wounds and broken bones. He had the support to get him on his feet and by fighting opponents even further above him he could improve faster than ever before.

The group quickly gained a reputation for taking on jobs most parties would consider near suicidal. It was well known that Niels was a talented fighter, easily the match of talents from even major powers, and most agreed he was certain to reach incredible levels of strength. Assuming he didn’t get himself killed first. The rest of the party though? It was a blessing that Theo was an unknown. Seba and Mathias were both known as helpless by the upper tier of the local guild. Most agreed that if Niels did die, it would be because his team was subpar for his talent.

Niels himself didn’t see it that way. This was his team. Handpicked with Mathias’s assistance. If they failed or he was killed it was because he simply hadn’t been good enough.

#

Barely five years after being established, Hidden Opportunities was forced to move on from their home city of Kirlin. There was simply no more challenge to be found there, and they honestly should have left long before they did. Kirlin was located near a Wild Magic phenomenon known as Ammothenae Megnalo, or The Great Sandstorm in the ancient tongue.

A rather uninspired name, but accurate when describing the several mile tall globe of sand that blew with such force it could strip flesh from bone in mere minutes. The storm consumed vast amounts of the local mana, producing an environment that many stronger creatures found somewhere between uncomfortable and inhospitable. One needed to have a more than instinctual grasp of magic to take in the amount of mana needed to sustain a higher tier body, a level of intelligence uncommon in any monster below the C rank.

It also, most scholars agreed, either prevented Dungeons from forming in the area or had arisen due to a lack of dungeons. Instead, the storm filtered all of the Wild Magic in the area into earth and wind magic. The excess of which would be released as great clouds of nutrient rich dust storms, producing a highly prized farmland.

The party decided to migrate to the neighboring Nation of Kelm, a region noted for housing a number of popular E rank dungeons with good rewards. There, they hoped to earn powerful items and enchantments, along with experience, that would allow them to push into the next Rank. Niels himself anticipated passing the E rank test as soon as he arrived, wanting to achieve the rank “properly” with a dungeon test rather than by assessment of the local guild master.

#

As he had anticipated, Niels handily passed the exam to be promoted to E rank. He had been annoyed at first that he hadn’t done well enough to skip all the way up to E+, but he supposed it made sense. He had done the exam with a group of other applicants rather than his own party, and a man almost a decade his senior had been the only to achieve the necessary merits for that particular honor. He was already far above the average strength of his age group, and many would have said wishing for more was like a rich man complaining about missing a single copper coin. He would get there. He just needed a little more time.

Hidden Opportunity wasted no time in beginning their quest to conquer every one of the popular dungeons. Each of them had their own reasons for needing the power or money these locations offered, and all put forth their full effort to make the undertaking as profitable as possible.

#

It was, in the end, Mathias who grew too careless in his actions. Hidden Opportunity had been pushing through the Secret Doors dungeon, an E rank dungeon noted for its large number of traps and abundance of high-quality metal available for looting. They had been attempting to gather the necessary ingredients for Seba and Niels new weapons and had agreed to split into two groups to search the room they had just cleared of monsters.

Niels had been nervous about the idea. The hallway they were in was not particularly large, easily within screaming distance, and there were no monsters around. When it came to traps, Seba was almost as good at spotting them as Niels was. There should have been no danger. Niels and Mathias took one side, Seba and Rory the other.

About ten minutes into the searching, Seba and Rory heard a panicked scream from Niels. A shout of “No, Mathias! Watch out!”

Then the sound of a large amount of air being displaced. A repeated *SHUNT*, *SHUNT*, *SHUNT* not entirely unlike rain. The sound of Niels sobbing.

When they arrived, they found a corner pin cushioned with metal needles about an inch in length. They absolutely covered Mathias’s body, and it was obvious the man had died almost instantly. In a small cubby on the wall, just past the trigger plate Mathias’ cold body still held down, was a single ingot of a beautiful metal of mottled green and blue. Corrupted skysteel, the very metal they had been in the dungeon looking for.

In a cruel twist of irony, they discovered the needles that had killed their friend, the defacto leader of their small party, were made of the same stuff. The number of needles was immense, easily equaling the amount of metal in the ingot. All together the two sources provided just enough material to forge Niels and Seba’s new weapons.

Niels saw this as a sign that he was still too weak. That he would never be strong enough to protect his team from everything. He needed to help them grow as well, at least enough that he could take his eyes off them for a few moments without disaster striking. They didn’t need to be that powerful, just strong enough to give him time to get to them.

That would wait though. Until they had moved on from Kelm. They had been there for almost a decade. Had built memories and grown as a group. It was too painful to stay without Mathias around. Niels decided they would head east, toward the Elderwood Mountains region. There they could restart. He could help them grow into a capable group in their own right.

Niels and Seba would never give up the blades that were made from Mathias’s sacrifice. Even when Niels eventually outgrew the blade and needed something more durable, he kept it as his back up weapon. A final defense and a reminder of the lessons Mathias had taught him in life and in death. A promise that Niels would never lose a teammate again.

#

Eventually the group settled in the Nation of Adamel, the northernmost of the four major countries in the Central Elderwood Mountain Region. There Niels rebuilt his team from the ground up. Rather than only focusing on patterns and abilities that could be used to enforce and support himself, he made them each learn new spells. Ways to entrench and defend themselves. To wipe out lesser opponents that might attempt to swarm their position.

In other words, he wanted the two of them to be a capable party even without his presence, if not quite as capable as himself. Unfortunately, neither of them was very defensively capable. Theo relied on using what would be a small fortune in health and defensive potions to anyone else in order to keep himself safe in a fight. Meanwhile Seba relied on pure mobility, avoiding the greatest dangers and encouraging them to target Theo instead. Which resulted in even more coin lost in potion ingredients.

They needed someone who could handle the focus of monsters, setting the pair up for success by letting them focus on their strengths. Hidden Opportunities, for the first time in almost a decade and a half, needed to recruit a new member.

It proved a lot more difficult than Niels had originally imagined. He had expected people to be jumping at the chance to join up with him, an experienced fighter of notable strength, and to a degree they were. It was just difficult to actually integrate anyone with his party. Clashing personalities and conflicting interests made it hard to find someone willing to work with Hidden Opportunity for an extended amount of time. The trio were just too set in their ways and it was hard for any new member to carve out a place for themselves.

#

Eventually they found the perfect addition in the form of a young ice mage named Rory after two years of searching. Much like Niels, the kid had grown up on the street after being kicked out the house by their father. Unlike most ice mages, who were heavily focused on offensive, single target magic with the ability to freeze them in place as a secondary consideration, Rory specialized in creating objects by freezing the moisture in the environment. They could build bigger constructs faster than any of their peers, even many of the earth mages that were classically trained in such spell schools.

In Niels mind, the kid was an unpolished diamond. His team didn’t need more damage. They just needed someone who could protect their allies and a fort of ice and snow available on demand sounded perfect for such a task.

Rory hadn’t been a member of the Adventurer’s Guild when Niels found them. They had flunked out of basic training after the local Career Family scions drove them out. The cost for membership in the guild in the area was high, likely due to the local Branch Head skimming gold from the guild’s coffers, so they had no money to sign up and take the course again. When they joined Hidden Opportunity, that wouldn’t be an issue.

It was the perfect solution for both the party and the mage. The party would have a new member with no pre conceptions. A blank slate perfectly positioned to be molded into a capable team member and comfortable ally. The mage in turn would have a sponsor to help them grow as quickly as possible.

#

Over the next year the group had only briefly dived into one dungeon. Instead, they mostly focused on taking various contracts. Niels hoped to fund the purchase and creation of a set of gear for Rory, along with upgrades to the rest of the team’s equipment. The group quickly tore through any and every profitable job they could find from guardsmen, to exploratory units, to monster slaying.

Rory proved to be a more perfect addition to Hidden Opportunity than Niels had dared to hope. Things were looking up for their small group, and Niels could almost taste returning to Lonolan in victory and glory. A little more in his war chest and he would be able to achieve his childhood goal. He would be able to change Kirlin City forever, or at least the small part of it he had called home as a child.

Their most recent job had been simple. An old man in Perth, the northernmost city in Adamel, wanted someone to go deep into the mountains. To trek even further into the inhospitable north than the city already was. Just past the very edge of civilization.

There, the old man said, they would find the dungeon name Forest of the Final Sleep. A dungeon so unpopular that the Adventurers Guild had not bothered sending anyone to check on it for almost a century. The dungeon had been ranked E+ then, but there was a small chance it had grown in the interim. Supposedly the dungeon didn’t even have good rewards. A deathtrap far from civilization with no redeeming qualities.

Except one. The reward for clearing the entire dungeon and defeating the final boss.

Supposedly the final reward, if Hidden Opportunity could claim it, had the potential to change their client’s life forever. And he was willing to pay anything to have it brought to him as quickly as possible.

He was dying, he explained, and feared that his family would fall into ruin without him. The other local powers of Perth had only left his family alone because they knew of his personal connections with a number of powerful individuals throughout the nation. Connections that none of his heirs had bothered to maintain themselves.

He needed a way to ensure the continued threat of political repercussions would keep his family safe or to create a new reason for the local powers to leave his family alone. The text was unclear what the final reward for clear the dungeon was, but he believed that it would be exactly what he needed to accomplish those goals. They would go to the dungeon. They would retrieve the final reward and he would pay them enough to outfit their party a dozen times over in return.