Micky was lying in bed naked in the morning when he realized that Squishy had spent the night on top of him. Then he realized he was much cleaner then he was when he got into bed. And that was after he had taken a bath.

It appeared Squishy had taken the time to clean him last night. Now he felt clean and sparkly. It appeared that he had hurt Squishy’s feelings last night when he had told her he didn’t want her riding on him yesterday. She had taken the time to clean herself and him and really anything. Even at this moment she was off in a corner cleaning, not knowing what she had done wrong. Micky felt bad and grabbed Squishy up in his arms.

“Shh, Shh, sorry it was my fault. You didn’t do anything wrong.” Micky said. He hadn’t realized how much he had hurt Squishy’s feelings when he didn’t allow her to ride him. He vowed to himself never to let it happen again. He would, but he fully intended not to at this moment, and would feel just as guilty every time.

So Micky did his morning pandiculation and got up. This time he knew better than to wake Princess so he just went downstairs to get breakfast.

Once finished there he went to the adventurers guild to pick up a quest. He was a village boy, early was what they did. So when he got there before even the [Clan] runners the [Adventerer’s Guild] staff was shocked, plus they hadn’t even opened up yet. They let him in since he promised he didn’t mind, and allowed him to browse the quests early.

This time he was able to choose two extermination quests a double delivery quest of there and back, and a collection quest. This didn’t exactly fill out his quota but it was brushing on what would be the max allowable for the guild.

Micky got back to the inn and went up to Princess’s room. “Alright Prin, time to get up.” And Micky was immediately conscripted into cuddle mode. This time he was prepared though.

“You know I have already excepted Quests right?” He said.

“So?” Prin said, trying to retain her sleeping state.

“If we don’t start now we’ll fail them.” Micky said.

“And?” Said Prin.

“You’re ok with failure?” Asked Micky.

At that moment Prin’s eyes opened like a predator. She focused on this insufferable twerp in her arms. The thing about an [Oath] [Sworn] was you had to manage them. They were easy enough to manage but that didn’t mean you could manipulate them easily. As a village boy he had sworn a lot of [Oath]s. Like he did not put a frog in Susan’s bed for the hundredth time etc.

Prin was a bandit. She never failed. Sure she wasn’t afraid of slacking or being lazy, but a bandit never failed. Failed bandits were criminals. And the criminals lined the walls even in this town, they filled the town square, they were everywhere slowly dying so that other people knew not to become bandits and end up like them. Which was why she never failed.

So when Micky said that they could go ahead and fail the quests, she was pissed. Because she knew she was being manipulated, and there was even the [Oath] in the back of her head exacerbating it. And she hated it because she knew she had to. Worse, she knew that if the [Party] failed it might blow her one chance at succeeding her family had given to her.

So she looked down with sharp eyes on her prey. “Oh, and breakfast is ready!” Said Micky. “Fine.” said Prin.

They headed down to breakfast to talk about what they were doing.

“Five quests. You sure are optimistic. Two of them are even part of a chain quest, we can’t fail either part.” Said Prin.

“Did you even check to make sure that this messenger quest isn’t a scam?” Said Prin.

“Well no, but why would it?” said Micky.

“Ugh, this is why you need me. Scamming on quests is the oldest trick in the book. Just have to steal the quest item and they are screwed. It’s probably alright though. Even if they are trying to scam us, because we’re so new, and because these other quests are the easy stuff of go tos we can get off the hook easy enough, and the guild takes scams seriously if we arbitrate.” Said Prin, Micky nodded.

“So are you ready? Next time if you have a problem you can come with-” “Uh, no” “-Otherwise you can do the poop cleaning quests yourself.” Miche finished.

“Ugh, fine, I get it already, geez.” Said Prin.

Prin, Squishy, and Micky walked into the nearby forest. It was actually Micky’s first real time [Party]ing in a forest. The trip here didn’t really count. He was kinda excited.

“We’re after [Goblin]s and [Wolf]s right?” Said Micky.

“How am I supposed to know, you’re the one that picked the quests. Also, what kind of dumb hic builds a house in the middle of a monster farm.” Said Prin. She was a bit grouchy that Micky got one over on her, but she would get him back for interrupting an Orks beauty sleep.

“The kind rich enough to have adventurers as errand boys, powerful enough to take care of any monsters, and anti-social enough to prefer monsters over people.” said Micky.

“Touche, though some say that monsters are more people than sapients, with their very direct socializing.” Said Prin.

Micky got a laugh out of that, “Oh yes, I can just hear a goblin say ‘May I eat you know sir?’ It would be wonderful.” Micky said.

“So [Goblin]s hu? Really? You couldn’t have chosen a more basic starter assignment?” Siad Prin.

“Yeah, well, goblins always need to be exterminated with their three ways of reproducing.” Said Micky.

“Yeah, and because they bury their eggs underground I bet their sewer system is crawling with goblins.” Said Prin.

“Yeah, and goblin larva can chew through anything until they reach air and burst open. So they are definitely in there. Then there is the fact they are born pregnant and can give birth randomly, oh [System] I hope we don’t come across a goblin orgy!” Said Micky, truly panicked now. He was pretty sure the goblins around here wouldn’t have abducted a town girl or something but that didn’t stop goblins from reproducing with each other.

“Fuckin parasitic basterds.” Said Prin. There were certain monsters that were just enemies of a certain race sex or species, and goblins were one of those ‘Enemies of everybody, but especially females’ races.

“Well, delivery first or goblins? And I hope I can get to do that [Crawl] sometime.” Said Micky.

“Let’s get that delivery over with, if we run into wolves or goblins on the way that’s their problem. We can also pick some of the basic healing herbs that are on the list.” said Prin, and Micky agreed.

The two traveled through the forest to the small cottage. The moment they came upon it they knew two things, it was an alchemist’s cottage, and why it was not attacked regularly by monsters. The cottage was surrounded by potent herbs. Now to Micky and Prin it didn’t seem so bad, but it also made them aware that anything but a sentient would find the herbs absolutely horrid.

Micky knocked on the door, “Hello?” came the reply. It was a women just showing the signs of aging. Yes she had wrinkles, but at the same time she looked youthful, and who said wrinkles would slow you down? She didn’t move like somebody old.

Micky handed off the package, “Is it alright if we perform some quests first before we pick up the package?” He said.

“Oh sure, sure, that’s usually what happens anyway. Usually the [Clan]s take up this quest but you’re new, they never send anybody new. Do you want to buy some potions? Guaranteed discount from what they sell in the store. Also if you’re on a fetch [Quest] for some herbs I’ll buy them, not all of course, and payment preferably in potions.” She said.

“Um, sure I guess? What do you mean ‘Guaranteed’?” Said Micky.

“Because they buy them from me and mark them up silly. That’s why the [Clan]s have a monopoly on this, and fight over it. Then they sell it off amongst each other. You probably got a lot of young [Clanner]s yelled at, don’t ya know? I wouldn’t recommend trying to sell the excess to them though, they have their ways.” Said the not old but not young alchemist.

“Mmm, then we’ll be off, got goblins to slay and quotas to fill.” Said Micky.

“Finally!” Said Prin.

“Boyfriend?” Asked the knowing alchemist.

“Worse, annoying boss.” Said Prin.

“Ahh, I got ya.” said the alchemist with a conspiratorial smirk.

They arrived at the goblin village easy enough. Now the problem was how to attack without killing them all off, but making them run with a large enough group that they would just attack the next goblin settlement. Of course the goblins would be regularly culled, but because they reproduced so fast, the best way was just to herd the goblins around so that they killed each other instead.

Micky surveyed the battlefield. It was time for battle!