They all sat around a table at the Daisy Do.
Kaelen and Jax had drawn the short straw on quest turn-in duty, so Thalia, Selene, Liora, and Aiden were waiting at the table.
Liora and Aiden sat there confused.
Selene and Thalia, meanwhile, seemed to be doing various hobbies like this was the most normal thing in the world.
Selene was attempting to draw with her left arm. While some spots were a bit wonky, the drawing was surprisingly good.
Thalia, on the other hand, had a small piece of wood and seemed to be whittling it into shape with careful, precise cuts.
"I mean, did we mess something up?" Liora asked, crossing her arms. "Were we supposed to keep the Bone Beast alive?"
Aiden pulled out the quest paper and laid it on the table.
Stonebone Recovery (E)
Children claim a bone beast sleeps beneath the Stoneflower Shrine. Investigate and recover 1 fused phalange from the offering pile without disturbing the remains.
Reward - 900 gold + 1 Spirit-Warded Bone Charm
Failure - 500 gold for shrine disruption and nightmares
"No," Aiden said, reading over the quest again. "From the looks of it, we did everything right. Maybe there is a byline or something in here."
"Ah ha!" Liora said, pinning the paper to the table with one finger. "We must have disturbed the remains!"
"Did we ever see any remains?" Aiden asked, trying to think back.
"Nope," Will said helpfully. "There was the bone pile from the nest, but we never touched it. The bone we needed was part of the creature's armor."
Aiden and Liora stared at the quest for a moment.
Then they both asked in unison,
"Why was it so easy?"
Aiden thought back to their previous quests.
The Blood Trent had almost killed all of them.
The dungeon nearly killed Kaelen and Liora.
The Ymer situation was traumatizing in its own right.
Sure, the salamander quest and ale slime were not as bad, but for the salamanders, they had an item that fit the situation almost perfectly. As for the ale slime, it had been more scarring than dangerous.
So why had this medium-difficulty quest been so easy?
"Has it not crossed your minds that your starting experiences were not exactly normal?" Thalia asked, raising an eyebrow.
Liora and Aiden both turned to her with confused looks.
Selene joined in the confusion.
"I-I thought the battles so far were pretty average," Selene said. "Though we have toned it down in recent days."
"Are you joking?" Thalia asked. "Adventuring work can be difficult and deadly if proper measures are not taken, but the quest rank system has been refined over centuries. An average quest is meant to result in, at most, one major injury for a party. At best, none at all."
Selene, Liora, and Aiden stared at her.
"No, no," Will said, crossing his arms. "She has a point."
Aiden was not sure if Will could see his expression, but he gave him a confused look anyway.
"The plate quest was to find the source. You all proceeded to hunt down a Blood Trent despite that. The dungeon was an unmarked dungeon you stumbled across by accident. And the Ymer thing was not a sanctioned quest at all."
Will nodded like he was presenting evidence in court.
"Really, when you actually do a quest the way it is written, it is not easy, but it is also not supposed to be terrible."
Aiden sat there for a moment without saying a word.
Then he silently stood up.
"Oh my gods," he said. "We have been making everything harder without even realizing it."
Almost on cue, the tavern door opened.
Kaelen and Jax made their way inside.
Something was off.
Kaelen had a disappointed look on his face.
Beside him, Jax was walking on his back legs, balancing carefully as he made his way over.
Kaelen placed the coin bag on the table and turned to the rest of them.
"We got the gold."
Thalia opened the bag and started counting.
Surprisingly, outside of combat, everyone had started taking different roles in the party's logistics.
Thalia handled money and finances.
Kaelen handled diplomacy.
Liora handled haggling and prices.
Selene organized equipment and assisted with quest preparation.
Aiden handled driving and transportation.
Which left only Jax.
"You forgot to grab the Spirit-Warded Bone Charm," Thalia said, looking up at Kaelen. "It was part of our quest reward."
Kaelen refused to meet her eyes.
Jax, on the other hand, looked smug as he held the menu in one paw and pondered it.
Aiden glanced at him.
Then he noticed a strange strap on Jax's wrist.
Attached to it was what looked like a prosthetic wooden thumb, helping him hold the menu.
Everyone stared.
"He didn't," Thalia said, sounding both disappointed and worried.
"He did," Kaelen said, letting his face fall to the table.
Jax was wearing a set of rather expensive prosthetic thumbs because he had traded in part of their reward.
He seemed absolutely giddy as he lifted one paw and ordered a beer.
When it arrived, he used a single paw to lift it with the most suavely rich-asshole expression he could muster.
"I see where you all find your enjoyment of thumbs," Jax said before taking a sip. "They are marvelous."
Thalia silently stood and walked behind him.
"You have a receipt to return those, right?"
Jax raised an eyebrow and took another sip.
"No. They have to be made custom per fullblood. Not something you can just return."
Selene and Aiden noticed Thalia bring her strings in front of Jax's neck.
Both dove.
Aiden grabbed Thalia under the arms as her legs kicked and she bit at the air like she might catch Jax with her teeth.
Selene grabbed the string to prevent it from catching and cutting into Jax's neck.
"Don't worry, Aiden," Thalia said, thrashing in his grip. "I will have a lovely new hood ornament for you, and our party spending will drop significantly."
"No, Thalia. Stop. We need him!"
Selene pulled the string away from Jax's neck.
Thalia broke free.
Aiden immediately moved between her and Jax, and Selene did the same.
For a moment, there was a standoff.
Then Thalia suddenly returned to a normal posture and walked past them to sit back down.
Aiden turned.
Kaelen was shaking his head, one hand pressed to his forehead.
Liora and Jax were missing.
"W-where did they go?" Selene asked.
She turned to Thalia as she sat back down.
Thalia looked up at them with a small evil grin.
"I was a distraction. Liora is currently enacting Jax's punishment."
From outside, they heard a yip of pain.
A moment later, the doors opened and Liora walked in, spinning the straps of the fake thumbs around one finger.
Behind her came a massive ball of fluff.
If Aiden had not noticed the fur color, he would not have known the puffball was Jax.
Liora sat down with a content expression and high-fived Thalia.
Jax walked over, his voice teary.
"She took my thumbs and kept soaking me and speed-drying me, so I puffed up like this."
Part of Aiden wanted to feel bad.
Then they started dividing the money.
At that exact moment, Jax suddenly bolted from the bar.
Liora looked at the table where the thumbs had been.
They were gone.
She jumped up and sprinted after him.
The rest of them sat there and ate their meal.
"Should we go after them or…?" Will asked as he did a small somersault in the air.
Aiden watched the door for a moment.
"I say Jax gets what he gets for thumbing his nose at us."
Silence.
More silence.
"That was bad even for us," Will said.
"Yeah," Aiden admitted. "I agree with you there."