CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 16

"Rise of the Strongest Swordmage" was a novel that garnered much interest from readers since its publication. While its story wasn't entirely groundbreaking, it was written in a way that left readers enthusiastic. The author's ability to craft characters and plots that appealed to readers was good enough to keep his work dominating the novel rankings for a long time.

It was a novel that entertained many for quite some time, until after the first two volumes, the story began to lose all its hype. It's not precisely known what led the author to write poorly, but there were rumors that all the fame and money had gotten to his head.

The third volume was a series of disappointments, and gradually the novel began to lose more and more readers. David, along with a few others, was one of the last readers of this novel who had decided to stick with it until the end, always hoping that the novel would return to its former glory.

The events narrated by the novel revolved around Erwin Grindel, a war orphan who had decided to become strong enough to exterminate all the nightmares and avenge his family and the people of his city.

Erwin was the only one to survive the massacre, thanks to the help of a mysterious being who decided to bestow upon him its legacy. Thanks to this, Erwin became strong quickly and later joined the magic academy with top grades, where he found the first members of his future team with whom he would set out to exterminate the nightmares.

In this team of heroes, who for various reasons had decided to follow Erwin in his revenge, there was one person whose fate had enraged the fans. Indeed, it was the first step that led the novel to its ruin.

This person was a mage of humble origins who had shown great talent in fire magic, one of the few elements in which it was difficult to progress and become strong. This person was none other than Clarisse.

Her great talent, combined with the fact that she and Erwin had similar goals, led her to join the team of heroes. The girl's personality, combined with all her efforts not to fall behind because of her element, had endeared her to the readers.

But her future was quite bleak. Due to an incident orchestrated by one of the members of the heroes' group, she was considered a traitor to the human race and killed by her own team.

Reily was one of the many readers who had erupted most on the novel's chat because of this event. The author's response to this uproar further infuriated the readers.

According to what he had said, his girlfriend had left him, and he couldn't suffer alone, so he decided to make his readers suffer too.

The girl, who had won over the readers with her hard work and had become one of the strongest mages of her time, was standing in front of him at this moment, thanking him for his help.

It took Reily a while to calm his tumultuous state of mind. Being a great fan of that novel and one of the admirers of this character, this was a great moment for Reily.

Although he had gotten over that event, he still had a certain admiration for her. He had decided to stay away from the team of heroes for several reasons, and one of them was that knowing everything that would happen in the future, he knew that they were natural trouble magnets, and the last thing he wanted was to end up dead in any of the incidents involving them.

But at that moment, he was starting to have second thoughts. If there was one thing he wanted to change about this novel, it was the event that would lead to this girl's death.

A few seconds passed, and Reily was still lost in his thoughts as he still held Clarisse's hand, who didn't know what was going through the boy's mind in front of her, and didn't know how to continue the conversation.

Reily snapped out of his thoughts, and seeing that he was still holding the girl's hand, quickly let go as he apologized.

"Ah, sorry, I got lost in my thoughts for a moment," he said and then continued.

"Anyway, it's late, and I suppose you want to stay to keep your friend company at this moment. I'll take care of informing the guild," he said as he prepared to leave.

Clarisse, hearing him, wanted to stop him, but after thinking for a moment, changed her mind and said, "I understand, and once again thank you for everything, we wouldn't be here without you. If you want, we can hunt together sometime in the future."

"No problem, in a few days, I'll also join the guild, and if you want to hunt together, you can find me there," and with that, they bid farewell.

Before leaving, Reily explained how he had met Clarisse and how they had escaped from the scene of the incident.

The receptionist understood the situation and said they would take care of everything else, including retrieving the two fallen adventurers.

Reily didn't hope much for their recovery, as the beasts would hardly ignore a free meal, but it wasn't his problem, so he didn't think much about it and left the guild.

It was already deep into the night when he left the guild, and there were only two hours left until the end of the daily mission. Reily knew that it was pointless to try to hunt at this hour.

Between going into the forest and finding prey, it would take a long time, and even considering the lack of time left for hunting, going into the forest at night wasn't the best idea. Just think, the last time Reily stayed until late in the forest, he was almost eaten by a crazed vampire.

He doubted he would encounter another vampire anytime soon since it was very rare to find them after most of them withdrew beyond the mountain range and sealed the entrance to the dark lands, something many speculated was due to the appearance of the nightmares.

As he walked slowly through the illuminated streets of the city, he decided to speak to the system:

"System, tell me, are there consequences if you fail to complete a mission?" he said as he remembered some characters from novels he had read who were given to monsters or left in deserted places if they failed to complete the missions the system gave them. 

He hoped his system wouldn't do something like that to him.

"[Host, an incomplete mission will be reintroduced, with a small penalty, mainly consisting of lowering the rewards you will receive for completing it.]" said the system in its usual monotone voice that as usual didn't betray any emotion in it.

"[The mission will be reintroduced until it is completed.]" it added, while Reily had just started to reflect on his situation.

'great, but I guess it's okay like this too, it's not like I didn't earn anything from today's hunt' he said as he looked at his screen where 3 Thorkas corpses were displayed.

Reily had decided that he would try to complete the daily mission when it was reintroduced tomorrow, as going to complete it today wasn't worth it, not that he had many chances of doing it today anyway.