“Type Zero?”
Julius repeated the strange-sounding term, a hint of confusion visible in his black eyes. “What does that mean?”
“It means starting from zero and being one of a kind!”
Helos talked nonsense with a straight face; her cheeks behind the mask didn’t even flush. “Don’t you think the name is cool? It’s full of mystery and… uh, technical flair!”
“Is… is it?”
Julius scratched his head. Although he still didn’t quite get it, he had no reason to object since Helos suggested it. After all, when it came to naming things, he admitted his talent was practically zero.
He glanced at Gavi, who stood silently beside him. The doll maid remained as silent as ever, the pinpoints of light in her eye sockets calm, clearly having no concept of a “team name.”
Even if Helos said their team was called “The Unlucky Noble Daughter and Her Two Unfortunate Teammates,” Gavi would likely just nod silently.
And so, “Team Type Zero,” a code name that sounded both avant-garde and incomprehensible, was officially decided upon under these rather hasty circumstances.
Morse watched the newly born team, a slight smile appearing on his face. He handed three bronze badges to them one by one.
“Very well. From now on, you are the ‘Type Zero’ team, a D-rank adventurer squad officially registered with the Olivias Adventurer’s Guild.”
He looked at Helos and added meaningfully, “I hope you can live up to this rank, as well as the strength you just showed.”
“Of course!”
Helos accepted the badges without hesitation, her tone full of confidence.
After completing the registration, Helos almost couldn’t wait as she rushed to the massive wooden board on the other side of the hall, which was covered in commissions. Julius and Gavi followed closely.
On the board, parchment commissions were layered atop one another, ranging from the lowest-level tasks, such as finding lost cats, to higher-level ones like hunting high-grade magical beasts, escorting caravans, or acting as a magical research assistant. Everything was there.
Helos’s gaze bypassed the miscellaneous low-level tasks and locked onto the D-rank commission area with precision.
Her eyes scanned the commissions one by one, her pale purple eyes sparkling with excitement behind her mask.
“Found it!”
Soon, her finger stopped on a commission with somewhat messy handwriting.
[D-rank Commission: Hunt a Stone-Skin Lizard]
[Details: Recently, traces of stone-skin lizards have appeared in the mountain pass area south of the city. Several quarry workers and passing merchants have been attacked.]
[Requirement: Adventurers are to subjugate them and bring back their hard skin and Monster Core as proof.]
[Reward: 10,000 Soli]
“A stone-skin lizard?”
Julius leaned in for a look, his brow furrowing slightly. “Isn’t this a bit too dangerous?”
Helos didn’t answer immediately. Instead, she peeled the commission off the board, turned toward the counter, and asked the still-busy female receptionist for details about the stone-skin lizard.
The receptionist was clearly impressed by this “instantly famous” rookie team. She set aside her previous disdain and patiently pulled a record regarding the stone-skin lizard from a thick stack of documents.
The stone-skin lizard, as the name suggested, was a lizard-type magical beast with skin as hard as rock.
They usually lived in mountainous areas, measuring about 2 to 3 meters in length, their bodies covered in thick, rock-like cuticular skin.
“This magical beast’s defense is extremely high, and it can even weaken the effects of some attack magic.”
The receptionist adjusted her glasses and pointed to an illustration in the manual.
“Ordinary swords find it difficult to cause effective damage to their skin. Even experienced warriors need heavy weapons to aim for relatively weak spots like joints or the belly to break their defense.”
“Not only that,” she continued, “a stone-skin lizard’s claws and tail are highly aggressive. Their claws can easily tear through leather armor, and that rock-hammer-like tail — if you’re hit, even a knight in heavy armor might end up with broken bones.”
“The most troublesome part is that they are cunning and good at using the rocky environment for camouflage and ambushes. Many inexperienced adventurers suffer fatal sneak attacks before they can even see the creature.”
The receptionist closed the manual and looked at Helos with a bit of advice in her tone.
“In short, although the stone-skin lizard is only a low-tier magical beast, it’s considered quite dangerous among D-rank commissions. If encountered alone, it would be very tricky. I suggest you’d better — “
“We’ll take this one.”
Before the receptionist could finish, Helos interrupted her decisively.
“Eh?”
Not just the receptionist, but even Julius was stunned.
“Helos, are you serious?” Julius lowered his voice. “That’s not an easy opponent.”
Helos ignored him and simply stared at the commission.
To be honest, she had originally wanted to find some safer tasks, like hunting a few spine-back boars or clearing out a group of slimes.
Those tasks didn’t pay well, but at least the risks were manageable, and they should be enough to unlock the Valiance Arts.
But…
The scene of unlocking the Branch of Life flashed in her mind.
She had failed countless times, wasted a vast amount of materials, and finally, only through luck did she manage to create a truly “effective potion” to satisfy the unlocking conditions.
This made her realize that the unlocking conditions for Ultimate Alchemy might not be as simple as they seemed.
[Kill a magical beast by any method]
‘If I really just find two non-threatening magic rabbits and solve them easily with one strike each, would that really count as satisfying the requirement of “Valiance”?’ she wondered. ‘Probably not.’
She had a strong intuition that if she chose a goal that was too easy, she might get stuck at the final step, unable to unlock it no matter what, just like when she was making the potion.
In that case, it was better to start with a truly challenging goal from the beginning.
Helos took a deep breath and looked up. Her pale purple eyes, hidden behind the mask, flickered with an unprecedented light of determination. She gently pushed the commission toward the receptionist.
“That’s right. We’re taking this mission.”
After saying that, she turned to look at Julius. “What? Is our ‘Team Type Zero’ unable to defeat a mere stone-skin lizard? Can’t you have a little confidence in yourself?”
The girl stepped forward and tapped on the light armor Julius was wearing. “At least we should do justice to this gear of yours, right?”
“Uh…”
Julius was left speechless. Truthfully, out of safety concerns, he wouldn’t have agreed with Helos’s idea.
But she wasn’t wrong; he really did need to have some confidence in them. Moreover, they had Gavi backing them up.
“Fine, since you put it that way.” Julius sighed, his eyes becoming firm. “Then I’ll — see this through to the end!”
I feel like she should still start with easier ones to gain expereince.