A few days earlier…

"So, why did you want to see me, Captain?" Ragna questioned.

Captain Laerton's room was as cramped and cluttered with junk as it always was, and the blonde woman was already seated in her chair, a can of beer open, which she had almost glugged down fully.

Laerton wiped at her mouth and let out a loud hiss. "Ragna Ran!"

"Yes?"

"Can you believe them!" Captain Laerton's eye twitched, and she crushed the can she was holding, spilling what remained of it to the floor. "How dare they!"

"Them?"

"The higher-ups."

"They're pissed that we aren't doing enough quests." Laerton grabbed another hot can of beer off her desk and popped it open. She took a long swig from it, most of it running down her chin. "They said they want all the guilds to do more dungeon raids every week and take on other odd jobs, so they're going to be sending us 'personal' missions."

"That doesn't sound good." Ragna rubbed his chin. "And this is after they still haven't given us the other two recruits that we're owed?"

"That's right." Laerton nodded, and she winced. "These quests are mandatory also. All high ranking. They said they're going to pick them out for everyone personally, and each guild will be required to take them. Knowing our luck, these quests could be what wipes the damn guild out."

"What do you need me to do?" Ragna asked, getting serious.

Laerton let out a sigh, and she looked up at the roof. "I don't know. At least not yet. This caught me totally off guard. I'll need some time to think of a plan."

"I understand."

"When these quests show up, I'll leave them to you, Vlad, and Tea. You three might be the only ones who can do them. Also, in the meantime, do your best to train the recruits, as well as Falco and anyone else who needs it. We need everyone to get ready just in case. There's no telling what or how these missions will work. The other guilds seem fine with it, but I've seen the way they looked at me. They're planning something."

"Worry not." Ragna placed a hand over his heart. "I'll train young Olivia and Davi and make sure that they'll be able to handle anything that is thrown at them. I'll quadruple my efforts. They'll thank me later when they're strong enough to beat me." He joked, but Laerton didn't smile.

"Ragna."

"Yes?"

"There's a storm coming." Laerton scratched at her chin, her nail scraping against her flesh hard enough to draw blood. "I can sense it. My Instinct skill is going haywire. I don't know what's coming, but be ready."

Ragna nodded. "Don't worry. We'll get through it."

Laerton took another drink. "I hope so."

***

Present day…

"Phoenix Flight? We sent that report in over a week ago, and yet they sent us Phoenix Flight? Are you fucking kidding me?"

The chief of Violet was a little old lady. She had a hunched back and dark grey hair. She was covered in wrinkles and looked like she would fall over at any moment. Despite her appearance, however, her hand kept slamming an old wooden cane down onto the ground, over and over again, cracking the flooring, and her teeth were clenched tightly; her eyes were angrily staring at the three people in her office.

"I couldn't have gotten anyone else?" The old lady spat out. "Myth was too busy to send some of his Pantheon members? What about Hydra Storm? Last year, the Captain themselves showed up to save my village! I just had to get you assholes!"

"Now, Ma'am," Ragna tried to calm her down and raised a hand. "I assure you, you can trust our guild-"

"Well, I don't trust your guild!" The old lady yelled out in rage. "We heard what happens to your kind and what you do! Half of you are mutants, and the other half are criminals! How could you ever expect me to trust a band of freaks?!"

Ragna's eyes suddenly narrowed, and the air in the room seemed to shift. Davi and Olivia both looked awkwardly down at the ground. It felt like being in a room with one of your parents when they finally snapped and yelled at someone else. Ragna managed to keep most of his cool and didn't scream at the old lady, thankfully.

The office room was small and placed at the center of a random shack in the village. It was extremely hot in the room as well, lacking any form of AC or fans, and only a few shelves, a desk, and three chairs were in the room. The old lady was seated on one of the other sides of the desk, while Davi and Olivia both took the other two. This meant Ragna was standing, and because of how freakishly tall he was, he had to slump down so that his head wouldn't hit the roof.

Also, due to Ragna's bad luck and the fact that he didn't have any shoes on, he had somehow managed to step on three loose boards that had nails poking out of them on his way over to the office.

He wasn't the only one having a bit of terrible luck, either. Davi had been rammed into by three different birds, who all somehow smashed into the back of his head, and Olivia had been so caught off guard and distracted by the chaos that she had walked into a wall three different times.

Needless to say, they were all a little ticked off by the time they were instructed to go see the chief. A lot of the people in Violet also kept shooting them dirty looks as they walked, which didn't help.

Olivia knew Phoenix Flight wasn't a popular guild, but it was starting to dawn on her that she was always going to be looked down upon while she was in this guild. People weren't going to respect her or root for her. If she wanted to be a hero who could save everyone and help Davi, she'd have to put in a lot of work.

Ragna gave the woman in front of him an intense look that managed to silence her. "You're welcome to kick us out if you want," Ragna began. "However, I feel you should know. When a dungeon first appears, the monsters don't instantly come out of it. They have to build up the strength to do that. Since this dungeon has been here for a week, the chances are good the monsters within will be exiting soon. Unfortunately, many of the guilds are busy; they have just welcomed new recruits, and a lot of them have been personally assigned tasks to complete. When you started this quest, the king's circuit magic flowed through the land, and in that moment, his eyes were on the dungeon, judging the level and the energy of it. This particular dungeon is a low-rank one. Since it's a low-rank one, this means that a lot of bigger guilds have no reason to send people out here, as it would be a waste of time. They're all trying to one-up each other. Maybe the matter would be different if the dungeon were in an important town, but let's face it, Violet isn't exactly a notable place. As such, I doubt another Arcane Knight will arrive as we have. The only way you'll get another group is when one of the monsters finally escapes and puts one of your people down. So, are you willing to wait for someone to die? Because that's the only way I can see a Knight being sent out to you at this current moment."

The little old lady's lip quivered slightly, and she looked extremely ticked off at Ragna's words, but she was also smart enough to know that he was correct.

Violet didn't earn the kingdom a ton of money. They were an extremely small and impoverished village, out in the middle of nowhere. Over a full year ago, a similar incident had already occurred.

A dungeon had appeared, their town requested aid, and the guild marked the quest as a low-ranked one, so no Knights bothered to be sent out! Of course, once the dungeon broke and the monsters were able to roam around freely, the rank of the quest shot up, and then the closest available Knight was ordered to arrive, but that was after the monsters had already ruined her village.

If the quest wasn't a high rank, most Knights simply didn't care because they wouldn't be able to grow and harvest powerful monster parts or find good enchanted loot.

The thought of going through something like that again and losing people all over again made the chief's stomach flip.

"Damn you, Knights. Damn the king, the kingdom, and all of you." The chief growled. "How dare you claim to be heroes?"

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"I never said we were heroes," Ragna said sternly. "The other Knights might try to say that they were, but I know what I and my guild members really are. We're mercenaries. The others won't offer their service to you, so Phoenix Flight has personally come to help. Do you want your help or not?"

"Whatever. You're just after the dungeon itself, aren't you?" The woman sneered.

"And the payment." Ragna nodded his head. "Typically, the way a quest works is that you send out a report on what the issue is and then are told how much you have to pay for the hiring of a Knight based on how high of a rank the quest is. You also usually pay the Knights up front, and the money is sent digitally."

"That's right! It was a pain in the ass heading down to Lotus just to find one of those stupid boxes so I could send the report in!" The woman nodded her head.

"When the quest is sent out, all guild members of at least the proper Knight rank can access the quest board," Ragna explained. "Here we can see all the quests that haven't been selected. Normally, we have to accept the quest through the app, at which point the server approves the users taking it and sends them out on the mission. The funds you offered up will then be transferred into our guild account. In Phoenix Flight, things are a little bit different, however."

"Oh?" The woman's eyes narrowed slightly. "How so?"

"We don't have an official guild account for payments," Ragna stated simply. "As such, I didn't accept the mission on the app. We can never properly accept quests on there. Instead, I decided to come down here myself and speak to you. Now that we're here and offering our assistance, I'm here to make a new deal. We'll do the quest for half the price the guild was charging you for, and in return, we want half of that money up front, and for you to go and cancel the quest request so that other Knights won't arrive or double charge you. The other half of the money, you can give us after the quest is over, and if we fail, you don't have to worry about that since we'll be dead."

The old lady rubbed her chin, and her eyes narrowed slightly. It wasn't a bad deal. Half the price was extremely generous, and then half of those Bells up front meant she'd effectively only be paying one-fourth of the required amount to get the Knights to enter the dungeon, as opposed to the full price the other guilds required up front.

Not to mention, this was Phoenix Flight. A terrible guild, but they were still Knights. They'd be able to get the job done since the quest really was low-ranked, and then when they were done, she could just refuse to pay them the rest of the funds.

They'd have no way to prove that any such deal was made, since it was done only through word of mouth and not via the app. If the guild got violent with her, she could even send in a lawsuit and claim they forced her to take the first quest down and threatened her. The guild would be forced to pay her a substantial amount for the act, and it was likely that everyone would just believe her, since people hated Phoenix Flight that much.

This was almost too good to be true. Not only would she get rid of the dungeon problem before anything bad happened to her village, but she'd also be able to force the Arcane Knights to pay her!

Slowly, a crooked smile formed on the chief's face, and she held her hand out. "Alright." The old lady nodded. "We have a deal. Half the money up front, and since you're here in person and not accepting through the app, you'll receive a discount. That sounds good to me."

Ragna gave a genuine smile and carefully shook the tiny hand. "I'm glad you saw things my way. You won't regret this."

The old lady chuckled. "Oh, I'm sure I won't." She pulled open a drawer and shuffled around a bit before finally holding out a small bag of silver and golden bells, which she offered up to Ragna. "These belong to you now. Take them, and I'll send someone to Lotus to cancel the quest while you lot deal with the dungeon."

Ragna took the bag, opened the front of his Speedo, and tucked the coins away inside of it. They seemed to vanish magically. "Is there anyone we can talk to first about the dungeon?" Ragna asked before he left. "Like the person who saw it first?"

The chief gave a nod. "That'll be Crowe. You can find him near the back of the village. He runs an alchemy station down there. Please speak with him if you would like more information. Now get out of my hut."

"Yes, Ma'am!" Ragna saluted. "It is a pleasure doing business with you." He, as well as Davi and Olivia, finally left the tiny room and stepped back out into the village square.

"That old lady seems a little sinister." Davi hummed casually. "My scar throbbed a little when she was speaking. Danger Sense doesn't like her."

Olivia gave a hesitant nod. "I get the feeling she seems to think this will all work out best for her, and that she also doesn't exactly have our best interests at heart."

"Can you blame them?" Ragna looked around at the small village. "After all, they live in the Esteria kingdom."

Olivia frowned at his response. "You have something against the kingdom."

"I do."

"So then why are you a Knight for it?"

"Lesser of evils." Ragna let out a laugh, and his eyes seemed to shimmer with sadness for a moment. "You know, growing up here, Olivia, you likely don't know it, but you have a good life. I say this as someone who has been around the world. I was born in Rossum, shipped overseas to Mordheim for a war, and spent part of my life recovering in Gallenth. Let me tell you, out of every place I've been, this kingdom is without a doubt the best in the world. Esteria has open borders. It lacks slaves, and its people don't starve or die in the streets. They allow people from other lands to live amongst them and build a community amongst peers. In this kingdom, you're free to love who you want as well. Compared to every other country or nation, the land Haru created is like a paradise."

"I thought you said you have something against it?"

"I do." Ragna clenched his hands tightly into a fist. "Esteria is the best place to live; that much is true, but it is still not without its flaws or sins. Every land has them; Esteria just has the least. The flaws it does have are still bad, though. For one, there is a significant power imbalance. Despite claiming they allow people from other lands to live here, the system that Esteria uses is made to support the people who run it. In other words, the nobles. People from other lands and commoners are used to give the nobility more power, who, in turn, are used to give the branch nobles more power, who, in turn, are used to give the king of this land all the power. Those from the branch families are built for success, and even Haru's Knights, which represent freedom above all else and are not strictly meant to be bound to any land, are directly under the king's thumb. Esteria is a machine, one that uses its gears to the best of its abilities. The king sees everything in terms of numbers. Even you and Davi. Why did he place the two of you into Phoenix Flight? Well, it's because clearly he has some idea that you two can serve some sort of purpose. You can do your role well enough to help save his people, as all Knights do, but at the same time, he has no reason to put effort or resources into the two of you, so he placed you into the one guild where it won't matter what happens to both of you. You'll simply serve, fattening the kingdom up, and then the curse will kill you, and he won't have lost a valuable thing."

Olivia felt sick at her stomach as she listened to Ragna's words. "Is that true? It can't be right? Is Nier Sini really such a monster?"

Ragna gave a lazy shrug. "You don't have to believe me, but do consider this village as an example. The village has a dungeon open up near them, and they request help, yet no Knights show up. Not until the village itself is under attack does the king order a Knight to arrive to deal with that threat. Why not prevent the attack before it begins? Well, that's simple. This village doesn't pay enough taxes for the king to particularly care, but the moment its taxes stop being paid entirely, he suddenly wants this precious village to be protected and saved. Of course, this is only after the village has been harmed, and the villagers will have to pay to have their place fixed. And who do you think they pay to get the funding needed to fix their homes? Saving them before the threat comes doesn't earn money, but saving them when they're on the verge of being destroyed?"

"But Knights are supposed to be heroes!" Olivia argued.

"And plenty are. Many Knights don't care about things like that and do jump to the aid when they notice something is wrong, but think about how big this kingdom is and the tens of thousands of villages that exist. The good guys can't be there all the time, can they?" Ragna hummed. "That's why it's important to help out when you can. Just because the system is corrupt doesn't mean its people have to be. That's why we'll help this village. The other good guys are busy, so we'll take the burden on ourselves."

Olivia calmed down a bit at his words. "So we're the good guys in this situation?" The judgmental eyes that were on her didn't make her feel like much of a hero.

Davi looked around at the people and didn't seem to mind the stares. He was used to it. It was a little unusual getting stared at when he wasn't even in his armor, but the fact that he had the mark of a guild upon his robes was likely a dead giveaway that he was a Knight.

A real Arcane Knight.

'Weird.'

Eventually, the three of them found the station the chief had referred to. It was an open area, with a wooden fence around it, and several tables laid out, all filled with various flowers, seeds, roots, and other things Davi didn't recognize. A cauldron was placed in the middle, filled with a bubbly, green liquid that emitted a wave of steam.

A man stood in front of the cauldron, dressed in long, white robes similar to those of a doctor, and had a piece of cloth covering the lower part of his face. He wore yellow gloves and goggles that kept his eyes safe as he used a metal spoon to stir whatever was in the cauldron.

"Yo!" Ragna gave a half wave as he and his two students approached. "We were-"

"Don't come any closer!" The man, Crowe, yelled out. The man glared up at them through his goggles and growled. "I saw you three coming in here. You're with the Phoenix Flight guild. Don't think I don't know about your bit of bad luck! You get too close and you could ruin my potion!"

"Potion?" Olivia glanced around Ragna and looked at the cauldron. "You know how to make potions? I guess you'd have to if you run an alchemy stand-"

Right on cue, there was a loud screech, and from up above, a bird that had miraculously suffered a heart attack suddenly dropped from the sky, nose-dived into the cauldron, and then the entire metal container exploded!

The blast wasn't big enough to harm anyone, but it did stink badly, and smoke rapidly expanded through the small village. Olivia broke out into a coughing fit while Davi swatted at the air and forced the odor away from him with an enhanced strike. Ragna just took it and kept walking forward, reaching the cursing Crowe.

When he did, Ragna patted the man on the shoulder. "Sorry about that. What were the chances a bird would fall in! Maybe don't do your experiments outside next time!"

Crowe gritted his teeth and removed his face mask and goggles. He had simple blonde hair that was messy, and now that his face wasn't covered, he actually looked a little handsome, though he had a long scar that ran down the side of his face. "What did you do!"

"Nothing, the bird did it!" Ragna smiled. "Mother Nature, am I right?" Ragna's smile then faded, and he looked down at the man. "We were told you have information on the dungeon."

Crowe sighed and took his gloves off. "Right." He walked over to his table, where a heavy backpack resided. He picked it up and slung it over his shoulders. "Alright then, follow me."

"Follow you?" Davi raised an eyebrow. "Where are we going?"

The blonde man rolled his eyes. "Where do you think? I'm going to take you to the dungeon."

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