The Masked Guild

Job Info: The Masked Guild

Shane had been posted from the HQ to Clover Town as part of an emergency operation. For the past week, the once peaceful town has been plagued by incessant acts of harassment from a guild known as the Masked Guild. Members of the dark guild have been appearing in and out of town. There had been multiple cases of caravan robberies, targeting merchants returning from their trading in other cities. Even when mages had been hired to protect against the members of the Masked Guild, they were still attacked.

Reports that came in gave them enough information for the Rune Knights to draw an organizational hierarchy of this dark guild. The attacks on the caravans without mages had been carried out the lower members who wore silver masks and carried spears, occasionally accompanied by larger members who were completely clothed in gold mask and black cloaks. The latter carried large scimitars that could easily hack through anything.

The attacks on the mages proved to be a larger headache. They were seated around an oval conference table, with Shane seated beside the head of the Clover Town Rune Knight Branch, with the others Knights of the local branch taking up the other places. There were a total of ten men here, excluding Shane and the branch leader. All of the files regarding the attacks on the mages were in front of him, strewn across the table while he read through one of the earlier reports.

The Masked Guild was quite organized, possessing mages within their ranks as well. Their attacking method had always been the same, always using the same Earth magic to brutalize the local mages. Broken ribs and bones were the common injuries shared by their victims. But that wasn’t the extent of their magic. Entire caravans have been reported to been completely lifted off the ground with pillars of earth.

“Ten cases. Four without magic, and six with. Over seven days,” the silver-haired Rune Knight said after calculating the files in front of him. He had separated them into two piles. “And what has the Rune Knights done to alleviate this problem?”

Shane’s fierce glare fixated on the Rune Knight branch leader left the man squirming and fidgeting in his seat as he stammered and tried to answer. He kept on looking back to his men for support, but all of them had their heads bowed.

“We.. uh… you can see… that we don’t have too many men here… We wanted to protect the merchants… But you see… We have manpower issues…” the branch leader spoke in a disjointed sentence, his head bowed as well. Blinking a few times as he tried to come to terms with the explanation, Shane exhaled forcefully and then looked up and down the entire table. None of them dared to even look back up at him. He was really going to have to report this back to Mythal when he got back.

Shane stood up from his seat and walked out of the meeting room, and quickly stepped back just as a Rune Knight returning from patrol charged right past before stopping.

“Sir!” the Rune Knight shouted with a salute when he saw Shane. “There’s an attack going on outside of town right now!”

No further words were needed, as Shane charged out of the branch office, heading straight for the site of the attack.

[563 words]
[Total WC: 563 / 7000]

Rina had been looking off into the distance at her newish home, and was wondering if she was truly doing what she needed to as the defender of the Heavenly Gardens. She felt...well, useless. She felt as though that she wasn't getting as strong as she needed to be at all. Yet, she realized that she needed to fight the Heavenly Gardens Goddess's brother soon, and Rina was not prepared enough at all. She felt a feeling of impending doom coming, as it circled her stomach. She realized that she was noticeably too weak for her mission. Usually, she would be doing some sort of job that would be helping her get stronger, but she realized that she was getting less and less persistent to get stronger to beat the god. It was something that hadn't bit at her for a while, but now that fear was here. What if she isn't strong enough to beat him, and both the garden and her rots away, because of some stupid idiotic god who believes he should have complete and utter power over everything. She was so comfortable with life, that it was as though she forgot about him. Her life was getting better, so she felt like she didn't need to worry about him as much, because she had her own life to worry about. But now, she knew how close the battle was coming, and she was scared. She didn't want to leave her family alone, like how her father did when he died. She was so scared what would happened to her family after another dead. If she were to die, she wouldn't know what to do with herself. Well...she couldn't do anything anyways, but thats besides the point. The point is, is that she couldn't comfort her family after all that happened.

So, as she looked down at the floor, she stood up, and decided that she needed to go out looking for a job, something that could help her become stronger than she could possible be. As she stood at the door, she looked out at her mother and sister, and said to them, "Bye guys I love you so much!" With that, she walked out the door, hoping to find something good. It took only a few moments for her to get back to the guild hall. She knew she had paperwork, but that wasn't what she needed to do right now. Paperwork was not as important as what she knew she needed to do, grow. So, as she looked up at the job board, she saw multiple request, of many different ranks. However, the jobs seemed to be mostly taken up, leaving behind mostly low ranking jobs. That was quite worrying, because having such low level quests on her repertoire was not gonna be helpful if she had to fight an actual god. So, she scoured endlessly looking for something. That was when she saw it, a tiny edge of a flyer hanging out from behind one of the posters. It seemed to be from a while ago, and it was an exclusive request for Fairy Tail. A higher up in the guild actually. Rina wondered how this passed by them, because usually Fairy Tail would be notified of requests like these, since a lot of money could be made off of the. As she stared at it, she saw the request, and it said that she needed to go to Clover Town to try and fight off some sort of masked guild.

They seemed to be causing a lot of mischief in the town, trying to get info out of it. What info? Nobody knows, at least nobody knows for right now. Either people like Rina haven't even seen the job to work on it, or everyone who did died trying. That wasn't very pleasing to Rina's mind, but at least it was a job that she knew would be challenging enough for her to get stronger. Time was closing in, which meant she needed to do as much as possible to be able to know she's strong enough to beat her one true rival. The rival to destroy all rivals. She didn't know what would happen after she beat him, but she knew that something good would happen. She hoped something good would happen, because she needs more of it. Living her life in the bad all her life, has made her lust for good fortune. So, when good things happened to her, she always needed more. Now that her life is sky rocketing, she is always on the lookout for something good to happen to her, like a surplus of money, or exactly what she's doing now, a job. That was besides the point though, she wasn't going to just sit there staring at that page, staring off into nothing. No, she was going to run out of this place and get to the nearest train towards Clover Town.

wc: 847
tc:847/7000

Shane was the first to arrive at the scene of the attack, just in time to provide assistance. Two other mages assumed to be hired to protect the caravan were being outnumbered by the silver-masked members of the Masked Guild, overwhelmed by the ten men armed with long spears. As Shane observed while he got nearer, he understood why the mages were having such difficulty with the weapons. The spears were barbed. Not just content with the usual thrusting and slashing, any person attacked with the spears would find their flesh quickly serrated.

The silver-haired Rune Knight jumped into the fray without much thought, in time to use Breaker, his extendable magic spear, raise it above his face in its sword form, blocking the two spears that were slashing downwards. His left hand shot up with Knight requip-ed, aimed at the chest of one of the two and he pressed down on the trigger, the energy bullet punching into the man’s chest and sending him back a few feet away. With the pressure on Breaker lessened, Shane pushed upwards and indirectly caused the man to fling his arms apart, leaving his chest wide open too.

A high kick solved the issue, sending him flying back as well to join his partner. Despite gaining new weapons like Huntsman and Knight, Shane still preferred close combat. Sending back Huntsman into his storage dimension, the Rune Knight left the mage he had just protected alone and ran off to quell the attacks of the other silver masks.

Another two were fighting the other hired mage. Shane approached from them back with a lunging charge, tackling one of them with Oak Smash, a full-body tackle that led with his shoulder. He hit the silver mask squarely in the back, pushing the masked man directly into the mage’s direction. Fortunately, the mage was wielding a greatsword and was utilizing it quite skillfully against his twin attackers, despite not being able to produce any advantage. Taking the chance, the mage straightened and tightened his grip on his sword and thrust it forward, impaling the pushed silver mask on his sword.

The other attacker wasn’t faring too well as well. The moment Shane had stopped from his charge, he had struck out his right hand, grabbing the man’s face. His grip faltered as the mask came off but he was unfazed. His left hand struck out just as quick, this time grabbing the man’s face before lifting him up and smashing the back of his head into the ground. The silver mask member twitched for a few seconds before going unconscious.

Shane was about to make short work of the other members when one of his Rune Knights ran up to him.

“Sir, the men just reported two golden-masked members leading quite a few of their silver-masked members to the train station!” came the report. Then it dawned on Shane, and he sped off without a word. The reporting Rune Knight ran as well, quickly accelerating to catch up with the silver-haired Knight and finding himself out of breath within a few paces. Shane turned around to the heavy panting behind him.

“Clear up the mess at the front gates. Then get the rest of the men to meet me at the train station!”

The Rune Knight nodded without any further question, although that could be attributed to him trying to catch his breath instead of being uninquisitive. Shane left him behind within seconds, sprinting to the train station without breaking sweat. He had some doubts if he could handle the more powerful members of the Masked Guild alone, but with things suddenly taking a twist, he was left with no choice.

[615 words]
[Total WC: 2025 / 14000]