Evan and Eliza used the train services going all the way from Gerfast to down to the capital of Awhen, a fellow western Alpha Continental nation.
His goal there was to unearth a few more powerful artifacts he knew of from the game, ones that had been lost when the merchants transporting it were attacked by monsters.
They had abandoned their carriages in favour of their lives as the monster numbers and strengths were far higher than what the hired adventurers and guards could handle.
But this was quite a loss for them as they were transporting a fairly high number of valuables, the kind that big nobles in Awhen's capital would have loved to buy.
So, in order to recover from this loss, they posted a request to the nearest town's Adventurer's guild, however, it just so happened to be a time when a new dungeon was also discovered, so tons of adventurers who were capable of handling the quest had all flocked to the new dungeon.
The number of levels the first dungeon clearers got was quite high after, all.
As for the others who didn't join the group, they all backed down after hearing the territory that the monsters had inhabited, as it was somewhere very close to a rumoured Epic Level Behemoth's lair, and no one wanted to mess around in that area.
Evan, however, knew that this Epic Level Behemoth was actually just a bored creature who had only chased after the adventurers who initially discovered it because it wanted to ask them about the world outside its territory.
Unfortunately, its size and appearance were not exactly the kind that gave good first impressions, especially in a town that had only two beginner S rankers as its strongest combatants.
They didn't want to risk their lives trying to find out if the monster had intentions of conversing with them.
And this was where Evan came into the equation.
Without a moment's break, he and Eliza went straight to the town right after arriving at the capital, keeping their movements on the down low.
By the time he got to the town, the monsters who had attacked the merchants had come back for another attack, and since there were no travellers on the roads to attack, they headed for the nearest settlement.
The scene Evan and Eliza met upon arrival was that of a company of monsters, headed by Level 400 Whip Wolves who were beating the shit out of the two beginner S rankers.
Though the two were higher levelled, their opponents were twice their numbers.
Regarding the remaining monsters attacking the city, Evan had Kayla and Kuro handle those with a combination of restraining shadows and Pseudo Authority Lightning Strikes from the heavens.
He and Eliza then assisted the S rankers, taking on two of the Whip Wolves and reducing the heat on them, allowing them to be able to deal with their opponents properly.
Unlike the weak Whip Wolves on the lower floors of the 'Tower of Trials', the ones here were a lot more ferocious, cunning and skilled.
Milena had a bit of a hard time quenching the flames of the two fire-attributed ones, as the creature was capable of sending out waves of searing flames with just a single tail flick.
The burnt-down town gates and melted buildings nearby showed just how hot said flames were.
But when Evan stepped in with his Harbinger of Ice, the two were able to tag team the monsters and consign them to oblivion.
Eliza handled the earth-attributed one while the two S rankers made short work of the remaining lightning-attributed one.
After this, Evan had a few talks with the town's leaders, revealing his identity to them before saying he was going to handle the rest of the monsters in the nearby mountain forest.
Of course, the two S rankers naturally informed him about the Behemoth that attacked those who stepped into its territory, which was scarily close to the Whip Wolves' domain but Evan told them he would be fine and went along with Eliza.
Naturally, the Behemoth emerged from its abode when it sensed Evan's presence, slightly wary of the boy due to his destruction law essence.
And Evan, having prepared for the monster, brought a lot of things that interested it.
In return, the Behemoth pummelled all the remaining Whip Wolves and their subordinate monsters to death and made things easier for Evan to retrieve the items he wanted.
He returned to the town and 'negotiated' with the merchants, taking the things he wanted in return for giving them back the other stuff that was still intact and had not been destroyed after being deemed useless by the monsters.
Thankfully for them, most of their stuff were artifacts with energy that the monsters sensed, making them keep those things as they may have had uses for the energy.
Thus, not many things were destroyed.
Evan also had them reveal that he was the one responsible for helping take out the monsters and return their stuff when they got to the capital, an indirect way of letting Awhen's noble authorities know he was within their borders.
But he was acting as an 'A-Rank Adventurer', so there was no avenue for any diplomatic problems caused by him as a Foreign Noble coming over unannounced.
Anyway, as the news spread, a lot of people commended him for his actions while a lot more wondered just how he was able to get past the Peak Epic Behemoth.
While many believed he did a good deed when he was just 'passing by', Eliza who was with him knew that the whole event was what the boy called a 'Side Quest' and was the reason he was even in Awhen in the first place.
They didn't need to know this though.
◇ ◇ ◇
After the little incident in that average town, Evan returned to the Capital of Awhen where he and Eliza began taking on more A-rank adventurer quests.
Much to the surprise of the Guild, Eliza applied for a rank promotion to S, shocking the officials in charge since they could see from the records in her card that she had only been an A ranker for less than 6 months.
However, they were also able to see that the girl had met all the requirements for the S rank, be it quest completion rate, or quest commissioner rating.
Her current level of 405 was also higher than the level requirement.
Eliza was the person in the Anomalies who had the highest number of quests completed, even more so than Evan, Pride and Greed combined.
And she always left favourable impressions on the quest commissioners, so the feedback the guilds had regarding her was always good.
In light of this, though the resident guild master was surprised, the man was more than happy to promote her to the next rank, and just like he expected, Eliza took on S-rank quests and helped free the quest board, a lot.
Towards the end, he was scared of just how many quests she undertook and how she completed them so quickly.
He understood that she was not alone, but had Evan and the spirit trio assisting him, but even so, the quintet cleared quests with estimated completion times of 7 days in just 1 or 2.
Monster horde extermination quests that required the involved parties to survey the monster territories, analyse the creature's weaknesses and acquire artifacts to aid in achieving optimal effectiveness as they carefully plan to wear down the monsters and take them out without letting any escape and wreak havoc in villages or small towns elsewhere while also maintaining seamless communication with the Guild.
But the Anomalies just pick up the quest, hop on the next train or carriage over and then show up the next morning with dead monster corpses in Evan's inventory.
Even when it came to requests from alchemists and magicians to delve deep into monster-filled forests and find strange rare medicinal plants or alchemy ingredients for research, Eliza found all the required things in hours as if the forests were guiding her to their locations (which they actually were).
No matter how one looked at it, that was scary as hell.
A and S rank quests weren't supposed to be cleared so easily!
In a nutshell, the group passed the remaining time in Awhen racking up quest completions left and right.
Finally, they returned to the GWE after spending a bit over 2 weeks there.
Date of Occurrence: Year 1053, March 20.
The main reason for their return was that Pride and Greed were finally set to come back to the GWE after spending some extra time in Tarse, courtesy of Greed who wanted to spend some time getting used to his new skill.
By some twist of fate, the Deadly Sin Sibling duo encountered Arnold's maid/confidant, Brenda while they were in a random city near the White Sand Desert.
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