Astral Online: Cursed by the Demon Lord to Become the Strongest Beautiful Girl, I Rapidly Grow and Dominate with Cheat Skills Despite Being the Weakest Profession - Chapter 158

Chapter 158: Bread Delivery and the Mysterious Girl

After leaving the inn, Sora and the group decided to take on a few simple quests to gather information.

The first one they took was a delivery quest.

It involved repeatedly climbing up and down a long hill, making it a time-consuming task despite offering decent experience points. However, Sora used her “Speed Boost” and “Jump Boost” enchantment skills to enhance her stats, allowing her to take shortcuts. As a result, she was able to complete four quests in just one hour.

The last quest involved delivering freshly baked bread, made by the daughter of a small bakery, to her father, a gatekeeper at the castle.

Sora carefully placed the bread-filled bag into her inventory, then jumped high and landed on the roof of a house, continuing to leap toward the next rooftop.

Kuro and Inori followed closely behind, and together, they traveled faster by hopping across rooftops rather than running through the streets below, heading straight toward the royal castle.

What they were doing was pretty much ninja-like, and the other adventurers who saw them were wide-eyed, taking screenshots of the scene.

While Sora was wearing long pants, two of her companions were in skirts.

One might worry about their skirts flipping up and revealing their underwear, but since this was in-game, the “Sexual Guard” protection system automatically censored any accidental peeks by blacking out such content, so there was no issue.

Sora and the group took the shortest possible route and, after jumping off the final rooftop, landed perfectly in front of the large castle gate, which was more than ten meters tall.

The gatekeeper, who witnessed their landing, looked so shocked he almost fell over.

“Are you that “silver-haired adventurer”!?”

“Yep! We’ve got a heartfelt delivery from your adorable daughter,” Sora replied.

“T-thank you very much!”

Sora took out the paper bag containing the freshly baked bread from her storage and handed it to the surprised gatekeeper. The moment the exchange was completed, experience points were added, signaling the quest’s completion.

By the way, due to the game’s food freshness system, there was a time limit on this quest. If the bread wasn’t delivered in time or was eaten by mistake, the quest would fail, and your trust level would drop. In the worst case, you’d be unable to take on quests from villagers anymore, so caution was needed.

On top of that, random events occurred along the route from the bakery near the port to the castle. Most likely traps set by the quest creator to interfere with the delivery.

For example, a child might trip and spill a sack of potatoes on the hill, or a woman might get attacked by bandits.

The rooftop route I discovered was the way to avoid such events from triggering.

By the way, I once tried following the official route, and not a single trouble that would normally occur along the way happened.

I guess no one had thought of the idea of jumping across buildings.

The gatekeeper looked between the bag he had received and me, scratching his cheek with his right index finger, wearing a somewhat troubled expression.

“The “silver-haired adventurer” never cease to amaze. After that King Crab incident the other day, the captain of the castle guard and the king himself were praising you.”

“Oh, that one that only dropped a shell. The experience points were good, but it wasn’t that great in terms of item drops.”

“Haha, it seems that for someone as powerful as you, you’re more interested in loot than in the honor of defeating a formidable enemy.”

“Of course. Useful items are way better than invisible honors. And if it’s a rare item, even better.”

As Sora expressed one of her main motivations for playing the game, the gatekeeper looked intrigued.

“Thank you for the interesting insight. I see, so that’s why adventurers are so eager to hunt monsters.”

“Yeah, keep that in mind. People call me a hero or whatever, but in the end, I just do it for myself.”

“Even so, whether it’s for your own gain or not, our opinion of you won’t change. To us, the feat of you and your companions saving two nations from the ?Great Calamity? is worthy of praise.”

As the soldier smiled, things suddenly got noisy beyond the gate.

Using her ?Perception? skill, Sora could tell that several soldiers were running around in a panic.

When a name was called out from behind the door, the gatekeeper apologized.

“Sorry for the interruption. Please excuse me.”

He then informed the other gatekeeper that he would go check out the commotion and disappeared inside the gate.

With no one left to talk to, Sora turned to head off toward the next quest and rejoined Kuro and Inori, who were talking about their travels so far.

“Sorry to keep you waiting!”

“It’s okay!”

“We were just passing the time exchanging information.”

After rejoining the two, Sora checked the experience points displayed under the HP bar.

Thanks to the effect of her title, her experience points were steadily increasing, and she was close to leveling up.

“I can’t believe we got this much just for carrying a package. That was a nice quest.”

“When I first heard we had to deliver bread with a time limit from the lowest town to the castle guard at the top, I thought it was a joke. But thanks to you, Sora, it ended up being easier than I expected.”

“Bouncing around like that was fun, like an obstacle course!”

“That’s good to hear. Alright, let’s move on to the next one!”

The next quest involved shooting down shark-like monsters called ?Brittsharks?, which periodically appeared on the beach at level 50.

As the name suggests, ?Brittsharks? have the ability to fly like bullets.

While they have low durability, defense, and resistance to status effects, they specialize solely in attack power. If you can’t dodge them, a full-armor knight could lose about 80% of their HP from a single hit.

Our strategy was for Inori to snipe the enemies and stun them while Kuro and I quickly dealt with them together.

“Ha! Ho! Take that!”

Even though Inori was using a high-spec bow, she accurately shot down the shark-shaped monsters as they leapt from the sea, moving like missiles.

“Good job.”

“This is easy!”

As the ?Brittsharks? fell, stopped in their tracks, and flopped around on the beach, Sora and Kuro, who were waiting, transformed them into particles of light with their swords, much like processing carp on a cutting board.

The dropped items were mainly shark fangs, which could be used as weapon materials, and shark fins that could be sold as food. Nothing particularly rare.

While the three of us continued the monotonous task of hunting sharks, I suddenly felt the gaze of someone watching me.

Who could it be?

Using my perception skill, I looked in that direction and spotted a girl-like figure wearing a cloak that concealed her up to her head.

Judging by her height, she seemed to be about the same age as Kuro.

“Sora, what’s wrong?”

“Oh, it’s nothing.”

Since I didn’t sense any malice from her, I decided to keep this to myself from Kuro.

The reason was simple: I had activated my ?Insight? skill with a quick glance, and her level was around 60. I assessed that even if she made a strange move, I could handle it.

After finishing the task a few dozen minutes later and with no more ?Brittsharks? appearing, we spoke to the beach manager and completed the quest.

I leveled up to 71, Kuro reached 66, and Inori got to 62.

For players without experience point boosting skills, completing both errand and shark quests will yield only a single level up. This clearly demonstrates just how great Sora’s title’s benefits were.

“Alright, let’s move on to the next one.”

“W-Wait a minute…”

Just as the three of us were about to head for the next quest, the person who had been watching us from behind called out.

I turned around to peek at the face hidden beneath her hood, and I saw blue hair and sparkling, gem-like eyes that shone like sapphires, staring intently at me.

“Who are you?”

“…Nice to meet you, my name is Laura. Would you allow me to join your party?”