The morning sun had barely managed to peek over the rooftops when the doors of the Adventurer's Guild exploded open—not literally this time, thanks to Thorne's confiscated bag of explosives—and five silhouettes stormed in with the intensity of caffeinated warlords.
Before the elf receptionist could even sip her morning tea, chaos had unfolded.
Lys dove straight toward the quest board with the agility of a starving squirrel, Renna skidded across the polished floor like a rogue dancer, Alaric and Thorne flanked both sides of the board like guards about to mug it, and Cael simply walked in with a deadpan face and a mental resignation to the disaster.
Then—riiiipppppppppp.
Paper flew. Silver-ranked quests fluttered through the air like desperate birds fleeing a hunter. The group tore every single silver quest off the board in a synchronized frenzy that could only be described as criminal efficiency.
"STOP THAT!" the Virelle shrieked, slamming her hands on the desk. "You can't just—THOSE ARE FOR EVERYONE!"
Alaric winked, already halfway out the door. "We are everyone!"
"You're a danger to the economy!!"
But it was too late.
The group ran. Ran like fugitives high on adrenaline and bad decision-making, arms filled with crumpled papers and dreams of heroic glory.
Outside, parked like it had no business being there, was a massive, clunky, half-dead but fully determined wagon, complete with the most overpowered horses Cael could "borrow without paperwork."
The horses were monstrous in size, pure black with red eyes like they'd eaten a demon and enjoyed it. One snorted smoke. The other snorted fire. Neither looked like they understood "walk."
Cael stood by the reins like a villain waiting for a lightning strike. "Get in, nerds. We ride."
Lys blinked. "Where did you get those?!"
Cael deadpanned, "The church has a Hell Horse Sanctuary. Who knew."
"Why would a church have hell horses—never mind," Renna muttered, tossing the quest papers into the back.
The wagon creaked ominously under their weight and ambition. Alaric climbed on top with his sword glowing, Thorne sat at the front bench stretching like a mad gladiator, and Lys immediately began sorting the quests by proximity and danger level with the precision of someone planning a heist.
"Alright," she said, flipping through them like a blackjack dealer. "First: missing chickens. Then: bandit camp. Then: escort a caravan. Then: clean an ancient cursed well. Then: haunted cabbage field? We have 21 quests on our hands huh?"
"What is it with this world and vegetables that need therapy?" Cael muttered as he snapped the reins.
The hell horses roared and took off like cannonballs.
The wagon jolted violently, nearly throwing Thorne off, and then they were off—barreling down the cobbled path, smoke and paper trailing behind them, the townsfolk screaming as the Death Wagon of Destiny thundered through the street.
The elf receptionist stood at the doorway of the guild, watching her peaceful morning explode into a slapstick fever dream.
"I'm putting in for hazard pay," she muttered.
And thus began the Silver Rank Quest Speedrun.
Heaven help the world.
The Death Wagon screeched to a halt in front of a suspiciously well-built bandit camp nestled in the woods. Spikes, lookout towers, and a flag that literally had "EVIL GUYS HERE" stitched in red thread fluttered in the wind.
Alaric jumped off the wagon like a blazing messiah, his sword glowing way too bright for 9AM.
Thorne was already ahead, cracking his neck and shouting, "THIS ONE'S MINE!!"
"Wait, stealth?" Cael suggested from the back, halfway through summoning a shadow veil.
But it was too late.
Thorne roared, dropkicked the camp's front gate into splinters, and Alaric followed right behind him like a shining rocket with legs. Bandits screamed. One guy dropped his crossbow and yelled "NOPE" as Alaric cleaved through a barrel, a tent, and an outhouse that somehow exploded.
A second later, fire erupted.
"Thorne, you idiot! You set the barracks on fire!" Alaric shouted as the two of them started playing 'Whack-a-Bandit' using divine judgment and pure testosterone.
"Collateral justice, baby!!"
—
Meanwhile, about 300 meters away, Lys stood calmly in a field, adjusting her glasses as a massive dire wolf stood protectively over a crate of distressed chickens.
The wolf growled. The chickens screamed.
Lys stared.
She sighed, knocked an arrow onto her magic bow which still wouldn't shoot anything, and instead charged her palms with swirling wind and ice.
"Okay. Plan B. Which is also plan A because this bow hates me."
She leapt into the air, roundhouse kicked the dire wolf mid-growl, and landed in a spin of frost and feathers. The beast lunged at her—
Only to be uppercutted by a magical chicken she had accidentally empowered with residual mana.
"…Okay," she whispered, watching the glowing chicken peck the stunned wolf's eyeball. "That's not how physics works, but I'm into it."
—
Back at the creepy moss-covered ancient cursed well, Cael stared down into the void, holding a bottle of holy water, a sage stick, and the creeping realization that he was alone.
A ghost whispered from the depths: "Doooom."
Cael screamed, dropped the sage stick, panicked, and threw his entire bag of church-blessed items down the well like a child getting rid of evidence.
"You dare defile—"
PLOOSH.
The well lit up with divine light.
"…That worked?" Cael blinked.
The whispering stopped.
"…I'm a genius."
—
In a haunted cabbage field nearby, Renna stood ankle-deep in mud, staring at what could only be described as possessed salad.
The cabbages were glowing. One hissed. Another spun in a circle and screamed in eldritch tones.
"Why am I the one doing this?" she muttered, pulling out her rainbow-colored dagger.
The moment she slashed a glowing cabbage, it exploded into glitter and trauma. The rest hissed in unison and began rolling toward her like a vegetable uprising.
"Oh you wanna go, lettuce boys?! LET'S DANCE!"
She kicked one. It shrieked. Another tried to climb her leg. She zapped it with a flick of her dagger and giggled maniacally.
The farmer watching from a distance just sat on a crate with tea and muttered, "Yup. That's haunted alright."
—
Back at the smoldering bandit camp, Alaric and Thorne stood atop a pile of unconscious criminals.
"Think we overdid it?" Alaric asked, wiping sweat from his brow.
"Overdoing is doing but more," Thorne replied sagely, as something exploded in the background.
And thus, the Silver Speedrun continued.
No helmet. No breaks. No survivors. Except the dire wolf. He's now a chicken farmer.
While flames and bandit limbs flew through the air like confetti at an apocalyptic birthday party, Alaric kicked open a cell door inside the camp's "Definitely Not a Dungeon" shack. Inside, a terrified teenage boy in tattered clothes flinched and braced for the worst.
Instead, Alaric knelt down, offered his hand, and said, "You okay? I used to be where you are. Let's go."
The boy looked at him like he was a god—probably because of the glowing armor and flaming sword. Then the roof collapsed. Alaric instinctively grabbed the kid and shielded him with his own body as fire rained from above.
"Cool guys don't burn in fire," he muttered. Somehow, it worked.
—
Thorne, meanwhile, had just suplexed a bandit through a table when he heard muffled crying behind a broken wall. He peeked through and saw a young girl hiding behind a crate, hugging a stuffed rabbit missing an ear.
His berserker grin softened just a little.
"Hey kid," he said, gently stepping through the rubble. "C'mon. I got a spear. You're safe now."
"...You're loud," the girl said.
"I'm always loud."
He picked her up, tucked her in one arm like a football, and kept fighting one-handed while carrying her and somehow not getting hit. The girl smiled. The bunny waved.
—
Lys, after chicken-slapping the dire wolf into submission, found a man with a twisted leg half-buried under a fallen tree. The guy was still holding an egg.
"My… prize chicken's egg…"
Lys, deadpan, picked up the egg and handed it to him, then summoned a wind spell to lift the log and gently pulled him out.
"You saved me," he gasped.
"No. The chicken did," she corrected. "But I'll take credit."
—
Cael, fresh from successfully holy-nuking the cursed well, stumbled upon a pale, shaky woman half-possessed and surrounded by dark spirits that looked like corrupted garden gnomes.
"Don't worry!" he shouted. "I've trained for this!"
He had not trained for this.
Still, he screamed, flailed, and blindly shot shadow bullets in every direction. One accidentally hit the lead ghost in the teeth. The spirits disintegrated. The woman blinked.
"Are you… the Pope?"
"No," Cael said, trembling. "I'm just mentally unstable."
She gave him a hug. He had an existential crisis.
—
Renna, still cabbage-wrestling, finally sliced open a possessed pumpkin and found a baby goat trapped inside, eyes glowing softly.
"HOW DID YOU EVEN GET IN THERE?!"
The goat sneezed sparkles.
Renna hoisted it like a holy relic. "I have found the goat messiah," she declared, as cabbage heads exploded behind her in a musical crescendo of pure, chaotic gardening.
—
By sunset, the entire group reconvened by the Death Wagon—dusty, bruised, and carrying people, goats, and unprocessed trauma.
Alaric set the boy down with a blanket and pat his head. Thorne handed the girl a cookie. Lys put the egg in a straw basket like it was a rare gem. Cael was staring off into space, whispering about gnomes. Renna held the goat like a victorious wrestler.
They were exhausted. They were filthy. They were probably breaking five different local laws.
But they had done good.
They had saved lives.
They had… technically finished five quests in half a day.
Cael blinked. "Guys. Are we… heroes?"
"No," Renna said. "We're idiots. But we're fast."
The goat sneezed again.
And the wagon rolled on.
The Adventurer Guild Hall stood tall and proud in the setting sun, a bastion of order and professionalism.
And then the party showed up.
Slumped. Burned. Covered in cabbage, goat hair, ash, blood unconfirmed if it was theirs, and what could only be described as "spirit residue," the five heroes staggered toward the entrance like war-torn soldiers returning from a 10-year campaign.
The elf receptionist—immaculate, sipping her tea, reading a romance novel—looked up just as the doors exploded open.
Ka-THUD!
The quest wagon crashed into the desk.
Alaric limping, armor smoking.
Thorne holding a half-eaten loaf of bread, hair on fire.
Lys dragging a dire wolf pelt behind her, still glaring.
Cael whispered "I can still hear them" to his own shoe.
Renna holding a cabbage with a knife embedded in it and a baby goat in a sling like a newborn.
The receptionist slowly lowered her teacup. "...Can I help you?"
"We finished," Alaric wheezed, slamming down a brick of blood-soaked quest papers. "All of them."
Thorne dumped a sack of stolen bandit swords, several rescued civilians, and a bottle of cursed wine on the floor like they were receipts.
Lys dropped the chicken egg in front of the counter. It cracked slightly. Still warm.
Cael trembled violently, shoved a bag of purified well water at her, and muttered, "Tell the gnomes I won."
Renna just set the goat on the desk.
The goat sneezed sparkles again.
There was a full thirty seconds of silence. In that time, a child who had been painting outside stared at them, dropped their brush, and ran.
"…By the gods," whispered a low-ranking guild official from the corner.
The elf receptionist blinked, closed her book, and calmly rang a bell. A back door slammed open and the guild manager—an old dwarf with a monocle and a soul patch—stormed in.
"You maniacs! You're not supposed to take more than three quests at once!" he bellowed.
"We took twenty-one," Lys replied, monotone.
"You what?!"
"We speedran them," Renna explained, setting the bloodied cabbage on the floor like a sacred relic.
The goat bleated in agreement.
The dwarf stared. The receptionist stared. The entire guild stared.
Then, slowly, the dwarf muttered, "…By the gods, they actually did it…"
"You're still alive," the elf said, stunned.
Cael twitched. "Not emotionally."
Then, with a sigh of cosmic resignation, the receptionist stood up, handed them each a heavy bag of coins—some jingling with larger clinks than usual—and a letter with a golden stamp.
"Congratulations," she said. "You're now officially Gold Rank Adventurers."
They all raised their arms in half-dead cheer.
"HURRAY," they croaked in unison like undead farm animals.
Then, with zero ceremony, all five collapsed in a pile of limbs, armor, and cabbage onto the guild floor, unconscious. The goat nestled into Alaric's arm like it was destiny.
And the elf receptionist, sipping her tea again, whispered, "They're gonna be Master rank someday. Or dead. Probably dead."