After spending the night without any troubles, and once they had a nice breakfast, the party decided to head back down earlier than usual. The idea was to hopefully get more quests by getting into the town early, before a bunch of adventurers snatched them all. After all, they didn't know exactly how many quests they needed to do or how much renown they had to get before the event started. Heck, they didn't even know what the event was about or how they truly got into it. The only thing they knew was that they had to get renown.

  As expected, their idea worked, and when they strolled into town, it wasn't hard to find quests. There were plenty of the ones they had already done, since the town held much of the same stuff as the village. That being said, it was interesting to see different frog folks from different parts of town offering the same exact quests. The entire thing threw off their immersion a little bit, but it wasn't anything that stood out unless they looked for it. Also, there was a good chance that all of these quest givers would calm down once whatever the event was started.

  Either way, it didn't take the party long to find a quest they had yet to do.

  “You look strong! Any chance I can hire you for a job? Ribbit,” A middle-aged-looking frog man called out, his voice and wrinkles revealing his age, but otherwise looking healthy. Even if it was odd that he was wearing a brown top hat, a monocle, and using a cane for whatever reason.

  “Yes, what is it you need help with?” Alexion responded, the party swimming closer to the frog man.

  “I am not sure how much you adventurers know about us frog folk, but I am sure you have seen some guards sporting metal weapons, correct?”

  “Yes, we have,” Alexion continued, the other two happy to listen.

  “Ever wondered where that metal came from? Ribbit,” The older frog man said, trying to sound mysterious.

  Of course, hearing the words of the frog man, the trio wanted to say that yes, they did know where it came from. That the metal was created by a powerful entity, and the old man wasn't real, and that he was just a creation inside a dungeon. However, what Alexion actually said was.

  “I figured that you guys got the metal from the surface, somehow, but I am guessing that’s wrong and you’re going to tell me how you actually get it?”

  “Haha! Right on, lad. You see, we have a mine down here in the depths, and it is due to that mine that I need to hire you.”

  “I hope you aren’t trying to hire us to go mine for ore because that’s not what we do,” Alexion responded, seriously hoping it wasn’t that.

  “Ha! You’re funny, but no, we've got plenty of frogs for that. Ribbit. What we need your help with is clearing the mine. See, for some reason, the catfish monsters in the lake like to hold themselves in there from time to time, and we have to drive them out, and now it's one of those times. Ribbit.”

  “Got it, so you want us to clear the mine?” Alexion questioned.

  “What!? Frogs no! That would take too long with just the three of you. Ribbit. If you can wait a few hours, I will hire some other adventurers to help you with the task. How does that sound?”

  The moment the frog man stopped talking, the quest notification popped up, and the party quickly accepted it. There wasn't much to the quest, and it was basically what the old frog wanted from them. They needed to go over to the mine and clear out the catfish monsters that had made it their home. The thing was that the quest itself did not tell them to wait for other adventurers. So, under the excuse of wanting to scout out the mine, they got an escort and were left right outside the large, dark hole that was the entrance to the mine.

  Looking at the murky pit that was the entrance to the mine, the party would have usually gone slow and steady with the quest. However, considering they had almost been in the dungeon for an entire week, it meant that something was likely to happen with the event situation. The party decided that they needed to rake up as much renown as possible as fast as possible. Thus, instead of going in slowly and steadily, Arctur and Adriana spent mana to figure out how deep the hole went and to see where the catfish were hiding.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  Turns out that the mine went pretty deep, almost a mile or two into the ground. This meant that they couldn't locate all the catfish, but they were able to determine how they were hiding. The task had been easy since the catfish were rather huge, almost the size of an average man at the smallest and the size of one and a half men at the largest. This made Arctur’s job easier, since Adriana couldn’t spot them correctly. From what Arctur detected, the catfish had dug into the ground, hiding themselves in the mud or inside large holes, which they also covered with dirt.

  Once the party figured out that they were hiding in the dirt, they began the extermination, quickly breaking down the endeavor into steps, though not before checking out what the catfish were capable of.

  Swimming into the cave, Arctur pointed out where one catfish was hiding in the mud, and Adriana blasted it with a wave of pressurized water. The wave wasn’t enough to kill the damn thing, but it was enough to stir the mud and irritate it. And as soon as the thing knew the jig was up, it dislodged itself from the mud, causing even more soot to go into the water. Not that it did much to hide its large body, nor its oddly white, almost albino white skin, and long, thin whiskers.

  Once revealed, the catfish turned towards them and opened its large mouth. It was obvious that its power had to do something with the mouth, but the party wasn't sure what. At least until the magic activated and the fish started sucking in water, creating a vortex. The trio was caught off guard for a second and were momentarily dragged towards the fish, but Adriana quickly intervened and stopped them. Now ready to react properly, the party was prepared for when the catfish stopped sucking in water and unleashed a continuous, pressurized beam of water.

  They managed to dodge the initial swipe of the thing's head, but as it swung its head back around, the beam caught Arctur's and Alexion’s shield before Adriana crushed the fish, turning it into red mist.

  “Well, that was nice,” Alexion said, admiring the fish's ability, which gave him an idea for a technique.

  “It was okay,” Adriana said, unimpressed with the attack.

  “Nah, it was awesome, really like the design decision of whatever entity is controlling this whole thing,” Arctur added, unaware he made Dan blush slightly.

  After demolishing the first catfish, the party moved on to try to poke a few more fish, which revealed that the first catfish they had killed was called a Vortex Catfish. As for the second type of catfish, well, they were usually larger than the Vortex Catfish but not as cool, as Alexion put it. The catfish had greyish, thick skin and were called Giant Catfish.

  These giant catfish would try to rush the party members and swallow them whole. A feat that was further helped by them having a spatial distortion ability, which activated when they went in to bite their target. The attack was nice and all, but nowhere near as dangerous as the Vortex Catfish’s pull, followed by their pressurized beam of water. After all, the Giant Catfish had to swim towards their victims, which in this case was the trio, making the fish irrelevant. This is not to say they couldn’t be dangerous because they were, but only when the adventurers in question couldn’t detect them in time.

  After discovering everything they could about their targets, the party stopped messing about and began properly exterminating the catfish. Arctur would point out where they were, and then either he, Alexion, or Adriana would take out the catfish. The entire process began with them having some fun taking out the catfish in different ways. Some lightning here, some roots there, a little bit of pressure crushing everywhere. They even went as far as sneaking as close to the catfish as they could before they were noticed, with Adriana winning that particular game.

  The problem was that after the first hour had passed, the entire process became tedious, as they simply went through a systematic process of slaying catfish before they had a chance to defend themselves. And it wasn't like they could even really speed up, since they had to leave some mana reserves available for emergencies, since one never knew what could happen. What if there was a big, strong catfish deep down in the mine, and they missed the chance to fight it because they were low on mana and had to flee? Though, of course, the other issue with clearing out the mine was that it was freaking huge.

  Eventually, the party did clear out their entire mine, and gave the frog man quite a surprise when they made it back to town.

  “WHAT!? You cleared the entire thing!?” The older frog yelled, garnering the attention of the other nearby frogkin.

  “Yeah, we figured it was faster, since we didn’t want to wait for other adventurers,” Alexion responded calmly.

  “I-I… I am thankful for your hard work, but I don’t think I can properly compensate you for your work. Ribbit.” The frog said, clearly worried and slightly ashamed.

  “No worries, you can just pay us what you were originally going to,” Adriana told him cheerfully.

  “Are you sure?”

  “We’re sure, it was our choice to clear the mine after all, even after you asked us to wait,” Arctur added helpfully.

  “Ribbit. Very well, I know it's not much, but here you go.”

  The frogman handed out some nice quality daggers to the party, and they quickly dismissed the identification notification. After the first few rewards, they knew that nothing they could get from these normal quests would be good, so they didn’t even bother to read them.

  “Great! Thank you,” The mermaid said, putting the dagger away and giving the frog man a hug.

  “Ribbit. No, thank you, adventurers.”