I Reject Quests

Two weeks ago.

Imada woke up, feeling refreshed. After two days of sail, he along with his group arrived at the nearest island, Batomata. The locals were accommodating and friendly, giving them an entire house for shelter.

Raising his body, he looked around the room. Three other guys were sleeping in single beds in different corners of the room. One was a black-haired short height Sakai, another was a tall brown-haired Koshikawa, and the last one was Koyami. He looked out of the window. It was early morning. 'Is someone even up yet? Whatever. I'll just look around.' Rubbing his eyes, he headed outside and immediately spotted Asuka doing stretches.

"What's up?" Imada asked, attempting to start a conversation,

Asuka looked at the newly-arrived figure from the corner of her eyes.

"Wake them up."

"Sakai, Koyami and Koshikawa? Sure, but what's the hurry?"

"What's not the hurry? We are on an unknown island around unknown people. How can I not hurry?" For some reason, Asuka was increasingly anxious about being in an unknown place. Growing up in an extremely wealthy family, she had been pampered and taken care of most of the time. Due to this, she had the thrill of adventuring but never actually wanted to go on adventures because she was too used to living an easy life.

Imada wanted to raise a counterpoint but decided otherwise when he saw her face. "By today or tomorrow, we'll depart from this island."

***

"I'm afraid you have to wait for half a year to depart from here. We don't have the modern technology required to charge the ship. Half a year later, a cargo ship will arrive here." An old man in primitive clothes let out a sigh. Beside him, there were several other tanned men and women who wore the same primitive clothes.

"Half a year!?" Asuka flared up. She is having difficulties staying in this place even for a single day, how was she supposed to stay here for six months.

"Calm down, Asuka. It's not their fault." Aya rubbed her back while she herself didn't have a good face.

Sakai and Koyami sighed.

Koshikawa had the same carefree smile. "So what? We'll eventually leave this place."

Imada ignored the guy and stared straight at the elderly man. "Is there no other way?"

The old man had a troubled face. "It's not that there isn't a way but…"

Everyone's eyes lit up hearing that.

"Please tell us." Imada stepped forward.

The elderly man looked out of the window. "Well, the other way is to go to Witch's Castle. She might be the only one who could send you back."

***

Batomata was a fairly big island stretching across 478 square miles of land area. However, despite the large area, its population is less than 100. This is due to the fact that this is a recent settlement. Forty years ago, a group of people came on this land because they were kicked out of the nation they were living in.

The reason they didn't adopt modern technology was simply they don't have enough money to do so. Of course, they weren't completely isolated from contact with the rest of the world. Twice a year, a cargo ship was sent to supply basic materials in exchange for wood. The recent exchange they had was just around a week ago so it would take six months for the cargo ship to arrive again.

"Do witches really exist?" Staring at Imada, Aya asked with a doubtful voice.

Imada shrugged. "Maybe. The world is full of wonders so even if witches do exist, I wouldn't be overly surprised."

"Hey! Stop chatting among yourselves. Help me fix this up." Koshikawa shouted from a distance. He was setting up a horse-driven carriage but couldn't restrain the horse enough to join it with the carriage.

Imada walked towards him. "Where are the other three?" The other three he was referring to were Asuka, Koyami and Sakai. Initially, they were also fixing the carriage but for some reason, they went somewhere and hadn't returned yet.

"They are watching street magic," Koshikawa answered briefly.

"Street magic?" Imada frowned, thinking that Koshikawa was playing with him.

"I'm serious. Go and call them." Koshikawa pointed to a small crowd gathered at a distance.

Imada walked to the crowd and as Koshikawa had said, there was a man performing street magic. He also spotted Sakai, Koyami and Asuka who were staring intensely at the street magician as if they wanted to uncover all his secrets. They are students of Sakura Garden Academy and could be counted as "magicians" in some places. They disdained tricks and therefore, wanted to ridicule the street magician once they uncover his secrets.

'Why are they so childish?' Imada helplessly thought, then his eyes went to the street magician who was wearing a typical "street magician" outfit. 'Wait a second, he doesn't look like he is a local.' Only now did he notice that the skin tone of the street magician is lighter. Even if skin tone is excluded, where did he get the magician's outfit?

Imada decided to ask him about him after the show was over.

Meanwhile, the street magician in question elegantly took out a small coin and showed the coin to his audience. "Look closely, this should be a coin, right?"

The audience nodded.

The street magician laughed. "I see some doubtful faces. Can someone come out and see if it's tampered with or not?"

Asuka immediately came out of the crowd.

"Very well, this young lady, please check." The magician smilingly handed over the coin to her.

Asuka examined closely. After a while, she gave back the coin to the magician and went back to the crowd.

"Alright, with that out of the way…" The magician pulled his sleeve and showed two of his hands, the right hand holding the coin with two fingers. "Watch closely. This is not a trick that has a story. It's…" He tossed the coin in the air and laid his right hand out to catch the coin but the coin never fell.

Rather, the coin vanished!

"... this simple." The magician spread his hands but he didn't get the expected applause.

"Is this it…?"

"This shouldn't be the end."

After the audience went through a flash of confusion, they dryly clapped and left.

Seeing this, the magician sighed. "People these days don't understand the true essence of magic… hm? Why are the three of you still here?" He then noticed that he still had three audiences.

Imada was about to ask the person's origins when Asuka spoke out.

"Hey. How did you do that?" Asuka directly asked. Ordinary people might not have noticed but being a <<Awakened>>, she had senses beyond ordinary people. From the start, she had her eyes set on the coin. Even when the coin was tossed, her eyes were set but then, it suddenly disappeared. This led her to believe that there must be some kind of mechanism behind it.

The magician had a strange expression when he heard this. "Young lady, a magician's secrets are more than the magician himself."

Asuka didn't appear convinced.

"Asuka, Sakai, Koyami. Koshikawa is doing all the work by himself. Please go and help him." At this moment, Imada spoke up.