The Laughing Swordsman

The eye itself had a rainbow iris and was covered in some sort of almost clear grey crystal.

Next to it, was a tiny piece of paper explaining how it worked. Apollo picked it up and read it.

'Unicorn eye. Used to gauge the purity of those it lays its eye upon. Holding it will let one see a living being's sins in the form of red light.'

Then, the paper disappeared.

Apollo looked at the unicorn eye for a moment before picking it up. Almost immediately, he saw thick and dense red tendrils of light coming off of his body. They were dark red, almost black.

Apollo smiled bitterly.

"It seems I'm not exactly the purest of people."

He brought the unicorn eye closer to himself, and looked at it. Almost immediately, the eye got a little bloodshot.

It was as though the eye hated to look at Apollo.

After a bit of hesitation, he decided to stick it into his pocket, causing those visions of the red tendrils to disappear.

Apollo's eyes drifted towards the table, where his iron coin was lying. He picked it back up and was about to flip it, but suddenly felt at a loss.

Why was he even doing this?

It was so he could kill his mother.

But he already killed his mother.

Apollo hunched over and grimaced in pain.

"Who... who was that?"

He shut his eyes tightly, as though the more closed they were, the easier it would be for him to envision his imagination.

However, Apollo was unable to find out in the end.

Eventually, he looked up at the swirling white mist at the ceiling.

"What am I supposed to do?"

Obviously, there was no response. Apollo continued to stand there meaninglessly for quite a while.

But eventually, he grit his teeth.

"...I still need to be stronger. I am far too weak."

Apollo narrowed his eyes, thinking about how helpless he was before Mark.

"It's not enough. Not even slightly enough."

A fire seemed to be raging within his pupils.

"Until all are dead..."

Apollo flipped the coin, causing plumes of mist to shoot out. They gathered together to form five condensed lines of mist.

And below him...

Were a lot of parchments.

Apollo raised both eyebrows in shock from how many there were. They were messily scattered around the table, forming a fairly large pile by being on top of each other. By a conservative estimate, there were at least one hundred of them.

Considering that four used to be on the high end, this truly was a crazy amount.

Apollo gave them a quick glance.

The immediate thing he noticed was that almost all of them had one picture. It appeared to be a dinosaur with an especially long neck. A brontosaurus to be exact.

As for the ones that didn't have that picture, it was instead of an egg.

Apollo scanned over an arbitrary parchment.

'Rank - Silver Coin - Platinum Lined

Target: Adult Male Colossus

Description: Appears to be a variant of a lizard. The adult version is at least five hundred meters tall and one thousand meters wide. Males can be identified by the red tuft on the top of their head.

Requirements: Recover a relatively intact corpse of a Colossus. Bonus rewards for better preservation.

Reward: 10,000 Gold Coins and 2 Contribution Points'

Apollo's eyes widened in shock for several reasons.

The first was definitely the giant reward attached, plenty of gold coins and even contribution points on top.

The second was also the actual rank of his mission. His current rank was iron, but he still had access to the higher missions.

...It was probably because the association had received way too many missions of this kind and allowed anyone to access it. That was also probably why one of the bases was just in the middle of nowhere here.

This was a very popular location in terms of issued requests.

As for the final thing that shocked Apollo, it was the size of five hundred meters tall and one thousand meters wide.

However, it didn't shock him too much. From his perspective, it was just something really big. And he had taken down several big things before.

Though... this was mostly because Apollo just couldn't envision or truly comprehend how tall five hundred meters actually was. In reality, these things were essentially the size of a small village.

Apollo wasn't really aware of this, thus didn't focus on it too much.

He continued looking through more of the missions.

'Rank: Platinum Coin

Target: Fertile Adult Female Colossus

Description: Appears to be a variant of a lizard. The adult version is at least five hundred meters tall and one thousand meters wide. Females can be identified by the absence of red hair on their head. Fertile females will have red tipped tails.

Requirements: Capture Alive and Deliver to the Grayson Family in the Conquerer Kingdom. Must be undamaged.

Rewards: 10 Contribution Points, 100,000 Gold Coins, Adult Male Earth Dragon Tooth.'

Apollo's eyebrow twitched.

The rewards were even higher than the previous one, as was the rank. It was a whole two ranks above his own!

Though it was tempting to take, Apollo didn't. Not because he thought it was too hard, but the sounds of delivering something somewhere sounded far too troublesome.

He continued to scan for something that seemed to be on the easier side, and was attracted to a picture of an egg.

'Rank: Iron Coin - Silver Lined.

Target: Colossus Egg

Description: Female Colossus will lay one egg every fifty years on average. After a few years, Colossus will hatch from those eggs. They reside within caverns that are believed to be created by a Colossus themself.

Requirements: Recover Five Eggs Worth of Shattered Egg Shells.

Reward: 2000 Gold Coins.'

Apollo looked through the other parchments and noticed there were around ten others with an egg picture. The eggshells seemed rather popular.

After a bit of hesitation, he accepted it.

How hard could it be?