Dragon's Wrath: The Cursed Returnee

When they returned to Ian's house, the mercenaries had already been sent to their own countries. Courtesy of Ivan since the job had been done much faster than he had imagined.

"Crap… is this late already?" Ethan sighed, noticing that it was 02 PM. "Well, might as well take the day off."

"Aww, man… I missed one of miss Lyla's classes," Ian lowered his head. "This sucks…"

Aside from Ian, Anna also seemed a bit down. It was because of the fight against that creature. Anna was a summoned hero who managed to save the world despite her young age. Still, she was just a twelve-year-old kid and not a combat type. She could do many things at a pretty decent level, but against that being, all she managed to do was to stay behind her father. She was an intelligent kid and probably would use that experience to grow stronger. Still, until then, she will have to deal with those complicated feelings by herself.

pαndα,noνɐ1,сoМ "Good work," Ivan said. "Thanks to your efforts, this mission was completed much faster than we expected. Regardless, our agreement still stands. Ethan wishes to be paid for his work with our best potions, and Emily wants to be paid with mana potions."

That was the first time Ethan heard that. Although Emily didn't accept the job for the money, it was weird that she wanted to be paid in mana potions. Moreover, the mana potions she wanted weren't the best Anna could produce. Probably for the sake of efficiency, she wanted quantity over quality.

"You are going to get a lot of potions," Ian said. "What are you going to use them for?"

"World domination," Emily said.

"When you say this with a straight face, it makes me feel quite scared," Ian frowned.

As expected, Emily had her own goals, but she didn't want to talk about them. It was only natural, given that she was forced to fight in another world and lose several years of her life. Still, Ethan was quite curious about her goals. Maybe if he asks, she will answer. After all, their relationship was pretty decent since they were helping each other with the things they weren't good at. Still, he decided not to ask since he was already too busy with his own goals.

"Considering that your achievements far surpassed my expectations, I don't think any of you will need to work for a while, but if we have the chance, I would like to call you two to help us again," Ivan said. "In fact, I believe that is going to happen much sooner than we expect."

Those were some ominous words, but given the things they learned and experimented on the last mission, none of them could say that Ivan was just overthinking it. In the end, all they could do was to use the rest of the day to relax and then resume their own activities the next day. There was no time for a vacation…

"We don't know how to calculate your contributing, Ethan," Ian said. "After all, you pretty much-completed one-third of the entire mission by yourself. So, all we can do now is to give our entire stock of Mystical potions, and we have fifty of them. Are you ok with it?"

"Yep, I am fine," Ethan couldn't help but smile since he expected to receive thirty or so of those potions.

"Well, if you say so," Ian shrugged. "I talked with father, and he said that you are also free to use our simulator if you want to. No one will be able to see you fighting, so you can all out as much as you want."

"Great… I will have to make more of those potions, and now he is going to come here every day," Anna said, visibly displeased.

"After hearing this, I usually would accept this offer just to annoy your little sister even more," Ethan frowned. "But I will have to refuse. Thanks for the offer anyway."

Although that seemed out of character, Ivan watched the whole process of them receiving their rewards and saying goodbye. Ethan confirmed once more that they, indeed, were a weird family… an unorthodox assassin, a little kid alchemist, and an ordinary human being with a high-tech power suit. Ethan didn't want to believe they were an unhappy family, but he felt like his family won in that aspect.

Regardless, Ethan smirked while he was storing the mystical potions in his inventory, and then finally, he returned home. Unfortunately, the place was completely silent, and William and Hannah were working, and Evelyn was probably doing some shopping.

"I guess this is a good opportunity."

Ethan mostly used his shop to buy potions and swords when his weapons broke or when they couldn't withstand his power. However, he could buy all sorts of things. He already bought defensive gear like helmets and boots, but he also could buy accessories with very useful effects. Unfortunately, the more useful the effect, the more expensive the magic item would be. Ethan had saved a lot of coins in the last few days, but in the blink of an eye, he used those six hundred thousand coins.

"Well, I have to keep using the cursed sword for a while, but I guess it is fine. Besides, maybe it is time to improve my fighting style a little bit."

Although those magic items would be useful, Ethan will have to put them to good use carefully… putting that aside, the fight against the devourers made Ethan realize that maybe just relying on big swords wasn't enough. In the future, he will probably recover the skill that will help him repair his equipment. Still, until then, it will be troublesome if you stop using a certain magic item because they are about to break. Although Harden could help Ethan with that, the cost of mana was troublesome. However, there was something Ethan could use instead of things that could break: his punches and kicks. Well, they could break, but they could be repaired with health potions. Besides, Ethan has to Heal now."

"My main style won't change, but in case something happens, and I still need to fight up close, it will be a good idea to know how to just punch and kick things with all my might."