Leon: "Mad Minute? Who the heck has been calling me that?
No, I've never heard that name in my life."

Leon: "......huh. Yeah, that's a different Leon. Shouldn't be too hard to top that, though."

Leon: "The way you say that makes me think this was a Karina plan again."
Frederic: "It was. The whole adventurer thing was, really."
Leon: "Yeah, figured. Well, yeah, I figured why not. The fogies at the academy were more interested in research than actually teaching me practical stuff anyway. This will be more exciting.

So, uh, we haven't met. I'm Leon Murgen. I grew up with Fred and Karina. And uh, I'm an elemental mage."
Frederic: "What do you mean 'elemental'? You saying they taught you all the different elements at the academy?"
Leon: "Yeah. They loaded me up with all the starter projectile series spells from each element."
Huh. That's unusual. Most elemental mages are one or two elements only, to work better with the Elemental Contract.

Elemental Contracts are a high level magical contract with one of the 8 Elemental Lords, donating some of your energy in exchange for access to the sky-wide mana network of that element, along with the highest tier elemental spells that utilize that network. Contracts of opposing elements tend to end badly for the contractee, though there are a few cases of people making it work, and plenty of cases of having multiple contracts for complementary elements.

Leon: "No, it's fine, I can cast all of them normally. Not quite this 'Mad Minute' guy, but I could sling fireballs or ice spears or any of the others all day."

Karina: "Well, with Leon, we have magic firepower! So, we coooould go back to the slime island and show them a thing or two."
Frederic: "Or the wolves. Leon can fill our firepower gap, letting me focus solely on defense. I bet we could handle a Wolfbeast with him here."
Karina: "Well... yeah, we, could do the wolves..."
Leon: "You don't like killing the doggies?"
Karina: "They're not doggies! They're just, you know... alive. And, scary. And slimes are, not those things."

Frederic halts mid conversation, and the smile drops off his face. He sighs heavily and palms his face, dragging his hand down and staring at Karina.
Frederic: "I just realized."
She darts her eyes away.
Frederic: "You planned this."
Her smile widens a bit.
Frederic: "With Leon here, it's perfect. Well, not perfect, but certainly good enough."

Karina giggles impishly as Frederic sags.

Karina: "You prooomiiised~. And I got us a paaarty~! A good one!"

Frederic: "The party. With Leon, we've got a pretty solid party composition. I'm defense and physical offense, Leon is magic offense, Karina is healing and support, and you're support and physical offense.
It's not perfectly balanced, but it's acceptable. Which is exactly what Karina wanted.

We're out here because she wouldn't stop pestering me about adventuring, so I promised that if she could actually assemble a decent party, I'd go along with it, as long as I approved of everyone. She wheedled me into accepting you, and of course I would be fine with Leon, I've known him for years. Really, you were the last piece of the puzzle she needed.

So now I've got to accompany her on this dangerous field trip across the sky, unless I want to break my word."

Frederic: "Only when she gets a 'fun idea'. Then she becomes startlingly resourceful.
Anyway. Since we're a proper party now, much to my chagrin, we should get back to business. I think slime hunting is below us right now. Leon will kind of completely overturn that battlefield, tear slimes apart with magic. That leaves the wolf island and the elemental island for nearby places to hunt. The elementals will probably be a hard fight with only Leon to provide magical damage. So, I think the wolves are our best bet."

Leon: "Wolves? Islands?"
Frederic: "The adventurer's guild and academy maintain a few beginner-friendly islands in the area. One populated by slimes, one by wolves, and one by earth and water elementals. They're bred or altered to be more docile than usual."
Leon: "Huh. Are the wolves monsters or beasts?"
Frederic: "Beasts."
You recall that Monsters are magical creatures with a core, like the ones you got from the slimes, while Beasts are magical creatures without one. Monsters tend to have the more exotic magic abilities, and Beasts tend to be more physically powerful.

Leon: "Hm. Yeah, the wolves sound good to me then. We could take on a, what was it, Wolfbeast?"
Frederic: "Yeah. Those are tough customers, but I've taken on things like that before. We can handle it."

Leon: "Oh, Gram, what can you do again? I see you have a gun, Fred mentioned support?"

Leon: "We're all low tier right now, Gram. Except maybe Frederic. S'fine, everyone starts somewhere. Shall we go then? I've never actually fought magic creatures before."

[ To the wolf island! ]
[ Check the job board for something different ]
[ Other ]