Frederic: "Yes Karina, what is the plan?"
Karina: "Um... Ah... Weeeeell..."
She looks around and laughs nervously. There is no plan, is there.

Karina: "Well, um, I may not have thought this far ahead. But that's fine, we'll think of something, by working TOGETHER! Right?"
Frederic gives his best deadpan stare. Or maybe he's not even trying, you can't get a read on his stare abilities.
Karina: "Psst! Gram! Back me up!"

Frederic: "Hm."
Karina: "Hm-HMM! A fine plan!"
Frederic: "A fine basic rule of adventuring more like. But, considering how fresh you both are, not a bad start. As it is we're kind of unbalanced. One dedicated healer, one healer-gunman, and me tanking. No dedicated damage dealer, and a small party. Unusual. Though I won't have any problem taking out monsters, at least whatever we can find around here."

Frederic gets to his feet, and you confirm that he is indeed as scarily tall as you thought.
Frederic: "Regardless, if you're going to be coming with us, we need to have a trial run. You said kill some slimes, is there a nest around here?"
Karina: "We're not from around here. I heard that Madosa was the Number 1 spot for Adventurers, so we came up to check it out! And it was all true!"

You head over to the request board while Karina burns off some of her excitement and Frederic gathers his items. The slime request itself has been there as long as you can remember, every time you've come to the guild. It's actually looking kind of ragged despite probably having the paper replaced more than once. Not surprising considering the request literally never gets taken down. It may be basic, but it's pretty important stuff.

Alright, details... They're paying 5 Drachmas per 4 slimes' worth of goo, about the price of a good lunch for the three of you. The slimes can just be splattered and gathered, though you'll likely lose some that way and have to kill more. These slimes have a core that acts as their brain, without that the body itself is pretty passive. Still mildly acidic, but a treated cloth can handle that much with ease. With the core still in it, they can move, attack, try to escape, and generally be a nuisance. So, if you can get a thick glove and rip the core out of a slime, or just break or remove it some other way without disturbing the rest of its body too much, you should be able to gather them up whole, and then they're dead simple to bring back and cash in. The little beasts range from just a few inches across, barely larger than the core, to big enough to swallow half a dozen people. The request specifies 4 mid-small slimes' worth for the 5 Drachmas, mid-small being about a foot across and the size of a large melon. So, no need to chase the big actually dangerous ones.

Heading back to Fred and Karina, you find the man has gotten his sword and is holding it upright with the "tip" resting on the ground beside him, while Karina dangles from his arm excitedly. He doesn't seem to mind her antics, and she doesn't seem to mind the absolutely massive sword less than a foot away. Seriously, this thing is almost as big as Frederic is. Practically more a giant plate of metal with an edge than a sword, the blade and hilt combined is easily as long as you are tall, and it's wide enough to hide behind if you squeezed a bit. Karina herself could probably do so with no problem.
Karina: "So? Are we in slime-business?"

Karina: "Oh. Um, weeellllll-"
Frederic: "No."
Karina: "Aww, come on Freddy! You said it yourself, we're unbalanced!"
Frederic: "I also said that I never liked this idea to begin with."
Karina: "It would be safer with more people though!"
Frederic: "We'd end up taking more dangerous missions with more people."
Karina: "Freeeederiiiiiic!"
Karina has at this point climbed up onto Frederic's arm entirely, and is now sitting perched on it not unlike a tree branch.

Frederic: "You're not going to stop unless I say yes, are you. Fine. On the condition that 'you know what' approve of them."
Karina: "Ya- wait, that's cheating, they hate everyone!"
Frederic: "They didn't hate him."
The two stop their shtick to look over at you. You are confused.
Frederic: "...I'll explain later. It's too noisy here. For now, we should go slime hunting. Let's see if we can work well enough together to earn money for a meal."

The three of you head out of the guild, Karina happily leading the way down the street towards one of Madosa's public docks.
Frederic: "We have a boat. Not huge, but big enough. Is that all your gear with you?"
You nod, and Frederic gives a small nod in return. The rest of the walk goes in relative silence, aside from the constant noise of the streets and Karina's humming.
You arrive at the docks, a veritable spiderweb of wooden ramps and walkways suspended between small bits of island. Anyone can park a boat here, as long as it's not too big for the docks themselves and they pay a small fee. Any larger ships have to head to either a shipyard or one of the few freight docks. The three of you carefully make your way over the docks, quickly arriving at the boat.

It's a pretty respectable thing actually. 25 feet or so long, solid timber body, nice and shiny and new, a pretty sizeable cabin. Looks to be a passenger vessel, no weapons or armor that you can see. Might not be so good for long voyages, not enough storage space or equipment, but Madosa's in a populated enough region that you can leapfrog around pretty easily for now.
You all board the ship, then while Frederic takes the wheel, you and Karina untie the boat and shove off. A bit of slow sailing and maneuvering later, you're out from the dock's skies, and you direct Frederic to fly south-southwest, the direction of the slime island.

At the current pace should be the better part of an hour until you arrive.
> Check something in your Adventurer's Guide.
> Talk to Frederic/Karina.
> Timeskip.
> Other.

Karina: "Yes! We're from down south, in Belus."

Ahh, that explains Frederic a bit. Belus is one of several kingdoms on the continent of Melgard, one of the four big continents. Coincidentally, Madosa sits right in the center of the four.
Belus tends to forsake technology somewhat, preferring tradition, magic, and the power of people. Few ships, few guns, lots of knights, bowmen, and mages. Swords and heavy armor are much more popular down there, could also have to do with the fact that most people there don't have to worry about falling off an island to their demise. That tends to make people be light on their feet.
Let's see, what else... If you remember correctly, it's a pretty temperate region; grasslands, some forests, mountains, lakes, that sort of thing. Several other kingdoms are on Melgard, but to be honest they're sort of just all variations of each other ruled by different people, not much difference in terms of culture. So not much to talk about there. Maybe you'll go visit that at some point, there's probably some good ruins or maybe even a dungeon to raid, assuming they haven't been picked clean already.

Karina: "Well, I'm not so much. I studied healing and light magic a lot from tutors, but I'd never really thought of adventuring until recently. Frederic though, he has stories to tell!"
Frederic: "Well. Some.
I was a knight before I met Karina. Started in the town watch, just a one armed orphan trying to make ends meet. Surprisingly, the one armed orphan grew up pretty big, got pretty good at swinging a sword. Before long I got myself some armor, a bigger sword, and pledged myself to a local lord. Spent a few years doing that, mostly suppressing monsters and protecting his lands. Then I met Karina. Precocious little scamp at the age of 6 runs off from her parents while they're out for a day trip. Into the forest full of monsters. Deep in.
Thankfully for her, I'm cleaning up a group of kobolds at the time."

Ah, kobolds. Humanoid things, come up to your chest at the highest, sort of doggish, sort of lizardish. Generally very unpleasant things. They don't live around the smaller islands, only on bigger ones like Melgard. Anyway.

Frederic: "She hears the sounds of fighting, approaches the clearing where I am. And suddenly the battle goes from one big armored knight against a bunch of little weak beasts, to one big armored knight trying to protect a scared little girl against a bunch of agile little anklebiter monsters looking to drag off the girl for a meal."
Karina: "Eheheh... But you did it! You saved me!"
Frederic: "I did. And then you became so clingy that your father had no choice but to hire me as your new bodyguard. Lords know you needed one, with the trouble you manage to sniff out. Anyway. Since then it's been mostly babysitting. I'm not quite the fighter I was back then, haven't had to flex my sword arm quite so much in recent years. But it's coming back to me."