- AMAGHIEL -
Darrel woke from his sudden deep sleep in what felt like a moment, the carriage was no longer there and he was not lying in a bundle of bloodied bandages anymore. A light blanket covered his body as he now lay on a bed in a small lamplit room.
Darrel's head felt heavy and his body moist, he could feel the pores around his body sweating from all the heat.
"What the hell is going on?" Darrel muttered. "Where the hell am I?"
The statement felt familiar to him and he could not help but briefly reminisce about his time in Oris.
The door to the room bulged open and Muriel appeared, she then approached Darrel and touched his forehead lightly. Darrel suddenly pushed Muriel's hand from his forehead and then sighed in relief, Muriel noticed the strain Darrel had as he breathed.
"Sorry, your hand just felt heavy..."
"At least you are much better now."
Muriel wiped the sweat from her hand, she then walked over to a drawer that stood at the feet of Darrel's bed and opened it, after examining the drawer's contents, Muriel picked up a purple crystal from the drawer then closed it.
"What's that?" Darrel asked wearily.
"A mana-sapping crystal. This should help you alleviate your current affliction."
"Affliction?"
Muriel stopped in her tracks as she was surprised for a moment, then she proceeded to place the crystal on Darrel's abdomen and started to mutter words that Darrel could not comprehend.
In response to Muriel, the crystal instantly glowed brilliantly and before long Darrel felt the feeling of heaviness and fatigue flee his body.
"How do you feel?" Muriel asked Darrel.
"Good, but my muscles still hurt."
Darrel winced when he bent his arm and cupped a fist in his hand, he could feel his muscles hurt as though he had been working out for weeks.
'Like the time I went crazy with the cursed pickaxe.' He mused.
"Muriel, what really happened to me at the time?"
Muriel paused when she looked at Darrel, then she proceeded to pick the crystal from his chest.
"A Rank-Master's job is to appraise an individual's strength and guide them in the best way they could improve, without us it would take mortals years to choose how they would distribute their abilities." Muriel explained. "However, you Darrel managed to do what few mortals are capable of doing, and in the midst of battle your accumulated strength began to distribute itself and you managed to reach new heights."
Darrel listened to Muriel as she explained her take on the matter, and from what he understood he believed she was talking about his attribute points, the same points characters in games gained when they leveled up or achieved an important goal.
"However, such acquisition of power has ramifications."
"Penalties? Like what?"
"In your case, it seems your body could not handle the vast amount of aura that you suddenly acquired. This eventually caused you to develop a mana-induced fever and extreme fatigue." Muriel explained.
"That's odd, shouldn't my body have been strong enough to handle the strength I had acquired during my growth?"
"What do you think happens when you train?" Muriel asked Darrel, she seemed to be getting impatient with his queries.
"I grow stronger?"
"Wrong. Your body gets weaker, and in that instance, a mortal is able to easily break through their body's limit and acquire new levels of strength." Muriel explained. "After such an ordeal, a mortal must rest their body for them to acclimate to their newfound growth."
"I did not."
"Worse, you grew stronger during the process."
Darrel looked at the ceiling of the room and wondered what this meant for him in the future, would he be subject to such harsh penalties whenever he acquired new power, what if there was no choice for him but get stronger during battle?
"Is there a solution to this?"
"Your growth is natural, though it seemed to have accumulated from a while ago, months even, this is normal for most prisoners since they are not allowed to gain new levels during their sentences." Muriel clarified. "Seems like when I trained you all, you unleashed your dormant power within you."
"Wait, but you only trained the others and not me." Darrel recalled. "Where is everyone anyway?"
"They left."
"Left? They wouldn't leave me with you." Darrel tried to sound confident. "What did you do to them? If you hurt my friends..."
"Friends? Them? Ha, how naive are you Dar-rel? Those were your cellmates, the only thing they had on their mind was to flee even after the other one..."
Muriel hushed.
Darrel's face twisted further and he clutched her arm, the crystal fell and cracked when it hit the floor.
"You think I don't know that? There was only one person I could rely on and everyone seemed reluctant to say anything until now they are all gone." Darrel grumbled at Muriel. "What aren't you telling me about Luca?"
Muriel sighed.
"He died trying to save us." Muriel relented.
"That can't be, he was such a selfish bastard." Darrel groaned.
"Seuvial wouldn't let us go that easily, she is a Holy Knight after all."
A long silence filled the air, Muriel let Darrel be alone as he honored Luca's memory with quiet tears, it was hard for him to find the strength to get up and this was not because his body was strained, but because of the sheer despair that was constantly aimed at him.
Muriel sat on a worn-out armchair outside the tunnels, though she was related to the Princess of Moriandia, she barely behaved like a royal, and her treasonous acts were just a part of her way of helping the Empire.
"There is a reason why I broke you out of Oris Dar-rel." Muriel stated when she felt Darrel's presence behind her. "You will either comply with-"
"You said you wanted to train me right? When do we start?" Darrel asked confidently.
Muriel smiled lightly then jumped from the chair and patted Darrel on his head.
"Don't worry it will only take three days."
Muriel led Darrel deeper into the tunnels where the light of day could not reach, torches and lamps were lit to illuminate the darkness as Muriel began Darrel's training.
Day and night could only be known in memory as Muriel spent three days and three nights teaching Darrel the arts of Morland and training him with the use of various weapons available to them in the tunnels.
Due to Darrel's illiteracy, Muriel could only dictate the philosophies behind the magic and skills of Morland as they sparred with the sword and spear. Occasionally, Muriel would teach Darrel a few basic symbols that depicted particular words in Morland.
However, Darrel was as thick-headed as they came, he preferred the oral lessons which were easier for him to grasp.
"What will you do after this?" Darrel asked as he waved the rusted sword toward Muriel.
Muriel skipped about gracefully, easily escaping the dull blade's reach before raising her arm in the air and firing off multiple balls of fire the size of a mortal's hand.
Darrel clasped his left hand into a fist and generated waves of electric currents that appeared like blue stripes around his fist, then as the balls of fire approached Darrel, he waved his hand through each one before they dissipated in the air.
"The organization I work for is in need of me." Muriel responded to Darrel's question. "And you can not come with me, you have your own journey to begin."
"I know."
In those three days, Muriel spent countless hours teaching Darrel as he blitzed through the assignments that any mortal would go through during their time with Muriel.
Their goodbye did not have any farewells, Darrel woke up the next day to find Muriel gone, but she had left a parting gift for him.
"Six bronze coins, I wonder what I will be able to do with these." Darrel wondered as he peeked into the small leather pouch. "Oh, this time she healed me."
During their time training, Muriel had promised not to heal Darrel if he was to sustain any injuries, and that included life-threatening ones too. At first, Darrel had assumed she wanted him to fight cautiously, but when Muriel had persisted to maim or gut Darrel he finally understood what the lesson had been.
"She wanted to learn about my ability to 'regenerate' as she put it."
Darrel found a satchel by his bedside and in it was a hooded leather cuirass, it was light and flexible which would allow him to maneuver easily when he fought. He recalled how Muriel had always emphasized that he should never get hit by the opponent.
"Words she had lived up to." Darrel recalled how he had not landed a single strike on Muriel, magic and physical alike, his attempts had all failed. "A note?"
Slipped between one of the satchel's pockets was a note scribbled in haste, on it were some symbols he managed to barely recognize. Fortunately, they were written in a manner that he could easily grasp.
"Job. Work. Coin. Leave." Darrel smirked after proving that this was the beginning of an end to his illiteracy. "Muriel had told me that there was a place I could get jobs in Amaghiel."
Darrel slipped on the hooded cuirass, grabbed the short blade nearby, and wrapped the belt around his waist, he pulled the satchel over his shoulder and made his way to the exit.
In the last three days, Darrel knew he had grasped more about the world of Morland than all those weeks he had spent in Morland combined.
Darrel walked through Amaghiel asking anyone he saw if there was a place where adventurers gathered to get job requests, but none of the people seemed to want to talk with him until one person pointed toward the coin factory.
"That's where you can get a job."
Darrel sighed.
Later that day he found himself sitting at a bar in a regular inn, he had used one copper coin to order an average meal and now he had only had five copper coins left.
Finding a job in this city was far harder than it seemed, somehow it reminded Darrel of the world he hailed from, at this rate e feared he might die of starvation. Darrel then pictured Muriel's face with her devious grin mocking him.
'Five coppers, five days Darrel.'
Seeing the depressed Darrel, the innkeeper approached him and asked if he was looking for something in particular, without a second thought Darrel agreed to the unknown and waited as the innkeeper went in the back.
A moment later he appeared and beckoned Darrel to come over, and when Darrel went through the door, he was led down a flight of stairs that led to a room in the basement of the inn.
Downstairs the air was filled with a rather energetic atmosphere, in the center of the basement was a small round table, and sitting around it were women garbed in armor.
"Ladies, I brought you the help you were looking for haha!"
"Haaa! You brought another one of your boys Wienfrei!" One of the women cried out to the innkeeper as he approached together with Darrel.
"Hi there." Darrel greeted the ladies as he tried hard not to show that he was intimidated by them.
"Who in Quara's backside are you supposed to be?" Another of the older ladies demanded of him.