Rayden awoke to the sound of Cylean birds chirping as they flew over the town. Adventurers didn't have a rigid work schedule, just a quota of quests they had to meet each week. Yesterday, he had finished his quota of 5 quests and now got to have the day off.
With not much else to do, he figured he'd head over to the library and spend his time reading a couple of books.
Reading and writing wasn't something commonly taught to most people, but adventurers had to learn at least a little bit in order to do their jobs properly. Most groups had at least one person capable of reading and writing, who would make up for the rest of the group's inability.
Since Rayden worked alone, he was lucky to have been personally taught by one of the AG's executives, making his life a lot easier. In the process, he found out that he really enjoyed reading as a hobby.
After cleaning himself up, he grabbed the dishes from last night's dinner and brought them down to the cafeteria, finding it a bit quieter than it was last night since most of its customers were still waking up. There wasn't any rambunctious laughter or storytelling, mostly just casual conversation and making plans for the day.
After returning the dishes he left the guild building and went to find a place to get some breakfast. He would've been fine with the cafeteria's food but Illie demanded he get something nicer.
He went to several cheap places, none of which were good enough for Illie, before finally settling on a nice place called Aurora. After sitting down and looking at the menu, he decided to order some elderberry pancakes.
'Come on, why don't we get the Aether Mountain Delight? It sounds delicious!' Illie's voice once again resounded in his mind.
'Its also just as expensive,' he responded.
'It's ten silvers!' their voice got even louder. 'I swear, what's the point in doing your job so much if you aren't going to enjoy your time outside of it!?' he could tell they were getting angrier and angrier by the moment.
Eventually, he agreed and got the Aether Mountain Delight. After using it to fill up his stomach, he regretfully paid and went to the library.
The library was appropriately small for the town, basically just consisting of a large room of bookshelves and rooms for the librarian who lived there.
When he went to say hi to the librarian, he asked if they had any new books. To his surprise, they did. One called Emperor of The End, a publication that detailed the recent fall of the emperor of the Droviel Empire. Rumors of his tyranny and cruelty had even reached this town, as well as news of his downfall and the rise of the Elemore Kingdom in its place.
Rayden stepped outside the library and sat down on one of the nearby park benches. As he opened his book to start reading, Illie asked him if they could watch what they liked to call "the town's routine" while he was preoccupied.
With his permission, his hair glowed and became brighter, like a light had been turned on. Moments later, it turned off and became even darker than it was originally. Illie was using their light sense ability to create a third eye of sorts that would see everything around them.
Rayden, in order to ignore the information, began focusing on the book, which began with how Emperor Vaughn Dach Droviel first rose to power through what was practically a coup and held it for over a decade. It said that he was capable of this thanks to the incredibly powerful spirit he anchored. It ends with the story of a group of powerful rebels overpowering him and forcing him to flee, and how weeks later his body was found dead in a nearby forest.
The time went by as the townspeople went about their day, haggling in the market, going to their jobs, and letting their children play in the park. One such among them was a man known as Caxius, an executive at the AG and the one that personally taught Rayden how to read and write.
Normally, this would be his day off, as executives and other employees whose jobs were to manage the adventurers had clear cut work hours and days. But the guildmaster of this branch had called him in saying that it was urgent, leaving him little choice but to make himself presentable and head over as quickly as possible.
Thankfully his outfit had been clean and ready to go, but he didn't have time to do much except wash his face. This left his wavy long hair and short prickly beard a little messy.
Eventually arriving at the guild building, he hurried past the receptionists and up to where the guildmaster's office was. When he arrived at the door, he took a moment to catch his breath and regain his composure before knocking.
"Come in," a stern voice said from within. As Caxius stepped into the room, he saw three people there. One was the guildmaster, Halvard, who was starting to reach that age that most people associated with old along with some of his black hair turning grey.
To his left was a woman who looked about a decade younger than Halvard. She had short blond hair and sharp expression that would stab anyone who met her eyes. Francine worked as Halvard's assistant but her job title was supervisor.
Her job was to focus on smaller details like promotion exams and hiring while Halvard made bigger decisions on the policy and structure of the Farpass AG branch.
While Caxius easily recognized the two of them, he didn't recognize the third person, the person to Halvard's right. He had nice butterscotch hair and an inspiringly handsome and clean-shaven face. He wore bright silver armor with blue streaks and shining red-toned copper gauntlets.
Recognizing Caxius' confusion, Halvard spoke up.
"Caxius, this is sir Hawkin, vice-commander of the Third Knight Brigade," he said.
"It is very nice to meet you sir Hawkin," Caxius said with a small bow, disguising the shock that filled his mind.
"It is very nice to meet you as well," Hawkin replied with a quick nod.
"In that case, let's get right on to business," Halvard chimed in, sounding both nervous and excited, "Sir Hawkin is out here looking for talent to be conscripted into knighthood, and I thought you would know best who among our adventurers has the most potential."
Caxius raised his eyebrow in doubt. A high ranking person such as a vice-commander coming all this distance in order to recruit their subpar adventurers sounded ridiculous.
"All we have in this town is a single C rank and about a dozen D ranks, none are worthy enough to join the knighthood, Sir Hawkin," Caxius acted on his doubts, trying to fish out Hawkin's reasons.
"We're looking for potential, talented people that can be trained to be worthy of becoming a knight," Hawking responded before continuing, "and I believe that even in less traveled areas there are always diamonds in the rough to be found."
Caxius still had his suspicions, but he wasn't capable of doing anything at the moment.
"So," Hawking began, "do you thing this place has any hidden gems?"
At those words, a particular adventurer rose up in Caxius' mind.
"Well, when you say that," Caxius thought of an interesting young man, one who preferred to work solo, and one that he had gone out of his way to help deal with the troubles of doing so. "There is someone that comes to mind."