A day later, I regained consciousness. I got a pretty nasty wound on my abdomen so I couldn't leave my room for a couple of days.
The whole assassination event ended on a good note, at least compared to what would have happened if I wasn't there. Thanks to the security being heightened, the guard actually detected the intruders and were keeping some of them busy. Thus, I and Krista didn't have to deal with more assassins. I didn't want to image what would happen if even one more assassin joined the battle.
Well, thanks to the skill [F- Emotionless] being active at the time, I didn't feel anything when killing them. Even now, I didn't have the slightest sense of guilt. The skill may be convenient but I need to get used to killing sooner or later. So, I decided to not use the skill the next time I have to kill a person.
Irene reported this whole situation to duke Adrancus who then proceeded to send investigator to the mansion. They tracked the escaped assassins down pretty quickly and the duke himself moved to eliminate the assassin guild that was responsible for this as they dared to collude with the Void fiends and attack part of his faction.
Thanks to that, things have been mostly peaceful in the Nightshade mansion until August of the year 787.
"Get out of the mansion, now."
"What?"
***
August 15th, year 787 of the Imperial calendar
It had been 3 years since I have saved Irene Nightshade. The entrance exam for Avaron academy was only 4 months away.
I had finished my trainings around a year ago. Thus, I was allowed to accompany the knights to the Ostual forest to thin out the monsters population. It was a good experience for me. I got bored fighting knights with the same sword style over and over again, fighting wild beasts was a nice change of pace. As a result of 1 year of near constant fighting, I was close to breaking through to F rank.
=====
Name: Theodore Gray
Race: Human
Rank: G+
Strength: G+
Agility: G+
Stamina: G+
Intelligent: G+
Mana capacity: G
Profession: Swordsman (Lv.3)
--
Affinities:
[High - Lightning magic]
[High - Space manipulation]
[Intermediate - Time manipulation]
[Low - Wind magic]
--
Skills:
[C - Magic eyes of fear]
The innate skill of Theodore Gray. Upon glancing at Theodore's eyes, people at lower rank than his will experience great fear. However, its effects greatly diminishes if used on people higher ranked than Theodore himself.
[F - Mana blood]
A degraded version of the innate skill [A - Fertilus' Blood] that every pure-blooded vampires has. Due to the user's barely qualified concentration of vampiric blood, he is granted the skill. The skill enables the user to recover Mana quicker than the average person, as well as control the Mana present within blood.
[F - Emotionless]
The skill consumes all of the user's emotion to boost the Strength and Intelligence stats while active, effectively raising the 2 aforementioned stats up to 2 minor ranks. However, it may backfire by amplifying emotions instead if the limit of the skill is reached.
--
Battle arts:
[III - Roteare style]
Sword art created and developed by Swordsman Theodore Gray. The art is fast and concise, with strikes always aiming at the opponent's vital points. It specializes in using the force the enemies use in their attacks and the centrifugal force against them. As such, the practitioner will look like they are constantly half-spinning left to right from an outside perspective. As this sword art is dependent on the opponent's attacks, there are no named movements. The effectiveness of the art upon mastery is currently unknown.
=====
My strength reached G+ which made me happy since it meant that my sword art would get even stronger. I was not worrying much about my mana capacity though because my mana recovery rate was already much higher than a normal G+ rank.
Just as I was feeling that my progress had stagnated, Irene Nightshade summoned me and her daughter over to her office.
"Get out of the mansion, now"
"What?" I was confused.
"Let me rephrase that better" Irene said.
"You two will experience being adventurers before taking the Avaron academy's entrance exam" she continued
Well, I was going to ask her to let me register as an adventurer anyways so I didn't really mind. But I was worried about Krista. After all, would it be okay if a noble's daughter became an adventurer this early?
Well, I felt like my worries was for naught when I remembered that Krista was already at F- rank, and she was having an extremely excited expression the moment Irene mentioned 'adventurers'.
"Krista, you will hide your identity. I don't want anyone finding out that you are from the Nightshade family. I can't have everyone giving you preferential treatments since it would ruin the whole purpose of this. After all, you two desperately need experience travelling outside to survive at the academy."
"Having said that, you can call me over by injecting mana into these if things ever get too out of hand. Please prioritize safety over everything else. Understand?" She handed us two pale dark purple brooches with the Nightshade's emblems on them.
""Yes!"" we both replied.
"Good, go and prepare the necessities. You're departing in 3 hours." Irene said as she kicked us out of her office.
***
"So what do we do now?"
Me and Krista were sitting in the garden, discussing about our plans.
Nobles sending their children away to be adventurers before even attending the Avaron or Kirion academy were... extremely rare, to say the least. The two academies teach their students about martial arts, magic, dungeon delving and all that. As to why there were two academies? Well, the Emperor of that time thought that competition between two institutions would raise the future generations to be stronger.
He was indeed right. But he hadn't predicted that the academies would be used for politics, lots of politics. For hundreds of years, nobles of various factions have been using the Grand tournament which is held every year as a tool to show off their might and prestige. As of now, Avaron and Kirion academy, also known as the two Great academies, are under heavy influence of the Angelic faction and the Demonic faction respectively.
The Angelic faction's major supporters were Duke Freywright Pyrian - the Phoenix duke, Duchess Marcela Evien - the Elven duchess, and Duchess Diana Salvant - the Angel duchess.
The Demon faction included Duchess Waynet Bytros - the Beastkin duchess, Duke Alucard Fertilus - the vampire that was titled Duke only 10 years ago, and Duke Baal Silvat - the Demon duke.
The three other grand dukes representing the human, dragon and dwarven races belonged to the neutral faction. It should be noted that although the current Emperor is a Demon and Empress is an Angel, the Imperial family is still taking a neutral stance.
Well, enough political stuff that hurt my brain. Back to planning!
Since Krista didn't have any ideas what to do, I was the one to call the shots. Our plan was to first travel to the fief capital of duke Adrancus' territory to register as adventurers and buy supplies, then go to Feler city, the city next to the Freezing forest, to start our first quest.
As to why we are doing our first quest at Feler city? Well, monsters in the Freezing forest were just strong enough for us to fight and improve our skills. Furthermore, I needed to go there anyways to power myself up. There was a battle art that suited my high space affinity. I didn't need to worry about messing up the storyline if I got my hands on this sword art since it was used by a rather minor villain that was just put in the novel as a joke about how the protagonist always waited for the opponent to finish charging up their attacks.
I'll just let my future self decide what do to after finding the sword art.
Thus, after 20 minutes of discussing plans with Krista, we left the Nightshade mansion and departed towards the fief capital of the Adrancus dukedom... by train.
***
There we were, in the only train station of Stocrean city. It looked like an average train station in 19th century England. As this was the first time I've gotten on a train, I was excited. Krista wasn't able to tease me since she too was excited. We bought our tickets, which costed 5 silvers each, and got on the train under the mocking eyes of people calling us country bumpkins and whatnot. But I didn't care. After all, I was going to travel on the second most advanced mode of transportation in the Empire, just below Transfer gates, steam trains.
Trains in the Empire didn't use mana. Well, not directly, anyways. Instead, they used fire mages to heat up the boilers. It was several times cheaper than replacing mana crystals every day, and much more efficient than getting mages to pour their mana directly into the engine.
As we didn't buy first-class tickets, our seats were make of cold, hard wood. Coupled that with the shaky train ride, the trip wasn't as comfortable as I would have wanted it. At least the view of the Arkus mountain range was pretty nice.
***
After 3 hours of constant bum torture, we finally got to the fief capital of the dragon duke's territory, Gerodd city.
We only needed a bit of asking around to find the way to the Adventurer guild.
The Adventurer guild was an organization created by Arthur Vritious. Its aim was to unite mercenaries across the continent to battle against monsters and the threat of the Void fiends. As the Empire was and still is the strongest nation in the continent, the adventurer guild was assimilated into the Empire around 200 years ago.
As such, the so-called 'Adventurers' were basically reserve forces of the Empire, albeit with much more freedom than conventional reserve forces. They could freely move around and complete requests for a living. However, there are compulsory requests, which were basically just direct requests from the Empire, that all adventurers in a town, city or even an entire region must report to.
As the Adventurer guild needed to keep a facade of neutrality to the public, the Empire could not directly punish adventurers that refuses to join their operations. Instead, should an adventurer ignore request from the Empire, or 'emergency requests' as the guild liked to call it, repeatedly, their rank would be demoted. Regardless of ranks, if they were to be demoted more than 3 times, their adventurer cards will be revoked and they were banned from being adventurers for a maximum of 10 years depending on the urgency of the requests they ignored.
Putting that asides, me and Krista arrived at the Adventurer guild.
The guild was busy since it was late in the afternoon, the time when most adventurers returned from their outings to the wilderness. As we got into the guild and walked towards the counter for registration, almost everyone in the room stopped what they were doing and stared at us. Some looked at us with eyes full of pity, and others with gazes of ridicule. I was sure they thought of us as poor kids that had to become adventurers for a living.
Well, ignoring those gazes, we walked towards the registration counter. Behind the counter was a burly dragon in his humanoid form with an eyepatch covering his left eye. I guessed that they put him there to discourage any witless fools from applying to become adventurers, which was definitely effective as I would be lying if I said I wasn't a bit scared of him. As we got closer to the counter, however, the dragon exuded some of his mana which manifested as an invisible pressure pressing down on us.
I glanced around, noticing that no one but us was affected by his pressure.
'This guy is strong' I thought. After all, you needed to have a high degree of mana control to target specific people with your pressure
'Though, the gravity room was a bit worse than this'
Krista and me continued to walk towards the dragon, albeit with some difficulties.
Seeing that we have successfully arrived at the counter, he retracted his pressure.
"You're here to register?"
"Yes"
"Kids, this job is dangerous, some flimsy brats like you can't handle it. I'd suggest you two earn a living at an inn or something. I'm sure they'll hire you, especially that cute girl behind you"
"..."
Seeing that we didn't respond to his advice, he sighed and took out two pieces of paper.
"Fine, if you want to die so badly then so be it. Fill these form here and hand them back to me. The cost is 2 silvers per person."
We handed him 4 silvers, which was enough to stay at a decent inn for a week, meal included. We then proceeded to fill the form. He was a bit surprised when we could write proficiently, or even at all. It turned out that attending school was a bit expensive, mother really took good care of me.
The forms were nothing special, we just needed to fill in our name, race, current rank and affinities. We could lie about everything but our ranks since we were required to show our stats to the dragon. He was again surprised at mine and Krista's rank which were at G+ and F- respectively.
After that, he handed a card to each of us and told us to infuse our mana into it. The card glowed for a bit as soon as we did so.
"Congratulation, you're now Bronze ranked adventurers" he said.
"Keep in mind that you can only be promoted to Iron rank if your rank is at E- or above and have completed over 20 requests" he continued.
Well, I found it pretty anticlimactic since there were no tests or assessments. Apparently tests for registering as adventurers did exist but were removed about 8 years ago since skirmishes with Void fiends were gradually increasing and the Empire needed all the fighting forces they could.
We did not linger there for long and left the guild.
"What are we going do to now?" Krista asked.
"Shopping."
***
First, we needed to acquire some weapons. Well, only I did, since Krista already got a pair of high-quality daggers her mother gave her.
"Welcome, esteemed customer" A voice rang out as I entered a fancy-looking weapon shop.
As I was about to ask him where the swords section was, his face contorted when he took a better look at me.
"What's a brat doing here? Get out!"
"What? But I—"
"OUT NOW! You're going to scare the customers away, homeless brat!"
He kicked me out of the shop on behalf of his non-existent customers. Seriously, I was the only one in the shop.
'Why does everyone assume that I don't have any money' I thought as I walked towards another store.
"Leave!"
"Get out!"
'...'
I immediately got kicked out of every stores I went to.
'Do I look that poor? No, that can't be. I'm even wearing sunglasses, no poor kids would wear sunglasses just to look richer' I thought, unaware of the fact that kids did indeed wear sunglasses to look cooler and richer than they were.
"Welcome to the smithy lad. Buying weapons I presume?"
This... he was the first one to not immediately kick me out of his shop. He was an old dwarf, with white hair and unkempt beard of the same color. His smithy looked a bit shabby but I've got no other options than to buy from this guy.
"Yes, I want to buy some swords and leather armors too"
"The swords are on the left. Wait here for me to bring out the armor stand"
I chose a sword as I thought about the old dwarf.
'The way he's speaking is strange. I thought all dwarves had a weird accent. Guess it's just a stereotype'
'He seems down-to-earth. Hopefully he won't rip me off since it's plainly obvious that I don't know the market prices of equipment'
The sound of the old dwarf dragging an armor stand out interrupted my thoughts.
"Done choosing?"
"Yes" I replied as I took out a double-edged steel sword. It looked sharp and very well made.
"Alright, now get here and see if this armor fits you"
The armor that only protected vital areas was light and didn't restrict movement. It was perfect.
"110 silvers for all that. Since you seemed like a new adventurer, I'll make it 100 for ya"
I painfully handed over 100 silvers to him, which was worth 1/10 of a gold coin.
"Oh, I got an advice for you" The old dwarf said.
"I've seen you getting kicked out of shops before you got to mine. You might want to take off those sunglasses, they make you look like a brat who just wanted to go into expensive shops to show off to his friends without buying anything"
"Okay" I said, not really taking his words to mind. After all, it would have been much worse if I wasn't wearing these sunglasses.
"Do you sell cloaks too?" I asked.
"No, but there's a good store right across the street. Though you'll have to wait until tomorrow since it's already closed"
"Well alright. Thanks for the help, old man"
"Don't sweat it"
I got out of the shop and met up with Krista in front of the adventurer guild. Since she had already bought rations and all the other necessities, we decided to look for an inn to stay overnight. Luckily, the inn we chose didn't kick us out for barely qualifying as adults. We booked 2 rooms and had dinner on the first floor of the inn, which served as a tavern.
The meal was fine, I guess. There were next to no seasonings so it was a bit too bland. Though, Krista seemed to have liked it a bit too much. This was the first time she had eaten at a tavern since she was a noble. I was just glad that she wasn't like all those haughty nobles that complains about every little things.
We finished our meal and went to our rooms. Though, along the way, some people we passed by smirked at me and gave me thumb ups. I knew the meaning of those gestures but I couldn't care enough to correct their misunderstandings.
***
It was morning.
Me and Krista packed up our stuff. And by packing I meant throwing everything we had into my [Alternate storage].
We went to the store the old dwarf told me about. Surprisingly, the store owner didn't kick me out. I didn't know if it was because the dwarf told him about me beforehand or it was only due to Krista being there with me. Either way, we bought two thick white cloaks. Dark cloaks would just make us stick out like a sore thumb in the Freezing forest.
After that, we boarded yet another train to Feler city. No bandits hijacked the train on our 45 minutes ride, much to Krista's disappointment.
We arrived at Feler city. The city was, interestingly enough, much bigger than Gerodd city. This was again, thanks to the Freezing forest.
A large part of Feler city was dedicated to woodworks. Timbers collected from the Freezing forest were sturdy but light. Furthermore, those timbers are strangely good at preserving heat. Thus, they are often used to make houses in cold regions or cooler boxes. Furthermore, the forest has the largest concentration of monsters in the north. As such, there are also many adventurers here.
Since Feler city was that important to the economy of the north, the security was pretty strict. The walls surrounding the city are almost as high as those in the Capital, and people travelling in and out of the city have to carry some sort of identification with them, lest they want to be detained as soon as they show up at the gates. It was a somewhat cruel yet efficient way of protecting the city, but it was exactly what you'd expect from duke Adrancus who only cared about the results.
We went to the Adventurer guild of the city right after. Thus, marked our first actual day as adventurers.