Sol woke up early at the break of dawn. He met Amber downstairs and enjoyed a hearty breakfast. Many other travelers and adventurers were also in the dining area, but most were eating in a hurry. The first status verification test for the knight selection was early in the morning, and no one wanted to be late.
“Hey, Amber, what are you gonna do while I am taking the test?”
Between bites of her food, she gave her usual one word response.
“Train.”
“You're going back to the dungeon?!”
Sol had noticed since two days ago that Amber was very dedicated to her training. Even he couldn't focus on training like that for such a long period of time without the help of [Reinterpret].
“What about tomorrow?”
“Train.”
‘Is this how she normally trains?’
He wasn't too sure, as this was the first real time he saw her training. Everything else before that was simply leveling, which was very different. Still, too much training could be detrimental, so he attempted to subtly suggest her take a break.
“Alright… but tomorrow is the tournament part of the knight selection. You should go watch; maybe you'll be inspired by some of them and learn something.”
Amber paused eating as she considered his suggestion.
“Okay.”
“Perfect! Cheer me on while you watch!”
Sol struck a pose, flexing his surprisingly well-toned biceps. His overall active lifestyle, paired with a healthy diet and with a final push from [Perfect Balance], helped him start building some muscle.
“No.”
“Arghh! My heart! I don’t think I’ll make it!”
Once the two finished their meals, they went their separate ways. Amber headed to the dungeon once more, while Sol moved toward the center of the city.
While walking through the city, Sol went through his preparations once more. He prepared and did everything he wanted except for one thing.
‘I never got to do anything with the void root…’
The void root still sat in his spatial ring unused, but it couldn’t be helped. Sol didn’t know what to do with it, as he had never dealt with such a rare material. At first, he thought it would be fine to just go to any blacksmith and ask what they could do with it, but then he realized how dangerous it could be. The blacksmith could easily run away with it and sell it, securing enough money to live luxuriously for the rest of his life.
Sol needed to find someone trustworthy to handle it, and there were currently two alternatives he could think of.
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‘I could ask Fabio, but I don’t want to distract him from his work. If everything goes to plan, he will also receive a huge influx of customers for the Lipon. The other alternative is only possible when I become a knight. The royal knights surely have some kind of connection to trustworthy crafters who could take my commission.’
If Sol was more well connected, this wouldn’t have been a problem, but he spent almost all his time in the city in the dungeon, so there wasn’t much he could do.
Soon, Sol arrived where the knight selection applicants were gathering, Crest Square. An extremely large plaza situated near the heart of the city and directly next to the castle. Most of the time, it was a normal plaza with residents and travelers moving between it as a shortcut, but its real purpose was to host events and, very rarely, as a speech venue for the royal family.
The area was packed full of applicants, most of whom were human, but there were surprisingly a few of other races: Dwarves, halflings, and even one elf from what Sol could see at a glance. As the requirements for becoming a royal knight were based only on the abilities of the applicants, race wasn't considered. This didn’t mean there wasn't discrimination against those races, but at the very least, the tests were designed in a way that discrimination couldn't play a part in them.
After registering with a knight who had a slate similar to the ones used in the Adventurers Guild, he was led to a section of the plaza for the registered applicants. Nearby was a large tent where they were being shuffled into.
“Welcome, everyone! Queue up behind any line before you for the status check!”
Inside the tent, Sol queued behind a line at random. Because the line was pretty long, he was already starting to doze off until someone called out to him.
“Sol? Is that you?”
“Huh? Nataly?”
The one who called out to him was Nataly, the brunette mage from when he participated in the fort defense back in Kerman. She was queued in an adjacent line and happened to see him.
Sol was shocked, “What a coincidence! I didn’t think I would see you here.”
“Same! Hey, mind if I hop over to your line?”
Sol glanced at the man who was waiting behind him; the man understood without Sol having to ask.
“Go ahead, it's not like it will change how long we all have to wait here.”
“Thanks!”
Nataly moved next to him and gave him a fist bump. Though Sol tried to hide it, he was a bit confused by her appearance here. This didn’t escape her notice.
“You're wondering why I'm applying, right?”
Sol didn’t deny it, “Well, yeah. Didn’t you say you specialize in healing? A royal knight needs to have above-average fighting capabilities. Don’t get me wrong, healing is important, but wouldn’t it be easier to apply as a healer in the army?”
She chuckled, but Sol could feel it also carried a hint of sadness.
“Where do I begin… Remember when I invited you to join my party?”
“Yeah?”
“When I met up with them, we decided to tackle the C-Rank dungeon in Kerman. We usually stuck to the early floors, but we leveled up recently and we got better at using our second talents, so we thought we were strong enough to tackle the later floors. Overall, it was not bad; the Earth Elementals were a bit hard to kill, but that's it. It was when we tried to tackle the boss of the dungeon that we messed up. It was a huge spike in difficulty fighting the Earth Serpent, not only was it twice as durable as an Earth Elemental, it was very fast and was able to wield magic. The fight was very one-sided; we could barely hold it back.”
“How did you manage to defeat the boss? You can't leave without defeating the boss.”
She shook her head, “We didn’t. One of my party members, Liam, gained access to space magic from his second talent. We all covered for him while he created the portal to escape, but we couldn’t hold back the boss for long. Having one less person in the fight made it even harder and… and then they started dying. One after the other. I did everything I could, summoning plants to protect and heal them, but even with intermediate-level spells, the wounds were too severe. By the time Liam opened the portal, it was just us two, we both jumped through as quickly as we could. We appeared at the boss room entrance; when I turned around, I saw Liam with a hole in his stomach from a jagged rock. I think the boss cast a spell that followed us through the portal. I didn’t even have any mana at that point to heal him, but even if I did, it was too severe to even do anything… After he passed away, I was the only survivor on the 9th floor of the dungeon.”