What came next was a blur of traveling all across the countryside performing whatever random task people had petitioned of them. The various chapters in Leygein rarely left the coastline, whereas they were deep within the interior of the republic, almost a week away from the state capital and approaching the border. It wasn't exactly what Tyr had pictured. Being an adventurer, that is, but his first stint at it wasn't all that within expectations either. If anything, at least it was some sort of 'adventure'.
In Amistad, people did it for money, typically. Or because they couldn't stand to work a normal job and wanted some measure of freedom. In many ways, it was the complete opposite in Lyran. They were road men, but bound to contracts and oaths of civil service. The pay, however, was slightly better in comparison. To anyone with the determination to stick to their rules and learn the regulations, it was fairly rewarding.
After all, the republic was many things – and beautiful was one of them. Highlands and great mountains, sprawling meadows of heather of every color under the sun. Truly idyllic valleys and rushing rivers. The kind of sights that took your breath away, and air so clean it felt refreshing just to breathe it. Largely colder than Haran, once you went up over the incline the whole country was pretty rough going, travel wise. Roads were not so plentiful, and neither were amenities. Very rarely, they'd see banners, but Daito indicated them as adventurer bands headed 'for Aurora', whatever that was.
Villages were very far apart, sometimes days ride between one another – but mostly it was homesteaders. Voting men who kept to themselves and lived in the hills with their clans. Most of which consisted of their extended families, and whatever bonded farmhands opted to live so far from civilization. Some were small, a handful were large enough to be towns – but those were rare. They'd stop, perform whatever tasks or bounties were available in the area, and move on. Daito seemed to really enjoy it, he was good with people in a way Tyr was not. Gentle and even, fair when dealing with shepherds arguing over a land dispute. Going out of his way to use his song magic to give their crops and animals a helping hand in one way or another before the harvest and reaping. Whether it was part of the official request or not.
Tyr noticed that they ate quite a bit of of bread here in the republic. Near everything was a grain or an oat. Oatmeal, bran this or granola that. Grains and legumes, lots of cabbage too, with meat being a thing for special occasions, the rest saved exclusively for the winter season and usually cured. Typically via a smoking process, or what they called 'corned beef'. They lived within their means, and were kind people if not all too suspicious of strangers. Once their badges came out, though, they'd change their tune.
It was a bit odd. Monsters were fairly common compared to Haran, but they managed to eke a living out in the wilds regardless. Strange that more adventurers couldn't be seen traversing the areas they'd been traveling to. When asked, all Daito would say is 'you'll see' and then force Tyr back into memorizing his chords. He'd shown an interest in the music, and Daito had turned from 'patient tutor' to slave driver overnight.
Fingers hurting, scabbed and bruised in some places, he felt thankful for perhaps the millionth time that he was able to heal so fast. Shamisen strings were sharp enough that with enough force, they could cut right through his skin. And they weren't actually made of metal, but rather some braided fiber from something called an embersilk moth. Tyr's was, at least. Daito claimed that each instrument, of which there were many in his culture, would be strung with something that favored the prime element of the user. Some were made of mountain flax, others of the sinew of a particular beast, and so on. Daito's specifically were made of the braided fur of some flying monster found in the south.
Through their time together, Tyr came to intimate knowledge of every malady under the sun. Cancer was arguably the easiest to solve, a knot in the anima that led to unhealthy growth. He'd take that, but not the symptoms away, feeling it for a few brief moments before his body regulated itself. As long as it wasn't a physical injury like a cut or wound, he became so good at it that it took mere moments before he was able to reset spines, even cure blindness. Only sometimes, it wasn't perfect but as long as it was related to anima he could take away the thing spurring the growth that assaulted people in their later years. A 'miracle worker', they called him. He didn't feel like it, and their reverence unnerved him.
There were potions that could do that, or spells, magical compounds and the nature. Priests that could regrow legs and organs from scratch. But here, in this place as with all others, it was a problem of money. Donations to the church to 'prove their faith' and 'worthiness to be healed'. Corruption, in its most blunt and despicable form. It made him think about what Daito had said, but he still didn't agree. These priests were not evil, they were just greedy. It all stemmed from the rich and powerful who had long ago set a standard for buying preference when an illness struck a member of their family. But even they couldn't cure cancer as far as he knew, and it felt good to have a leg up on them. The problem was how absurdly common it was here in the republic. Cancer of the bowels, to some degree, seemed to affect one out of three individuals. Daito had no answer for that, unfortunately, as he was no healer – unaware it was a problem in the first place.
He, as well as most of his clan, did not experience this phenomena.
Not just the people either, but also the animals. Okami confirmed it, after he'd dug into Tyr's food reserves one too many times. According to the mystery wolf pack he'd encountered, they did not eat 'tainted flesh', avoiding the dark spots in the meat.
The more inland they went, and the worse it got. Tyr was near whole in his confidence cancer wasn't contagious, but he couldn't get it anyways, so he cut around the afflicted flesh and discarded it on the rare opportunity he had to hunt. Diversity too, increased the more inland they went. Tyr could see a party of orcs doing as he was, corralling a cave bear and seeing half their numbers slaughtered before taking it down with heavy chops of their exotic weapons. Free orcs, Daito named them, living on their reservations as the Anu did and separated from the wider body of humanity. One of the few peaceful tribes who did nothing but observe warily as the two men passed through their territory, marked with all manner of animal skull, daubed huts and vast mosaics cast from boulders on the rolling green hills.
They made them into recognizable shapes, and sometimes not so much. Horses, birds in flight, even what appeared to be a dragon. Other times it was knot-like patterns of fantastic intricacy.
More days passed, but as the terrain grew sparser, so did the villages. No long houses and thatched roofs to announce the territory of a freeholder. The forests came then, smaller than they were in Haran but larger than any Tyr had seen in the region. Dark and foreboding, and full of monsters. Previously, their contracts had been random and slapdash, and only perhaps three out of ten had anything to do with monster hunting. Here, they were more common. The border region on the furthest edge between the states of Leygein to the general east and Aysgarth to the north.
He'd though the entire region deserted, until they saw it. A mass of blocky stone structures organized into incredibly neat clusters, framed by a wall, and another three meter high edifice sprawling for countless miles in both directions. As if the 'town' existed as some kind of nature preserve, the land the wall surrounded was incredibly large, at least as big as your average barony. Even from their point of view on the hill overlooking it, he could not see beyond it. Everything was foggy, thick with lightning wreathed mist.
The entirety of the... Collection of dwellings, he'd call it, unsure how else to refer to it. It looked artificial, too square and perfect to be cast from human hands. Near all of the buildings were perfectly identical down to the windows, with only the various signs of life differentiating one from another. That, and their height. Some were twenty or thirty meter tall towers, others more humble in scope.
“What is this place?” Tyr had found his breath taken away more more than once in this country, but the view from this ridge was insane. Haran's southern valleys between the mountains and the canyons were picturesque, but here you could see for fifty miles or more – easily if given the elevation to do so. Less idyllic and more of the world telling you how tiny and insignificant you were. All greens and grays of the mountain broken by dark streaks where brooks and rivers lay, or the bright hues of wildflowers soaking up the sun.
“A town, a city... People have argued its status for decades.” Daito crossed his arms over his chest, joining Tyr on the ridge. So rough was the terrain that they'd foregone the highland ponies common in the region and rode creatures called ewens, some bizarre amalgamation of ram and camel. Long necked and knobby limbed, with the hooves necessary to walk safely across the rocky ridges. “Anu call it the nexus wall. Aurora by another name. Amazing, isn't it?”
“Naturally, but I'm more curious about that wall... It must be a hundred miles around... Who built this place?”
“Nobody really knows, Aurora has existed since long before humans ever settled these lands. The wall is ours. But the magic is mostly Anu. It covers roughly a thousand square miles or so? Let's say twenty five hundred kilometers as the dwarves measure things. You could take every city in Leygein and Haran combined and fit them well within the confines of those walls.” Daito seemed bizarrely proud of the edifice, but Tyr supposed he had a right to be. The town was impressive, albeit ugly, but the wall was an achievement. One thousand square miles was bigger than most middling noble domains. “As for its purpose, seeing is believing. And you'll do both.”
Closing in on the ridiculous edifice, he saw that the wall wasn't just stone. It was capped at the top with fence-like protrusions, thousands of metal spikes set equidistant from one another down the entire length of it. Each heavily enchanted to form one incredibly titanic array, a storm of mana serving as both shield and deterrent from both sides. Even approaching it too closely caused him to feel a great deal of discomfort, and Daito seemed to be feeling it too. They felt it all the way until they came close enough to the gates to identify the faces of the guards. About a hundred meters, when the sensation abruptly disappeared.
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“Good gods...” Tyr breathed. “How much money did something like this even cost? Even the earth is enchanted...” It wasn't just the space nearest the walls and into the air, but the array extended dozens of meters below the ground until he could no longer feel it. Both above and below. “I'm pretty sure the imperial palace isn't this well protected with wards. There are tens of thousands of them...”
“Financially, I'm not sure. The work, however, was done for free – or so they say. And as I said, it isn't a wholly human construction, this was rumored to be the cost levied on for the reservations that Anu occupy.”
He said that, but he wasn't providing any further elaboration. In fact, as soon as they'd entered the walls and registered themselves with the guard – Daito had promptly made himself scarce. Okami was not allowed inside, whether he could speak or not. He wasn't an official 'slaved' familiar – an awful word but that's how people said it. And therefore not permitted beyond the gate. Even their ewens couldn't be brought through the gate. When he got a better look at the place, it made sense. This wasn't a town, but more accurately the single largest military fortification he'd ever seen. Below the ground was a wide network of heavily reinforced tunnels, and the streets were not nearly wide enough to see traffic by wagon or beast. Only the main strip might've, but only the odd horseless wagon could be seen and they were all ridden down an overhead railway, elevators unloading them into the various levels of buildings.
There were inns, a lot of them in fact. Shops were abundant, and plenty of restricted facilities. Beyond that, there were various chapter houses in the largest tower, smaller offices where they could house a token garrison of personnel in the place. Notably, the Hunter's did not have an office in the building – so Tyr was not allowed access to anything but the bottom floor. They had a 'chapter barracks', but Tyr wasn't allowed inside because he didn't have the authority. One of the locals that immediately noticed how new he was to the place caught his eye and addressed him in a rather irritating way. Like some veteran soldier that saw fresh meat and wanted to feel good about giving snarky pointers to a new member of their brotherhood. It didn't help that she was a halfling, Tyr had never liked short people – the race was largely irrelevant. Looking down at them made his neck hurt.
She said that very few people were given permanent residence in Aurora. Only authorized members of the republic guard, adventurers, and those with a very particular kind of mercantile license were allowed to stay. Nothing could come or go without being thoroughly scanned and checked for contraband, and the town ran an extremely tight ship. All heavily regulated and controlled, ensuring there was no crime or funny business to be had. Half utopia, half dystopia.
Those who did not actively work were expelled from the place, just like Amistad. For the most part they came and went in shifts, rotating into the town and only staying as long as they were commissioned for. Very few people wanted to remain here longer than they needed to. He didn't blame them for that either, truth be told.
It wasn't too different from a normal town. Adventurers weren't exactly known for their professionalism, at least those not bound in oath to a knightly order. They were a rowdy bunch no matter where you went, that fact barely changed. Some of the structures in the town, the tower besides, were full time chapter houses for the guilds that could afford them. Blue Rose, Dynasty, Invictus, Grayshields. You name it. If they were a big name guild in the republic, this was their seat of power and most of their leadership would be at one of six similar installations in the core of the republic. Or rather the outer core, it was a big country and he wasn't anywhere near the center.
“Are there really six of these?”
“Six of what? Adventurer cities? Sure. This is one of the largest, the walls certainly are – but Kriegstad over in the successor states has the largest. There are six in the republic, with similar sites all over the world, similar being subjective – this is the largest overland astral barrier in the entire world as far as we are aware. At least on our side.” A clerk replied. He was an older man with tired eyes, not even looking up as he droned on in his well rehearsed spiel. “Accent tells me you're Harani, correct?”
“Yes sir.”
“Ah, and you've some manners. Not so common among your countrymen. You've never been to the Talon, though?” The Talon was one of the largest citadels in the empire. Watching over the ruins of the nation spanning wall that had existed before men had. High up in the mountains, but Tyr had never been there – saying as much. It was the center of all ranger activity in the empire, with the Lord Marshall, one of the most powerful men in Haran, presiding over it. He had no reason to go, but he'd never heard of it watching over something like this. “Guess I don't blame you. Republics big, but Haran... Lot of ground to cover. Anyways, how can I help you?” He asked, looking up for the first time with a small frown on his face.
“My captain told me to stop here and 'ask for work'?” Tyr replied with a questioning tone. He had no idea what Daito wanted him to do. As before, he was left mostly to his own devices, and he didn't plan on squandering the freedom by lounging in some inn. He wanted to do some more exploring, see more of this strange world, maybe beat something to death.
“Badge?” Tyr didn't have a badge just yet, not a real one. He had a writ of charter, and a brooch marking him as a Hunter – but the badges themselves were only given to registered members. “Ah, not registered. Before you can take any contract in Aurora we'll need to do that. You've been given your exam, so that gets most of the busy work out of the way. Makes my life easier.”
“I have?” Tyr asked, tilting his head again. The mans eye twitched, watching the young man flop his head to the side like that. Customer service was a hard job, and it took very little to make him wish for either retirement or death at this point. Whichever came first. But for all the negatives in the republic faced by adventurers, disrespect was not one of them, not here at least. The people, especially attendant government staff, were expected to be 'well mannered'. Calling it hard was an understatement, with how some adventurers behaved it could be punishing.
“Says right here, kid. Look:”
And so it did. Without the contract having ever left his hands, there was a thick check mark over his exam. Announcing that he'd achieved a 93%, which seemed rather random as far as numbers went. “Ah, great. So, what do I do now?”
“It's easy. Come with me.” Tyr was led to a room in the back, a completely empty chamber except for a crystalline and silver contraption looking a bit like a globe floating in a bird bath. All surrounded by spinning gyroscopes and floating bits of mana crystal. He'd seen rating devices before, but never one so large or complex as this. He was instructed to place his hand on it, and when he did – he nearly yelped as a holographic display flared into life, searing itself simultaneously into his mind.
[Tyr Surname-Redacted]
Guild: Hunter's
Race: [???]
Age: 21
Nationality: Harani (Marked)
Education: Amistad – Red Dragon
Rank: Silver (provisional foreign license pending completion of probationary period)
Rating: C
Class: Mid-Range Battlemage / Healer / Enchanter / Runesmith
PE: Fire
CCR: 31/31 (100%)
Alias: White Wolf, One Eyed Bastard/Commoner/Prince, Butcher Prince, Meat Man Infinity
Who comes up with this shit...? B's not bad though, that's a sign it hasn't all been a massive waste of my time. The nicknames though... He cringed, looking at those. Only the last of which was of any interest to him. He certainly enjoyed meat, speaking of, he was getting quite hungry...
Several more spots were entirely blank, leaving their purpose unknown for the time being. Most of it was pretty easy to understand. Race having question marks was rather foreboding, but PE must've been prime element, and all the secondary information listed below seemed right. There was even a tab for things like titles, achievements, and reviews of contracts that he'd performed in the past. Most of them were, bizarrely, written by Goroshi. There was even a note explicitly stating that he'd been banished, albeit honorably, from his homeland. He guessed that was better than nothing.
Hmm, they really like their background checks. Listing me as an enchanter is a bit of a stretch, though. And it makes it look like I graduated from the academy... This information wasn't on my last writ. Did Lernin do something? Maybe Abaddon? Am I really 21? That can't be right, let's see...
The man raised his eyebrows in mild surprise, staring at the same display Tyr was. “A 100% contract completion rating, and thirty contracts at your age? Well mannered and a work ethic to boot. Not bad at all. With a CCR like that, for what reason would you remain silver?”
“What's CCR? Contract completion rate? Is that for contracts I've succeeded on versus failed?”
“Not exactly.” The man replied. After seeing both his rank and other metrics, he brightened up considerably, dragging a pair of spectacles from the breast pocket of his slightly over-sized suit. A man who had lost a considerable amount of weight recently, Tyr guessed. “A CCR is the rating, not the rate. In layman's terms, it's the grade you were given for a contract. Anything above sixty percent is considered satisfactory. A one hundred percent would qualify as an A+, and so on and so forth. As in, you did everything you could to complete the contract effectively and efficiently without any collateral damage, liability to the guilds, or unnecessary requests for assistance. Not that it's wrong to ask, the composite is determined by your guild manager or sponsor. It differs from region to region, and we are only related to the foreign establishments in name, emancipated as we are. Still, Amistad is fairly well known – so I can confidently say you must've done some good work. Silver, though?”
“In Amistad, they make you go full time and you lose your freedom once you pass silver. I took bounties for some extra pocket change when I had the time – but I was a student then. Didn't have the time or interest in writing reports and going on mandatory patrols. According to a friend of mind, they could be sent all the way south as Saorsa one one job or another. Not a chance I'd do that.”
The older man chuckled. “Well, you won't have to write your own reports here unless something goes wrong. We have adequate clerk staff for that, but it is a bit more regimented. Mandatory bounties are kind of our trademark. Not likely to leave the borders of the kingdom, though.”
“Anyways.” He coughed. “Welcome, officially, to the Lyran Adventurer's guild. Congratulations, and all that. Woohoo...”