Morning came faster than I anticipated. I was awake before I needed to start moving. I decided to do some stretches and check everything. While I still wasn’t completely clear about the dungeon and how long we were going to be inside versus outside, I hoped we would have some time to train together as I was seriously missing teamwork experience.

When everything was packed up and rechecked, I started my walk towards my destination. It was going to be a long one as the place I was going to was on the north side of the city.

Even now, there were a lot of people moving around, but the streets were basically empty compared to the busy time during the day. The place where I was going was a large compound owned by an Academy, that seemed to be quite a prestigious one.

Roger gave me some information that he learned, and from that, I gathered it was at least one of the best in the area, if not the world. It was incredibly large and occupied an entire island somewhere in the shallow sea.

When I reached the edge of the compound, I was stopped not by the city guard but by the academy guards. "Stop right there. Only Academy students and people with written permission are allowed past this point," said one of the guards while blocking my way.

"Just a moment, I should have the written permission somewhere." I had tried to fit so many things into my tattoo storage that it was a bit difficult, even with my expanded skin surface area, to move things around so I could get the item to my hand and then pull it into reality. The guard was getting a bit restless, but eventually, I got the piece of paper out.

"Here you go, and my apologies for the wait. It seems that I need to rethink my storage organization." After the guard read my paper, he just nodded at me and continued his patrol. That was kind of rude, and I already got a bad feeling about this place. Perhaps our plan to send our bright talent into these academies might be the wrong one.

The few students who I saw didn't seem too bad, but there were certainly people who held themselves in a way that I didn’t like. But whenever I saw guards, I was quite certain that the Academy had some sort of agenda on how they wanted their students to think.

Thanks to my interactive map, finding the place where I needed to go was no trouble. To my surprise, it seemed to be a smaller arena. After entering, I found the place to be quite similar to where I fought, but the quality was certainly worse, and I could see several places where repairs were made that were quite obvious.

There were a decent amount of people here, but it only took me a few moments to locate Luana. She was with two other people, one who looked like a typical Knight but not with heavy armor, more like medium armor. There was also another young man who seemed to be wearing mage clothing.

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My entrance didn't go unnoticed. A lot of people were looking towards me and starting to discuss among themselves quite animatedly. The higher level of noise alerted more people, and soon I saw Luana and her friends notice me. As soon as they did, I started to walk towards them, and they looked a bit nervous, which was kind of weird. Luana was the first to speak when I was getting close.

"It’s good to see you, Rich, and I’m incredibly grateful that you chose to accept my proposal to come and delve with us. Seeing your fight yesterday certainly was impressive, and I do have a few questions about your last fight." At that moment, Luana was elbowed by the mage-looking fellow.

"Oh yes, these are the other two party members. Adam, he's our healer," she said while pointing at the mage-looking person. "And this is Horus. He will be our off-tank and damage dealer while also being the party leader," she said while pointing at the Knight. I shook their hands when they were introduced, and I did like the self-confidence that I felt from them.

They didn’t feel like bad people. "It's a pleasure to meet you both. My name is Rich, and while I’m mainly a farmer, I do quite a lot of fighting, and I am the general for my nation. I hope that we can have a fruitful delve and that we will all grow stronger from the challenges and from learning from each other."

My words seemed to be enough to break the first contact ice and assure them that I could be an asset to the party. "Rich, I’m truly glad that you are here. We kind of expected, after the performance you showed yesterday, that you might have gotten offers from other parties or even guilds, so we’re quite glad to see you are here," Horus said.

I was a bit confused, and I guess it showed on my face. As they looked at me quite puzzled. It took me a moment to realize what was going on. "I understand the mistake. I haven’t received any offers. Basically, I ran away from the arena after I was done. I was too tired to speak with any of them, and besides that, I already said that I would be joining you."

My words made them relax. Moments later, Luana spoke up. "Now, for the reason we’re meeting here, we need to go through an evaluation, both individual and team, to be allowed into the dungeon. Everyone else has already gone through individual evaluation, and our last party member will join us a bit later. She has something she needs to take care of before we leave."

"If the evaluation isn't too complicated, I don’t see any problems with it. But are we leaving immediately after the evaluation, and when will we actually start the delve?" I asked, and it was Horus who answered.

"The evaluation shouldn’t be too hard. It’s just to test that we can pass the minimum requirement. As for the delve itself, we have had quite a hard time finding people for it, and we have pushed it back as far as possible, so unfortunately, we will need to delve basically the day after tomorrow. The delve itself will take at the maximum two months, but I will make a comprehensive report on the dungeon when we are all on the Academy island."

I nodded to that, and then we just waited for my evaluation and simply got to know each other. They all seemed like people who I didn’t mind being around, so that was at least good news. Adam seemed to be from a noble family but a decent one.

Horus was from a huge Knight family that had hundreds of active members in this city alone. It seems that delving this dungeon wasn’t just an Academy thing for him as he needed to also prove himself to his family. Luana also needed to complete this dungeon quite badly, as then she would have access to better classes.

Adam only seemed to be interested in delving this because his father told him to, but I didn’t mind as he was the healer, and anyone who chose that occupation and was that good at it didn't need extra motivation to keep the people around them alive.

It also looked like Adam and Horus were good friends, and Luana seemed to fit into their friend group quite well. Eventually, I saw a more official-looking person approach us, and I saw everyone else got more serious.

"I assume you are the delving party of Horus." When he received an affirmative, he continued. "My name is Cornelius Snodgrass, and I am the assistant to Professor Evangeline Worthington. I am here to evaluate an individual named Rich Dirt and then evaluate the entire party to see if you are qualified to enter the Ruin of Lost Ages. Now, if there are no questions, I need Rich to follow me."

He started to walk away immediately, and I quickly started to follow behind him. I just hoped that this wasn’t going to go badly. I wasn’t worried about not passing but about the evaluator, who I didn’t get a good feeling from.