Ishrin tried asking around the guild, in hopes of obtaining some information about the expedition, but all he got were rumors. The official version was not for the low-rankers, it seemed, and without Melina to vouch for him there was no way he was getting preferential treatment from the regular staff. They were already overworked as they were, with the volcano and the newcomers, and a Tier 2 asking around was nothing of note. Except for Goddard, who noticed his Tier-up and congratulated him for it.
According to him, the rumor around the place was that they were moving the whole area up the danger ratings. It was due to Melina’s report about the volcano, although Ishrin got a feeling that perhaps there was something more than that at play, for instance a way to get higher ranked people to Noctis without rousing suspicion, all so that they could scour the place clean until they found the multiversal traveler they were looking for. It was just a theory, but it was a valid one, he felt.
Back to the matter of the expedition, though. Ever since last night, he had been feeling restless and quite worried about it, for reasons he could not quite put the finger on. His gut told him that he was worried about Melina’s safety, and another strange part of his mind told him that it was because there was the desire for something more than friendship brewing inside of him. But the more rational part of his mind shut that thought down immediately and thoroughly.
Melina might have gotten some pleasure out of teasing him and lightly flirting with him, but he had to be careful not to fall into the trap of seeing the first woman who showed him some affection after he lost his wife as romantically interested in him.
Well, if there was something he was good at doing—among the many things he was good at doing actually—there was his ability to just repress whatever feeling was making him uncomfortable at the moment. He had done so for centuries, after all. Thus, he bottled up the whole matter with Melina and tucked it away someplace in his mind where he could not access it readily and tried to move on.
He had things to do. Soon the ban on higher ranked adventurers was going to be lifted, and the place would fill up with Tier 5s and higher. Even now there were some peak Tier 4 who were stronger than Lisette, meaning that he could not call himself safe even if she was with him. Yes, he could fight above his Tier and with his sword he could probably stall against a Tier 5 until he found a way to escape, but doing so at Tier 2 would inevitably paint him as the world traveler and invite much more trouble in the process.
Therefore, priority one was: don’t piss anyone off for now. And focus on growing stronger fast.
“The new Guild Master will arrive tomorrow,” Goddard said, nodding towards the quest board. They were under the protective dome of Dispel Eavesdropping, one of Ishrin’s proprietary spells he could finally cast now. “The news got all the newcomers in a frenzy. Look at them, trying to look good when he finally gets here, doing as many quests as possible. Even the latrine cleaning postings are gone. They never got picked before.”
Ishrin hummed.
“With you Tier 2, you are safer but not out of the bush yet. You need to focus on training, mate.”
“I am not your mate, Goddard.” Ishrin said with a tired smile, “but I see your point. You don’t want to lose your protector, you made that point quite clear. Why don’t you focus on growing in power yourself instead?”
To that, the man came up with an excuse. There seemed to be more than laziness in his excuse, though, but Ishrin decided he didn’t care. His first impulse, damn Albert and whatever he did to him when he killed him so many times, was to help the man, but his rational mind told him that he had already enough shit on his plate and helping an asshole was not a priority.
Good, this means I can resist the conditioning, at least partially.
With his inquiries done, Ishrin decided to head back to the Labirintine Dungeon for some monster farming. He had some muscles to stretch, and some new magic to test now that he had reached Tier 2. Too bad Lisette was still away, but he wasn’t too worried about her. She was more than capable of defending herself, their first meeting being the outlier.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
However, his plans were thrown in disarray the moment the city got out of sight. Melina was waiting for him next to a fork in the road, arms crossed and a wary expression on her face. Her tail was standing rigid, ears swiveling like sentries, and her orange eyes scanned the forest nearby and the fields like she expected monsters to come out of the bushes at any moment. As soon as she spotted him, her face lit up, and she grabbed his arm with an iron grip to lead him away from the main path.
“Ishrin! You look much better today!” She said, all too chipper.
“Yeah,” he said awkwardly. “I reached a conclusion of sorts yesterday.”
“Oh! And what would that be?”
“That I want to live my life here, Melina, and not try to get back what I have lost and cannot have anymore. Let the past rest.”
She smiled. “I’m happy to hear that. But I’m afraid I must sour the mood now. We need to talk,” her voice was low and ominous, wiping away the grin from Ishrin’s face, “a realm has opened nearby, and it’s time you knew what’s really going on here.”
Ishrin nodded.
“As you know, Noctis is in the middle of a danger zone, where the monsters are more powerful than normal. This is caused, we think, by the presence of excess unstable magic in the environment. Noctis as it is now begun as a Tier 2 danger zone. Too dangerous for normal people to live here unprotected, and the city was simply too small to be worth fortifying. So, the guild did something else. They turned it into a place to train new adventurers, to help them scale the Tiers while also using them to harvest the bountiful resources that a magically dense region was eventually bound to produce.
“A safe heaven. At the beginning at least. As of last year, Noctis was a Tier 4 danger zone, but the increase in tier had been slow enough not to attract too much attention. The guild simply changed the parameters, introducing a cap to the minimum and maximum tier of adventurers who could be transferred here and called it a day. Then the energies started growing again, this time not resulting in another increase in danger but in the formation of the Labirintine Dungeon. That was still fine, the guild only needed to put out urgent culling quests for the adventurers, but it was still manageable. Then, a week ago, just before you appeared, the mountain you see over there started spewing smoke. The mountain that was never known to be a volcano. Never. That isn’t all, though.”
Ishrin nodded gravely. “Someone leaked to the whole guild about my presence here.”
“That’s right,” said Melina, “too many coincidences. You know what we found at the volcano? A whole pocket world, Ishrin. A door to another place, a door that is now spewing smoke, magic and monsters alike in great amounts into the surrounding environment. I couldn’t even calculate how dense the magic was on the other side, meaning that it definitely is beyond my Tier and by a lot. A realm has opened under our noses and we didn’t even sense it happening. Not even my Tier 6 sight saw it!”
She shook her head, took a deep breath and continued. “There more still. There are signs of yet another realm, still hidden. And the funny thing? I shouldn’t care about all this shit anymore! As of tomorrow, I will not be the Guild Master of Noctis anymore. Back to being an A-Rank adventurer. A Tier 8 master will replace me, although I have no idea who he or she will be.”
“But you do care, don’t you? You want to help the people of Noctis, the adventurers…”
She looked at her feet, but Ishrin saw for a split second the twinkle of tears in her eyes.
“I do. Or do I? I mean, what can I do? I will just be another little cog in their machine, a normal adventurer like you and Lisette.”
The silence stretched on.
“Fuck ‘em.” She said in the end. “I am but a Tier 6. I’ve been stuck at the gods damned bottleneck for too long. Will you help me, Ishrin? Will you help me become stronger? Strong enough that I won’t have to just take all this shit and do nothing?”
That takes the strength of a god. Ishrin thought, but did not say. Nor did it occur to him to ask himself if she was genuine in her request, or if she was somehow manipulating him.
Perhaps he didn’t need to pose himself such questions.
There was something in the way she looked at him, in the intensity and emotion of her voice that really resonated with him. She was hiding something, it was evident that she knew much more about the political situation than she let on, but it didn’t matter. She was genuinely angry. Frustrated. She felt utterly powerless.
And Ishrin couldn’t help but say yes. It didn’t even take Albert’s compulsions. One look at her face, at the tears marring her beautiful skin, tracing lines of reflections on her cheeks. One look at her sunset eyes, misty and full of worry.
“Of course, Melina.” He said, and she hugged him.
She broke the hug. Ishrin felt her arms linger for a moment, but then they were gone and he thought he had imagined it.
“How about we form a party?” She said, “you, me and Lisette.”
Ishrin hummed, mostly to put back a certain bundle of feelings where it belonged. “Interesting idea. I think I would like it, yeah. How about you, Liù?”
The pixie chirped happily.
“Deal, but you do the paperwork.”
Melina chuckled. “Then it’s decided. Now we only need to talk to Lisette and then we make it official.”