“We have an arcanist.”
This one simple yet powerful sentence broke the heavy silence, releasing the flood of thoughts that had up to this point been contained within the minds of those present.
“Holy shit! It’s actually an arcanist!” Someone yelled out, quickly followed by many others.
“Not only that but look at how huge her talent is!” Another yelled out.
“She definitely has a glorious future ahead of her. We must make sure to get on her good side.”
“It’s said that only one in a hundred people have the talent to become arcanists! And that only one in ten of them actually manages to become one. However, with such a monstrous talent there is no doubt she will become one. Perhaps she’ll even reach rank 2 in her lifetime!” Yelled out another voice.
“Dang! You’re an arcanist! I can’t believe it, that’s so cool!” Felix said to her.
“Yeah, that’s really impressive.” Ross said, also in awe at what he just saw. His friend was going to be an arcanist! Arcanists were the most powerful and respected profession out there! It required immense talent and effort to become one. Of course, he would be impressed by having learned that his best friend had the potential to be one. “You’ll be able to help your mother in no time this way!” He added.
“Congratulations.” Said the woman at the desk, interrupting their celebration. “You’ll be assigned to the arcanist squad. I’ll let you know right now that there are currently only three other recruits assigned to this group at the moment. So, don’t be too surprised, the arcanist squad may be the smallest but it’s by far the strongest.”
She then turned at looked at the group of three kids as a whole. It was perhaps the best batch of recruits they had found this year so far. Following her script, she declared.
“All of you. If you have any second thoughts now is the time to turn around and leave!”
She then proceeded to pull out the three sheets she had been writing on.
“Once you sign these, you’ll officially become part of the Hunter Federation. Know that you may very well die before even becoming a hunter! However, also know that glory will await you if you survive. Once you sign this sheet, there is no going back…”
“Do you wish to continue?” She said as she finished her speech with an ominous tone.
Mia, Ross, and Felix looked at each other with a small trace of worry but mostly excitement lingering in their eyes. Yet, if one were to look at them carefully enough, they would be able to see their deeply rooted resolve within.
“We are ready.” Mia said with a steady voice as she took a step forward.
The others followed as they lined up in front of their respective contract. The contract required them to place a drop of their blood on the paper to seal the deal. Although they were surprised, they still went through with it. They grabbed a dagger that had been made available to them and each drew blood from their index. Mia moved first and pressed her bloody finger on the contract. Suddenly a bright light shone out from where the blood had made contact with the paper. It was bright enough to make Mia close her eyes and turn her head away. After the light had faded, she opened her eye and looked down to see that the Hunter Federation’s emblem had appeared on both the back of her hand and the contract. This emblem was a form of arcanist rune that bound her to the contract on which she had deposited her blood.
Quickly following her, the two boys also pressed down on their contracts. Which was closely followed by a blinding light from each of these. Once it had disappeared, they looked at their hand which also showed the mark of the Hunter federation. They then faced Mia and showed off their new ‘tattoos’ with a dumb smile on their heads. Smiles which Mia immediately returned as she too was ecstatic. They had joined the Hunter Federation!
“Now that all procedures are complete, I’ve called an instructor from each of your squads to show you the ropes and bring you to your new residences! “The lady at the desk said with a kind smile on her face.
“Good luck kids! I look forward to hearing about your achievement!” the man in armor said. “Oh, and don’t worry too much about being in different squads. You’ll be spending plenty of time together once you become fully fledged hunters!”
The small group of three celebrated together before being taken away. The first one to go was Ross, his instructor was a rather tall and slender man which had an extremely masculine face and a rather haughty expression on his face. He didn’t say much and only pointed at Ross before leaving with him.
The next one to go was Felix. It turned out that his instructor wasn’t there. So surprisingly the responsibility of showing him around fell onto the armored man that had been watching all along. This made Felix rather glad as he felt they would get along well.
Mia stood there by herself waiting for her instructor to arrive, however, after half an hour no one had shown up yet. As she was starting to get nervous a hand grabbed her shoulder, the hand was neither strong nor weak, instead, it gave out a feeling of perfect control. She jumped in surprise as she hadn’t heard nor seen anyone get behind her. She immediately turned around to see an average man with extremely messy hairs and an extremely tired look on his face staring at her. The man had a poorly shaved stubble on his chin and clearly looked lacked the concept of maintaining looks. Luckily of Mia’s nose, that man seemed to have rather good hygiene which was unexpected from someone that looked this way.
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“Oi. You’re Mia, right?” He said. “Come with me, I’m your instructor, you can call me Nash.”
‘What the? You’re telling me this guy is my instructor, an arcanist? No way. He probably is a cleaner or something that got put in charge of me like for Felix because my actual instructor isn’t here’ She thought.
After walking for a while, they finally arrived at the arcanist quarters. There Mia was shown in her room. It seemed that by having potential as an arcanist she would get preferential treatment and get her own room! After this, she got to meet the three other recruits, all of which were at least twenty, which was rather intimidating. But overall, she felt that she would get along well with them. They then proceeded to go on a tour of the area, where Nash pointed out everything she should know.
Finally, after an hour of walking, he stopped and turned around to face her.
“Behind this door is a training ground for arcanists.” He said as he pointed towards a clearly reinforced door which looked like it had seen better days.
He walked up to the door and pressed on a button, the door instantly opened revealing a gigantic outdoors training ground. The area was surrounded by 4 massive walls that were easily as tall as the Hunter Federation building from before. Each of the walls seemed to be at least 4 meters thick.
“Now that you’re one of us, you’ll need to know what to strive for. Here, I’ll demonstrate the power of an arcanist for you.” He said.
He took a deep breath in, and upon exhaling a strange yet fascinating symbol appeared in mid-air in front of him. The symbol was as large as a cartwheel and seemed to be glowing with an eerie green light. The symbol gradually shone stronger and stronger until suddenly Nash yelled out.
“Acid spray!”
The moment the words left his mouth a flow of high-speed green liquid flew out of the symbol. It shot in a gracious arc up at a 45-degree angle before coming back down on a small tree in the form of a highly concentrated rain. As soon as the rain came in contact with the tree the leaves disappeared soon followed by the branches and then the whole tree. The whole process had taken less than five seconds and had caused a whole tree to be dissolved as well as the ground below it forming a pit that was a couple of meters deep.
Mia was speechless. This man indeed was an arcanist, and the might that he had demonstrated went beyond her wildest dreams.
The man turned around and spoke to her.
“Now that you’ve seen this, I expect you to be able to cast such a spell in the future. Once you do so you’ll be recognized as a fully fledged arcanist. Good luck.”
And so, the days went by as Mia followed the strict schedule enforced upon her that supposedly would allow her to become an arcanist. Her days consisted of both physical training and classes that would teach her how to become an arcanist.
She first learned about the magicules system which she found rather fascinating. Afterward, they were taught about how being an arcanist worked. The idea was that there were ancient symbols that existed and that by visualizing them and injecting magicules within them, they would create the effect associated with them. In a way the symbols represented spells. What made it so incredibly tough to be an arcanist was the complexity of the symbols. To make use of them one not only had to memorize their complex structures perfectly but also understand its meaning. By understanding a symbol’s meaning, one would be able to understand how to control the magicules flow within to bring out its full potential. Spells could be used with a very limited understanding of how their meaning, however, the better it was understood the stronger and more magicule efficient the results would be. She was also told that people with full understandings of spells were extremely rare and that for example, the acid spray that Nash had used beforehand was only the might of a 10% understanding. Therefore, it was very important for arcanists to increase their intelligence stats through magicules. As for talent, she learned that this referred to how easily they would be able to increase a specific stat in the future. Those with talent would unknowingly use magicules in low quantities to improve their stats from a young age. The orb from beforehand was able to detect her talent by measuring how many magicules she was passively absorbing, as it was a good indicator of how easy it would be for her to upgrade that stat. And that be an arcanist that stat was obviously intelligence.
Over the course of the next few years, she got to see Felix and Rob on quite a few occasions. Felix had grown extremely strong whereas Ross instead became extremely nimble. On the other hand, Mia still wasn’t able to cast any spells. However, that did not mean that she was falling behind. Generally, for an arcanist to have enough brain power to understand enough of the meaning of a rune to cast it, they were required to reach rank 1 in intelligence. However, Mia had only just reached level 9 of rank 0 a few weeks prior. Despite that she had within those few years managed to memorize the structure of over 100 runes and had made progress in understanding three of them. This feat made her a genius compared to all other recruits they would generally only reach this stage after becoming a rank 1 in intelligence. And even then, it generally took them at least a decade.
Luckily thanks to her talent she was allowed a pay slightly higher than average, which she had used to support her mother financially. When her mother found out about how well Mia was doing, she was both really glad and really sorry. Afterall it was her fault that her daughter resorted to such actions. If she hadn’t said all this that day then Mia would have never known about the situation and never joined the hunter federation. But she was glad because her daughter was very successful, and she was proud of her. On top of things she no longer had to worry about money, although this made her happy, she was still embarrassed to have to rely on her daughter. He feelings at the time were very complex, to say the least.
After a few more months Mia got the news that she would finally be allowed to participate in the hunter exam. If one successfully passed it, they would officially become a hunter! On top of that, she learned that she would be able to pass it along with Felix and Ross!
Showing up on the day of the exam they were told that their goal was to kill a Lesser Red-Tailed Lizard and bring its body back to the federation. If they successfully managed to do so then they would become official hunters.
And now here they were, in the forest, having trapped their target between a cliff and themselves.
“Don’t worry Mia, we got this.” Felix said bringing her back to reality, before charging at the lizard.