“You're the one looking for a guide to World’s end?” Azura turned towards the voice. It was early morning, and he had just finished taking down the rock dome he had used as a shelter the previous note. The man was strong, that much he could tell right away, but temperament was important too. He looked like an adventurer through and through though. He was wearing some light armor made out of brown metal plates protecting his vitals, and sturdy looking combat boots. His brown hair was cut short, and he had a scar running from above his left eye all the way down to his jaw.
“Yeah, that’s me. You interested?” He’d of course want to talk to him more, to make sure the man would be a good guide, but at least in terms of strength it looked to be fine. Plus no one else had approached him yet, and he had no guarantee anyone else would consider taking his request so ideally this guy would be decent enough.
“Well I’m considering it, but I mostly just wanted to see what kind of crazy person you were. It looks like you just haven’t been on the frontier before so I’ll give a pass on you not knowing, but this is the absolute worst time to go that deep into the wildlands. It’s mating season for a lot of the monsters, and that makes them especially aggressive. However dangerous you were prepared for this to be multiply it by 10.” Hmmm, that was about his luck, but it didn’t really matter much. His quest got a little bit harder, but nothing had really changed.
“Unfortunately the journey isn’t really something I can afford to put off until later, so extra dangerous or not I’ll need to make the trip soon.” His father wouldn’t wait until things were convenient for him, and neither would any of the other troubles that seemed drawn to him.
The man raised his eyebrows in curiosity. “Well it would seem that I misjudged your reason for wanting to go. I thought you were simply hoping the spring would grant a free powerup. It’s pretty common for people to get a guide to the springs thinking that, but usually they give up when they realize it’s not guaranteed, and it certainly isn’t free.” He sighed. He was well acquainted with human greed and stupidity, but somehow he was still disappointed every time he heard something like that.
“Well I can assure you my reason is nothing so shallow, well not to me at least. Well either way I suppose, the important thing is that I need to get there, and the safest way to do that is to get a guide. I could attempt to get there by simply taking the direct route, but I would rather survive the trip if at all possible.” The man laughed, and his posture relaxed a little.
“At least you’re aware of the danger, that’s a step up from most of you pure mage types that end up around here.” He was aware that most adventurers were commoners who chose to devote all their magic potential to physical enhancement and special moves with their weapons, but he hadn’t been aware they didn’t consider themselves mages. It was all still magic after all. Not like he was here to learn about the classes people pointlessly divide themselves into.
“Of course, I’ve done my research. I did however miss the mating season bit. I suppose since I only searched everything as general terms rather than as something I’d be accomplishing at this time of year. Not that it matters much to me. I can hold my own, and if worst comes to worst I’m extremely capable at escaping an unwinnable battle. Or as Katy liked to say there was nothing they were better at than running away. Thankfully the time constraint he was on was nothing like it was when he had to confront the water spirit, so if he had to add a few days to his trip in order to survive that would be fine.
“Well that’s a good skill to have, the only more important one is knowing when it’s an unwinnable battle. Out here it’s not as simple as whether you’d be able to win or not, it’s how much energy you’d spend fighting vs escaping, how useful it would be to defeat the monster, the likelihood of you being attacked again before you could fully recover, and how difficult the terrain is. Those among other things become very important for extended trips into the wilds. Being out there for a few days can’t compare to being out there for over a week, it’s 2 completely different experiences, and the first extended trip is considered the experience that makes a true adventurer. Given that most people die or quit at that point.”
He supposed that made sense. He hadn’t really had to worry about resource management on any of his forays into the wildlands, why bother when he’d only be out for a few days? Still he was fairly confident in his abilities. Katy liked to joke about his lack of survival skills, but it was just that. He knew how to forage for food, he just hadn’t known how to prepare meat. Other than that he could use magic to take care of everything else. Honestly if it came down to it he could probably subsist on mana alone for a decent amount of time. “Let’s just say I have a lot of experience conserving energy. It’s actually probably one of my most used skills.”
The man gave him another appraising look. He was a little surprised when the man unleashed his aura. The pressure was immense, less than his teachers, and substantially less than his father could, but more than enough to make it clear he couldn’t win. Not being able to win and being cowed weren’t the same thing though. He pushed out his own aura. He couldn’t push back the pressure, but he could keep a bubble that he could safely stand in. He glared defiantly at the man testing him, but otherwise didn’t react.
“Well you’re quick on the uptake at least, that’s good. Naturally strangers don’t show up around here very often, so I looked into you a bit before showing up to take the quest. You’ve made quite an impression around here, forcing the spire to shut down for several hours is a pretty big deal, and you only even went to floor 11. Still it’s not really in question whether you can defend yourself or not.”
“Well to be honest the spire thing was an accident, and probably not proof of my abilities in the way you think it is, but I wouldn’t have come here in the first place if I didn’t know I could handle it.” He didn’t think it would be unfair to say he was in the top 10% of all mages, and the top 1% for mages his age. Of course the gap between him and the strongest mages on the continent was so wide that even the ocean couldn’t fill it.
“Quite arrogant aren’t you? Well I’ll give you a bit of a lesson for free. Out there such a thing as knowing is impossible. You can prepare, and you can hope, but you’ll never know that you can handle it. Sometimes monsters that shouldn’t be there appear, sometimes the numbers are larger or smaller than usual, sometimes they are more aggressive than usual. Out there is chaos, there is a very real chance you’ll die every time you go out, that’s as true for me as it is some d-rank adventurer. The second you go off half-cocked thinking you’re hot shit, that’s when you’ll die.”
The man seemed unusually invested in this particular speech, so he could only conclude the man had a friend die due to his carelessness. “I see, well if it helps the reason I said know is because I’ve already taken hundreds of precautions. You can’t see them now, but I have 5 powerful familiars with me, and I have access to several different recovery items, and several weapons and escape tactics prepared.”
The man laughed hard, completely shifting from his previous somber tone. “So I had you completely wrong, did I? Well no that is to say you’re still arrogant, way overconfident in your preparations, but you’re also cautious. I’ll bet you know that about yourself, and that’s why you over-prepare right? To make up for your own overconfidence.” He wasn’t so naive he didn’t realize his own arrogance, but as long as it was from his own earned achievements and not simply because he was born in a noble family he had decided it was an acceptable flaw.
“Nobody’s perfect, even the ones who must pretend to be, no perhaps especially the ones who pretend to be. That being said, most flaws can be compensated for so long as you know they are there.” Not all flaws unfortunately, and even for the ones that could it was usually only mitigating their effect rather than negating it.
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“True, well enough about that. I got what I came for, I’ll handle the request. World’s end is quite the distance, so we have some preparations to make. I'll give you a list and you can say which things you’ve already prepared. We should be ok to leave before mid-day.” He wasn’t displeased with this arrangement, the man was likely as good as he was gonna get if he didn’t want to wait here forever, but…
“Sounds good, but I think you may be forgetting something.” He wondered if it was perhaps due to everyone around here knowing each other. Well not like it was a big deal to him personally, but it was a pretty big faux paus to make in noble society.
“Oh? What’s that?” He just sighed. He was half tempted to let it go, but it would probably make conversation awkward at some point.
“My name was on the request, but you never gave me yours.” That was to say his alias was on the board. He may have had to give his real info for his adventurer id, but using an alias for requests was perfectly fine.
The man laughed. “How about I tell you my name if you can convince me your name is Marcus. Hate to break it to you kid, but you're not as good at pretending you don’t have a high class background as you think you are. Even if you were, your clothes would give you away in an instant. No normal person even owns clothes that clean.” He sighed. He knew that, but he had hoped no one would notice that small detail. He wasn’t a fan of getting dirty, so he had decided it was a worthy risk, perhaps he should have just sucked it up. “Wow, don't think I’ve seen a face shift to neutral that quickly.”
That was a habit of his. Whenever he decided he was caught off guard he immediately shifted his expressions and body language to give away as little as possible. “It’s fine if you don’t want to tell me your name, but communication is going to be important out there, so I need something to call you by.” The best way to get around people prying was to close the subject. In this case he didn’t care to have the man’s actual name, so the man didn’t have any leverage. Not like it would be a huge deal even if the man decided to drop the quest altogether.
The man put his hands up in defense. “Ok, name’s a touchy subject. My bad clearly I misjudged why you were hiding it in the first place. You can call me Jackson.” He didn’t have to think too hard to guess the reason Jackson thought he’d hide it. Most nobles wouldn’t go around talking about their status unless they had guards with them. They were after all typically extremely wealthy. Of course most non mage nobles didn’t go out on their own very often so it was a risky prospect either way.
“It’s not like I gave you a fake name anyway, just not my full name.” He wasn’t usually a fan of outright lying, but even he could acknowledge that there were times when no amount of twisting the truth would work. Either way the answer seemed to appease Jackson well enough.
“Fair enough I suppose, not like I need that in order to follow through with your request anyway. Anyway, come on, I wasn’t kidding about us having to get supplies.” Credit where it’s due, Jackson recovered quickly from the sudden change in the tone and they were back to the relaxed atmosphere from before. Or well as relaxed as could be, when they were preparing to go deep into the wilds. He wondered how the others were doing.”
***
To say Azura’s copy was worried would be an understatement. It took him and the other copy all they had to pay attention to the classes with the trip to the capital looming. Almost everyone else in his team was either also worried or starting to get 2nd hand worry from him and the others that had been there. Well to be precise there was nothing wrong with the capital itself. In fact if she wasn’t there to torment him it would probably be one of his favorite places, The library there was fantastic. He idly wondered whether the library here or that one had more knowledge stored inside. Not that he’d be able to read all the books in either one in this lifetime.
“I’m kind of excited to meet this person. If she’s capable of making you and Gareth tremble like that she must be monstrous.” He snorted at Lily’s words. As if any amount of strength would make him nervous like this. Frankly he’d rather fight his father, and he had a negative chance of winning that fight.
“She is, but not in the way you’re thinking. In fact she can’t fight at all, not even basic hand to hand.” In exchange she was the craftiest person he had ever met. She had played innocent at first, but once she asked something he didn’t want to do and he said no her true colors were revealed. Every time he had seen her she ended up putting him in a position where he had no choice but to do something ridiculous. His father wouldn’t be there for her to use to pressure him though, so that was at least better than the usual circumstance.
“What?! She can’t even fight, and she has all of you shaking in your boots like that? How? If she does something you don’t like, just force her to stop.” Right, Lindin’s culture was very different from the kingdoms on this continent. Aside from the ban on external magic they also seemed to have more of a strong rule the weak mentality. The emperor changed whenever someone stronger than the current one challenged for the throne.
“It’s not quite so simple. She herself has no battle ability, but the kingdom's royal knights do. I’d say if it came down to it the strongest 10 of the royal knights working together would have a chance of beating my father. That may not sound like much without context, but each of those 10 is well above my level. If it helps you visualize I’d say heir Crimson would probably take the 6th spot in terms of power at the moment.” It goes without saying that there were many knights not in the top 10 that were stronger than him, but he could at least match almost anyone else if it came down to it.
“So the princess herself is weak, but she has strong followers? This place sure is different then I’m used to. Is the king at least strong?” It was funny how ingrained certain thought processes could become. She hated her home continent for good reason, yet even still she couldn’t help but think of things in terms of how they are in Lindin.
“He’s not incapable of combat like his daughter, but he’s not exactly a power house either. I’ve never seen him fight, but if I had to guess based on what I have seen I’d put him on the level of maybe an average 3rd year at this school.” In other words he was probably on par with the king more or less if he took things seriously. For the most part it could be said that the strongest of each year were roughly equal to the weakest of 2 years ahead. Of course there were exceptions to every rule. In this particular case he’d guess Lily and Roran were both equal to the 3rd years mid tiers. Of course there were 2nd years that were stronger than them though, so it was all kind of rough to judge. Not even counting himself since his own strength varied so dramatically depending on what resources he was willing to use.
“What keeps his followers in line then? I mean I get that this academy represents the best of the best in terms of talented mages, so even being equal to a 3rd year puts him above most of them, but what about the rest?” He tilted his head. It was an interesting question, and one he didn’t really have an answer for. Well at least not one that would satisfy Lily. In the same vein that Lindin’s culture affected her, it was only natural that people here were affected by the culture of Soren.
“Duty I guess. I always joke about my father taking over the kingdom, but I don’t think he’d really do that, or at least not through physical force. It’s not loyalty, not really. I suppose it’s more like a game where everyone has agreed to a certain set of rules, and doing things outside of those rules constitutes a loss. Most people strong enough to change things either don’t care enough to, or are too prideful to break the rules and admit they couldn’t win fair and square I guess.
“So they are trapped by imaginary rules that are obviously in favor of the one already in charge? That’s dumb.” He laughed. He supposed in some ways it was, but it was an effective system so long as all the powers kept each other in check. After all it didn’t matter how strong the man in charge was if they didn’t know how to run a kingdom then that would mean less revenue, and less food. Which would lead to less workers which would lead to even less revenue. Frankly in that sense even he had to reluctantly admit that her highness would become an excellent queen. She was already basically in charge anyway.
“The system works more or less, but it’s not like I don’t see your point. In reality there isn’t anything actually stopping people like my father from taking over if they wanted to, but that comes with its own risks anyway. Well either way come on, the others are probably waiting for us.” He ran off down the halls to their meeting place with Lily hot on his heels.