[Aya Grephin POV]
"Phantasm, Can you please make our meeting a little more.. Secret?" Elder Virion asked me and then I smile a little.
"Sound Barrier... Extension."
I silently recited and soon a light green sphere emerged from my mana core and expanded covering the entire room, it seemed that one of the invited adventurers noticed my magic, as he looked in my direction, even though Virion hadn't specified who was "Phantasm".
"Interesting... He must be the elven Wind Augmenter they say so much..." I thought to myself, looking at the adventurer with a mask marked with green stars.
"Fine, then there won't be any problems... Anyway, could you introduce yourselves?" King Alduin spoke, adjusting his wrists a little as he set them on the table. We already knew the names, we just didn't know who is who, from the vague descriptions we were always given.
"Your Majesty, king of our beloved forest. My name is Diamond, and the colleague next to me is called Note. It is an honor to know that you all wanted to speak with us." Said the masked adventurer from before, as they both got up, bowed again and then sat down again.
"Masked adventurers, do you know why we called you?" our old king, Virion, said, touching his own beard.
"Great Elder, I don't know exactly why you called us. Just that it has to do with our achievements as adventurers." Said the other adventurer, Note.
"Well, yes, it has to do with the achievements of both of you, knowing that you are extremely capable for intense events and sudden urgency." Queen Merial said in her calm but political voice.
"Yes, elven majesty, this is true, we were taught to an ancient mentor of ours to always be prepared for the unexpected, this makes some see us as crazy for so much precaution. But in the end, this turns out to be what is necessary. An example that would be the most recent event." Note said making everyone confused.
"Zero, what were the dates of the last update we received on them?" the King of Sapin, Blaine Glayder, said looking at one of our guards.
"The last events we have available regarding them are from 1 month ago." Varay said, as he had some papers in his hands and put them on her royal table.
"When was this last adventure of yours?" The Queen of Sapin, Priscilla Glayder, wondered about this.
"Human queen, this adventure happened not even 3 days ago. It was something so intense that we were thinking of taking a little vacation, but we ended up being called to this last minute meeting." Diamond was talking, always gesturing with his hands, apparently he hates being still.
"Could you tell us what kind of intensity that was?..." King Blaine said, looking at them coldly.
"In short to get into the main reason for this meeting, we were in a dungeon to explore a new part that had been discovered behind fragile walls. There we had several problems, like the healer of the group dying early on, the dungeon being different from what was reported to us, one of the participants of the group being a traitor and trying to kill us..." Diamond seemed to have raised his voice as he said that, but soon he coughed and returned to a more political voice. "And finally... We found a mana beast that should never have been there... An S-class known as the elderwood guardian."
Almost instantly all of the Eralith royal family with the exception of Princess Tessia, rose from their chairs in amazement, while Alea and I were wide-eyed. Queen Priscilla seemed to cover her mouth in amazement, while the Princes of Sapin, Curtis and Kathlyn, did the same reaction I did, just wide-eyed. King Blaine, for some reason, was the only one who looked nonchalant.
"I'm sorry, but did I hear correctly....? An Elderwood Guardian...? How can they prove something so crazy?" Elder Virion said.
"Well... We could prove it simply by writing the report together with the other team members, because even if we had been attacked by a betrayal, Diamond and I managed to get most of them out of there alive." Note said, looking directly at the king of his kingdom.
"And we have this here." Diamond spoke while revealing something surprising to us, a greenish mana core, incredibly dense and with a thin dark layer around it. That item was in the palm of the green-clothed adventurer's hand.
"Aureate, could you confirm this information?" King Alduin ordered Alea, and she went towards the adventurers.
Diamond put the mana core on the table and gave a light push with his finger, causing the sphere to roll across the table towards Alea. She took it off taking off her glove to take a closer look, her eyes got even wider, as some blood dripped from her nose.
"M-my god! Is everything okay?" Queen Priscilla said in concern.
"Aureate is extremely sensitive in the art of 'Sensory Perception', she is the person who would react the most when analyzing any mana core." Virion spoke, causing the queen of Sapin to calm down a bit.
"This…this is more…are you sure this came from an S-Class mana beast and not an SS-class?" When she said this to the adventurers, I looked around, everyone was petrified of what was being said and King Blaine looked like he was having a little tic in one of his eyes.
"Well yes, it's a mana core of an elderwood guardian, however I would say it was modified by something, it was completely anomalous and acted differently from the reports of the species." Diamond answered Alea, who was slowly moving away, leaving the mana core with them.
"From the way you guys talked before about someone betraying you and everyone getting out alive thanks to you... could I say without fear that it was you two who killed this mana beast?" Virion asked.
"Exactly. It was tricky, but we ended up using the mana beast's terrain as a weapon against itself. Of course, we didn't leave it unharmed, here we have my arms affected by the unhealthy use of mana while my colleague here is full of bandages because of this event." Diamond said showing his arms full of red and purple spots while Note slightly lifted his robe, revealing a huge amount of bandages all over his torso, covering everything.
"I'm sorry for what you've had to go through, but I want to get back to the main topic of our meeting... Gentlemen Diamond and Note, we'd like you to be our special guards." King Blaine spoke politically, but showing impatience.
"Exactly, we are creating a new title called 'Lances', with this title, you will be considered mages of the highest possible rank of Dicathen. Besides that, so that all Lances are on an equal level, we received wonderful artifacts, which allow any mage to automatically enter the White Stage." King Alduin announced encouragingly.
"Yes, because there are a little few artifacts that have this characteristic, we would like that extremely skilled mages like you, become our 'Lances', knowing that a solid yellow S-Class and a light orange AA-Class, together managed to defeat an anomaly S-Class mana beast. Imagine if they had a mana core on the white stage." Queen Merial said smiling.
"That looks quite tempting...." Note was saying.
"But we'd like to decline this incredible offer." Diamond spoke and soon I heard a light knock, King Blaine had slammed his leg on his own table in reaction to that answer.
"Excuse the question, but.. Why refuse something like that?" Virion said touching his beard more.
"We believe that things must flow naturally to be perfect... If we accepted this gift, we could not reach our understanding of perfection." Diamond spoke confidently of the decision.
"Where did I ever hear this same conversation before....?" I thought, feeling deja-vu about that.
"So how about you two become Lances without having the artifacts?" King Blaine said with a political smile.
"We still declined the offer. If that were the case, many people would begin to doubt that there are mages of our level among the white stage mages. That would cause a slight problem." Note said.
"But what about-" King Blaine tried to say more, but was interrupted.
"We've already declined the offer." Diamond said releasing an intense bloodlust that made everyone there gasp for air, including me.
Even the children were being affected with their surprised looks by the sudden attack he unleashed. Even with the difficulty of breathing, Zero would start to advance against the adventurers creating a sphere of ice, but Alea stopped that by raising her hand and soon the bloodlust of the greenish adventurer was disappearing.
"Why are you in the front? He just threatened royalty!" Zero exclaimed.
"I could clearly feel that he did this just because we've been bombarding them with requests to join our group, even though they've declined. Clearly at some point they're going to lose patience, don't you think?" Alea was talking to Zero.
Diamond stood up curtsying "I'm sorry about that.. As Miss Aureate herself said... Being showered with proposals, as soon as we get out of a life or death situation.. It's stressful for anyone.. And who's to say that this is not stressful, that person will be lying." He spoke in a now calm voice and this time he remained standing, not sitting in place.
"Excuse me, I don't think we're needed here anymore." Note said getting up too and the two were heading towards the door.
... Until King Blaine got up from his chair and said "What about the Wykes ?"
We were all confused, but apparently the adventurers knew what he was talking about, as they turned back to us.
"What about them?" Diamond said indifferently.
"About the person who betrayed you in the last dungeon, I learned that it was Lucas Wykes. The youngest son of the Wykes noble family. They are well known for attacking or bribing those who threaten the integrity of their family.... That is, they will try to silence you in any way possible, unless you are under our wing."
I was a little taken aback by that, was that why he was indifferent, with the first part of the reveal of these adventurers' last dungeon? He'd known from the start and was just waiting to see whether or not it was necessary to bring it up… It had to be a human.
"Wait... Wykes... Don't tell me that..." I thought looking at where Bairon would be if he hadn't left earlier to sort something out.
"Well, why do you think we'd be so safe with you guys? Don't get me wrong, but from the way you said it yourself about the Wykes family, I don't think they'd be afraid to 'accidentally' try to attack us." Note said.
"The advantage of this is that among the Lances already chosen, we have Thunderlord, better known as Bairon Wykes... The older brother of the little pest that attacked you. If you gain the titles of Lances, the Wykes family would understand that you are on the same level as their prodigy son and so they would be afraid to touch you two in anyway." Blaine was really showing his 'fangs' as he said that, really putting the two adventurers in a tight spot.
I looked at the Eralith family, they all seemed to be a little annoyed by Blaine's way of acting, while Princess Tessia looked sad for some reason.
"Blaine, I think that's an exaggeration, no?" King Alduin spoke.
"Exaggeration? I'm just showing you all the cards and consequences of refusing our deal." He said smiling friendly as if he wasn't a viper.
"We still refuse." The two said in unison, turning their faces to the room, their gazes penetrating our confidence to get on with it.
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[Curtis Glayder POV]
Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.
Those two great adventurers, named Diamond and Note, were there at a meeting with my parents and the elven royal family. And they were having the courage to refuse every offer my father made.
"I don't like it here... I want to go home soon." Kathy, my sister, said it in a low voice just so I could hear because I was on her side.
I also wanted to go, the situation was being extremely rare for me. My dad looked like he was already holding back from advancing on them using some more tricks.
"...And how will you survive them? Will you stand by yourself against an immense powerful family?" my dad said looking sharply in their direction while I just sighed. Sometimes I hate having a father like that.
"Actually yes" the adventurer Note said.
"I... actually think that I could kill everyone in this room if I wanted... I literally killed the elderwood guardian by controlling its own vines... But... no... this would be rude and I would never do this... I have honor in my spirit... BUT I have these two things here that prove we can survive the Wykes." the adventurer Diamond said as he took from his dimensional ring a kind of emblem and a reddish sword.
"He really said that? He isnt afr- wait..." I thought as I looked at the sword, feeling a sense of dejavu.
"A medal and a sword?" My father said confused trying to understand that, it seems that he wasnt affected by what that adventurer said before, as if that was a just a use of words to make him stop.
The green-clothed adventurer had just given the medal into the hand of the elven lady known as Aureate, she looked surprised, looking between the medal and the man there beside her. Then she went to the elven royal family and it looked like they were having a conversation, with a sound shield preventing us from hearing it.
I soon had the courage to get up from my seat and walk towards the adventurers. It could be a problem, but I felt I had better get a closer look at that sword.
"Curtis, what do you think you're doing?" my father caught my attention.
"I'm just looking to see that sword, it seems to be well decorated." I said.
"If it's not a problem for the adventurer Diamond..." My mother said looking at him.
"No problem at all, kids these days, even though they're royalty, have an incredible amount of curiosity. And that curiosity teaches them a lot for the future, so check it out." Diamond said in a different tone of voice than when talking to my father, he seemed more friendly as he approached me, handing over the sword.
I took the sword and analyzed it a little, I was slightly suspicious so I looked under the protection of the item's handle, and I was amazed. There they had the initials "C.L.G.L", I had marked that same acronym in that same area of the sword I gave as a secret gift to my friend, Luz Leywin.
Seeing that sword with the same mark, I kept my mouth open and looked at the masked man, his vibrant blue eyes watched me and suddenly they were colored in 3 colors.. Those same 3 colors as before, but it didn't last long, because soon returned to blue.
"Luz...?" my mouth moved, but I didn't make a sound, but I got a faint, almost imperceptible nod from my head.
Soon I returned the sword to him and look at the other masked man there, logically, so Note must be Arthur...
"Oh my god... Is this really happening...? Luz... And Arthur...? I mean, if so... It would explain why Luz said he was on a trip.. And why it has the acronym in the sword..." I thought to myself, still in shock over things.
"Apparently the little prince here was impressed with my sword, unfortunately, it's not for sale, it was a gift from a very special friend to me." Diamond said looking at my father, this also waked me up from my thoughts.
"Excuse me Blaine. I think our visitors are ready to go." I heard the voice of the elf Elder of the Eralith family. It looked like they had just had that private conversation.
"Hmm...? What do you mean?" my father asked curiously.
"They are really able to protect themselves from Wykes. The medal that the adventurer Diamond has represents a connection with several elven nobles. Apart, they are not that powerful against the Wykes, but together, they have quite a lot of influence." The elven king answered my father.
One of the elven guards threw the medal towards Diamon-... Luz, and he easily caught it in the air using a wind spell.
"Even though we declined your proposals, it was still great to talk to everyone, have a great day and may the kingdoms prosper even more with the proposal of the union of races." Note... Or I could say, Arthur, leave the room, along with his brother.
"Is this really the best? Don't you understand the wonders we're missing?!" My father exclaimed to the elven royal family.
"Blaine, I know you could see potential in them.. But using those tricks was a bit too dirty a move, I feel like there was a chance we could have asked them to be our Lances if we'd just let them go and then proposed again, instead of pushing harder." The elven queen said.
"Unfortunately, I have to agree with Merial, you should have calmed down more." My mother said looking down a little.
"Besides, you said you've already found other two residents of the Sapin realm that would make great Lances, right? So I don't see any problem with leaving these two adventurers alone." The Elder said.
"True... But I still need to find a way for us to have stronger bonds... Curtis! I want you to get along really well with the Leywin boys! We can't lose them for good!" My dad said that and I sighed, feeling just a way for him to get what he wants.
I looked at the elves and everyone, without exception, seemed to have a strange expression after my father said that. "I wonder if they're like this because my father is 'using' me? Or... Do they know the Leywins...? No... That second alternative isn't possible.. is it?" I thought to myself.
"But it's still comical, if Luz and Arthur really are Diamond and Note. Then my father would have lost all chance with them without knowing it. Apparently that's called karma." I thought some more as we left that room. I decide not to comment on what I discovered to either my mom or kathyln.
I really felt like it was fate that I found this out before everyone else, after all I had handed over the weapon he uses and luckily I had been childish enough to write the acronym "C.L.G.L", which stands for "Curtis and Luz; Glayders and Leywins". If in 2 whole years before school they had already done stuff like this, now I was excited to see them at Xyrus Academy.
After a few minutes, we were already saying goodbye to the elf family and going to our carriage, so we would leave the Adventurers Guild of Xyrus. But before the carriage left, Thunderlord appeared and approached my father.
"Your Majesty, I don't think I will go with you at the moment, I need to take my brother home, he passed out in the middle of the courtroom" Thunderlord was saying.
"Court?" My mother and I said at the same time, confused.
"Yes, some bastards are claiming my brother to be a traitor adventurer and possible murderer, we are trying to judge people for slander. The judges believed in the story of him having betrayed, with justification of survival, so they just removed his adventurer license. But there were two unknown people who kept claiming that he tried to kill them, and for my brother's protection, the two bad guys are expelled from Xyrus until Lucas can finish his studies. Unfortunately, their names were not revealed. They deserve something horrible for try to tarnish the Wykes name." Bairon said all that without having a filter, my mother and I looked at my father and he took a deep breath, understanding our looks as "don't add more fuel to this fire mage".
"Okay, Bairon, you can go take your brother, we're leaving now." My father said and then we left there, leaving only Bairon behind.
"I can't believe one of our great Lances has such a troubled brother...and that you wanted to use the Wykes family's anger to buy those adventurers." My mother said looking at my father.
"Sometimes you have to use all the cards on the table. That's the way it works, and you know it." he answered her by looking deep into her eyes, and then my mother sighed and looked at me and Kathyln.
She was sitting next to Kath while I was sitting next to my dad, so my mom was patting my little sister's hair. She felt guilty that we had come here with them. Apparently, today would be a day to study how to make deals, but we ended up learning what not to do.
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[Virion Eralith POV]
We left the Xyrus Adventurers Guild with a strong bitterness in our mouths. I still couldn't believe how the current king was as greedy as the old one, at least he didn't want to attack any kingdom for no reason, or at least I hope that's the truth.
We got into our carriage to drive to Xyrus Academy to take my granddaughter to see her mentor, that pesky old woman who always teased me, Cynthia Goodsky. We were all silent, until we felt one of our Lances, Aya, create a sound barrier for all of us to speak without being overheard by outsiders.
"I can't believe that! Are those boys crazy by any chance?!? According to the reports, they've been adventurers since two years ago... That means they became adventurers at the age of nine!!" My son was the first to say something now.
It was really shocking, from the moment we saw that medal, we knew right away who that adventurer in the green clothes was, and consequently, we also knew who his friend was. During my entire reign and my son's current reign, there were only three people who had that medal, so it was impossible for us not to know their identities, as the other two were killed during the war between humans and elves.
"But we have to accept that they evolved a lot, I mean. They left our house with the cores between red and orange. And now one is solid yellow and the other is almost turning into dark yellow. That's amazing!" Merial said and I gave a little laugh at that.
"Wow! Smart brats! One of them even said they learned to be cautious thanks to me!" I said with a few more laughs.
"Well, you always attacked them in the middle of nowhere during practice." Incredibly everyone said this at the same time, making me lower my head, but then we all had a few laughs.
"But I didn't understand, I knew from the princess that they were going to be students in Xyrus, but why would they need that if they are already at an absurd level among adventurers?" Alea questioned this curiously. "I mean..Students who defeated an S-Class anomalous enough for me to detect it as being SS-Class?"
"They promised they'd be there with me! So they MUST be there! Hunf!" Tessia said with a silly pount.
"You just want to be glued to Art don't you?" I said giving a smirk, after that everyone had the same expression, with the exception of Alea who put her hand on her own face.
"H-hey!?! Don't say that!!!" my granddaughter exclaimed.
"Why not? It's really obvious that this is going to happen. And he already has our blessing if he wants to marry you." my son spoke as if it was something completely normal. "My daughter, married to a great adventurer, powerful and quadra-elemental, with all that incredible etiquette and not afraid of great people. This is incredible!"
Tessia reacted to this by starting to beat her father's legs as she went completely red in the face, including her ears. I, on the other hand, reacted to that with a laugh.
"Fufufufu~ while you're with Arthur, Luley will be mine alone, he looked so grown up and cute in that outfit." Aya said that as if to provoke the situation even more, since Tess saw Luz as her brother.
Tessia, without needing to get up, shifted the target of the slap to one of Aya's shoulders, with everyone laughing more at that.
"But I'm glad they're okay, even if they got into trouble with the Wykes family... And by the way... Did you hear what King Blaine said? Apparently he already had his eyes on the boys or something." Alea brought up a point that got me thinking a lot.
"Oh! They must have met in that incident." Tessia said, stopping to attack Aya.
"What incident?" I got curious, and everyone looked at Tess.
"Well, it's just that I've been using Granny Rinia's... Sphere of Sight." when she said that I remembered when I caught her using that sphere to watch Arthur sleeping.
"And I saw that there was a moment, in a big place, where Art and Luz's family ended up meeting with the human royal family due to some event. And then the royal family was attacked, with the guards that were there being killed... causing Luz and Art to go all out on the invader to protect the others... It was so tense..." my granddaughter continued talking and I took a deep breath.
"That explains how they know them, but tense how?" Meriel asked.
"Tense to the point that... Luz had to develop a technique... to control severed limbs of himself." When she said that, we were all extremely scared.
"W-what?...." Alea asked, in shock.
"The invader cut off his arm.. And he simply managed to control the arm and glued it back using... Lightning." She said with her expression getting quite scared as if she was reviewing the scene in her mind.
"Really.. Now I don't doubt their absurd growth and having defeated an elderwood guardian." Alduin said leaning back in his chair.
On second thought, it was really easy to accept that, seeing as Luz had a beast will that he was born with, and Arthur had Dragon's beast will. It was so irritating not to be able to tell others about it, but I promised both of them that I wouldn't tell anyone about it, only with permission.
Arriving at the entrance of Xyrus Academy, Aya created an illusory barrier around us, so no one could see us, just beyond the entrance was Cynthia, with a barrier of sound surrounding her.
"I know you guys are always busy with some stuff, but making my disciple come late to class is kind of irritating isn't it old elf?" Cynthia, that woman who always found a way to tease me, said as my granddaughter got out of Aya's barrier and into her mentor's.
"It wasn't a big deal, I think she even had fun going there. We accidentally ran into the Leywin boys. And you know how close she gets to them, especially the brown haired one." I said with a little laugh at the end, while my granddaughter glared at me.
I ended up getting a tug on my beard. "Ouch!!"
"Stop talking like that! Hunf!" my granddaughter had red cheeks and red ears again.
"With the Leywins accidentally...? Did you find out about them being adventurers?" Cynthia said curiously.
"Wait a minute! Did you know!?" my son said surprised.
"Yes and no, Luz decided to come here at one point as Prince Curtis' personal guard... Apparently, he and the prince are good friends, and Curtis wanted to take him here to give him a little tour of some common areas. I took advantage of what I knew about him around here, and pulled him to see Tessia a little. There he told only about him being an adventurer with his brother, he even gave some mana cores to help strengthen her. So I don't know the names that both boys are using as disguises." Cynthia was saying as she patted my granddaughter's hair.
"Did he even help you by giving her mana cores?" Merial spoke curiously.
"Yes, they were all from C-Class mana beasts, they were quality. I asked her to not tell this to you all, since it would be better... either way..." Cynthia said and then turned around with Tessia beside her. "We'll talk later, I have to train this adorable little girl." She waved as she walked into the Academy with my granddaughter.
We returned to the carriage, which was now heading towards the teleport portal that was on the other side of Xyrus. I wondered more about those boys and how they sneakily did things without us having any idea.
"How about we go see these brats more naturally later?" I asked everyone there and received silent confirmations.
{A/N: I hope that y'all liked the idea of feeling how the royal families and some Lances were reacting of this whole thing. And yes, we'll dont have the scene of Lucas in the courtroom with Luz and Art. I'm only going to say what Bairon said: "Lucas passed out in the middle of nowhere".}