The next morning, after Erebus had pulled himself out of Tear’s grasp (she had crawled into his bed), he headed down to the Quester’s Guild with Vyne. Tear told them that she would work on gathering some more information. Vyne had lectured them both on how ignorance would not help them get anywhere. Since they had basically lived as recluses for hundreds of years (a thousand or so for Erebus) they lacked the ‘common sense’ that everyone else had. So, to fix this ignorance, Tear was sent out to gather the fundamental knowledge.

And, the reason he didn’t go information gathering with Tear, is because he didn’t trust Erebus on his own. Erebus had a habit of drifting off to find places to nap (like a cat of some sorts) and abandoning his duties.

“Ah, so boring, this world is so boring.”

“Indeed, there hasn’t been anything interesting. Perhaps we should incite a fight at the Guild? That would prove entertaining.”

“What’s with that troublesome thinking? Humans are no fun to fight. Their entire race is painfully weak.”

“Yes, I don’t mean us fighting, I mean them fighting each other. Some of my methods of gaining (torturing) information from others include making them experience betrayal.”

“Oh... so if Vyne wanted, you could start a war? That’d be fun.”

Vyne laughed loudly. “Indeed! That would be great!” Even though I think you’re overestimating me too much, Vyne thought to himself.

“As I thought, Vyne is certainly amazing. If I was a woman I’d marry you. No! My love for you transcends such barriers.”

“Hahaha!”

“Hahaha!”

Even though Erebus said these types of things, he was aromantic. He called those types of emotions ‘trivial’ and ‘an annoyance’.  

“Anyway, Erebus, should we aim to get Tier 3 today?”

“Yes. That’ll prove more entertaining, correct?”

Vyne nodded, displaying a somewhat smug expression. “Yes, and at Tier 5, we’ll be able to go explore dungeons. Last night, I went back to the Quester’s Guild to gain even more information.”

Erebus applauded Vyne’s quick information gathering. “Good job, good job.”

Vyne looked happy to be praised by his master. “Of course! If I provided my Lord with anything else, I would be unworthy!”

They entered the Quester’s Guild.

“I noticed this before, Erebus, but this place has a wonderful flow of mana.”

“Indeed,” Erebus tilted back his head, “it has such a relaxing feel to it.”

Inside of the Quester’s Guild, due to the enchanted materials it was built with and mana stones embedded in the ceiling to provide light, it had its own flow of mana called a ‘channel’. A channel would be formed if there was a large quantity of mana existing in an area. Also, two channels can blend together and become a ‘linkage’. Then some linkages form a ‘composite’... it eventually becomes a jumble too irritating to decipher.

Anyway, the channel was typically influenced by the auras of those inside of it. For example, in a dungeon which is full of hostiles, the channel there had an unsettling feel to it. Inside of the Guild, however, the aura was tranquil.

Though, many times, some Questers would get into fights that would disturb the tranquility and create a menacing atmosphere, the raging auras would eventually calm down.

An aura, by the way, was emitted by every living thing. It was, in a simple explanation, mana affected by the living entity. Mana flows in and out of everything, and when it flows through living things, auras are created. The aura that they emit is similar to a channel, but it is influenced by their emotion. So, if a person gets angry, their aura changes into that of anger, also. Similar to channels, aura is felt by others. Aura can be controlled if you are skillful enough.

The best example of this would be when Erebus. Erebus, who is constantly bored and lazing about, emits a useless aura. Which is why everyone finds him to be ‘worthless’. But, Erebus is capable of withholding his aura since his true aura is that of a creature nearly as old as the planet they lived on. In other words, he purposefully emits an aura of a wimp.

It’s a strange concept to explain but, more or less, that’s how it works.

Back to the duo, they both had their eyes closed as the peaceful mana channel flowed around them.

“I haven’t felt this relaxed in a while,” Erebus admitted, opening his eye.

Vyne nodded his agreement. “Moving on, let’s find some high reward Tier 2 Quest.”

The two made their way over to the crowded Quest Board, which was surrounded by tough looking men and women.

There was one female who had a long scar stretching from her left temple cutting across her face diagonally to her chin. She had shorn her hair into a buzz-cut, and well... she looked manlier than some of the guys standing there. She looked like she spent all of her free-time lifting weights and crushing the skulls of unfortunate passersby.

When she saw Vyne and Erebus, she let out a large laugh. “Hello there!” she began in her gravelly voice. “I haven’t seen you two before!”

Vyne’s eye twitched. She was incredibly loud. “We just applied yesterday.”

“I see! I see!” she boomed. She stuck out a beefy hand. “My name’s Heather, Tier 8 Quester.”

Erebus shook her hand enthusiastically. “Pleasure to meet you, I’m Erebus.”

“Ohoho! What a firm shake for a scrawny looking man.”

The two who got along surprisingly well shared a laugh.

Vyne, who seemed to be saddened by being left out, introduced himself, “My name is Vyne. Erebus and I are both Tier 2

Questers.”

“And you say you just applied yesterday!” a man with a shiny bald head input. “Amazing.”

The others around them all agreed. Gaining a Tier in less than a day was certainly a feat, no matter how low the Tier was.

“We had another friend with us, so it wasn’t too difficult.” Vyne smiled kindly at them all.

Heather laughed again, undoubtedly rupturing the eardrums of the fellow next to her. “And humble, too!”

Vyne twitched again. He wanted to get a Quest and leave already.

Erebus, on the other hand, was doing his signature head-scratch and ‘What can you do?’ smile. “Eh? Your compliments are making me blush.”

Heather, upon seeing this, forced Erebus into an embrace against her muscled chest. “How adorable!”

Vyne was doing his very best at not beheading her for laying her filthy, lower-life form, disgusting, unworthy, worthless (the list goes on) hands on his master. It was almost commendable on how he kept his bloodlust restrained. Though, he was making plans to go out tonight and relieve his stress by playing with some poor soul on the street. He wouldn’t kill quickly them, that was too easy.

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Ah, he couldn’t wait to see the moment the life left their eyes and the last breath escaped their filthy lips.

It was those kinds of thoughts that kept him calm.

During Vyne’s vivid day-dreaming, Erebus had been lead off by Heather and a couple of other Questers to a table. Heather would laugh every now and then and smack Erebus on the back with enough force to break a small child’s spine.

“So, you decided to become a Quester because you were bored?” the bald man from earlier questioned. His name was Luke and he was a battle-mage with a kind heart.

“Haha yep~” Erebus left out the fact that he was a Dragon/Demon Lord who had existed for a long... long... long time.

“How amusing.” Heather laughed and gave him another bone-crushing ‘pat’ on the back. At this moment, even though Heather acted so light-hearted, she was amazed by how strong this young fellow was. She had subtly been increasing the power of her pats on the back and he didn’t show the slightest recognition of pain.

Vyne came over and sat with them, even though he didn’t want to. “He has always decided to do things on a whim like that,” he said, adopting the role of a childhood friend. A side-note, Vyne’s acting skills were amazing. Perhaps it was because of his hobby (he had to lure in his victims, I mean, companions somehow) but he had perfected the personality types of many varieties.

Erebus laughed and continued to rub the back of his head.

“Where do you hail from?” A black-haired man by the name of Mur asked the two.

“The Lower continent.” Vyne didn’t hesitate.

Mur raised an eyebrow and let out a low whistle.

The Lower Continent was known for having monsters even more vicious than the ones in Milon. The dungeon and labyrinths were also more difficult.

Heather nodded, that would explain why her ‘pats’ had no effect on Erebus. Little did she know, it was mentioned just for that. It would be their explanation for why they were so strong, they would just mention Lower Continent, and people would understand.

Since he had sensed a change in the atmosphere, Vyne suggested to Erebus that they head out on their Quest.

Erebus, who had also noticed how they had drawn the attention of other Questers with the mention of the lower continent, agreed to this. They said their goodbyes and left.

“To think the Lower Continent would illicit such a response,” Erebus said.

Vyne nodded. “From what I heard last night, the condition of the place has grown even worse within the past centuries.”

For more information, Stone and Magnus had both been Demon Lords in the Lower Continent. When Erebus had gone there to meet a certain person, the arrogant Lords had challenged him. They were arrogant because they had become the only existing Lords in the Lower Continent, they had completely wiped out the others. Their strength was truly something to be reckoned with. He dominated them in battle. Thus, they became his servants and formed their creepy obsession over him.

It was also why Erebus wasn’t particularly bothered by leaving the castle with only three to protect it. All of them possessed strength of a Demon Lord, as they used to be Demon Lords. He had subjugated them all in similar ways, save for Tear. She joined when Erebus had passed through her clan’s territory.

That goes to say, any Quester raid sent to his castle, would be destroyed with the power of five Demon Lords. The reason it was five was because Erebus was a Dragon rank.

Ah, Demon Lord is just a ranking. The top three hostility rankings were: Demon Lord, Demon Emperor, Dragon.

The reason why Stone and the four others who were beaten down by Erebus lost their rankings as Demon Lord is because they became his minions. Minions don’t have rankings.

That being said, the humans didn’t know Erebus was of Dragon rank, so they wrongly labeled him as a Demon Lord.

And because of their pride, they refused to label him as a Demon Emperor.

With that being explained, the Lower Continent was also dubbed the Demon Continent because of the sheer amount of powerful entities existing there. Magnus and Stone weren’t powerful enough to overthrow the Demon Emperor that existed there.

By the way, the Demon Emperor, was who Erebus was going to visit. He was the closest thing to a friend Erebus had.

Anyway, the Lower Continent was the most dangerous place in this world other than the Dragon Realm. To put it into scale, a common monster in the Lower Continent was at Epic rank, two steps below Demon Lord. Actually to get it out of the way the rankings, from lowest to highest were:

Lower Terror

Terror

Epic

Demon

Demon Lord

Demon Emperor

Dragon

There were even more specifications within the lower ranks but the details are too minute to bother with. At Terror Rank, the monster was capable of becoming a Tier 4 Quest.

Lower Terror was Tier 3.

So, if you wanted to survive the Lower Continent, you’d have to be Tier 7. These kind of details are important among the Questers, every monster had to be classified correctly, or a lot of people could die.

“Tier 7, huh,” Heather said softly (or at normal volume for the average person) as the two left the building.

“They could become something amazing.” Luke also watched them leave. “To be born in the Lower Continent... I wonder what their story is.”

“It’s better not to pry, you old man.” Heather ‘patted’ him on the back. Heather had explored the Lower Continent before, it was where she received the scar.

Mur stayed silent. He, unlike the others, had felt the very subtle bloodlust Vyne had been giving off. It was enough to make him fear for his life.

Dangerous, he concluded. Those two are dangerous.

I tried to explain as much as I could because it'd be really confusing later on if I didn't. Please let me know if it's all clear or not because as I a writer I tend to overlook things. Tell me if my explanation is a little clunky, I wasn't sure how to put it all into words.