The sky was just starting to brighten from the light of dawn when I awoke the next day. Though my exhausted body protested against the activity, I pushed myself up and stretched in an attempt to dispel the ache from my ailing body. The ache from the mana realignment had faded somewhat, but it still hurt to move. As I stretched, a small metallic object slipped from my hand.
Reaching down, I picked the blue ring off of the ground. Even after a night’s sleep, the ring was still there. Turning it over once more in my hand, the ring still did not betray any sinister properties. Ahriman had retrieved the ring from a coffin, so it probably wasn’t demonic in origin.
I took a deep breath to steady my nerves. The ring was supposed to be a gift, and I would not gain any of its benefits by being over-cautious. With my right hand, I drew my wand, and I prepared to place the ring on the pinky finger of my left hand. If the ring tried to kill me, I would sever that finger with a Wind Knife.
Carefully, I placed the ring on my finger before frantically withdrawing my wand and aiming it at the finger. Moments passed, and nothing happened. A sigh of relief exited my lungs, and I returned my wand to its sheath.
If there was any curse on the ring, it did not activate when worn for the first time. I had never heard of a cursed ring that activated at any other time, so I was pretty sure that I was safe. I started to transfer the ring to my other hand when I noticed a much larger script on the inside of the ring. In runic letters, a single message had been written inside of the ring’s band: ᛛᚯᚭᛢᚫ ᚬᛦᚩᛅᛝᚮ (Etron Polaris).
Written on the inside of the ring was the name of the Hero of the Cataclysm and founder of the Kingdom of Etronia. The name was basically inescapable in that country, so I had read it often. Whoever made the ring probably inscribed the name to list Etron as an inspiration or to invoke his power in some way, I thought at the time. Invoking Etron’s name was basically a national pastime in my homeland.
Paying the inscription little mind, I placed the ring on the middle finger of my right hand and started getting ready for the trip ahead.
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The sun was still low in the sky by the time everything was packed into the carriages and the horses were ready to go. Eadric brought the third carriage that we had prepared ahead of time to the clearing. We needed a lot of extra space to hold the head of the great talpa.
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Through extended use of the [Lift Object] spell, I packed everything into my carriage long before everyone else was done. At one point, Eadric walked over to me and asked, “Aren’t you low on mana, Thale? Should you be using magic like that?”
Absentmindedly, I scratched the sensitive skin on my chest as I said, “I still have plenty of mana left over. I have even more mana than Beltane, remember?”
“Right,” Eadric said. He clearly did not believe me, but he didn’t want to press the issue. Eadric knew roughly how much mana I had, and he knew that I should have been depleted after killing a great beast and levitating its head for an hour.
I sat in the driver’s seat of my carriage while I waited for the other two to get done with their preparations. Considering that I could see Eadric physically push Kinro out of his hammock from where I was sitting, I figured it would be a while.
While I sat there, I thought about one piece of information that I saw on my Character Sheet the night before. I had advanced from D-Tier to C-Tier. To put that in perspective, 90% of all people on Ferrum were in D-Tier. Beltane and Eadric were in C-Tier, and Walter was in B-Tier at the time of his death. Much to my chagrin, even I had to admit that the Red Knight was in A-Tier. Roughly speaking, a Tier was equivalent to 25 levels. People typically reached C-Tier at level 25, which meant I was ahead of the curve.
I was happy to be out of D-Tier, since that was typically considered to be filled with commoners and cannon-fodder. Those in C-Tier were able to hold their own, somewhat. Knights and veteran monster hunters were the typical examples used of NPCs in C-Tier.
Though D-Tiers were considered fodder compared to C-Tiers, it was like that at every Tier. Walter was vastly stronger than Beltane, and the Red Knight was vastly stronger than Walter.
To defeat the Red Knight, I still had to advance two more Tiers. The vast amount of ground I had to make up if I was ever going to reach A-Tier became very clear to me in that moment.
As I looked down at my hands, I reminded myself that my own physical power was the only thing I could rely upon to kill the Red Knight. I could find the identity of the Red Knight, raise an army, and bring it crashing against his home. My position as a wealthy nobleman made that very doable.
Yet, that would never work. An army of ten thousand D-Tiers and fifty C-Tiers would have no chance against the Red Knight. Thousands of soldiers would die as he carved a bloody crest through my army. No, it was only by investing in my own power and the power of exceptional individuals like that drunken samurai that I had any chance of killing the Red Knight.