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As it turned out, Lorcan was two years younger than Rowan, a fact that had attracted his ire more than once.

In terms of power alone, Rowan was easily Lorcan’s better, the role of his Uncommon (Mezzanine) card undoubtable in that calculation.

As the son of one of the Neem Guild’s founding members, Lorcan had not lacked resources or quality tutelage growing up, his sword technique inherited from his father, who in turn had perused the family records to obtain it.

The reason why Rowan found Lorcan so irritating was because his skill with the blade was undeniable, even if his Uncommon card didn’t really mesh with his fighting style. While Rowan didn’t know what Lorcan’s card was called, the gist of it’s abilities boiled down to blasts of compressed wind from a distance, with the additional ability of making the blunt sphere attack of compressed wind transform into smaller, scything arcs of wind blades that indiscriminately fired off in every direction.

The latter was a fatal move and clearly could not be used in a duel, while the former didn’t really synergize well with Lorcan’s preference for the sword. Despite those disadvantages though, Lorcan worked well around them, using the spheres of compressed wind as a distraction to cover the distance between him and his opponent before he unleashed his offensive sword form to make them yield.

Of course, such a strategy was ill-fitted to fight against spectral whip, which could go through his sword as well as armor to lock him in place.

What that didn’t change, though, was the fact that Rowan wouldn’t be able to offer Lorcan a fight when it came to a true clash of blades. If Lorcan managed to acquire a more powerful, higher rarity blade, then it was a real possibility that he would pose a threat to him in the duels.

Snippets from Rowan’s fight against Lorcan were preserved in Tom’s memory and he found himself agreeing with that assessment.

Unfortunately, the memories hadn’t come with a location, so Tom didn’t exactly know where Lorcan lived. If he spent more effort and SP there was a good chance that he’d find it, but there was no need for him to do that.

Tom knew how Lorcan looked and he was bound to come to the Neem Guild’s headquarters eventually. Lurking in the Nexus City’s plaza for too long was bound to draw suspicion, so Tom went about his search in a leisurely way, staying in the plaza for an hour every day before returning to his inn.

On the third day, he found Lorcan.

A silver-haired young man had walked towards the Neem Guild headquarters, his demeanor unhurried and his steps measured. In comparison to Rowan’s ostentatious armor, his was a sleek, form-fitting set of chest plate, platelegs and greaves forged out of a copper-colored metal. The visage was left undefended, his azure eyes nothing unusual in Artezia or the Aerinaculumn from his experience.

Stolen story; please report.

His silver hair was neatly parted to the right, the longer strands sweeping across his brow and framing his sharp features that were devoid of all but the slightest hint of fat, an observation that extended to his tall, lanky build. Back on earth, such an observation would mean little, but when Physical was a stat one could invest in, it told Tom that Lorcan had not invested heavily in the stat.

A sheathed shortsword was strapped to his waist, its ornate hilt the only eye-catching part about his equipment.

Even as Lorcan had drawn closer to the Neem Guild, Tom couldn’t help but notice how content was with largely going unnoticed amongst the crowd, a respectful nod from one of the passersbys the only bit of deference that was offered to him.

The only thing that had surprised Tom, really, was that the SP ask to use Maya on him was even lesser than Rowan, coming a mere fifty-nine SP.

There had been no reason to hesitate any further.

Behind that calm exterior, Lorcan was hiding quite the nuanced character. While Rowan had seen him as a potential threat in the future, Lorcan personally wasn’t desperate to win. The youth was twenty three years old and most of his growing up years had been spent training under his father, Vulturi, who was more feared than respected in the guild due to his status as the leader of the guild enforcers.

When the guild’s rules were broken, it was those trained under Vulturi or sometimes, him directly that hunted down the suspect. Though on most days, their duties were limited to overseeing contributions and making sure that no guild member was siphoning funds for their own personal use.

In a nutshell, the enforcers were in charge of maintaining order within the guild and it was a line of work that made far more enemies than it did friends. That was why, from a young age, Lorcan’s father had not gone easy on him when it came to training.

He could not afford to raise an inept successor.

And over time, Lorcan had come to resent his father for it. It was not the grueling hours he had spent toiling in the training grounds, or the countless times his father had disarmed him without even trying, to prove just how far he still had to go, that had come to irritate him.

Neither was his skill with the sword, for it was something he had toiled for and earned on his own merit. No, Lorcan had come to enjoy swordplay.

What frustrated him was the Neem Guild’s aversion to any real danger. His father had trained him and he done so without holding back anything. Lorcan should’ve been out there, challenging one Nexus Quest after the next like his father had.

Ascending to the next floor was a choice, not an imposition. Even after you achieved a total of a hundred Nexus Points, unless explicit consent was given to the divine system, you would not be teleported to the next floor.

You could also keep taking more quests, just without being awarded the Nexus Point component of it.

But his father had refused. There was no reason to risk his life when he was not being trained to ascend.

Instead, he was forced to spend his days playing games with inept fools like Rowan for a position that ultimately didn’t matter. The Neem Guild was fated to be limited to the first floor and no guild leader could change that reality.

Lorcan’s own desire was a nebulous thing. He wasn’t certain if he wanted to ascend to the next floor, because that entailed leaving everything and everyone he’d ever known behind for an unknown realm but at the same time, he was discontent with the current status quo.

No wonder his “weight”, in terms of the SP required to use Maya on a person, was lesser than the arrogant but clear Rowan.

After Tom rediscovered himself an hour into Lorcan’s Maya, powering through to the single Astral Gold star he was in possession of proved to be easier than it had with Rowan.