“... So we walked in the middle of the night after the huge dog tracks, having no idea where it would lead us…” Grey tells Delvin Darsh and albi of our adventure at the undead village. They took us to a nice place with some really good food, it’s a restaurant called Grace’s Kitchen next to their guild. We spent some time looking around at the shops on the way, we took a few detours, we only sat down to eat when the sun started setting down. “So then, this guy here goes peeing in the woods.” Grey points at me and laughs.

“I didn’t pee actually, I didn’t tell you. There was this big dog creature and… that reminds me, I need to buy a dictionary.” The big lion dog thing had a deal with me, I’d hate to fall behind on that.

“Big dog creature? What? Did you fight it? We all thought it was weird you came back with your swords in your hand. I mean his actual sword.” Grey clarifies needlessly to Delvin and the rest. He embarrassed me a little.

“Anyway, we’ll continue the story some other time, but we haven’t heard of any of you.” I try to pass the conversation to Delvin and the others. Grey has been talking for a long time, and it took him an hour just to get to the forest part, we all finished our food already.

“I’d really love to hear mor-” Delvin gets interrupted by Darsh.

“Well, we don’t have any adventures on plate strap yet, but we’re not here for no reason! My surname is Darjee, you probably won’t recognize it but he’s a noble in the inner district. I’m the second son, but in terms of strength I’m number one! hahaha. “ He laughs and pieces of food fly out of his mouth. He then looks at Delvin, inviting him to introduce himself.

“Right,” He sighs in discontent in regards to Darsh’s actions. “I’m Delvin steel, my father was a soldier, my grandpa was a smith. We’re not nobles but we have every etiquette nobles do.”

Grey and I then turn our gaze to Albi, who remains quiet. Darsh and Delvin also look at her pale blank expression, as if she didn’t understand the introduction format.

“Albi, this is where you introduce yourself.” Darsh reminds her.

Albi looks at Darsh and nods to acknowledge it, then she says “I’m Albi.” in a delicate voice and returns to be silent with an emotional expression.

Delvin laughs awkwardly a bit and explains in her place “Well, she isn’t much of a talker. Her name is Albenis Jawer, she’s a bit wary of strangers. Honestly, if I hadn’t met her when we were kids I don’t think she’d talk to me at all either.”

She does seem overly reserved, I can see what he means.

“Well, I guess it’s my turn, huh?” Grey intentionally fails to hide his enthusiasm, I can tell he only wants it to look like a cool introduction. Probably something you’d hear characters do in a children's book or see on TV… on what?

“My name is Gregory Engillian but you can all call me Grey!” he says pointing to himself with his thumbs, and is he thrusting his chest forward? He’s putting a lot into this ‘first impression’, it’s almost laughable really. “I’m a priest adventurer… erm, I mean hunter, and I’m under direct orders from Allous to accompany Fren here on his journey until she tells me otherwise.” He says proudly standing up from the table and putting fists on his hips, completely missing the fact he’s presenting himself as a valet.

I guess it’s my turn next. What should I say? ‘Hi, I’m Fren and I’m the greatest enemy to the world you've ever seen’? I shouldn’t toy with the thought, I only recently realized how dangerous it is to present myself honestly, even with people I think may be my friends. “Right, I guess I’m Fren… I came from Duhndale to become a hunter to help my village…” I awkwardly look at Grey, he was so confident, what else do I have to say?

“Don’t sell yourself short, Fren. Allous herself told me to take care of you, that alone is impressive.” Grey cheers me up. Or maybe he’s just looking for something to say in an epic manner. “You’re Fren! The ghost vanisher, the bane of the Damians! And… didn’t you say you fought a named monster?”

Oh, right, Gavang, I forgot about him… I did kind of lose too. “That wasn’t all that impressive, it was only a goblin.”

“WOW, you really did?!” Darsh gives the impression that perhaps it is ‘all that’, is it though?

“What’s the deal with named monsters anyway? Simply naming thighs won’t make it more of a challenge, will it?-” I hardly finished my sentence before,

Glong Glong…

A bell tower rings, I didn’t know they had those here. We all stop and count… seven, Glong. eight, Glong. nine... silence.

“Oh, what? It’s that late already?! We were supposed to tell our guildmaster how it went!” Delvin stands up in a rush.

“Oh, that’s bad, we planned on going an hour ago! Crest is going to be furious.” Even Darsh is afraid of their guildmaster. And albi emotionlessly looks at her two friends and nods before swiftly getting up too. I’m the only one still sitting… I might as well stand too.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

“Are you leaving already? We only nearly got to the interesting part of the story with the undead.” Grey was eager to tell the tale. He feels more like a bard than a priest.

“I’m sorry, Grey, you’ll have to tell us another time. Guildmaster Crest will make lawn plants out of us if we don’t go there and apologize for being late. You can tell us tomorrow.” And with that they put some coins on the table and leave, enough to pay for everyone though. We have nothing to do but call for the waitress and leave.

“They were all pretty nice, weren’t they?” Grey asks me on the way back.

“I guess they are, or maybe you’re just very good at communicating with others. I didn’t get so familiar with them.”

“What are you talking about? Delvin likes you, he asked me about who you were back in class, and Darsh is basically in love with you. Albi is a bit strange though, doesn't she remind you of Lisa?”

“I was thinking the same thing, I sometimes feel like she’s missing a hood, and then I remember it’s not her.”

We chat some more and go to sleep.

The day after that we both meet before class. It’s supposed to be a lesson about magic.

“Grey! Fren! Morning!” Delvin greets us in class with albi behind him silently watching.

“Sit down everyone, we’re starting class early today, we have a lot to go over.” Luxios passes by before we get to send Delvin a greeting back. Darsh isn’t here yet, but Luxios insists that we start as early as possible. He stands in front of the class and holds a different book and uses the same projector device to show the class its pages on the blackboard.

“This is a religious history book, what does it have to do with magic?” one of the students asks, I think it’s Anabelle, from yesterday.

“You're right, it is. And besides the religious part it has, it also explains about magic, if you listen carefully to what it reads.” Luxios explains to everyone.

I can’t really understand what’s written over there, it’s not the same language as normal writing. Luxios reads it to us, or maybe he’s paraphrasing?

“There are many gods and dragons, Mythos is the god of the world and sacrificed himself, leaving his empty husk to house the world and his immortal soul to become mortal and vanish. That’s not completely true, at least up to some speculations, his soul seeped through the-” The story is interrupted by Darsh entering the room a bit late, and with food smeared over his face. He tries to walk over slowly to his seat but Luxios must be feeling a bit mean today. “Darsh, correct? You seem more muscle than magic focused. Before you sit down, why not give me a brief history of the religious beliefs of? Where is Mythos’s soul?”

Drash looks stupefied, most likely overall embarrassed. “Umm… it’s us, right?”

“Right,” Luxios answers. “And what is the soul made of?”

“Umm… I don’t know.” I feel kind of bad for him to be on the spot like that.

“You can sit down.” Luxios finally releases him. “Does anyone else know?” Luxios looks around the room, but no one is brave enough to answer, or maybe they don’t know? I sure don’t. “It’s magic! It’s made of magic. We are all magic. Yes, even the elves and the monsters. We are all magic.”

“Yeah, that makes sense, like the church says.” I’m glad Grey is making sense of this, I haven't the slightest clue what he’s talking about.

“Grey, let’s not bring the church into this.” Luxios says before he continues. “But either way, we are all magic, and we have our internal magic, the core, that keeps us alive.” He paints a circle on the board, and then struggles with the projector to change its angle so people can see it. “And the outside is the reserves.” He paints another circle around the first one, but now he needs to adjust the angle again and he gives up on that.

“We can’t draw from the Core, or we’ll die, but we can and do draw mana from the reserves, that’s what most of you did yesterday. Sometimes you can do amazing stuff with it like produce fire, water, teleportation is a more complex thing. You can even produce weapons and armor completely out of magic, if you have the right technique.”

“The guildmaster is a shapeshifter, right? Is that magic?” Delvin asks.

“That is…” Luxios looks troubled with that question. “It’s more complicated. But there are potions that can do that, so I think the answer is yes. It’s definitely very complicated though. Anyway, let’s continue with the book.” He mumbles a bit and flips through the pages until he finds a particular one.

“Here, monsters are also magic, and items too. Monsters have no core, so they can use all the mana they have and won’t die to mana sickness, furthermore, monsters and items that have been given names but people gather mana more easily and sometimes transform too. Associating a name with something without a core allows it to gather mana… I guess this is important for the next lessons, but not for today, I’ll just skip that.” But before Luxios does skip it I want to ask a question, what if…

“Umm… Luxios… What about monsters from outside?” What about me?

“From outside?”

“From the adversary, I mean.” I explain, like me… although nobody knows that.

“The adversary… Well, that’s difficult, it’s a topic all on its own. They don’t ever have a single rule about them, so it’s impossible to say. I suggest you go to the library after class if you’re really interested. Maybe Jade will have more to tell you when he gets back from his quest. So back to magic, we can use…” Luxios continues with the lesson. It sounds like he doesn’t know.

I wonder what I really am, am I just a freak? Or am I something more? I might be a monster, I remember something about mana sickness after fighting that ghost, and the way Allous looked at me, she knew it wasn’t normal… I’m glad I didn’t tell her that I’m an outsider right there or it would have been the end of me.

“... Now, we can go outside. We don’t have enough wands so you’ll have to share and take turns. It’s easiest with incantations, but after you get the feel for it it’s not all that necessary.” Luxio leads us outside, it’s not a very productive class, nearly no one made more than a gust of wind but Luxio said it was to be expected. I just can’t wait to go to the library as he suggested.

“Fren, what are you worried about?” Grey asks me… when I remember he might flip if he learns about me, I get even more worried.