Maron abruptly opened his eyes at the loud banging on his door, he forced himself up and an elf displayed herself when he opened the door, his drowsy self suddenly turned alert because of her voluptuous appearance. Maron couldn’t helped but be wide-eyed and stare at her enormous racks, he knows that it was rude and he might get slapped but still it was worth it.
The elf coughed angrily with her fist clenched, Maron closed his eyes and prepared himself for the slap, however it was already a few seconds but there was still nothing hitting his face.
“Are you Maron?’ the elf asked with displeasure.
Maron slowly opened his eyes and answered “Yeah, may I help you?”
“My name is Caeda” she said. “I’m here for the tournament, I heard from Aqua that you and Sakura are going to team up with us, all the team will register today, so I'm here to get you to come with me.”
“Okay” Maron said.
There really was no reason to decline, it didn’t seem like she was lying too, so Maron readily followed her and they reached a street that Maron was familiar with. This was the street where he bought the Magic pouch, they walked past by that store and reached a big gate and went inside. This place is probably the academy, looking at the people passing by with the same robe on that he saw yesterday, anyone could’ve guessed that this was the academy.
Caeda was walking so fast that Maron is always two steps behind her, he tried to increase his pace to catch up beside her, but when he gets close to her, she walks even faster. The two looked like they were on a race, Maron pressed together his lips and walked even faster, until finally Caeda stopped and went inside a building. Inside the building was a crowd of adventurers, he was sure that it was adventurers because of their armors and weapons, there are some that are wearing robes too.
Maron wandered his eyes and found familiar faces, Bruno, Aqua and
Sakura was in a corner chatting with themselves, he quickly walked up to them, poked Sakura’s shoulder, and greeted the other two.
“Hey” Maron said.
Sakura was startled a bit, but when she saw who it was, she quickly turned to smile.
“You’re here” Sakura said.
“What is this place?” Maron asked. “Why are there so many people here?”
“This is the register area for the tournament” it was Aqua who answered.
“They suddenly said that today is the deadline for joining the tournament, so everyone rushed here to register their team”
“Why is that?” Maron asked.
“We don’t know” Aqua said. “I don’t think anyone knows, we tried to ask them but they don’t tell us anything and wants us to register with the whole team, now that we’re complete were going to ask them again.”
Afterwards the party went to a desk with an old woman sitting behind it.
“We’re going to register for the tournament” Aqua said.
“The required level is 20 and the maximum member of the team is 5” the woman said.
“We’re all above Level 20 ma’am” Bruno said.
The old woman eyed all of them and told the group to touch a stone. If the stone glowed red it means that you are at least Level 20, but when it doesn’t that means you’re not. The group grasped the stone one by one and each time it glowed red it means that all of them were qualified to join. Afterwards the five was given identical stones, the woman explained that the stone will play a recording of the rules and everything you wanted to know before the tournament starts.
The party left the build lacking knowledge about the tournament, all they know is that they are registered and there are going to be a lot of opponents based on how many was in that building, afterwards they decided to have a meeting on a nearby restaurant to discuss.
The party used this time to get close to each other, the first one to start was Bruno, unlike when they first met, Bruno’s attitude now is more preferable.
“My name is Bruno” he said as he tried to shake the hands of Maron. “I just want to say sorry for my rude behavior when we first met. I didn’t mean to be impolite to you”
“That’s alright” Maron said and shook the hand. “I was rude to you too, so let’s just drop and forget about the past”.
Maron and Bruno seemed to have reconciled and are now starting to banter with each other, they both seem to have many similarities, they both are just 18 and their sense of humor are alike too, so it was easy for the two to be friends.
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Afterwards Maron took a glance at Caeda, he felt uncomfortable but he wanted to resolve the misunderstanding earlier, well not really a misunderstanding but his offending actions earlier, he wanted to apologize to her quickly, but he didn’t know how to approach her. He finally gathered his courage after a few minutes and started to talk to Caeda.
“Caeda” Maron began. “I just want to say sorry about earlier, I didn’t really mean to do it, but I just couldn’t help myself, from the bottom of my heart, I ask for forgiveness.” Maron sincerely said.
Caeda just stared at him for a few seconds, seeing his genuine attempt to apologize, she finally decided to forgive him, besides they were going to be in one team, so having a grudge on your teammate is not a good thing, that is one of the things she learned being an adventurer.
“Don’t worry about it” Caeda said.
Maron not convinced that she entirely forgave him said. “I’ll make it up to you, I'll treat you to a meal some other time.”
“Sure” Caeda replied.
“What happened?” Aqua asked, ignorant of what they were talking about.
“Nothing” Caeda said casually and lied. “Just some minor incident that happened earlier, he tripped me on our way to the academy.”
“Oh, that's upsetting” Aqua didn’t pry about it and instead started discussing about their plans.
“Let’s talk about our strategies, but first let’s share our skills to each other since we three don’t know your skills, and you two don’t know our skills either.” Aqua said seriously.
“My skills” Bruno started. “It’s called ‘Berserk’- every time I activate it my strength doubles, another is ‘Shield Bash’-I stun my opponents with my shield, another is a passive called ‘Bear skin’-it makes my damage resistance increase. As you can see with my skills, I’m the tanker of the group.” he said proudly.
“I am the Mage” Aqua explained her spells next. “My skills are ‘Water missile’- a ball of water that explodes on hit, ‘Ice wall’- a wall that can withstand enemy spells, and I also have ‘Cleanse’ - a type of healing magic that can cure wounds and disinfect poison.”
“I am the Archer” Caeda said. “My skills are ‘Power shot’, ‘Split shot’, and a passive aura called ‘Precision’”. There was no need to explain her skills, everything about it was understandable on the name alone.
It was Sakura’s turn next, she told all of her skills except the ‘Invisible Cloak’ and ‘Gifted Wizard’, she explained her other spells, the three was shocked by her spells quality, they asked where she found it, or who she got it from, especially the ‘Hand of God’ Aqua didn’t hesitate to pry about it, she even asked if she could teach it to her, in which Sakura said that the book wasn’t hers so she needed the owner's permission, which was Wuglat.
Maron’s turn came next, he took out his Desert Eagle and presented it on the table, which caused the three to look fixedly on the thing. At first, he didn’t want to tell the people of this world about his guns because of the repercussions that might come about by revealing them, however after seeing the powers of the adventurers and monsters here, it didn’t look like his guns were overpowered or anything, so he decided to not hide it anymore and bring it out in the open. He slowly tried to describe the gun.
“This is a gun, a pistol to be exact.” Maron started. “You can think of it as a developed crossbow, an improved form of a crossbow, but instead of arrows, it uses what you call bullets.”
Maron didn’t know how to show them the bullets without shooting, because all of his guns didn’t have magazines, it was the same design and mechanism as the actual gun but without the magazines, so it was useless explaining to them about the bullet, but still they understood the idea of it, even though Maron was shit at explaining it.
“And this is an MP5” Maron said and the Desert Eagle quickly changed to it. “This is a different form of a gun, it does better than the Desert Eagle.”
The three stared at the MP5 intently, the appearance of it was more alien to the eye, the three were mesmerized by the gun, Aqua even tried to fiddle with it but Maron obstructed her because playing with a gun is a dumb thing to do.
“Is it strong?” Caeda asked curiously. “What about its penetration power? My long bow can pierce a tree with my ‘Power shot’” she bragged about her bow.
“I don’t think this can pierce a tree” Maron baffled.
“How is it an improvement then?” Bruno pondered.
“Well maybe it’s not an improvement, more like a variation then” Maron tried to explain.
The three was amazed at the impression of it at first, however after hearing that it cannot pierce a tree, their interest on the gun slowly diminished to a cursory glance.
After describing their skills to each other the group dispersed and left to do their own thing, while Maron and Sakura went back to the inn together.