The streets of the Capital City of Kairahl, Kret, were oddly empty as Alec made his way through them early in the morning. His first morning since leaving Blessed Catalyst and his childhood friends behind.
Since he had stayed in the same hotel as them, he had made sure to go to bed earlier than usual in an attempt to wake up earlier and leave the hotel before a second tearful farewell could begin. Because as cathartic as the goodbye had been from the night before, he had no wish to repeat it.
Especially on the first day of his journey as a solo adventurer.
Though the backlash of his early night was already hitting him, making him yawn quietly in the back of his hand as he walked through the streets. An annoyed click of his tongue left his mouth as he turned down a small side street and made his way down a small set of stone stairs.
The turn had taken him off the more elevated main street of the district and into the more densely packed, but lively, streets of restaurants and cafés and merchants of all sorts. The clothing, armour and items on many of the people making their way through the immediate street pretty much immediately clueing Alec into the fact that he’d made his way to a more adventurer focused market.
Even now, at just a little past 6:30 in the morning, adventurers of all sorts were making their way through the streets. Some of them were relaxing and eating meals alongside their parties, others were perusing the stalls and shops scattered about, and some just seemed to be walking around and enjoying the atmosphere; An activity that Alec himself could more than appreciate.
Slipping ahead of two patrolling knights when he saw a gap in the foot-traffic of the street, Alec began to make his way through the street with an idly swivelling gaze. The late teen looked for anything that would catch his attention even a little as he traversed the well-worn street.
‘I have to go to the Adventurer’s Guild later to get a quest, but no need to rush this early in the morning.’ He thought to himself, swerving over to the left side of the street as he noticed an old wooden sign hung up beside a rather traditional looking café.
“Huh. Well, I’m pretty hungry so why not?” Alec mumbled to himself, shrugging and making his way into the café.
The café itself was densely packed with tables, chairs and booths but not so much as to be stifling or overwhelming, a soft yellow glow of magical lamps lighting up the space where the natural lights of the large windows could not. A couple knights and adventurers already sat at some of the tables and booths, with another two in line to order.
So, making his way into the line while trying to avoid knocking anything with the blade sheathed at his side, Alec let his mind wander. His reflection in the polished bronze of the counter edge caught his attention, causing him to briefly grab his chin and turn his head a couple times.
He had never really been one to pay much attention to his appearance apart from the bare minimum to be considered ‘polite’, as Miss Vira had, figuratively, beaten into all the orphanage children’s heads. Yet even then he couldn’t help but think back to his friend’s comments about him not being ugly and, somewhat hesitantly, admit that they may have had a point. He wouldn’t consider himself supermodel material, but his somewhat sharp features, such as his jawline and eyebrows, definitely gave him some good qualities in his own opinion.
Though his moment of self-appreciation didn’t last too long as his gaze, naturally, went up to his cobalt hair. While he considered himself lucky not to have spiky hair, like his red-haired friend, he couldn’t help but curse his own hair at times.
Right now was exactly one of those times, his usually nice straight hair was beginning to grow too long, at that weird stage that Alec hated to look at where he had to decide whether to cut it or let it keep growing so that he could do something else with it, like tie it back. Historically he had chosen to do the former, but given he was looking for a quest to take him out of Kret today he’d have to take a chance and grow it out for once.
‘Reminder, grab some hair ties before I leave Kret.’ He hummed mentally, finally stepping to the front of the line and smiling politely towards the girl that stood opposite him.
“Good morning. Could I please get a Large Mocha and Croissant?”
“Of course, sir.” The girl smiled, making a small scribble on a notepad in front of her. “Were you looking to try and claim the Adventurer discount today?”
“Oh! Yeah, I am, thanks for reminding me.” He chuckled, reaching into a small pouch on his waist and pulling his Adventurer’s ID out.
“Woah, a [Swordmaster]. Isn’t that a [Platinum-ranked] qualification?” The girl asked, looking between Alec’s ID and his face a couple times.
“Ah. Not quite. It’s actually still an [Abyss-rank].” He admitted sheepishly, rubbing the back of his head.
“Oh! Pardon me. I’m sure you’ll find out its true rank.” The girl smiled, getting a small smile in return from the blue-haired teen.
“So that should be 7 copper coins, right?” He questioned, pulling his coin pouch out.
“Ah! Yes, that’s right.” The girl yelped, having realized she had gotten a little carried away with the qualification of the boy before her.
He just smiled and handed the coins over before going to take a seat while waiting for his drink and food to be completed, letting his mind wander as he looked down at the blade by his side. The chape of his scabbard pressed on the wooden floor of the café, his lax sitting position causing the sword to rest in an almost perfectly vertical position, letting the pommel of the blade itself shine a little as he tilted his head.
‘[Swordmaster]…By all estimates it should be a [Platinum-ranked] qualification but it’s so rare that it’s still stuck in Abyss. What if it only turns out to be [Tungsten-rank]?’
Realistically, Alec knew that his worrying was ridiculous and had no real grounding. If the [Swordsman] qualification could reach Platinum, then it was pretty obvious that [Swordmaster] would be able to as well. But emotions were never logical at the best of times and that continued to hold true at the current moment.
The reason for Alec’s worry, the ranking of his qualification, came ironically from its rarity. Certain qualifications, magic items and, very rarely, spells fell outside of the regular six metallic ranks and into a special rank known as [Abyss-rank]. Anything that sat within Abyss did so for one very particular reason, not enough was known about it to confidently place it into the regular ranking system.
[Swordmaster] was among some of the rare few qualifications that still sat within [Abyss-rank] in this day and age, with other examples including [High-Sorcerer] and [Dragon-Summoner]. Alec himself being the sixth Swordmaster in recorded history, and Angelica being only the fourth High-Sorcerer in recorded history.
“Mocha and a croissant?”
Alec shook himself out of his musing as he heard his order being called out, quickly hopping over to grab his meal and drink. Now he just had to grab some hair ties and supplies, grab a quest and he would be on his way out of Kret, easy.
XXXxxxXXX
An Hour Later, Adventurer’s Guild
Alec had no idea where to even begin. The Adventurer’s Guild, while as busy as the last time he had come in here as part of Blessed Catalyst, seemed so much more chaotic now that he was on his own. The four storeys of the building, at least as much of them as he could see from the open plan foyer he currently stood inside, were a bustling mess of adventurer’s, clients, employee’s and all manner of random figures.
Yet while it was just as busy as the last time he was here, it somehow felt so many times more chaotic without the ‘buffer’ that his friends had been. Leaving him just a little bit dazed and confused as he made his way forward, towards the ground-floor reception desk.
Luckily it seemed like the desk itself wasn’t too busy at the moment. Only two people talking to the four seated receptionists, leaving him able to slip in front of one of them quickly and easily.
“Hello, how may I help you?” The lady sitting before him asked, her expression and tone pleasant.
She seemed rather plain as far as looks went, with round green eyes behind small spectacles and her light brown hair pulled up into a tight, professional, bun. A pin of the Guild’s symbol on the collar of her jacket to denote her as an employee of the international organization.
“Uh, hi.” He began a little awkwardly, placing both of his hands on the edge of the counter, “I was looking to change the party affiliation on my ID and pick up a quest?”
“Of course, do you have your ID on you, sir?” She asked, holding a hand out to gently grab the ID card from him when he pulled it out for her.
“What did you wish to change your party affiliation to?”
“Not applicable, please.” To the receptionist’s credit, she didn’t react at all to the information about him going from being in a party to solo, which made him feel a little more comfortable.
It wasn’t exactly like people leaving a party, or a party simply collapsing, was a rare occurrence in the world of adventurers. If Alec was remembering correctly from the guidebook he had been given when he had first signed up with the Guild, the average was something around 3.3 parties over the course of an adventurer’s career.
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
“Alright, your ID has been updated, Mr. Dius.” The woman commented politely, holding his ID back out to him with both her hands, “And you said you were looking for a quest as well?”
“Yeah I am.” He nodded, accepting his ID back and putting it in the pouch at his hip.
Looking back at the receptionist after his confirmation, he saw her looking him up and down. The late teen tensed up a bit in reflexive defensiveness as he recognized the gaze of scrutiny that she was giving him as her eyes went from his neck to his feet and back up again.
He would admit that he didn’t exactly cut the most intimidating of figures. His boots, pants and long-sleeved shirt all practically screamed low-rank adventurer from the boonies and the only armour of any kind on his form was a slightly scuffed, and well-worn, simple leather cuirass.
Once upon a time he had had a matching set of bracers as well, but those had been in a far worse condition than the cuirass and he hadn’t had the money to repair them after they had been damaged in one of Blessed Catalyst’s early quests.
“I see. Have you ever been a solo adventurer before?”
“No.” He answered succinctly, his voice just a little clipped in the wake of her silent scrutiny.
Whether or not she noticed his clipped tone of voice, Alec simply had no idea. Regardless of whether she did or not she smiled and began to look through a couple pieces of parchment on her desk, seemingly in thought.
“You can deny this if you wish, but I can organise a higher-ranking adventurer to accompany you on your quest to give advice if you foresee yourself staying as a solo adventurer for the near future?” She offered, seeming rather pleased as his body began to unwind from its unwilling tenseness.
“Are you sure? I won’t get in their way or anything?”
“Oh no no. These adventurers are paid by the Guild specifically for this purpose. We’ve noticed a 43% increase in solo adventurer survival after implementing this system, actually.”
‘43%? Was being a solo adventurer some kind of death trap beforehand?’ Alec thought to himself, clenching his left hand tightly at the thought of himself becoming just another solo adventurer that went missing on a quest and never came back.
“Alright. That sounds good, I’ll accept their assistance, please. Do I have to share the quest payout with them?”
“Not at all, our payment is more than anything a Copper or Iron quest could ever offer, regardless.”
“R-Right…” He mumbled, slouching a little at the casual reminder of how little money adventurers had to work off of at lower ranks.
“Feel free to go and choose a quest. I’ll find and organise an assistant to join you on whatever quest you choose in the meantime.” The receptionist explained, giving a small finger wave as Alec walked away with a small nod.
Making his way over to one set of stairs off to the side of the foyer he made his way up to the first floor, making his way around the open-plan center and to one of the wings of the building that he knew he could find [Copper-rank] quests.
The room in question seemed fairly busy even at this time in the morning. Solo adventurers and parties alike looked over the 14 large bulletin boards with quests of all sorts pinned to them with built-in clamps.
Making his way forward, he began to look for any quests that would take him out of Kairahl. He didn’t care whether it was to the bordering country of Xyrtah or even across the ocean to the Eastern-Continent, just something that he could conceivably do that would take him out of the country.
And eventually something did catch his attention, a quest to bring a package of twilight-bloom –a flower native to Kairahl– to an apothecary in Xyrtah’s capital; Zenik.
Silently side-stepping around another party looking over the quest board, he unclipped the quest and made his way back downstairs to the reception desk. The teen making sure to stick to the edge of the staircase to avoid the oncoming traffic heading upwards as best as he could.
Finding his way back to the marginally busier reception desk, Alec gave a small smile and wave to the receptionist that he had spoken to before, getting a pleasant smile in return as she gently gestured for him to come over.
“Wow, it really got busy fast, huh?” He asked rhetorically as he walked up to the desk, placing the quest that he had chosen on the edge.
“It’s usually like this around this time.” The woman hummed, taking the quest poster and looking it over with a surprisingly scrutinising gaze.
Alec really, desperately, wanted to know what all the scrutiny was about. Yet he held his tongue as he saw her place the poster back on the desk in front of her, her eyes lifting back to his face as she smiled.
“Alright, it seems that everything is in order. Would you like to hand in proof of mission completion at our branch in Zenik or are you planning on returning?”
“Yes, I would like to get my pay in Zenik, please.” He said resolutely, getting a hum and a nod from the woman as she seemed to make a note of his answer on a small piece of parchment.
“Of course. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go grab the package and return with it and your assisting adventurer. It shouldn’t be longer than…five minutes.” She said after a moment of thought.
“Oh, yeah of course. Should I wait down here or up in the lounge?” He asked, pointing a finger upwards while tilting his head to the side slightly.
“Down here is fine. As I said, I shouldn’t be long.”
“Ok.” He nodded, walking over to the side of the room to lean against the wall of the foyer.
The teen hummed to himself as he took the brief moment of waiting to watch the people of the Adventurer’s Guild. The adventurer’s that funnelled in and out of the building, the employee’s that ran back and forth, even the occasional Guild-employed guard that wandered through the premises.
Just looking at one of those guys made his skin break out into goosebumps and his hand subconsciously rest on the pommel of his sheathed blade. A reflex on the part of his body, spurred on by the sense of danger the guards seemed to almost passively exude. Yet a reflex that only ended up drawing the attention of the closest guard, further increasing the speed of his heartbeat and the tenseness of his muscles.
Luckily for his nerves, and his continued wellbeing, it never went beyond cautious stares. The eyes of the guards sliding off Alec after barely a second of attention when it became evident that his actions were not of his own mind.
“Aha! Hello there! Mr Dius!” The crow of an elderly voice, over the static buzz of footsteps and clinking metal and idle conversation, snapped Alec out of his reflexive tenseness, his cobalt eyes sliding to the right to look over at the figure that had called out his name.
The man was a human, of that Alec was fairly certain, but he was also an elderly one at that. His age hovering somewhere between 60 and 70 based on his appearance, with his short, spiky, grey hair and mildly wrinkled skin. However, the man moved with a strange spryness that seemed unnatural when paired with his appearance, but Alec had already seen his fair share of strangeness even in his short tenure as an adventurer, so he didn’t dwell on it for longer than a second at most.
“Hey there, are you the assistant adventurer?” He asked, giving a small wave to the man as he walked over, a small parcel in his left hand as he approached the teen.
The elderly man, as previously stated, had wrinkled skin and somewhat short spiky grey hair, that seemed to defy gravity, with startlingly focused brown eyes that seemed to look at Alec and learn more about him in a second than Alec had learnt about himself in 17 years of living. He was garbed in flowing robes of a deep, rich, green with striking red embroidery along the edges of the cloak, neck and sleeves.
‘Aren’t those…?’ Alec thought to himself, squinting his eyes a little as he stared at the red embroidery on the flowing green cloak that covered the rest of the man from view.
Alec may not have been the most knowledgeable when it came to magic, but he knew magic formulas when he saw them.
“That’s me! My name is Alexandar Greynam, a pleasure to meet a spry young adventurer such as yourself. Especially one with instincts as keen as yours!”
“Huh? Keen instincts?” Alec questioned, giving the man a confused look as he tilted his head to the side.
“The guards. Everyone knows what they are, but they wade through all these adventurers without any issues whatsoever. Yet despite that, you still move reflexively to heighten your guard whenever you happen to notice any. It speaks of good, if not slightly anxious, instincts.” Alexandar explained as if it was a common fact, waving the package around as he waved his hand dismissively at the end of his explanation.
“Oh, thank you. I can’t say I ever really noticed any difference between myself and my friends…” Alec admitted, trying to think about if he’d ever reacted to something when his friends had failed to.
“Perhaps their instincts were just as good? Hard to tell without meeting them.” Alexandar shrugged, slipping the package inside his cloak where it seemed to just…disappear.
“Right. Uh, should we get going?” Alec suggested, pointing a thumb awkwardly in the direction of the door.
“Oh yes! Go ahead, Mr Dius. I’m simply an assisting adventurer. A guiding hand if you will. Whatever you wish to do, I’ll follow along.” Alexandar smiled kindly, beginning to follow after the teen as he started to walk.
“Right… Say, what rank are you, Mr Greynam?”
“None of that, none of that.” The elderly man shook his head and waved a dismissive hand behind Alec’s back as they left the Adventurer’s Guild.
“Eh?”
“Just call me Alexandar. I stopped caring about those sorts of manners when I was somewhere in my 23rd decade of living.”
“23rd!? How old are you?” Alec couldn’t help but ask, nearly falling down the steps up to the Guild as he turned around to look at Alexandar.
“Hmmm. 304 if memory serves.” The elderly man hummed, scratching his chin.
“R-Right…”
“But about my rank, I’m a Tungsten adventurer, myself.” Alexandar stated, as if talking about the potted plant they walked past on their way out of the city.
Something which gave Alec just a little bit of whiplash if he was silently honest with himself. He was so used to the importance that everyone seemed to put on their qualifications and their ranks that hearing someone in the second highest rank that just didn’t seem to care was…unique.
“Wow. Guess I don’t need to worry about holding you back, huh?” Alec muttered with a sardonic grin, not able to see the slight thinning of Alexandar’s eyes as he hummed.
“Certainly not. So long as you don’t try to fight anything too far above your level and stay out of imminent danger, you’ll make it to Zenik in one piece. This old man swears it!” The elderly adventurer declared before laughing merrily, getting a small chuckle from the teen.
“Well, it’ll be interesting. That’s for certain.”
XXXxxxXXX
Two days later
Alec hummed quietly as he heard the rustle of leaves from something too large to be some kind of regular creature like a bird or possum. The teen came to a stop and slowly began to draw his blade while scanning the bushes and trees to the right of the main road that the adventurer’s followed for this beginning leg of the journey.
Behind him, Alexandar just watched Alec’s movements with a gaze that was halfway between amused and intrigued. As if he found the teen's caution funny, yet also found himself curious as to what the teen would do and how he would handle the situation.
“You seem convinced there’s something there?” He questioned the teen, silently moving a few steps back.
“Because there is.” Alec mumbled back; his gaze narrowed on a particular area of flora.
“Really? Coulda’ fooled me. How do you reckon that?” He questioned, miming a hand over his eyes while squinting and leaning forward slightly in case the teen happened to look back at him.
Of course, the man was fully aware of the creatures that hid in the bushes that Alec happened to be staring directly at; he just wished to hear the teen’s reasoning and deductions.
“There’s something too big to be a regular forest animal in the bushes, it made too much noise when moving through the bushes.” Alec muttered, slowly tilting his blade into a more suitable position before shooting forward.
The teen was quick for his rank, Alexandar would give him that, but even with that speed two of the Draken hiding in the bushes were faster. The sharp tip of the teen’s blade cutting clean through the head of the third Draken that hadn’t been quick enough, going in one eye, across the forehead and out the other eye. The slash was a well performed maneuver, especially with the cleanliness of the wound.
It was an almost perfectly straight cut with no serration or tearing of the flesh, with even the admittedly soft bone of the reptilian creature cut amazingly smoothly. Yet Alexandar would not rate an adventurer on a single strike, no matter how good, so he waited on the sidelines to see how the teen would handle the other two monsters.
Though whatever creature Alexandar could sense approaching beneath the earth would be a problem a little beyond the [Copper-rank] adventurer.
Spinning with the short momentum of his killing strike, Alec shifted his footing and took a good two steps forward and a half step or three to the left. The blue-haired adventurer closing in on one of the Draken before it was ready to handle him, causing it to leap haphazardly in the air in an uncoordinated attempt to strike at his front as the third and last Draken tried to circle around his back.
The flash of his blade was quick and smooth, creating an arc from his side, up into the throat and jaw of the creature that looked halfway between crocodile and wingless-dragon, and then around and over his head and right back down into the skull and brain of the third Draken. Blood spraying out of both of their injuries for a second before beginning to leak out in small waterfalls as their bodies fell to the ground dead.
Right as he lifted his blade to try and flick as much blood off of it as possible, there was a creak of trees from further up the road. The teen looked over curiously to try and tell what it was, only for the ground beneath his feet to begin rumbling as the trees around him began to make that same, ominous, creaking and groaning.
“Apologies. You took out those Draken well, but the cause of this is a little beyond your level, Mr Dius.” Alexandar said as he walked closer to the teen, voice smooth as he held his hand out to the side and summoned an immaculate and intricately crafted and enchanted staff from seemingly thin air.
“What is it?” Alec asked, keeping his blade out and to his side as he looked around warily, crouching just a little in preparation to move at a moment’s notice.
Except, rather than receiving an answer from the mage himself, the answer to the teen’s question came in the form of erupting earth and exploding trees. Dust climbing high into the air and the air swirling in the sudden imbalance around a large, central entity that seemed to be rising higher and higher into the air just as the dust did. The swirling of the wind clearing just enough of the dust to reveal the thick, sandy-brown carapace of the creature as it ended its ascent and began to curl around to start looking down at the ground, at the two adventurers.
“Is that a Dune Worm!?” Alec yelled out over the cacophonous sound of shattering stones and swirling winds, his gaze locked in terror on the rows of undulating, exposed, bone in the creature’s mouth that acted as its very own facsimile of teeth.
“It is! Incredibly rare to find them this far south though!” Alexandar called out, staring far more calmly up at the creature as the rings of muscle and exposed bone in its mouth stretched out wide before beginning to clatter together in a horrid recreation of a roar that was, almost paradoxically, just as intimidating.
“They’re meant to be up by the Star-Split Mountains right!? Why would one be down here!?”
“It’s injured! Something pretty big must have happened in the mountains or around Gladia and it ran down here scared! Which is pretty good for us because its injuries have weakened it quite a bit!” Alexandar called out, pointing his staff at the mouth of the creature and forming a three-layered magic formula over it that began to spin and reform itself.
The reason for this became apparent to the magically untrained teen as the backmost rings of muscle and bone clattered together once more while the foremost rings widened as much as possible. Mana began to coalesce before its mouth into a small ball that grew larger and larger with each second that passed.
If Alec had been able to focus on anything except his heart hammering in his ears and the icy grip of the Grim Reaper around his throat, he may have been able to take notice of the unique colour the Dune Worm’s mana seemed to take and the speed at which it was able to coalesce so much. Yet alas, such observations were the last things on his mind at the moment.
“YOU SAID IT WAS WEAKENED!?”
“It is! I’ll be able to take this titan down all by myself, easy! So just sit back and enjoy the show, Mr Dius!”
The magic formula flashed a bright, vibrant, green before a spherical dome of solid mana surrounded the two of them, and the coalesced sphere of mana exploded into a beam of pure power, striking the newly created defence.