“Well, time to go I guess.” Villin’s locker neighbor said before quickly jogging over to the door.

Everyone here was paid well for the job and they didn’t want to be tardy, within a minute nearly a third of the guards had already moved through the door as they followed the general to the training grounds.

Villin shook his head at this group as he thought, ‘The general was right, it truly is a bad batch.’

The reason for this, of course, was that they weren’t supposed to follow the general at all. Just a few minutes ago Eveline, the current manager of the auction, came to tell them they could only follow the commands of the three people present, unless they told them to follow someone else’s command.

It only took a couple of minutes for a third of the guards to totally forget about this fact, most probably didn’t really pay attention or process the information, or they thought some completely unprofessional-looking person may come to ask them to do something and that would be a problem.

There were a few lucky people who were the last to begin moving out that noticed that most guards weren’t moving and quickly got back to the lockers but Villin figured most of the people that went with the general would either be fired or disciplined.

Alexi Gurnov and his three companions hadn’t moved when the general came either, but this was only a small matter in Villin’s mind, he was just keeping an eye on him out of probably unnecessary caution.

After the guards waited for another ten minutes the old general returned, soon followed by the blue-haired Aurus Goodlaw. When Villin looked at Aurus he felt that he seemed to have changed his walk slightly, his steps were slightly more sturdy and his facial expression was more positive, he also looked many guards in the eyes, unlike earlier where he barely paid attention to him.

“All right, from now on you can follow the commands of the general here, until told otherwise!” Aurus said positively as he took a step back, giving the general the stage.

“Ah, yes, of course. Hmm, let’s go to the training grounds then guards.” the general said in an unsure voice.

At this point, everyone, including Villin approached them, but Villin had a frown on his face, he had a suspicion he wanted to confirm.

Tiny invisible magical threads started moving towards the general and Aurus, Villin was extremely stealthy as he didn’t want to risk offending him in case he was wrong. When one of the tendrils approached Aurus’s head, he knew he was right. He could feel magical power coming from Aurus’s face. It didn’t come from runes either but a spell, if Villin was right it would be an illusionary one.

When Villin became sure of this, he quietly stepped to the side, an action unnoticed by nearly all of the guards around.

One of the only people that did notice was Alexi, he had sneakily been keeping a really close eye on Villin to make sure he wouldn’t try anything again. When he noticed Villin stepping to the side and not following the group, he got suspicious.

He thought of a couple of reasons Villin could be doing so, then he thought of how Aurus acted a little different this time around.

“Go ahead guys, I have a suspicion but if I’m wrong I’ll get disqualified,” Alexi told his friends. Even though they wanted to ask what it was, they were close enough to Alexi not to ask questions at this time, they simply nodded and went on ahead.

Nervously, Alexi took another look around after the general, Aurus, and the group of guards had all left. Now, there were only five people left in the room. Villin was clearly the youngest, the scar on his face made his age hard to guess but Alexi guessed it as eighteen. Coincidentally, the second youngest guard in the group was also here, he seemed to be about twenty and looked extremely normal with his messy blonde hair. That was, until you looked him in the eyes, the boy caused Alexi to feel extremely uncomfortable, not as much as Villin but close. An impressive feat considering the lack of contact between the two.

The final two people that remained were together. They seemed to be twins, one boy, and one girl. They seemed to be slowly nearing thirty but as magi, they may as well be fifty at this point. Their hair was equally long and was falling flatly to the sides of their faces. They had black lines around each of their eyes, clearly makeup.

The most unique thing about these two wasn’t their long tattered black robes, neither was it the fact they never went closer than one meter away from each other. It was the fact that they both had two swords hung on their back.

“Tch, using cold weapons like that, they’re like damn easteners.” Alexi inwardly cursed. Of the four people that remained here, he was somewhat scared of two and the other duo acted like they were from the east making Alexi, who had lost a lot of friends to the east, quite unhappy with them.

Looking at these people did confirm to him that he was right to stay though. No matter what he thought of them, the four people here were all clearly of high-quality. Two geniuses and twins that were probably extremely used to fighting and working together.

As Alexi thought of the situation, someone entered the room. It was the general that was supposed to have left with the main group about a minute ago. He was also closely followed by Aurus Goodlaw.

“General Gaze is in charge, listen to him,” Aurus said as he stood next to the general. This time he looked over the remaining guards, unlike the first time when there were too many to count. He soon got bored of their faces though and seemed to be inspecting the wall as the general became the center of the group.

For a few minutes the old general said nothing, he just looked at the five guards intently. Alexi saw Villin looked the general in the eyes with a neutral expression. The regular-looking blonde-haired boy, only looked at the general for a moment before inspecting a wall, similar to what Aurus was doing. The twins barely looked away from each other as they looked at the general with reluctance.

When the general looked at Alexi, he felt extremely exposed for some reason. He could feel something pushing him, or his emotions rather. He gulped nervously as he tried to resist whatever it was that seemed to be exposing him so much but wasn’t able to do so.

“Hmm, it seems we only have one fluke. Four in a single group, that’s not too bad.” the general contemplated as he took his eyes away from Alexi for a moment, he looked at him again when he said his next sentence though, “Then again, luck and regular observation are also important skills, you can stay for now.”

-------------------

“So, what now?” Villin asked the general as he decided to take the initiative. Since there were only five of them left and they were greeted by both the general and Aurus, he figured it shouldn’t be a problem to ask the question.

The general looked at him before replying. “You lot will be trained a bit more properly than the others and if you do well in the other tests, you will be protecting our more important VIP’s from within their booths.

“You lot seem to have a good grasp of the art of observation, one of the most important skills a guard can have. Other than the big guy here you all also have sturdy minds, an extremely important quality to have when you may have to deal with rogue magi.

“You’ll be getting some extra classes on how to more effectively identify different kinds of illusions and how to deal with basic mental attacks. In a bit, you’ll join the rest of the group after they finish the briefing. Don’t tell them that their instructor was fake or that you’ll get extra classes. There are most likely spies amongst them.”

“And how do you know there aren’t spies amongst us?”

Surprisingly, these words came from Alexi, who was still somewhat pale-faced. Both Villin and the general noticed that Alexi subconsciously glanced at the twins.

“Hmm, I don’t believe you have to worry about that.” the general responded before looking at Villin and the blonde boy, “but if there are spies, we’ll find them before the three days are over.”

Villin couldn’t help but smile slightly when he saw the general’s gaze fall upon him. He couldn’t help but think that even if he was a spy for the rogue guilds, they were unlikely to figure it out. As long as they didn’t have anyone from the Von Hauser family working for them that is.