Bam

Bam

"Coming!"

Bam

"I said. I. Am. Coming." Arath opened door to the apartment aggresively.

On the other side of the doorstep was an elderly couple with kind smiles on their faces.

"Good morning, I guess you are our new cotenant. Nice to meet you, my name is Bogun and this is my wife, Donna." The man introduced himself and walked inside the flat.

Without paying much attention to Arath he approached the kitchen and started preparing lunch. His hands moved quickly and with great precision and his multitasking abilities allowed him to finish this task in just few minutes. Meanwhile Donna introduced herself to Arath further and walked with him towards couches in the living room. She seemed to be a very kind woman in her seventies that took care of her looks, her clothes were new, hair was still lush and teeth weren't in a bad shape. Before he realized Arath was talking about his life, events from the previous day and all his worries. Her kind voice and compassionate eyes enchanted him and made him open up. They talked about almost everything fot the next half an hour, the couple shared their lunch with him and later even Anga joined them for the meal. When they found out that Clara was lying unconcious in a room just behind the wall their expressions saddened and promised to help in any way they could. After they excused themselves and went out to do shopping Arath finally took a shower and washed his dirty clothes. For the rest of the day he focused on cultivation and managed to awakened his ears before he went back to sleep.

'That's not what I was hoping for.' He said when to his surprise every sound from the street and other apartments was as clear as if it was happening next to him. 'At least surprising me will be impossible now. I should hide how fast I improve if I don't want to on Council's radar. Let's hope Elisabeth either didn't notice or she isn't as much of a bad person as I think she is. I wonder what will tomorrow look like, will I be on the front line or will I be more of a scout?' He pondered before sleep.

--------

"MOVE IT SQUIRE, FASTER!"

"I need food, William, bring me a sandwich!"

"Squire, do you want me to dehydrate? Get your ass over here, I want water!"

The group kept making for of the boy and didn't give him even a second to rest. Although it was just jokes and no one actually took it seriously it was slowly getting on Arath's nerves. Elisabeth ordered the entire team to call him "squire" until they found a replacement, supposedly it was a tradition of Leafers Mercenary Group. Because of this he was a henchman and was supposed to help everyone with everything. They had spent the last four hours facing enemies and instead of fighting all he did was serving others and preparing their weapons for them. Contrary to his expectations the team moved swiftly and was much better at finding monsters than Ben. During their stay in Tower they found over six groups of creatures and had no problem with razing them to the ground. One by one cave spiders, white ghouls and blestols dissapeared from this world giving way to the mercenaries. Their main goals in the dungeon was to train their new members and let them experience life in the Tower first hand, and also searching for this year's famous mineral grottos.

"What do you think about this cycle's heroes, Will?" Elisabeth sat next to Arath during a break.

"I heard someone wants to be a hegemon already, that was fast." He asnwered.

"She is called Olga I think, I met her during the fight with Face Stealer."

"Really? You took part in it?"

"I did, we were the only team to not have suffered any casualties as I took only the elites." She pointed at few men on the other side of a campfire. "Although it is my second cycle I am actively taking part in I was surrounded by great people first time around who taught me how to survive here and thanks to that I was able to become a leader."

"It's your second time and you are already a leader of mercenary group, impressive."

"Not really, my father was it's founder and he died two years ago so I took over. Many people revolted and thought it was unfair so we were reduced to the size you see today. It's very hard to convice people that he designated me to be a leader not because I was his daughter but because of my skills." Her expression darkened and smile dissapeared from her face. "So coming back to the topic, this Olga is really strong, she carried her whole team and few could rival her strength."

"What is her element?"

"I didn't really get a closer look but I think it was fire. But the intersting part of it was that she could already cast spells after only few days of training."

"Spells? You mean the ones from intermediate level or advanced one?" Arath got curious as he wasn't really informed on this topic.

"Intermediate spells aren't really different from advanced, the only difference is that the latter don't require the caster to remember them by heart, you create them on the go."

"Can you use advanced spells?"

"No, I recently learned my first spell ever so that would be weird if I could already make my own." She laughed.

"I don't think I have asked yet, what is your element?" He asked.

"That's a direct question, alright. It's Sound. And I know what you are going to ask now, so here you go. I am single, don't want to have kids, twenty three years old and that's all I am willing to share" She patted him on his back and started laughing.

"I actually didn't want to ask that." He was a little flabbergasted and lost in the situation that occured.

"I know, just thought you should know." She smiled broadly. "You might want to ask that in the future and I don't like to wait. I am a very impatient person."