THE VOYAGE

Soon—after some questions, signing papers and a blood stamp on said papers—, I registered as an official Warrior Rank Adventurer in the guild. I received a gold badge with the guild crest embedded into its center. After attaching it to the left side of my crimson jacket, I went back to my friends’ table.

“Whoa!”

“Damn!”

“As expected of my rival.”

Surprisingly, they didn’t make a big fuss over it. We all registered without causing any commotion whatsoever—

—That’s an obvious lie.

“Whoa! That’s amazing!”

“Damn! How the hell did you get so much XP!?”

“As expected of my rival. I knew you were far stronger than we are since you were able to fight those powerful paladins, and win. Now my motivation to surpass you has been rekindled.”

They erupted out of their seats, bringing even more attention to our table. Every adventurer in the guild was now paying rapt attention to our party.

“Could you guys tone it down?”

“Tone it down?!”

“How can we tone anything down with the massive gap in abilities between us?”

“I need to catch up faster, train more, learn more, eat more XP rich food.”

After a few…disturbances, yes let’s call them disturbances, after a few disturbances, I left to go on a short solo hunting spree. Hopefully, that would give them enough time to calm down and register before I returned. If i was lucky, there would be strong monsters at the paladin corpse site.

I searched for a few minutes, since it was already late, and returned to the guild empty-handed. When I returned, my party members were chatting at their table with their adventurer badges on. I wasn’t surprised to see Hana with a Copper Rank badge on her robe or Aoyama also with his Copper Rank badge tied around his neck on a string, but I was surprised to find Petra proudly wearing a Platinum Rank badge on her.

“How the hell do you have that?”

“What, thought you were the only one with degenerate?”

I guess I never really bothered checking their levels. I would, but she should be expecting it now.

“I’m exactly level twenty one, I know you were about to check or ask.”

“Sure, can we go finalize our party registeration now?”

“Yeah, yeah…”

“Let’s go!”

“Sigh, calm down Hana.”

We made our way over to the counter again.

“So how do we do this?”

“Well since you all registered in this village and on the same day, you just need to sign and stamp one paper each. We’ll add your levels then find the average for your rank. It’s simple so we can start and end it faster than single registrations.”

She guided us through the process and verified our party’s rank as Elite or Platinum Class. With the exception of Petra,--who was already wearing a platinum badge-- the rest of us had the edges of our badges change to platinum. Mine had the center and guild emblem shining with its gold colour while the edges added a beautiful platinum shine.

“For a startup team, that’s pretty impressive. Especially for a party that only began adventuring two weeks ago.”

“Impressive? Isn’t that strange at all!? I mean we jumped a lot of levels so easily, we must be the most rare people on earth.” Petra asked.

“…Sorry to burst your bubble but, no you're not. There are people with demon or angel genes that suddenly remember their past lives and shoot up in rank pretty fast so this isn’t strange at all, but you guys are really impressive to have leveled up from levels below five to ten and above so quickly. You two are just amazing.” She said as she looked at Petra and I, “You must have defeated a giant at the very least, to climb up so many levels.”

“Did not encounter any though.”

“Me neither.” I answered quickly before they would ask.

“Some people spend their whole lives training and monster hunting but still remain below gold class, so that’s impressive.”

“…Well, we should be leaving the village soon.”

“Huh?”

“What?”

“Leaving to where?”

“Where we going man?”

“Could you guys give us some time? I’ll explain in detail when I get to the inn.” After waiting for them to leave, I continued “We will be heading into the Holy Kingdom to find someone, we’ll be back though.”

“Interesting, should I take that to mean you’re the reason the secret paladin sect came here recently?”

“Ho—?”

“Don’t worry, I won’t say a word. Despite my gullible demeanor, I'm well informed on many matters.”

This girl might be dangerous, she could be an asset. I don’t know much about her but I should be cautious.

“…”

“I can pull some strings to get you past the border without verifying your identities if you need it?”

“Thank you, but we need to do this by the book. And if we decided to get there secretly, we wouldn't want to involve you.”

“Alright, say goodbye when you’re leaving though. We will be losing our strongest and newest adventurers.”

“Don’t worry, we will.”

With that, the conversation was over. I left the guild with no regrets.

After returning to the inn, I went straight up to my room. My friends were waiting there so I sat on my bed and tried giving a brief explanation to them, but…

“Wait, you mean you’re not even at your full power but you’re stronger than we are?” Aoyama asked

“Forget you two, I’m also the child of a Demon Progenitor so we should be on even footing…or close.”

“This is really unfair.”

“Tell me about it.”

I twitched a little when they complained. In my expalnation, I never mentioned the spirit genes since being a demon angel hybrid was already killing their motivation so I expected Aoyama to get arrogant since he was a dragon kin. The strongest beings in the world, dragons. And Hana was misusing her talents. As far as we knew, she was part elf--high elf at that--so she should have been higher ranked were she to equip a bow nd arrow. She stood by this foolish notion that she could be the greatest elven healer in existence or something like that.

The only reason I kept silent was because nobody ever won an argument with Hana and Aoyama could whine so much that youd forget the reason you were angry with him anyway.

I watched them go on for some time before I abruptly shot up and said, “We leave tomorrow at dawn, get out.” Before kicking them all out of the room. I didn’t care where Petra would sleep or what the others were thinking, I only wanted to sleep. After taking a quick bath, I fell asleep.

………………

…………

……

In the Pride Dorm…

“Whoa!”

I woke up like a jolt had ran through my body, to meet my dad staring at me. He had an annoying smile on his face that peeved me for some reason.

“Dad!?”

Am I dea—?... Huh…

“Heyy boy. You’re not dreaming, this is the Pride Dorm. You were killed in your sleep... bahh I'm just kidding, I used a massive amount of my power to pull this off so you should be grateful. You need to leave the village now, don’t wait till morning, leave now. The Holy Kingdom will be sending a few more secret agents after you, including the one you thought you killed.”

“…?”

“Can’t explain, leave now, go find me.”

Ack! Huh? Arghh! The he—Graagh!!

As usual, at the end of the message, I was pulled back to reality. I got up, put on my armor and pulled my weapons from my personal space quickly and rushed out of the room. I sliced the handles off both Aoyama and Hana’s doors and woke them both up. Petra was already awake, as if she was expecting me.

“I felt something wrong with you, it shocked the hell out of me… literally.” She answered when I shot her an expecting look.

“Since you’re already armed and dressed, you should have no problem helping Hana while I go help Aoyama.”

I left without wasting for her answer and quickly, but violently, shook Aoyama awake. He was dazed but wore his armor nonetheless. We grouped up with the girls in the corridor, getting ready to leave, when I felt a presence coming up behind us. Without thinking, I grabbed Petra and pulled her on my back(because she was the most awake, not because I was picking favorites) then grabbed Hana and Aoyama by their wrists.

“{Blur}”

I sped downstairs and out the village so fast, the shockwaves blew some windows apart and the paladins back. The sand that got blown everywhere, gave perfect cover for me to change direction while running. By the time I realized the village was far behind us, we had already gone past the national border and into Dwarven-Jura State lands, in the mountainous regions to the north of Lanburel. The excessive energy I had from {Persistence} boosted {Blur} considerably. I could barely process the fact that I had gone out of the village when I reached the border. The moment I stopped, the momentum threw my friends forward, dragging me along.

“Ow!”

“Heyy, man that hurt.”

“You two should have learnt pain nullifying spells.”

“That was my fault though, I should have more time to practice using {Blur} while we travel.”

“Why did you even use that spell or skill? We were almost done dressing.”

“Yeah, you’re still too impatient man.”

“What?! There were assassins coming to kill you guys and kidnap me, there wasn’t exactly time to vote on what to do!”

“Sure I can get that, but why did you drop us here?”

“Obviously he didn’t want them to follow us, so he went off our planned route and now we’re here.”

“Okay, but why drop us in the middle of nowhere.”

“Think ahead Hana, there may be a few stationed at the border of any and all nearby nations…also I didn't notice we were even out of town by the time we reached here, plus my legs really hurt.”

“What was that?”

“Oh, just mumbling to myself. Alright, we’ll move past this area tomorrow and into the dwarven kingdom, the Dwarven-Jura State.”

“Wh—?”

“I can’t use my skill more than once a day, besides, you guys need to upgrade your gear and buy new skills and spells.”

“Great idea, slight problem though…”

“Yeah Petra, I know. We can slay monsters we find along the way and harvest their parts for trade at the adventurers guild in the dwarven kingdom. According to some intel I’ve been gathering, every nation in the world has at least three guilds and at least two different types of guilds.”

“Oh that’s right, there are mercenary guilds and collectors’ guilds to name a few.” Petra interrupted.

“Let’s set up camp quickly. I bought the necessary items a week and a half ago.”

We whiled away setting up the tents all night, because Petra kept knocking them down ‘accidentally’. She visibly hated the tents, that much was easy to see. After trapping her in her mind for a few hours,—with my most expensive skill, at one gold coin and four platinum coins, {Mindscape}—we set up the tents quickly.

The fact that she was off the Lust faction made it extremely difficult to put her to sleep. By the time I managed to do so, most of my mana was gone and I was really tired. We spent some time chatting before I released her--she would've broken out eventually so I just released her.

She didn't seem too pissed, so we all went to bed before she got really mad.

As I lay there in my futon in the tent--shared with Aoyama--I thought back, trying to remember the important things my dad said in my memories.

The 'pride dorm' huh? I wonder if Petra could unlock all the messages my dad left behind...well, yawn...a problem for another day.