After sorting through the clues and leads the Adventurer’s guild collected for him for the Revenant bounty quest, Casimir sorted them into three piles.

First, there were the ‘promising’ leads. There were four of these. Second, there were the ‘iffy’ leads. These were the credible rumors of revenants of any kind in an area. Finally, there were the ‘desperate’ leads, the most succinct description of which is any credible rumor of undead. Honestly, four leads was more than he expected. As such, he just picked the one closest to the Soul-Devouring Dragon’s first lair and started packing.

But first, his students needed to be tested. Theoretically, he could just file a form and vouch for them. He couldn’t do that to make them Veteran ranked, but for Standard, his word as an Elite was enough.

The main problem with that is that Casimir didn’t actually remember clearly what benchmarks he needed to use to declare them good enough to no longer be considered Novices. He sort of knew, vaguely, as one of the ways the guild trained up prospective guildmasters is to start paying those who meet certain qualifications, that is, Veteran ranks over age thirty, to help sort through requests, teaching them what methods were used to determine what rank a quest was appropriate for. As he was thirty-four, Casimir has had a little bit of training for that before his sabbatical, so he was positive the kids could complete most quests that he would file as the standard rank.

Besides, it would be best to make sure the physical benefits of that magically enhanced exercise regime were as estimated before he started to put them in actual danger. It took five years to train a mage-knight, according to Professor Thorne when they were plotting out the theoretically best training plan. Of that, they typically only spent twelve hours a week on pure physical training enhanced with magic, as in one twelve-hour session at the end of every week. Weapons training was much more frequent, of course, and that was also strenuous, but the question is, how much did the refinement of the curses, cast by a master instead of the trainee, impact the efficiency?

As it turned out, it impacted it a lot. Rank tests were entirely at the discretion of the guildmaster as to how to test them, although other guildmasters could dispute the promotions after the fact, with severe penalties if they were ruled by a tribunal to be too lenient. As such, there were some informal guidelines.

Purz, knowing that Casimir would skip the test if he was sure, brought out all the stops. He was a shaman, and used the contracted spirits he retained in his old age (for a shaman, lifetime contracts were rare) to shape up an obstacle course the kids had to go through as the first part.

“Okay, the course is simple. The audience will be throwing rocks at you during your run, but you can otherwise use whatever magic you want.” Explained the guildmaster. Illivere, Peter, Faron, and Hanna nodded decisively.

The audience was pretty much anyone who didn’t have a quest today, which was most of the local adventurers. It was the day after the last big purge of the local area, so most of the middle-aged adventurers had nothing better to do than to chew the fat at the guild hall. Normally they’d be gambling their winnings away with card games, but instead…

“Five on the elf getting hit the most.” Bet Steve, who was the only priest of Helel in the area that was also a member of the guild. Casimir nodded to acknowledge the bet and placed it in the box in front of him, quickly noting the bet on his enchanted slate. He showed Steve the record of his bet, and with a nod Steve settled in with his assigned pile of ten rocks. Well, they were really more smooth stones, created with magic specifically for the test. Excellent examples of throwing rocks, good for skipping on the water.

“Anyone else?” Casimir offered, shaking the box and letting the coins from the many bets jingle.

As Casimir was finishing the bets, Purz was explaining the obstacle course. “First you have your basic twenty foot chasm. Get across, not around. Then, there’s a small maze filled with traps. Nothing special, but get through it. After that there’s the river. I’ve got Swirly there keeping up the flow, if you end up swept into the underground part, you fail.” The easiest ways to bypass the chasm generally also work to bypass the river, so it was more of a ‘common sense’ test. That and the stone throwers usually only do a token throw on the chasm, the river is where the stones start coming in hard. “Once you’ve crossed the river, the monster pit will disgorge its contents. Turn in one monster core each and you get promoted.” Getting monsters to do the bidding of men was impossible in a conventional sense… but they could be manipulated, if they weren’t too smart. Digging a pit and sticking monsters inside was as basic as it gets, when it comes to using monsters.

Casimir’s students took ready stances, their bodies burning with mana to Casimir’s senses as they prepared their spells without fully casting them. At Purz’s signal, they each leapt as one, running to the edge of the chasm and reflexively adding a few drops of force mana to clear the distance faster before the audience could finish deciding to throw, entering the maze within seconds.

Casimir grinned at the disbelieving looks the middle-aged adventurers were giving him, but they all readied their stones, resolved to not give them such an easy time for the river segment.

Casimir personally made the traps in the maze, because no one else had practical experience setting traps that weren’t for hunting. He mostly used kobold traps, but he also made sure to mix in a few family recipes. After all, graverobbers could be very tricky bastards. Casimir carefully ignored his sight in favor of feeling out the mana let off by the progress of his students. True to their training, they began by Illivere scanning the place and sharing her knowledge via telepathy magic. With a rough map of where the traps are, even if they lacked the refined expertise to immediately identify the triggers and effects of each, they were able to minimize the number of traps they had to encounter.

As for the traps they had no choice but to deal with rather than just avoid… Casimir made sure the ‘path of least resistance’ had the nastiest traps. It was a little unrealistic, as one of the points of mazes was to make there be an actual safe path through, but Minos the cave spirit designed the maze, and honestly it was kind of simple by Casimir’s standards. Thus, extra traps.

His students were undaunted, however. Hanna seemed to be their primary trap disposal tool, using the sculpt stone spell to cause the rock to crush the mechanisms, with Illivere doing a quirk and dirty reinforcement to ensure the molded stone didn’t break from the trap’s energy from breaking into the tunnel. Casimir was a little surprised the spirit didn’t magically reinforce the maze’s walls, but that would probably be overkill for a standard rank assessment.

Once the group had finally escaped the maze, Faron had to quickly increase the size of his shaped shield (metal this time), protecting the whole team from the massive volley of rocks the irate crowd finally had a chance to unleash. In response, Hanna cast one of her more complicated spells, Vortex Shot. It created a temporary windstorm centered around a single snarl of wind aspected mana twisted into tight overlapping coils, lasting until the mana finished untwisting itself, as air was wont to do. While a few of the crowd probably could launch a stone through that, it was silently agreed to be overkill and the kids stayed unmolested when they leapt over the fifty foot wide fake river with a force-empowered leap, ignoring the wind through the expediency of shifting twenty feet down river before jumping.

Casimir tried to foul them up by snapping out a stone when they were almost across, but despite nailing Peter in the head, Illivere created a barrier for him to land on and just moved it the seven feet he still had to go. With them across, the whirlpool spirit let the fake river calm.

Purz gestured, and personally made the underground chambers disgorge their contents, sealing up afterwards. Casimir grabbed an eclectic bunch, first he had grabbed yet another Barbed Bear, honestly curious if they could handle a fresh one. Then, he supplemented it with a small tribe of Aqua Apes, amphibious monsters with long stretchy arms and the ability to disgorge dozens of gallons of water as an attack form. Finally, he finished things up by cursing a set of marsh bears to sleep to prevent them from swimming out of the underground chamber. Those ones Purz kept underground, so Casimir could end their sleep and allow them to ambush the kids.

Honestly, the monsters were probably a bit too dangerous, but Casimir was perfectly willing to step in personally if things got out of hand.

The five or so aqua apes unleashed their water attacks as an opener, which was not the smartest move but they were probably hoping to shove them into the river or something. Hanna raised a stone wall from the ground, angling it to allow the water to divert away rather than catching it straight on. Peter started on casting curses on the barbed bear as it started to charge the group, leaping straight over the charge and hacking away at the vines on top with his axes. Illivere followed up that assault by bracing her enchanted spear, which promptly exploded with force when the bear fell on top of it. When combined with the weight reduction curse Peter had used… it flew hundreds of feet away, the probable death on impact with the ground becoming certain when Peter spiked the mana in the curse, forcing it to break in resistance which both stunned the monster and increased the falling damage.

Casimir grinned at the flawless combination attack. With the biggest threat taken care of, the audience decided to throw the remainder of their rocks, which scored some hits before Hanna unleashed another Vortex Shot. It was interestingly timed, too, as the wind turbulence started sucking up the mud that the marsh boars had turned some of the ground into as a hiding place. With their hiding place compromised, both boars rushed out in ambush, the aqua apes using their long arms to try and hold down the students while the bigger, nastier beasties got their licks in.

Unfortunately, Faron was a bit too dangerous in close quarters for the apes to get anywhere with that. He used stone armor shaped into spikes to prevent the apes from getting a good grip on him and used that freedom of mobility and a shaped metal weapon to just carve up the soft flesh of the weak but annoying monsters.

Hanna raised and also sank a stone wall to block the marsh boar’s advance as Faron dealt with the apes, and Illivere reinforced the ground underneath her to provide a similar effect, the boar swimming along the ground at speed slamming into the section of now rock-hard earth that suddenly failed to yield to the boar’s magic.

It was a work of seconds for the group to kill the stunned boars, harvesting the cores from the aqua apes to finish off the test as a team. The crowd hurried to throw the last of their stones (that is, the stones they slyly conjured when they thought Casimir wouldn’t notice) to ensure their bets won out, but Illivere, with the most mana remaining, maintained a barrier spell to ensure the group passed without being further harassed.

“Peter wins with seventeen unblocked hits.” Casimir announced. The boy had tried to keep mobile to dodge, but the experienced adventurers had too good of aim for that to work well. He only got hit by a good impact three times, and healed himself, but according to the rules, anything that wasn’t completely blocked or deflected counted.

As money changed hands, Purz gave the kids a speech about responsibility, duty, and all that serious stuff to impress upon them what they were accepting by becoming full members of the adventurer’s guild.

After he finished pocketing his cut of the bets, Casimir moved to his students at the end of Purz’s speech. “-ow go, brave adventurers, on your next great adventure.” Classic.

With a clap of his hands, Casimir seized attention. “Alright, I’ve got our ship out set, we need to hurry if we’re going to get to the coast by the morning.” To Purz, he added: “We’re good on the paperwork, right?”

Purz shook his head slowly. “I’m afraid you’ll need to deliver the documents yourself. I can’t send things to Treadhill any faster than you can travel there.”

Crap. “Let’s get that done fast while my students bind more mana for the trip.”

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

“So Teach, where are we going?” Peter finally asked after Casimir led them to the dock. They were each carrying an enchanted trunk, filled with clothes and other such items necessary for a long trip.

“Well, Anima’s monsters are generally strong examples of their kind…” Casimir began. “But they’re strong examples of relatively weak monsters. Sometimes it’s the other way around, where you get weak examples of relatively strong monsters, but that’s uncommon.” Casimir didn’t really study monster ecology, he mostly just soaked up that knowledge from other adventurers, some of which actually did study it. “I have some business to conduct during the break, a few requests from old clients, etcetera. While I’m out doing that, I’ll set you up with some quests you can do in foreign countries. It’ll be a good experience for you.”

“Cool!” Peter exclaimed, completely accepting the bullshit explanation. Illivere’s face was unwavering, as usual, but Casimir picked up a hint of incredulity from her blank expression nonetheless. Hanna and Faron ignored the exchange.

Dock seven… eight… ah, here it is. “Ahoy!” Casimir shouted, catching the attention of the ship captain supervising his crew loading crates onto the ship.

“Ah, the passenger.” Said the swarthy elf. “Four berths, as agreed.” He held out his palm.

Casimir dropped a handful of silver coins into the man’s hand. “Captain Coastspear, I see I didn’t keep you waiting.”

The elf laughed. “You? No. The Port Authority? Yes.” His good cheer vanished as he vented about the bureaucracy. “It’s half an hour past sunrise, if you haven’t noticed. That bastard Inspector Cooper insisted on a thorough audit of the warehouse, delaying load up by three sodding hours!”

Potentially troubling. “Any reason in particular?”

The captain scowled. “He said it was a random audit, but he’s in the pocket of Fellhammer, and I outbid that stingy bastard on a shipment of enchanted swords.” While the number of independent merchant ships wasn’t all that high, Anima’s merchant’s guild controlled all shipments leaving the official ports. However, a guild was not a company that maintained fleets of shipping vessels. As such, the typical solution was to hold auctions that representatives from the various shipping companies bid on in the hopes of selling for even greater prices on the mainland. “What’s in that second box you have there?”

Casimir glanced at the crate in question. “A gift for my friend in the Depths. You do recall that I paid for a stop there, right?”

“Right, right.” The captain said. “Good thing you didn’t show up when the bastard was here, or else I’d have to pretend to care.”

Seeing the gangplank still occupied by crew members carrying crates, Casimir just leapt onto the deck, and his students followed suit. After everything got settled, the captain got his boat started in the usual way: by using water magic to shove away from the dock and follow it up with some crew using wind magic to maneuver into the natural currents. It’s a necessary step, due to the grand works of enchantment that the founders used to create a natural barrier against invasion. As a result, the seas and winds are magically calmed for the first mile or so of the ocean. Supposedly, there was the option to create a ruinous circular current around the island nation, but Casimir’s never heard of it ever being used. It wouldn’t be the first grand work of the founders to have fallen into disrepair, or just never having worked right in the first place.

“Onward!” Shouted Captain Coastspear. His bronze skin practically gleamed with the sweat of exertion. “To The Depths!”