The ‘main road’ as Finn put it put the Grand Promenade to shame—width-wise, in any case. If he was forced to make a comparison from back home: where The Grand Promenade would be, say, the width of a three-lane highway, this road would be close to an eight-lane highway.

Comparisons aside—he wasn’t quite sure why he was contextualising, since he could see it—there was a gargantuan carriage waiting for them, with five golden maned horses at the head. The sheer scale of such a land vehicle was not something that Ivory was prepared to see—all 25 of them could probably easily fit in there, with plenty of breathing room. Ivory was snapped out of his stupour by Finn.

“Everyone here? Good. It won’t take us long to reach our destination; it’s just outside the city. Hop in.”

He was a man of few words. On closer inspection, should this guy even be leading this little expedition? Sure, it wouldn’t be anything strenuous for him, but he had several stitches running along his face. Guess that’s a Gold-rank adventurer for you.

When Ivory ascended the black leather steps into the carriage, he was greeted to a spectacular sight. Had he been transported to some grand ballroom? There was a chandelier hanging from the roof, tables and chairs, and of course fluffy lounges to, well, lounge on. He picked one of them.

He was happy to see that, for once, everyone had the same look of utter awe as he did. Ivory was certain that this kind of hedonistic display was not something the common people ever saw, even in Calanfer.

After everyone was settled in, The Ruby Nobles entered the caravan and they set off.

“So, a brief explanation on what we’re going to be doing this afternoon. There is a quite famous dungeon just in the fields near Calanfer’s gates—it used to be the abode of a reclusive [Scholar] some 800 years ago. When he died, his relatives who inherited the property discovered that he had made extensive tunnels underground for his research. There was nothing sinister afoot, however the descendents dug deeper and unearthed several Crelers—adult Crelers. It took a coalition of the city’s Named and Gold-ranked adventurers to fully clear them out, and the entirety of the manor was scorched, including all his research and equipment.”

The colour was drained from everyone’s faces. A Creler must be something pretty insidious, indeed.

“Make no mistake—the [King] of the time made very sure the threat had been eliminated, hiring [Druids] and [Geomancers] to make sure of it. So well was the manor built that it still stands: the blue and gold hues still permeate the walls and the tunnels below. What we will be doing is exploring the dungeon and what you might come to expect when exploring a low-ranked Bronze dungeon. There will be some surprises in store that we have prepared beforehand. Any questions?”

A woman, Ivory’s age, put her hand up.

“Will we need to use our Skills on the things inside?”

Finn shook his head.

“No. We will be dealing with any of the threats. Simply follow along, take note of your surroundings, and watch.”

“What if we want to?” another young man asked.

“You may not. Part of the agreement with the city and the Watch was that no civilian take part in any combat, only us. This is a learning exercise.”

Satisfied, the young man nodded. No other hands went up, and Finn advised everyone to remain comfortable for the remainder of the ride.

It seemed that everyone knew each other—each “age group” was affiliated in some way. Ivory wondered if [Eavesdropper] was a class, ‘cause he’d been doing almost as much of that as he had been practising his own magic. The middle aged crew were all members of some crafting coalition—[Blacksmiths], [Alchemists], [Painters] and the like. They came to the seminar because they were all fans of The Ruby Nobles; they weren’t too interested in adventuring. They were ecstatic at this unexpected practical demonstration.

The adults and young adults were different—they were interested in potentially becoming adventurers. The young adults were all childhood friends, and the rest seemed to be as well—they were the furthest away, so he couldn’t hear much.

Ivory chose to sit there comfortably instead of trying to join in conversation. Not that he was a loner or an introvert—he just didn’t really want to insert himself artificially. Not that he’d have much time to, even if he wanted to: they were already at their destination.

“File out.” He was a man of very few words. There were a couple of grins from the younger people at his abruptness.

Ivory left the Chariot of Hedonism, as he was now calling it, and got his first taste of an otherworldly countryside, and it did not disappoint. He had little time to take in the beautiful fresh air and the gloriously green pastures, as Finn was back at it.

“Here’s the dungeon, dubbed Scholar’s Folly by the original clearers. Note that from the outside, nothing looks amiss: it looks like it could be a newly built structure. Few believe it when they are told that it was bombarded by countless Tier 5 fire spells. Nevertheless, I ask everyone to stand behind myself and Hesia as we walk through the dungeon; Simon, Layth and Agracia will be at the tail end of the group. This is how escort related requests will function, with your escortees ‘sandwiched’ between the escorting adventurer team. Now, let’s head inside.”

Everyone came up to the double doors as Finn began to push them open. Inside was a large, basic room with three large staircases on each side of the room—bar the entrance—leading to a different storey. He was surprised that Finn wasn’t exaggerating: the interior looked brand new and not damaged or time-worn at all.

“We’ll begin on the ground floor. There’re doors on this floor next to each staircase; feel free to explore and think like an adventurer. That may mean looking for where treasure could be, where monsters and enemies could be hiding, where you could hide in case of danger. Remember, stay on the ground floor.”

With that, everyone was off. There were at least six different rooms to explore, unless some of those doors were ornamental—with these eccentric recluse types, nothing’s ever off the table. Oh dear, now he was thinking like an adventurer!

Ivory had a feeling that there was some kind of, like, hidden objective here. Was there a secret compartment in one of these rooms that they had to find? Some hidden treasure? Or was this really just a “think like an adventurer” activity? Yes, there’s more to come, but to just say to 20 people “off you go, do some role play” seemed a bit strange. Ivory supposed that, if you were actually serious about becoming an adventurer, this would be an invaluable experience. May as well play along.

Ivory walked to the… second furthest away door. You never put the treasure in the closest or the furthest away, that’d be stupid and obvious. Perfect reasoning.

Ivory opened the door and saw… an empty room. As if you’d just purchased some property and walked into a bare-ass room. It was perfectly shapely; no crevices to hide things, no windows, no nothing. It was a disappointment, that’s what. “Play along, Ivory,” he thought.

He walked up to the far wall and started patting it down. Hidden pressure switches were a thing, and since there was no seemingly inconspicuous bookshelf, this would have to do. His wall probing was interrupted when he heard a wannabe adventurer.

“Checking the walls out, huh?” asked the young woman.

“Thought it was worth a shot… I’m gonna assume I look pretty dumb.” The young woman smirked.

“A bit, yes.”

“Well, I feel it as well. There has to be some kind of thing we have to find or activate, so I’m trying out the walls first.”

“I think I’m going to head to another room, since this one’s kind of… empty?”

“Probably a good idea.”

“Enjoy your wall hugging!” with a laugh and a wave, she left the room.

“This is fucked,” he thought out loud.

Even if he wasn’t being watched, he didn’t want to shimmy along the walls any longer. He decided to simply just inspect the walls first.

That turned out to be a good idea. When he abandoned the far well and moved to the next wall clockwise. There were some subtle scratches at about neck-height… very strange. The whole place was engulfed in powerful fire with nary a scorch mark, but some… cat or something had been able to damage this wall? Curious. Man, it felt good to be right. But what now?

On closer inspection, some of the scratches were quite uniform: vertical and horizontal strokes, which then morphed into a random assortment of scratches that followed no conceivable pattern. Fucking puzzles. Ivory hated puzzles. He’d done one escape room back home and hated every second of it: he went with four friends, and he did not meaningfully participate whatsoever. In fact, he actively hindered his group, as he accidentally brute forced a puzzle they weren’t up to—nor knew was there—by just fiddling around with it, and they had no idea what it had done. Good times.

Now, though, he had magic. Ivory spread both of his hands side by side, thumb to thumb, over the scratches. He was just able to more or less ‘cover’ the entirety of the scratches. Concentrating, he channelled some mana into this part of the wall and hoped for something to happen. He’d been practising with [Basic Mana Control] while he walked places, by simply, well, channelling mana out of his hands. He didn’t consider this a waste, as mana was a regenerating resource, and he wasn’t using much. In terms of pure mana output, without channelling a specific element to ‘direct’ the spellcasting, he had three modes: lots, some, and not much mana. He was on ‘not much mana’ mode for this exercise.

Nothing happened, obviously. How’d that meme go? He expected nothing, but he was still disappointed. Maybe something happened in another room? Maybe it needed a bit more mana, actually. Ivory had a small mana pool to begin with, and the mana he was actually outputting was abysmal. He flicked his internal switch to ‘lots’ and resumed his channelling.

He could feel himself weakening—he estimated he’d used about… half of his mana in under a minute. Yep, time to stop. He entertained this lunacy for long enough.

Not quite exhausted—but noticeably drained—Ivory hunched over panting, hands on his knees.

“Dunno what I was thinking. As if they’d do something so childish.”

He stood back up and looked at his folly. He’d gone and muddled up the order of those scratches.

Hang on.

What?

Ivory looked back at the section of the wall. They’d definitely moved. He got up quite close and squinted his eyes. This was some kind of code, he was certain of it.

He placed his hands back on the wall and channelled more mana on full power, with this thought in his mind: decode this message. He didn’t know if that would help, but he knew that intent mattered when he was practising with water.

The only problem was that he was running out of mana. He knew this wasn’t worth some weird cryptic bullshit, but he wanted to ‘solve’ this puzzle to spite it

Mana stores nearly empty, Ivory stopped pouring his mana into the wall. He rubbed his eyes and looked back at the wall and gasped. Those scratches were forming a sentence!

“Found something?” a voice chimed. Ivory whirled around in a daze to see the young woman from before.

“Almost fucking killed me, but yeah. There’s some scratches on the wall here and thought I may as well pour some mana into it and see what happened. Turns out it was a code! I think it’s done now actually.”

“Oh, show me!”

She walked over to Ivory and looked at where Ivory was pointing.

“This looks like someone’s scribbled on the wall. Are you pulling my leg?”

“No! It says something! I’ll read it out: Wish the favour of Marquin to acceBANISH”. Huh? acceBANISH? Who is Marquin?”

Amelia raised an eyebrow.

“...She’s the founder of Calanfer. You know? ‘Du Marquin’?”

“Yes. Right, she is. Well guess I’ll wish for her favour?”

“She’s been dead quite a while, so good luck with that. I’m Amelia, by the way. I’ll see you later.”

“Ivory. See ya!”

As she turned around, Ivory, hands back on the wall, spoke aloud:

“I wish for the favour of Marquin.”

Pop.

A small acorn materialised in front of him and dropped to the ground.

“A ha! Wretched puzzle!”

Triumphant, he squatted down and picked it up. It… was just an acorn. He pocketed it. As he was getting back up, he heard a great ruckus from the lobby. They were all using their Skills?

“Something’s coming!”

“[Bound Spell: Field of Impasse]. [Lightning Barrier]!”

“[Forthcoming Engagement]!”

Those spells and Skills came from Hesia and Agracia respectively. Ivory turned around to see the doorway barred by a transparent rainbow barrier that was crackling with lightning. On the other side of that barrier was Amelia.

In the next few seconds, multiple things transpired. A great being of air materialised. With a great rage in its eye, it turned towards the easiest target—Amelia—and fired off a torrent of razor-sharp air at her. With the reaction time befitting of her class, Hesia shrunk her barrier, causing Amelia to stumble back. Before she fell, the two barriers collided with the creature’s attack, weakening it severely. It nonetheless passed through the barrier and struck her in the gut. It then began its attack on the Rubies.

“Jesus fucking Christ!” Ivory screeched as he rushed to the limp—but breathing—Amelia. She was flat on her back with a wide gash running across her stomach.

Ivory had no first aid skills, nor would they have done him any good here. What could he even do, here? Blood was oozing out of her stomach at an alarming rate, and she’d probably die soon. That [Battle Healer] could probably save her, but the entire team was grappling with that air creature.

Before Ivory knew it, he was on his knees in front of her.. All he could do was stop as much blood coming out as possible—he layered his hands on the gash, trying to do just that. He suppressed a gag as he felt the stream of blood pass his hands. In this heinous moment, a thought came to him.

Blood is mostly water.

Blindly trusting his instincts, he attempted to manipulate the oozing blood.

After what felt like an eternity—in reality, two or three seconds—he felt the stream of blood begin to slow. He did not dare try and force the blood to go back in: this is the best that he would be able to do, if it was even helping at all.

After yet another eternity, the rainbow barrier disappeared from his peripheral vision, and all five members of The Ruby Nobles rushed into the room. Simon was on the ground in a flash.

“[Hemostatic Pause]. [Render Unconsciousness]. [Restore Bystander: Level 5]. We need to get her back to the city. Now.”

“I’ve already sent a message to the Runner’s Guild. A City Runner’s on their way with [Has—”

Ivory collapsed backwards and missed the remainder of the conversation. The shock of having his hands pressed against another person’s guts, running out of mana and the knowledge that he, a level 5 [Sorcerer], uncovered a secret that experts had missed rocked him into unconsciousness.

[Sorcerer level 11!]

[Skill - Magical Inspiration obtained!]

[Skill - Conceptualise Magic (Lesser) obtained!]

[Skill - Efficient Spellcasting obtained!]

[Skill - Dangersense obtained!]

[Skill - Blood Manipulation (Lesser) obtained!]

[Spell - Purify Blood obtained!]

[Skill - Mana Stream obtained!]

[Spell - Detect Magic obtained!]