“So this is Araiah port.” Lazarus said as he looked around the bustling wooden dock filled with wooden crates being moved around by muscular men in light clothing. A lot of them were tanned, probably due to the long exposure in the sunlight. There were also several inns near the dock which was a bit strange. There were also quite a lot of peasants and merchants roaming about.

The most eye-catching of the scenery was of the large wooden boats with sails. The strange thing was, no one was boarding the ships yet other than the crew. Why?

“So we’re gonna be riding on the Gasten, ey?” A deep voice resounded from behind making Lazarus turn his head and look.

Behind him was a group of people, and one was a bipedal tiger with a greatsword on his back. What was strange was that while he looked mostly like a tiger, he had abs similar to that of a muscular man and even his paws resembled hands to some degree.

-Is that a beastmen?’-

-=”Affirmative”=-

Seeing one up close was quite surreal. From what Lazarus read, beastmen were quite vast in a sense that some of them had completely human features but with added animal ears and tails whilst sometimes they looked completely more like animals and just had a bit of human features like the tiger Lazarus was looking at.

“The Gasten really is great.” Said the man in full plate of armor beside the bipedal tiger, glancing in admiration at a ship in the dock. Lazarus couldn’t help but follow their gazes and furrowed his brows upon setting eyes on a wooden ship. It was the largest one around and dwarfed the rest of the ships with its sails casting a large shadow over the dock. But–

“It’s smaller than a commercial ship…?”

Maybe it was too much to expect people from the medieval times to build something massive. But Lazarus had expected that with Magic, they could’ve somehow made up what they lacked in research, but apparently, that wasn’t the case.

The party passed by Lazarus and began lining up for entry at the Gasten ship and Lazarus quietly vanished in a corner and activated his cloak. Why was the party one of the few who boarded the ship? He needed to know.

“First, I’ll need to understand how getting on board is done. If this was back on earth, I could just book a ticket online and send over my Id’s and just board the ship with my digital pass. Haa-...this world is really inconvenient.”

After cloaking and following people around and making note of the process. Apparently, all he needed to do was pay directly before boarding the ship and present his identification to the guard responsible for entry to the ship. Lazarus of course, didn’t have any identification but it wasn’t a problem since there were a lot of people who also didn’t have identification.

Unfortunately, for those people, they could only board the smaller boats that looked like it wasn’t going to Kratos.

-=”Master, I suggest you board via cloak and bypass security and check-in.”=-

Lazarus’ looked at the air as if to stare at a non-existent being. Then smacked his forehead.

“Right, I could’ve just done that…” Lazarus sighed. “Still, I wonder when the ship is set to leave?”

Still invisible to the naked eye, Lazarus proceeded to walk around the port. He carefully listened in on their conversations, gathering as much intel as possible.

Seeing as there was really no need to cloak anymore, Lazarus turned a corner and de-cloaked after making sure no one was watching.

After walking for a bit, and almost bumping into a member hoisting up a large crate on his shoulder and getting shouted at. Lazarus looked to his side, noticing the thick smell of alcohol.

“A Tavern?” Well, he could sit-down and sort out the information he gathered and at the same time listen in on people. It was hitting two birds with one stone. With a nod to himself, Lazarus pushed the wooden door open and could see it was almost already filled to the brim, save except for a table in the corner.

After placing an order and seating himself, Lazarus began skimming through the information and blocked out the sound of the people laughing loudly and the occasional table slam of a wooden beer mug.

From what he gathered, it seemed like ships typically leave after a couple of days. That explains why no one boarded the ship immediately since they were waiting for its departure, which also explains the number of inns built near the dock.

The problem was, only one ship was set to leave for Kratos, and that was the famous “Gasten” ship. That meant, Lazarus had absolutely nothing to do for days on end.

-’I should make a skyboard. These unsophisticated processes takes too long.’-

Lazarus continued to drink his juice as the drunkards of the tavern made noises by bashing their wooden mugs to the table. A bard sang his heart out strumming his and dancing as if to convey a story of old. It was quite surreal to watch everything from the corner of the room as it really felt like he was back in medieval times.

As he continued to watch the people from out of the corner of his eyes, one table caught his attention as he noticed some of them were wearing plated necklaces similar to the one he saw on Fido’s neck. If he remembers them correctly then those are–

“An adventurer’s necklace…”

Upon closer inspection, those were also the very same people that Lazarus saw this morning with the bipedal tiger and the man in full plate of armor together with two other people. The tiger and the man in full plate had golden necklaces with the number “2” etched into them while the other two had iron plates etched with the number “5”.

-’Two gold rank 2 adventures and two iron 5 adventurers.’-

From what Lazarus read, the lower the number the stronger you are. And the adventurers are ranked based on the order of iron, bronze, silver, gold, platinum, then diamond. With the diamond being the strongest. So if you were Diamond 1 in rank, that meant you were far stronger than a Diamond rank 5 adventurer.

But there was a special rank that only a select few had. And that was Adamantite ranked adventurers. Lazarus has yet to meet one, but the book describes these so-called “Artifact wielders” as examples of Adamantite ranked adventurer’s power level.

“Hey what the hell are you doing!?” A man screamed, making Lazarus turn his head. A man with a scraggly beard who had stains on his clothes stomped towards another man with a fat belly.

The fat man, who also looked infuriated, screamed back, “You were in my way! What the fuck are you gonna do for the drink you wasted you bastard!”

Lazarus sighed. This might turn messy so he opted to just leave and stood up. But then a beer mug came flying in an arc and it landed near the two, spilling its contents to the two screaming men.

“Shut the fuck up ye two! I’m tryna drink *Hic* here! I can’t taste the beer with all yer yappin!”

“Da fuck you just do!?”

The moment the fat man turned to the drunk who threw the beer, the beard man sucker punched him and his friends from his table got up and both their tables began brawling. When some unrelated bystanders got hit, they jumped into the fray and began launching their fist at whatever was near.

The big tiger man also jumped in with a big smile and began smacking people like flies.

It wouldn’t be long till the guards got here. Lazarus slapped a punch coming to him and redirected it to another man who was ready to launch a fist at him. The two began brawling and Lazarus stuck to the wall and quietly made his way towards the door.

Hearing a spinning sound in the air and realizing what it was, Lazarus lowered his head without even glancing at the direction. A beer mug slammed to the wall where his head had been and he continued to walk away.

Unbeknown to Lazarus, the tiger man who saw this grinned and jumped in-front of Lazarus who scowled.

“What do you want?”

The tiger man just grinned widely and readied his fist, screaming, “Baaar fight!!” before launching his fist like a loaded gun.

Lazarus tilted his head at the last second, dodging the fist by a hair’s breadth. The tiger-man’s eyes widened when he felt something hit his feet, sweeping him from below and he lost his balance, falling with a loud thud and breaking the wooden floor into two. Stunned, the tiger hurriedly got up but the hooded man he fought was nowhere to be seen.

“H-huh? Where’d he go?” The tiger wondered but then got a chair bashed into his back. He looked back, seemingly unfazed and it was the scraggly beard man, he grinned and the man quickly sobered-up. A loud scream echoed from the tavern as the brawl continued on.

At this point, Lazarus had already left the bar and de-cloaked in a dark corner and sighed.

“Damn drunks.”

This was going to be an awfully long few days before the Gasten ship would set sail.

============================================================

Having had no luck in searching for Lazarus. Reisha, who was walking by the side of the road in a white hood, sighed.

“Princess.” Falon, who was beside her, stopped and called out.

Reisha stopped and looked back asking, “Is something the matter?”

“We’ve already been gone for several days now. I think it is best we return to the palace soon.”

Reisha’s eyes narrowed. “You want me to give up the search for my big brother..?”

“N-no…” Falon shivered at her icy glare and said, “I think it’s best we head back and devise a plan to tell the King and Queen to allow for a longer search. At this rate, if they send out a search party, it will become complicated and your search for the young prince will be hindered.”

Reisha furrowed her brows. After a brief pause, she nodded. “That is true…”

Falon sighed in relief. He thought he’d have enough time to think how to convince Reisha otherwise while on their journey back but–

“Perhaps it would be best if I renounced my rights to the crown…?”

Falon felt his stomach drop, grabbed Reisha’s arm and pulled her to a corner and said. “You can’t do that!”

Reisha raised a brow.

“Please do not do that! It would only serve to anger the King! You know how his highness is, don’t you??”

“That’s right…”

“But I still do not understand. Why would you go to such lengths for him? Don’t you understand your duties as the crowned Princess of the Twilight Kingdom? Are you perhaps willing to forsake your duties to the people? Think back to when you had saved those villages from the bandits! If you hadn’t been there then those people who could have all lost their lives, including the children had it not been for you! Are those lives so meager to you that you’re willing to–”

“Silence.” Reisha snapped back, cutting-off Falon. “Do not use the lives of the people I saved to keep me hostage to my duties.”

Falon clenched his teeth. No matter what, he needed to keep Reisha from renouncing her crown. Otherwise, the King would investigate or ask as to why Reisha would renounce it and it would immediately point back to that blasted Prince with that very dangerous disease. If he found out that Falon didn’t kill the child as he was instructed, the King would probably want his head for that. He couldn’t risk it no matter what!

Falon continued to think what he could say, but Reisha spoke, her tone a bit soft.

“I’ve already thought about this before. It may be selfish of me, but I truly want to see him no matter what. It is not that I think the people whose lives I’ve saved throughout the years are of no importance. It’s just that–“ Reisha looked down and put a hand to her chest, “I really want to see my Big brother Lazarus once more… Is it wrong of me to want that?”

Falon furrowed his brows. Reisha’s tone was soft and had a deep yearning to it. He couldn’t understand why. All this time, he had Reisha go on missions and some of those involved saving villages in the Kingdom all so she could build a sense of responsibility to them. But for some reason, her thoughts have been fixated on that boy since a long time ago. This was the problem with humans who were always so damn stubborn. He sighed.

“It’s not for me to say. In any case, we must return to the castle. As we journey there, please give your decision some more thought.

Reisha nodded. Talking about this some more wouldn’t get them anywhere anyway.

The two then left the corner and continued walking.

==========================================================

Several days had gone by–

Lazarus, who was lying on a bed inside a room, looked at a screen hovering in-front of him and furrowed his brows at the icon indicating ‘Emergency override protocol downloaded’.

“FS, I don’t recall downloading anything. So what the hell is this?”

-=”It is one of the many features being installed in the neural chip that Dr. Rex Hargreave initiated.”=- A deep robotic voice resounded in his mind.

“I see, but what’s this one specifically for?”

-=”Error: You do not have sufficient access to any information pertaining to the ‘Emergency override protocol’”=-

Lazarus’ eyes widened, as he unconsciously muttered, “Huh..? That can’t be right…”

There was a brief silence as Lazarus hummed and cupped his chin.

“Why would Dad need to restrict the info from me..?” Lazarus had no idea why, but maybe it must’ve been one of Rex’s usual lunacy. He knew his father was a bit shot in the head since he lived hundreds of years alone and he frequently had these episodes where he did random stuff, so maybe that’s it.

But still, how many of these were there? A bit curious, Lazarus asked, “FS, are there any other downloads still on-going?”

-=”Affirmative. Most are combat enhancement related software.”=-

“Can I see what they’re for?”

-=”Affirmative”=-

The screen hovering in-front of Lazarus disappeared and another screen appeared in its place. It was a small bulleted list of the items being downloaded.

“Dual combat mode, Joke module, and Heart trigger. Wait, a joke module? What’s that?”

-=”Error: Access clearance insufficient to access this information.”=-

Veins popped in Lazarus forehead as he cupped his forehead. “That damn old man… High security clearance for a goddamn joke module!?” It’s times like these that he wished Rex was beside him so he could strangle him. More than likely, that first module was also a joke he just named something cool just to mess with him.

“Anyway, can you tell me about the other two?”

-=”Affirmative. Dual combat mode allows a combat A.I to monitor surroundings based on different parameters to allow for automated assisted combat maneuvers with little to no interruption to main users.”=-

Lazarus nodded. “And the second one?”

-=”Error: Insufficient access”=-

Lazarus scoffed. Knowing he couldn’t ask FS for more, he got up and looked at the top right corner where a time was displayed. “6:03AM. They should allow boarding now, so time to head out.”

The Gasten was set to sail today, finally! Lazarus had spent so much of his time doing odd jobs for money as he waited for the days to pass by and now it’s finally the day he could head to another continent and apply as an adventurer.

It felt so fantasy-like that he couldn’t help but chuckle out of the sheer irony of it all. Lazarus barely remembers his past and most of his memories were of Earth, though he knew he was mistreated and isolated. He was born in this fantasy world but felt so out of place till he met Rex and lived on Earth where everything just seemed to click in place..

Lazarus slapped both of his cheeks and psyched himself. “This is for the tower, and my real home.”

======================================================================

*Huff-Huff* A blue haired elven woman panted as she dashed through the streets. She almost bumped into a merchant who was carrying some items but she immediately hopped to the side and continued her stride.

The merchant cursed her as he dropped his items from the sheer shock of it but she didn’t care and continued to run at full speed. Besides, he was a human. No doubt he would rip out anyone with the prices rather than sell them for the right price so it was only karma doing its thing.

Looking above and the angle of the sun, it was clear that she was already late. There’s no other choice.

“Arasuh, elus enormah” Sylphi muttered as runic circles formed around her limbs. “Serastiyuh mei zora!” The runes pulsed and she crouched as low as she could, kicked the ground and launched herself high up into the air. Seeing a couple of stairs down to the docks, she ignored it and just jumped down from a height that would’ve normally broken the limbs of any human being and landed gracefully like a feather.

She hurriedly looked around and her eyes widened.

“The Gasten is leaving! Wait!” Sylphi kicked the ground and a guard who was near the dock held his hand and screamed,

“Halt!”

“Sorry! But I need to get on board!” Sylphi jumped through the air, and before the guard could cast a spell, she threw a bag of coins to the guard who smiled greedily and decided not to pursue her.

As she reached the tip of the wooden dock, she jumped up to the ship that had just left and was just a few meters away from the dock and managed to land on its rear deck.

“Phew!” Sylphi wiped her forehead and smiled, “I barely made it…”