Before Kayden could even begin to comprehend the new spell he just learned, his surroundings dimmed and faded into nothingness. Only he and Hel were left standing amidst nothingness, a black void devoid of anything… but they weren’t alone.

In front of them stood a man with blonde hair and green eyes, and a trait that stood out to Kayden was the massive, white luggage he had at his side. Massive was an understatement, it was tall enough to reach the man’s shoulders!

There was also another thing he noticed. The man wore some interesting-looking gloves, black in color with small holes at the tip of each finger, and there were metallic plates on the back of each hand. It definitely looked like it served a function other than to keep his hands covered.

“Hey… aren’t you that kid… Casey?”

The man smiled and replied to his question, much to the surprise of Kayden. He didn’t think that he would be capable of interacting with the subject of the memories, but judging from how he was able to interact with random people in the memory before, this really shouldn’t be too surprising.

“Sure I am, but don’t call me a kid, kid.” He smirked, “Anyway, you’re the ninth, huh? I’m the fourth, it’s a pleasure to meet you.”

Kayden tilted his head in confusion.

“Huh? What are you talking—?”

“Shush. You don’t need to know right now.” Casey interrupted. “I just need to test your strength, and then you’re free to go.”

“Test my strength?” Kayden asked, “Why—?”

His eyes suddenly flashed blue, and he kicked off the ground with all his might, dodging to the right as a beam of light shot past the place he stood. That was too close.

Kayden turned to look at Casey, who had his left, index finger pointed at him.

“I’m surprised you dodged that. It seems that inheritors are getting stronger and stronger as time passes.” He said with a cheerful, comforting smile. At this point in time, all Kayden could feel was dread.

From his finger, Casey shot forth another beam of light, which Kayden easily dodged now that he could see it coming. His stunt earned him another praise from the blonde man.

“Good… Good… let’s try two fingers now, eh?”

He raised his middle finger, and from it, it shot out a storm of arrows that had Kayden performing strenuous athletics in order to avoid. It came simultaneously with the occasional laser beam, forcing Kayden to keep on his toes. Each and every projectile came dangerously closer and closer to hitting him as time passed, to the point where his cloak was now riddled with holes.

‘Screw this! Since he doesn’t look like he’ll be stopping anytime soon, I’ll stop him myself!’

Kayden pulled out a knife and dashed toward the man with blinding speed, but was quickly stopped when a laser beam flew too close. He tried to dash again, but a hail of arrows flew by, forcing him to stop and carve them out of the air.

This process continued for the next minute, where every time Kayden tried pushing forth, he was stopped time and time again. Each dash got him closer and closer, yet the attacks grew more and more difficult to evade. Still, he was slowly getting used to the wave of attacks, and steadily made progress toward the man.

However, his hopes were dashed once he got to within three meters of Casey.

“Time for three fingers! Hope you can keep up!”

Kayden had his mouth agape in shock when he saw a full-blown boulder launch toward him. It wasn’t just any old boulder, no, it was humongous, and it rolled toward him at terrifying speeds.

He tried evading the boulder by side-stepping to the left but was immediately met with a laser beam that blocked off his retreat. The right wasn’t much better, with a large volley of arrows zooming past.

With no other choice, he turned into a bird and easily flew over the boulder, but was immediately spotted by Casey. The man raised his arm and began firing lasers, arrows, and boulders into the sky in an attempt to knock him down.

At this point, Hel should have said something, like a piece of advice… or an order to retreat, but seeing as she was no longer inside his head, her voice was nowhere to be heard.

‘Shit!’

Weaving through the preposterous projectiles, he swooped down onto Casey with killing intent, but his air maneuverability was nowhere close as good as his evasion skill on the ground. An arrow struck him on the chest, dropping him out of the sky and reverting him back into a human.

“U-ugh…” Kayden rolled onto his back and lay there. He had landed squarely onto his face, and now his nose was both cracked and bleeding.

He then heard the sounds of clapping, and Casey walked toward him until he was standing over Kayden. Just now, he had noticed that the man was no longer firing projectiles at him.

‘Does that mean… it’s over?’

Casey grinned and gave him a thumbs-up.

“Not bad, Kid! Three fingers on your first try is pretty good! You’re pretty strong!”

Kayden picked himself up and sighed.

“Well, I wasn’t using my full strength. If I did, maybe I could hit you.”

Casey laughed, and proceeded to give Kayden a close view of his gloves. Like he had seen before, there were holes in the tip of each finger, but that wasn’t all. For each knuckle, there was a hole, and there was a larger one on each palm. Added up, it came to a total of forty holes.

“That’s right, I wasn’t trying my hardest either. Anyway, your goal isn’t to beat me, but just to train yourself. I’m assuming that after that little bout we had, you’re starting to have an idea of how to improve?”

Kayden thought about it, and discovered that he was right. If he wanted to not use ice magic as his crutch, there was a lot he could improve on. For one, he could improve his ability to fly, which was a reliable skill when it came to evading things.

“Thanks, I guess… By the way, what’s with this place? Why did I see your memories? And why do we share the same ring?”

Casey smiled and jabbed a finger at Kayden.

“I’m sorry, but that’s for you to figure out. Don’t worry, everyone else goes through the same thing.”

“Huh? Everyone else?”

Kayden’s question wasn’t answered. Instead, Casey waved him goodbye, and he was forcefully awakened from his sleep. What was once an empty void suddenly became his bedroom. Absolutely nothing had changed from last night.

Well, except for one thing.

“[Oh, you finally woke up. You might want to take a look at the spell you just learned. If it’s truly a tier 5, I can finally rest easy for once.]”

Well, the spell didn’t actually have a specified tier. It was just a bunch of question marks, and the spell’s name also had them. Only Casey’s version of the spell seemed to be tier 5. Well, whatever it was, Kayden doubt he could use it as of this moment. But maybe once he got stronger, he could.

“I’ll aim for being able to take four fingers at the same time!”

“[Four… what?]”

Ignoring Hel, he looked around his room and opened the only window, discovering that it was already early morning. The sun was as scorching as always, eager to incinerate him once he stepped his foot outside.

‘Hmm… Perhaps I should go buy an umbrella.’

Kayden first went downstairs before he decided on doing anything else, checking to see if the gnome was still there. As he expected, Casper was dead drunk and fast asleep, and Kayden had no intention of waking him up.

Instead, he paid the inn for a breakfast meal to fill his stomach. No cheese, or coffee, unfortunately, but it would do. Next, he stepped out of the inn, ignoring the snoring gnome completely.

“Okay. We need some way to smuggle things over first and foremost, and we also need to build a roof over the cart. If I have to spend another three days with this sun, I’m going to end up a fire giant.”

He had a few ideas, but he was way too afraid to try them out. One of the ideas was to fly over the wall as a bird with the bag in hand, but the fact that he needed a ‘pass’ to enter made this plan less feasible.

After all, Kayden had no idea how this ‘pass’ worked. If he were to step foot anywhere within the walls without a pass, would he just die? Would the Land God be alerted to his presence, and a bunch of worshippers would go out to get him? Kayden couldn’t risk it.

Since his plans were nowhere close to a solution, he decided to first get a roof for his cart. It was not anything special, just a large sheet held up by wooden poles on each corner, like a portable tent. It held together with the help of a hammer and some nails, and Kayden couldn’t be gladder… for how cheap everything was.

Once he got the roof done, he felt a light smack on his shoulder.

“Oi! Why didn’t you wake me up!?”

Casper was furious, and Kayden could see why. It was now midday, and the gnome just couldn’t dawdle around while his daughter was in danger.

“Sorry… just didn’t want to wake you up. If you’re ready, we can go now.”

Kayden didn’t sound very enthusiastic, prompting Casper to raise an eyebrow. Still, they had to resume their journey soon. Both Casper’s daughter and Kayden’s school couldn’t wait.

“[Have you thought of a plan yet? If you want, you can always hide it in places they wouldn’t check. Like under the cart, for instance.]”

He looked at the unimpressive cart and already began to ridicule this plan in his heart.

‘Pfftt… Under the cart, huh?’

Unfortunately, that was the plan he settled on. He really couldn’t think of anything else, at least, not within such a short span of time. He hid the bag underneath the cart and used a little bit of ice magic to freeze it to the bottom. Then, he cast a layer of illusion magic to hide it from prying eyes. The scale of his spells was tiny, so he didn’t worry too much about the mana cost. Hopefully, his condition will get better by the time he reached the Solus Academy.

And of course, he did all this while Casper wasn’t looking.

Once they were ready, Kayden spurred on the horse, and it began to drag their new shaded cart toward the checkpoint. There, several guards would come to inspect your goods and confiscate any forbidden items you may have.

Kayden was by far not the only one queuing up outside the gate. Ahead of them were about twenty different carts, wagons, and carriages. And it seemed that they were going to have to wait for quite a while.

“Thank goodness you constructed this shade!” Casper said as he felt the fabric of their roof, “Good thinking, boy!”

With nothing else to do, they decided to play another game of illusory chess, which was more of a front for Casper to display his superiority in both chess and illusion magic. Kayden was fully capable of doing everything that Casper was doing now, like slamming a chess piece on the board with an illusory, resounding smack, but that would reveal to him that Kayden had already learned all of his tricks.

He could probably just pass it off as being a genius, capable of using a spell just by seeing it once. But for now, he really didn’t want to draw any more attention to himself. What if someone else recognized him as a System User? Would another group of B-ranks hunt him down? Would another God descend upon him to destroy him? Would he… have to kill more people?

No. No matter what, he couldn’t let that happen. He still had too much to live for, and he didn’t want to stain his hands with more blood.

“Boy… are you okay? You don’t seem to be focusing.” Casper pointed out, “You look anxious.”

Kayden had been mindlessly sending out his pawns to die. No matter how bad he was at the game, this kind of strategy was still inexcusable.

He grabbed at his face, hiding his mouth.

‘Was my emotions displayed so clearly on my face? Hah! I lack training.’

“Sorry, I’m just a little bit distracted…” Kayden gave the gnome an unconcerned smile, “Don’t worry. I won’t mess up your plan to rescue your daughter. Just leave it to me.”

Casper frowned.

“That wasn’t what I was getting at—”

Knock knock knock!

“Next cart please!” A male guard called out, “Can all passengers exit the cart?”

Both of them dispelled the illusory chessboard and obediently stepped out of the cart. Kayden’s heart began to beat wildly as the guard slowly approached them with his arms out.

“All right. Please pass me all the spell orbs you have in your possession. I’m sure you’ve heard, but the recent terrorist attacks cannot be allowed to happen in the Kingdom of Arcadia.” The guard explained monotonously. Kayden guessed that he had repeated those same words over and over again for every cart before them.

And as a matter of fact, Kayden did have spell orbs in his possession. It was the leftover ones he had taken from Madison back when he had knocked her out. There was one for X-ray vision, and one for the Eye of Truth. Kayden handed them over without complaint.

The guard raised an eyebrow and raised the clipboard in his hand.

“Name and destination, please. Also, if you’re an adventurer, hand me your card.”

“Kayden… no last name. I’m headed for the Solus Academy and…” He took out his card and handed it to the guard. “Here.”

After confirming all the details, which happened relatively quickly, the guard passed him back his card, but not the spell orbs.

“You may come to retrieve your spell orbs at this same checkpoint once you are leaving. If for some reason you cannot, please make a request at the Adventurer’s guild and we’ll have your spell orbs delivered to your preferred branch. Thank you and uh…” the guard looked up at him, taking in Kayden’s height. “Good luck dealing with the kids, Teacher.”

Kayden winced, but wasn’t eager to go correct the guard. Casper snorted at his side, while Hel giggled in his head. He was going to have to tell them to shut up later.

And just like that, they were through. All the guards did was glance briefly at the insides of their cart, and after noting nothing suspicious, they let them go. Kayden was astonished that security was so freaking lax.

“Huh… Was I just paranoid…?”

With a loud whinny, the horse marched on, bringing them to their next destination.