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Chapter 31 — The Adventurers' Guild

After the long and exhausting ordeal of the previous day, today I finally woke up in a great mood. To be honest, yesterday my only tactic was to dodge Lady Violet Montemor and Lady Isadora Vanguard. But the two of them were persistent. Even after I tried to brush them off with logical arguments and philosophical riddles, they closed in on me. To my utter bad luck, I ended up forced to share the imperial waltz, dance with both of them under the watchful eyes of the court, and still maintain formal conversations for quite a long time. While I suffered with the mechanical stress of my tight boots, my parents watched everything from afar, laughing openly as if they had won the day on the political board.

But today the scenario is different. After breakfast, I will finally be able to set foot outside the fortress walls. The official agreement I signed with Marquis Arl was simple: I could leave, as long as Katriny acted as my elite bodyguard in tow.

I got out of bed and began to change by myself. Thys entered the room shortly after with her usual firm posture to wish me a good morning, warning that breakfast would be served promptly at seven o'clock.

— Are you happy today, young master? — asked the domestic sergeant, vigorously smoothing the sheets. — Was yesterday good?

— Yesterday was terrible, Thys — I replied, finishing buttoning my shirt cuffs. — But, as compensation, today I am free.

— Don't be like that, young master — scolded Thys, though there was a tone of satisfaction in her voice. — I heard from your father early today that you received formal marriage proposals from over thirty different noble Houses. That number alone is impressive for Eldoria. You must have made an excellent impression on the lords.

I put my hand to my face, with a very bitter tone:

— Yeah, I really made a good impression... I just didn't know the aristocracy had so many women who like being masochistic or contradicted... — I grumbled with a feeling of total helplessness.

— Oh, and your mother sent me to ask... — Thys paused, looking at me sideways with her arms crossed. — ...if your father has been saying indecent things to you. She wants to make sure you aren't falling for his masculine trick of looking for dames with "more meat."

I felt my mind short-circuit. I rested my face in the palms of my hands, defeated, but took a deep breath to answer my caregiver.

— You can tell my mother not to worry — I replied, with a tone of total discouragement and a voice choked by a lack of patience with the aristocracy. — The ladies from the previous night certainly won't cause that kind of problem. But... I can no longer guarantee the same thing for their tongues when they start spreading ballroom rumors around.

Thys arched an eyebrow, holding back laughter in the face of my obvious social exhaustion.

— But, Thys! — I protested, taking a step forward with my arms raised in pure indignation. — They literally sold me to those two political contract vampires! They left me alone in the middle of the ballroom, I had completely no escape route, and I was still forced to dance with them... The worst of all is that my father and mother looked genuinely happy, laughing openly at my bitterness!

Thys stopped by the doorframe. She listened to all my dramatic outburst and, unable to maintain her stern domestic sergeant posture, began to let out a loud, contained laugh, shaking her head.

— Young master... — she replied, wiping away an invisible tear from laughing so much. — They did it for your own good, believe me.

With that final provocation, she finally left, closing the door and leaving me alone with my morning bad mood.

Can I cry now? — I think, with my hand on my face... How to ruin a person's happiness in three steps... Meet Thys. — I grumble to myself.

Then I go down to breakfast and prepare to sort out my things to go to the adventurers' guild.

It was approximately nine in the morning when Katriny and I crossed the gates of the Galiath adventurers' guild. Upon entering, any ordinary person coming from Teia would immediately think: "Wow, this is an isekai!". But, for me, the rustic physics of the place broke any mysticism.

In the corner of the hall, a good-looking young lady operated a counter, looking very much like the clerk of a fabric and haberdashery boutique. Due to the morning hour, the movement of mercenaries was low. Fixed to the side wall, a large notice board displayed dozens of scrolls and notes with various rescue requests, each bearing a small note in the corner indicating its respective danger rating.

Katriny and I moved toward the reception to complete our official registration. By the institution's laws, children who had turned twelve could register as apprentices, but practical level advancement was rigidly blocked; the user could only progress from rank F to rank E after turning thirteen. From fourteen onwards, the transition between tiers was free, depending exclusively on accumulated merits.

The clerk in charge of processing our paperwork was named Rita, a heteromorph with very peculiar canine biological characteristics. While filling out the scrolls, she patiently explained how the ranks worked. The standard classes of the guild went progressively from F up to S. Above that, the ceiling was strict: the SS, SSS, and the legendary U ranks were special concessions that depended on royal decrees, great military conquests, or continental-scale heroic deeds.

The physical environment of the place looked much more like a rustic tavern than a military command center. The lighting was sparse, but what truly caught my scientist's attention was a small metal plaque forged in mithril. I would love to analyze the metallurgical methods of thermal printing and molecular engraving that the guild used on that rare ore. According to the receptionist, only a single drop of the user's blood was required to activate the registration.

Can this metal alloy read and map DNA sequences? — I pondered, fascinated. However, my academic excitement quickly withered upon discovering the practical functionalities of the object. The card acted as a rustic interface device, displaying the bearer's level, martial skills, and current status. Katriny, noticing my curiosity, pulled her plaque from her pocket and showed it to me with a loyal smile.

To my total technical disappointment... my plaque displayed none of this dynamic information. The mithril visor showed only my raw name: Kaelen de Vance.

Considering my Absolute Mana Rejection, it was perfectly logical that the magicle-based interface would not work on my body. I looked at the receptionist, narrowing my eyes analytically:

— How is this plaque going to record my practical activities in the field if it cannot interact with my energy?

Rita smiled, wagging her tail slightly behind the counter: — There is a latent magic matrix imprinted on the metal itself. The spell records and catalyzes physical activities and fluctuations around the card, independently of the user's internal flow. It even serves to identify us in case the adventurer happens to die in the field, graphically projecting the exact cause of death... And it acts as a crime tracker, blocking status if the bearer breaks the kingdom's laws.

Great... It's not a magical artifact, it's literally an inquisitorial civil monitoring device — I thought, putting the plaque into my pocket with disdain.

I thanked the canine receptionist and walked over to the large board on the left side of the reception to select our first official mission. Since we were rank F, our logistical options were pathetic: collecting medicinal herbs in the forest, cleaning community bathrooms, repairing rustic roofs in the citadel, locating lost pets, or working as a kitchen assistant in local taverns. All tasks bore the little letter "F" stamped in the upper corner.

For a change and to avoid urban boredom, I selected a gathering mission. I could very well have taken the task of repairing roofs to analyze the civil engineering of the houses, but since I had an elite monk as a bodyguard in tow, I decided to take advantage of her speed in the woods. The scroll required the delivery of ten units of a specific plant used by apothecaries for the distillation of healing potions.

— At least this part feels like fantasy novels — I reflected. Those six years of confinement in the fortress had been worth it, even though I would have preferred a thousand times a real combat mission to test the resistance of my new armaments against live targets. But I needed to restrain myself and keep a low profile.

As we walked along the dirt roads toward the northern exit, I looked at Katriny with curiosity:

— Katriny, do artifacts like dimensional pouches or spatial compression devices that can store large volumes of matter happen to exist in this world? Or perhaps arcane abilities of this genre?

— Yes, young master — replied the panda-monk, adjusting her leather bracers. — But these spatial items are usually extremely expensive on the black market and at apothecaries. The selling price scales proportionally according to the mass and volume they can support within their magical vacuum.

I immediately grew excited at the prospect of spatial physics.

— That's excellent! Before we head into the woods, let's go to the local market to try and buy one. This will optimize our transport significantly.

— Young master, are you sure about this? — Katriny frowned, stopping in the middle of the street. — They cost a fortune in gold coins... And there is a serious technical problem that...

— Let's go already, we have no time to waste with bureaucracy — I interrupted her, pulling her by the cloak toward the merchant district.

After a full hour scouring the rustic shelves and warehouses of Madame Cindy, we finally found a small leather pouch treated with ether threads for sale in the back of the shop. To my immense scientific happiness and immediate financial sorrow, the price stamped on the scroll was an insane fifty gold coins.

At that exact millisecond, I felt a genuine urge to cry. During six long years of privations, savings, and small patent negotiations with Master Balin, I had managed to save at most fifty-six gold coins in my private vault. Buying that piece of leather meant blowing practically one hundred percent of all my accumulated wealth. I was deeply torn, but my curiosity about dimensional engineering spoke louder. I slapped the coins down on the counter and bought the item.

My reward for this impulsiveness was my second major technical disappointment of the day.

I held the little pouch, tried to project my invisible beams, changed the angle of mechanical approach, but the spatial device simply remained inert. I couldn't get it to work at all.

Maybe if I take this to the workshop, stay close to the object for a few weeks, and try to map the spatial mechanics behind the ether lines, I can understand the physics of the process in the future — I reflected, sitting down on a wooden bench with an expression of pure frustration.

— Ehhh... Young master... — Katriny approached slowly, scratching the back of her neck with an awkward smile. — That was exactly what I was trying to explain to you back on the street before you interrupted me so abruptly. All dimensional items and magical artifacts of this world work, generally, by consuming the active mana of the user themselves. Since your body possesses Absolute Mana Rejection, the raw ether flow won't stabilize with you...

I began to curse myself mentally in every language. Why on earth didn't I let her finish talking? I stretched out my arm and threw the useless little pouch directly into the monk's hands.

— Keep it then, Katriny. Let's go get this task done before the sun shifts position.

Forty minutes of walking later, we crossed the demarcation line and reached the edge of the Great Black Forest. We had been there a few times before, but not to collect medicinal herbs. Katriny, showing admirable patience, knelt on the damp earth and began to explain in detail the techniques her master from the Bamboo-Sanctuary had taught her: how to remove medicinal herbs while keeping the biological roots perfectly intact, the importance of preserving the surrounding soil, and the methods for identifying the best leaves.

The process was undoubtedly educational, but incredibly tedious for my mind. Fortunately, those six years of isolation and intensive training had not been in vain. Thanks to my body's cellular maturation at age twelve, my psion energy had evolved robustly. Currently, I could activate my Psychometry and keep it running continuously for a period of fifteen to thirty minutes, mapping the physical history of matter.

My Precognition was limited to a strict window of three seconds into the immediate future — enough to anticipate any mechanical attack vector. My Cryokinesis could lower the molecular temperature of my steel blades to marks of thirty degrees Celsius below zero, making the air humidity freeze instantly. Pyrokinesis, on the other hand, operated at the exact opposite extreme: I could raise the metal's temperature to an impressive one thousand five hundred degrees Celsius, turning the edge into an incandescent drill.

Because of these brutal thermal fluctuations, the handles and grips of my four short swords had been forged by Master Balin with special insulating materials to withstand the thermal stress without burning my hands, and the tempering of the blades had given the old dwarf monumental work.

I remembered with amusement the first time I managed to stabilize pyrokinesis in the workshop. The old veteran dwarf became so fascinated by the thermal fusion capability that he used me as a living furnace for three straight hours to melt iron ingots! I almost kicked that perverted dwarf right in the middle of the gears. To this day he laughs and asks me to come back more often to help with the anvil work.

But my greatest mechanical evolution was in Psychokinesis. If at six years of age I struggled to lift and move an average mass of four kilograms, today my mind could lift and displace up to one hundred and twenty kilograms with surgical precision. With this strength, I was capable of projecting an invisible kinetic shield around myself to act as absolute defense against projectiles. Not even Katriny knew the true extent of these thermal and kinetic capacities of mine; in a real battle for survival, she would certainly have many surprises.

After listening to the botanical instructions, I extended my left palm and pressed it directly against the damp soil of the clearing. I activated my psychometry, expanding my psychic waves through the roots and the earth to track the purest and densest specimens of the medicinal plant. The mental mapping yielded a pleasant surprise, indicating a break in the forest's density a little further ahead, where the concentration of herbs was perfect.

The gathering process became fast and efficient. Using millimeter-thick telekinetic beams to loosen the earth without damaging the plants, I pulled up two dozen of them in a few minutes. Katriny widened her golden eyes in sheer shock at my biological speed as she collected the herbs and stashed them in the dimensional pouch.

Our harvest, however, was abruptly interrupted by a sound that made my spine stiffen.

The howl echoed through the trees.

The dim light of the dense forest began to thicken with the damp mists of dusk. In the clarity of the dark grass, absolute silence was cut short by a short, sharp howl loaded with bestial authority. The Dire Wolf — a colossal mass of gray muscles, deep scars, and hungry eyes — gave the signal to hunt.

The pack advanced through the shadows in a perfect semicircle, using the vegetation as visual camouflage. There were twelve ordinary wolves guided by the giant Alpha, a true storm of fangs, claws, and predatory instinct strategically designed to shred any intruder who violated the forest perimeter.

Katriny and I pressed our backs against each other in the exact center of the clearing, awaiting the impact vector of the first pounce. I took a deep breath, anchoring my thinking mind in the flow of the moment and clearing any neural noise. My psychometry instantly lit up in my consciousness like a three-dimensional thermal map: I could read the heat of each beast's heartbeat, the muscle tension of each paw about to spring in the shadows, and the acrid smell of wet fur mixed with old blood.

Barely a meter and a half away, Katriny twirled her two short daggers between her fingers with lethal, military fluidity. Her golden monk eyes fixed firmly on the opposite wing of the clearing, and the muscles in her legs flexed like steel springs ready to fire.

With a mental and silent click, I polarized my weaponry on my back. I drew two of my short swords. In my left hand, the special metal blade instantly plummeted to minus thirty degrees Celsius, exhaling a frigid mist and crackling dryly as the air humidity froze into sharp crystals along the steel edge. In my right hand, the sister blade rose to a live ember, reaching the insane mark of one thousand five hundred degrees Celsius. The air around my right arm distorted in visible heat waves, and the smell of molten metal clashed against the arctic cold of my left side.

The first wolf shot out from the shadows of the eastern wing, breaking the distance with a mortal leap directed straight at my legs. Three other animals jumped right behind, seeking the left flank to activate their feared Pack Tactics and tear my defense apart.

But my mind was already experiencing the future even before it materialized on the physical plane. My precognition drew the next three seconds with crystal clarity in my cortex: the exact angle of the pounce, the trajectory of the bite, and the precise spot where the bodies would fall.

— Not going to happen — I murmured in a low voice, my eyes glowing with an intense aura of blue psychic energy.

An invisible push of pure psychokinetic force exploded in an expansive wave originating from my body. Four of the wolves attempting the lateral encirclement were violently hurled backward into the air, flying for meters until colliding with dry, brutal cracks against the thick trunks of the trees. Crushed air rushed from their lungs in a mute yelp, and they tumbled inertly into the vegetation.

Taking advantage of the power vacuum and the pack's mechanical disorganization, Katriny sprang into action with the precision of an elite warrior. Her defense sector was the right flank, where three wolves advanced in a coordinated line.

With the implacable agility of her martial class, Katriny slid beneath the first wolf's pounce, using the beast's own kinetic momentum to arc her body in a perfect circle over the grass. Her daggers traced silver, surgical lines in the air. With a fluid rotational movement, she drove the short blade directly into the base of the skull of the one leading the attack, breaking its vertebrae and dropping the animal instantly.

The second wolf tried to snap at her left arm on the rebound, but the monk ducked by millimeters, swinging her elbow in a direct, violent impact blow against the creature's snout. The sound of breaking bone echoed through the clearing, and the animal staggered back dazed. Before the beast could manage any escape reaction, Katriny advanced with a precise double thrust to the center of its chest, piercing vital organs and fumbling the second opponent. Only a third wolf remained in her patrol zone, taking a full step back, growling with bristled fur and gripped by fear upon seeing her companions' blood stain the grass.

Meanwhile, at my back, two wolves that had managed to escape the initial telekinetic wave leaped in synchronization in a suicidal attack, seeking my blind defensive spot.

Without even turning my head to look, I released the hilt of the cold sword operating at minus thirty degrees, leaving it suspended in the air. Connecting my psychokinesis directly to the metal, I made the blade spin furiously on its own horizontal axis, turning it into an invisible helicopter propeller. The frigid vortex intercepted both animals mid-flight: the edge instantly froze tissues and blood flow upon cutting the skin, hurling their rigid, frozen, and howling bodies directly against the newly formed snow at the edge of the clearing.

Yet the real danger and the true threat of the mission advanced, trampling the vegetation with fury. The Dire Wolf — enraged at seeing its pack decimated, foaming at the mouth and completely ignoring the waves of scorching heat that made the air vibrate meters away — charged at me like an armored battering ram. It concentrated all its mass and lunged directly toward my neck, driven by a blind, primal, and murderous rage.

I didn't back down a single millimeter. Keeping the frigid sword spinning on automated defensive patrol around me, I fixed my eyes on the colossal Alpha plummeting from above, blocking out any other stimuli from the outside world.

At the exact millisecond the Dire Wolf reached the apex of its ballistic jump trajectory, my psychokinesis grabbed the beast in mid-air. Instead of exerting horizontal force to push it sideways, I applied a vertical thrust vector, propelling the monster upward with immense and sudden force. The acceleration made the Alpha fly much higher than the mechanics of its giant legs could calculate.

The Dire Wolf's eyes widened in pure panic and instinctive confusion. It found itself completely suspended in the void, flying through the forest sky against the laws of gravity, with its vast and vulnerable belly totally exposed underneath.

I bent my knees, accumulated energy in my legs, and leaped lightly from the ground, extending my right arm. I firmly gripped the hilt of the incandescent sword operating at one thousand five hundred degrees Celsius. Channeling all my available psion energy into a single focal point of my mind, I commanded the blade to spin at very high speed on its own axis, transforming Master Balin's rustic steel into a true pure-plasma drill.

With a shout of physical effort, I shot upward like a projectile, meeting the monster at the peak of its descent.

Fwump!

The superheated metal tore through the Dire Wolf's vital core from bottom to top in a fraction of a second, piercing tissues, muscles, and bones with the ease of someone cutting butter. The creature's furious, territorial roar was cut off abruptly, turning into a muffled hiss of cooked flesh and incandescent ashes the exact moment my blade completed its full perforation of the back. The emptied, burned, and lifeless carcass plummeted heavily against the earth, opening a small crater of dust, soot, and smoke on the clearing floor.

I landed softly on the ground shortly after. Seeing their Alpha leader dead and the pack's best warriors slain with surgical and brutal precision, the three remaining wolves still prowling the perimeter lost the rest of their bestial courage. They turned back in unison, howling with primitive dread and despair, and vanished into the dense darkness of the Black Forest in a total stampede.

In the clearing now immersed in silence, the strong smell of molten metal and burnt flesh hung like a thick mist. The frigid blade at minus thirty degrees ceased its patrol spin and rested gently in the palm of my left hand, crackling slightly as the accumulated ice began to melt upon touching the warm grass.

A few paces away, Katriny tore a piece of fabric from a dead wolf to wipe the blood from her short daggers with precise movements, stashing them at her waist afterward. She took a deep breath, controlling her heart rate, and stared fixedly at the smoking remains of the Dire Wolf. The panda-monk crossed her broad arms, gazing at me with a smirk that blended profound respect and a clear sense of relief.

The danger was over. Our blood baptism in the guild was fulfilled.

— Young master... — began Katriny, shaking her head in disbelief. — You've been hiding your abilities very well... How are you able to project and maintain that invisible wall of force? And how do you make the blades float and operate by themselves like that in the air?

I gave a light laugh, sheathing the two short swords on my back with a magnetic click.

— Secret, Katriny! Now, gather the Alpha's teeth and the remaining herbs. We need to take everything back to the adventurers' guild and collect our reward.