“And who might you be, young man? Valar, was it?”

  Erin’s voice rang in the dining hall, but Valar’s mind was blank. What should I say? “Hey, I’m Valar. I’m a life mage that grew up in the orphanage?” It just doesn’t sound right. Everyone’s looking at me… I need to say something!

  “I… I’m Valar,” he muttered. “I’m a healer, I guess…”

  “You’re a healer, you guess?” Erin asked quizzically. “You aren’t sure if you’re a healer?”

  “Well…” Valar blushed. “I just got out of the academy and I’m not that good…”

  Every person’s gaze turned to Rodrick as he burst into bellowing laughter. He continued laughing for a good while, the sounds of his mirth filling the entire room. What is he laughing about? I was speaking-

  “Son, what made you rudely interrupt your new member here?” Erin started. “You’re supposed to be supportive of-”

  “No, it’s nothing of the sort,” Rodrick wheezed out. “It’s just that Valar saying that he’s not a good healer is like hearing you say that you were kind of a bad paladin… He used Lesser Restoration on us until he passed out, and that was the first mission he’s ever been on. If he’s a bad healer based on that performance, I should just begin knitting instead of adventuring!”

  He’s… praising me? Valar couldn’t really understand where the compliments were coming from. In his own eyes, he had done the bare minimum and no more. Sure, he hadn’t frozen and been totally useless, but his castings had been slow, inefficient and eventually led to him losing his consciousness. By the abyss, he had even missed the last fight!

  “Based on his expression, your healer doesn’t seem to agree,” Alistair stepped in. “Valar, could you describe the first mission to us all from your perspective?”

  After a short moment, Valar nodded shyly. I’m already part of the team, so they won’t kick me out even if they realize I’m not as good as they think. What’s the worst that could happen?

  “I joined the mission as a trial member by arriving at the last minute with Arthur,” Valar narrated. “That I couldn’t have really avoided, so I can’t really criticize myself for it.”

  “Why should y-” Rodrick began.

  “Let the boy speak,” Alistair snapped. “I’m starting to see a problem, and I think Valar’s story will shed some light on that problem from your perspective too. Please continue, Valar.”

  “Well…” Valar gathered his thoughts and nodded to himself before continuing. “The first beast we encountered was a bronze rank windsoar canary. The fight went generally quite well, but I got injured at the end.”

  “You got injured?” Erin asked with a worried frown. “I’m so sorry, my son’s team has got some training to do if they let their healer get injured so easily!”

  Valar didn’t notice the embarrassed expressions of his teammates as he turned his gaze towards Rodrick’s mother. “Oh, it was my error, but at least I could heal myself. That meant that we could continue without any significant delay. The following encounters of the day were all against bandits, and I don’t think I made any significant errors during that time. When Carla got injured at the forest’s edge, my healing wasn’t as fast or efficient as it could’ve been, but that I can at least justify with my lack of experience.”

  Alistair noticed that his son was about to speak up, so he raised his finger admonishingly. Valar didn’t notice the interaction as he continued on. “Honestly, the next morning was a mess. Waking up to a silver rank goat beast ripping our cabin apart was a confusing experience.”

  “What in the abyss happened?” Erin’s tone was becoming more and more worried. “A silver rank beast ripping open your cabin? How are you alive?”

  “Oh, it left immediately afterward,” Valar explained with a matter of fact tone. “There was a stampede in the wasteland led by a gold rank behemoth ursa, and it passed around our camping spot. Honestly, my performance that morning was abysmal…”

  The boy was oblivious to the expressions of his teammates, which ranged from amused to incredulous on Rodrick’s part, so he continued his recounting of the mission. “I took way too long to heal myself…”

  “And why was that?” Alistair grunted.

  “I think it was part confusion and part inexperience. I can somewhat understand why I took so long, but it still feels like quite a bad mistake. Healing just my hearing took almost ten minutes, and that is unacceptable. The same issue repeated itself when I needed to heal everyone after the ursa’s roar shattered our eardrums. A couple hours after that, we found some soldiers in a wrecked outpost.”

  Valar hung his head in shame. This is the bad part… “One of them had been injured during the stampede. When I was healing him, I allowed myself to pass out during the mission and even completely missed the last fight against a big group of bandits. My miscalculation led to trouble for the team…”

  A pervading silence filled the room after Valar spoke. In the silence, he even felt a small twinge of burning pain deep inside his very core, reminding him of his failure. Eventually, after a long while, Alistair’s cough broke it, as did his following words. “Son, do you understand what I’m getting at now?”

  “I think I do,” Rodrick sighed. “My team members haven’t been trained by you, so their mentality is quite different from mine. I don’t really understand what I can do about it though.”

  “Son, I’ve been a leader of men for as long as you’ve been alive. Part of being a leader is learning to understand those who you work with, and you haven’t done much of that, have you?”

  Valar lifted his head in shock. “I think you’re misunderstanding something! The mistakes I talked about were my own, not Rodrick’s!”

  Alistair smiled down at him. “You are mistaken, young healer. In my son’s eyes, you’ve done exceedingly well for someone on their first mission. Those things you listed as mistakes are closer to accolades in the eyes of a normal adventurer.”

  “What? But…”

  “Let’s go through them one by one,” Alistair interrupted Valar. “First, you getting injured by that windsoar canary is mostly your team’s mistake. Sure, you could’ve dodged, but the healer should be the most protected member of the team. Also, the fact that you even managed to cast a healing spell through the pain of your injury on your very first mission is a great accomplishment.”

  “But I was inefficient and-.”

  “Doesn’t matter. Most iron rank adventurers would have frozen, panicked or passed out right then and there. You healed yourself immediately instead, resulting in no significant loss for the team. As a feat, it’s by no means worthy of a star on your badge, but it shows that you are much more of an adventurer than most when they start.”

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  Valar blushed in embarrassment. This is too much. I guess I wasn’t that bad, but this… Unfortunately, the barrage of compliments continued.

  “As for the inefficiencies you talked about, in my opinion you can forget about each and every one of them,” Alistair laughed. “Carla, is every spell you cast perfect?”

  The brown haired ice mage shook her head with a rueful smile. “No way, Mr. Steelheart. I of course aim for clean spellframes, but combat situations make actual perfection almost impossible.”

  Valar turned his gaze to Carla “What? But I will waste mana and…”

  “I think I can continue from here, father,” Rodrick interrupted Valar just like his father had done. “It seems I’ve neglected one of my responsibilities as a leader, and that’s actually giving feedback. Valar, your performance during your first mission with us far exceeded my expectations, and if I was a guild executive, I would award you a star on your badge for just that one mission. It proved you’re reliable, don’t balk at danger and actually take your work seriously. To me, the fact that you passed out from casting too many healing spells just signifies that you’re highly motivated and ready to push through the pain in order to do what's right. This discussion has helped me understand that I should give compliments to my team members more frequently, and maybe even start doing in depth run-throughs of what went right and wrong during the mission.”

  When Valar had recounted his experiences during his first ever mission, the feelings of disappointment and shame had made the wound scarring his soul twinge with burning pain. The mental blows took on a flavour of actual pain in his soul, feeling that much worse. These compliments… They were having the opposite effect.

  Hearing that he had actually done quite well for his first attempt as an adventurer was surprisingly nice. He had bashed himself for mistakes his team leader hadn’t even considered errors. I really shouldn’t be that much of a self-critic…

  That mindset wouldn’t change instantly, but now that Rodrick was aware of it, he could work to raise the confidence of his team as a whole. It was a step in a good direction, if nothing else.

  “Now that I’ve complimented Valar, all of you did great too,” Rodrick said to the rest of the team.

  “I don’t need your praise,” Arthur grinned. “I know I’m good.”

  Rodrick shrugged, “Everyone but Arthur did amazingly, I guess.”

  “Hey!”

  Carla kind of liked the praise. Much like Valar, many people hadn’t complimented her work in the past, so even a few words of praise from her team leader warmed her heart considerably. She would never admit it though… No way in the abyss.

  Growing up in a noble house was a double edged sword. Sure, the children were given all kinds of assistance commoner children would never dream of, but the expectations set on them matched or even exceeded the level of aid. The Thorn house valued the fire affinity above all, so any accomplishments Carla had achieved after her awakening had been totally ignored. It hurt her feelings, but what could she do? Go complain to her father? Her grandfather?

  No, she sucked it up and left Thornton as fast as she could. She knew she performed well in her class even when nobody complimented her for it; The statistics proved that. Carla had been top of her class in almost every metric she could track in both iron rank and bronze rank studies, so the opinions of others didn’t matter, right?

  In some ways, they didn’t matter. However, they mattered in one very important aspect. The negative opinions still hurt her feelings. No matter how accomplished she became, no matter how handily she beat her contemporaries, their jeering shouts and insults hurt her. It wasn’t anything she couldn’t deal with—she had grown up in a noble household after all—but they still hurt.

  Hearing someone like Rodrick, who she actually somewhat respected as a warrior, compliment her and her teammates was actually quite nice. The compliments and following banter with Arthur even brought a smile upon her face.

  “We still have one member that’s yet to be introduced,” Erin reminded the group. “Who might you be?”

  She was looking directly at Ciel. Erin’s eyes were above the rogue’s, but the difference wasn’t big by any means. Their gazes met, and Erin frowned.

  “Ciel, rogue and dark mage. Nice to meet you,” the rogue’s flat tone and expression didn’t match her words, nor did Erin’s.

  Rodrick’s mother seemed to have problems with forcing her smile when looking at the pale woman. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Ciel.” Her eyes didn’t match her smile, and Carla was quite sure she knew why.

  It had been an off-handed comment, but Rodrick had mentioned Erin’s past profession earlier. A paladin, eh?

  Outwardly, the church of light was an organization preaching peace and prosperity. They did a lot of good in the kingdom, giving food to the poor, healing the injured and funding the many orphanages of the land. That, however, wasn’t their only purpose.

  The church of light was directly antagonistic to the abyss and its denizens. Their singular purpose was to annihilate the demon, the devil and the gods of darkness, and they couldn’t very well do that without a fighting force of their own. That’s where the paladins came in.

  Warriors, light mages and warrior light mages trained by the church to defend the realm were called paladins. In some ways, they were the church’s own military force, although they worked more like the adventurer’s guild in how they acted in the open. Paladins took on missions, slayed beasts and defended the citizens just like any adventurer would, but all of those things went out of the window when an abyssal hollow appeared.

  The paladins were the primary force against invading abyss demons. The church considered demons unholy creatures whose only salvation was death. The thing with that was that the most common magical affinity of abyss demons was darkness.

  Publicly, the church was neutral on human dark mages. Darkness was a rare affinity like any other, and deeming it anything else would have been unfair towards those who got it by happenstance.

  But… they just really didn’t like anything similar to the demons, and evidently Ciel reminded Erin enough of them that she couldn’t fully hide her prejudice.

  Alistair gave his wife a worried look and eventually decided to take over the discussion. “I’ve heard that you are quite the fighter, Ciel. Have you been trained at one of the martial schools of the kingdom?”

  Ciel shrugged noncommittally. “Something like that. My teacher was quite skilled, but I’ve been self-taught since I turned sixteen..”

  “Interesting, interesting,” Alistair mumbled. “Good to hear that my son’s team has competent members. By the way…”

  Rodrick groaned. “Dad… There’s no need to…”

  “No, no, I want to hear this. Who came up with the name Cookie Sandwich?”

  Every single party members’ eyes moved to Arthur in unison, as did their accusing fingers. Well, Valar didn’t point, but everyone else did.

  “I think it’s a pretty good name,” Arthur said with a wide smile on his face. “Ice cream is good, so the name tells others that we are good as well!”

  “Son…”

  “Yes father?”

  “Your team is full of idiots.”

  “Yes, father.”

  “You know, I could have a mission for your team, Rodrick,” Erin said as they were just about to leave. “The church has some that they are about to pass off to the guild, and I picked out a really nice one.”

  “Really?” Rodrick asked. “We were just about to go to the guild!”

  “That’s why I got a mission for you,” Erin ruffled her son’s hair. “It’s a den of voltaic badgers, a mix of iron and bronze ranks among them. Should be a relatively lucrative reward too.”

  “Thanks mom,” Rodrick gave his mother a huge bear hug. “Do you have the contract?”

  “Yeah, I should have it right here,” Erin grabbed a piece of paper from her pocket. “50 silver for a day contract is pretty nice, isn’t it? The badger hides are pretty valuable too…”

  “Fifty silver? How did you even manage that?” Rodrick asked confusedly. “Did you swindle the church or something?”

  For that, he got a smack on the back of his head, and it wasn’t a soft one either. “Of course I didn’t swindle the church! I was a paladin, for light’s sake! It’s simply a high priority contract because it’s near the city and neighbouring fields, as if the den grows any larger, they will start killing farmers for food.”

  “Oh, okay. We’ll take the contract then.”

  “I knew you would! Have fun bashing some skulls in!”

  As they left, Arthur and Carla yelled their thanks for the food and good company. Valar joined in shyly, but most of his contribution was a simple wave. Still, it was enough. Ciel gave a small forced smile, but Valar heard her mutterings as they walked away from the family home. “Scary lady… Wouldn’t want to fight her.”

  Rodrick didn’t notice as he was reading over the contract. “So, how did you all like my parents?”

  “They seem like amazing people,” Carla said. “Although I can’t shake the feeling that your mother is way scarier than your father.”

  “Oh, I didn’t tell you?” Rodrick took his gaze away from the contract.

  “Tell us what?”

  “That my mother wasn’t just a paladin. She used to be the lowest ranked Justiciar in the whole kingdom!”

  Valar couldn’t help but notice Ciel’s frightened expression as she turned away from the party. Nobody else seemed to be paying attention to the pale woman somehow turning even paler as she clutched her heart in obvious distress.

  “What’s a Justiciar?” Arthur asked. “I’ve never heard the term.”

  Carla coughed into her hand, her eyes almost as wide as Ciel’s. “Paladins kill demons... A Justiciar has killed at least a thousand of them, and the ones coming through are not some iron rankers. The abyss sends its best, and so does the church of light.”

  One scary lady indeed…