“So… I heard you’ve been adventuring,” Elizabeth remarked. “Quite a fast road through iron rank, eh?”

  “I got a couple really good opportunities,” Valar mumbled, looking down at his feet. “Most of the energy from the rank was gained through a couple kills.”

  Valar realized his mistake right after he closed his mouth. I shouldn’t have said that.

  “A couple kills? Wouldn’t that mean that you killed-.”

  “Daughter dearest,” Helen interrupted Elizabeth with a hand on her shoulder. “Look at the boy. He looks like he might implode any second if you continue prodding into his secrets.”

  When Elizabeth’s gaze moved to meet Valar’s mortified one, her eyes went wide. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to pry!”

  “T-That’s alright,” Valar coughed, his nervousness shining through like a star in the night sky. “It’s just that the matter is kind of private, and…”

  “No need to explain, young man,” Helen smiled. “Everyone’s got their secrets, and us Wendirs won’t make you reveal them—especially in the middle of a crowded hall. Right, daughters?”

  “Right…” Both Elina and Elizabeth echoed their mother’s words back to her, rolling their eyes. That didn’t discourage Elina too much, though.

  “I get that you can’t tell us your secrets, but at least tell me if adventuring is fun!” the teenage girl demanded, her long, red hair bobbing with her twitchy movements. She kind of reminds me of a small bird.

  If Valar had to hazard a guess, Elina was fifteen or sixteen years of age. That meant that the girl would be awakening relatively soon if she was lucky.

  “It can be…” Valar mused. “I’ve had fun, at least. It’s just that when I’m adventuring, danger is around every corner. It can be quite a nerve wracking line of work…”

  “But you’ve had fun?”

  “Yeah…”

  “Nice!”

  Based on her disappointed frown, Elina’s mother wasn’t a fan of this particular line of discussion. Luckily for her, Valar didn’t have a lot to say. I couldn’t really talk about a lot of things from my month of adventuring, if I really think about it. Revealing my teammates’ abilities and talking about them… It would feel bad.

  I wonder what they’re doing right now…

  Rodrick grunted as he swung his axe in a seemingly wild swing, meeting the descending fang with a roar. Bone met steel in a shower of sparks, but the warrior’s axe didn’t falter. The death-grip constrictor hissed in pain as its head was lashed back, impacting its own slithering bulk.

  “Focus, soldier,” Rodrick muttered, unheard by all but himself. This is a bad situation, but it’s by no means untenable. We just need to keep the pressure coming!

  With that thought, he rushed forwards once more, roaring his challenge to the beast ahead.

  Team Cookie Sandwich had been travelling towards Kilras for a little over a week, and it had certainly been an interesting journey. First of all, they weren’t the lone protectors of the caravan anymore. The way to Kilras—the southernmost city in the whole nation—was too long to traverse with only two wagons, so the smallest convoy they had been able to join was four wagons long. That meant that they were working with another team.

  Seeing a bolt of lightning streak past his head, Rodrick twitched. It was a weird experience to be working with Team Stormcloud, but he thought that it had mostly been a positive one. The four-man team working with Team Cookie Sandwich was relatively competent and functioned well under stress. It was just that they were a bit reckless, like-.

  “Wheee!” Rodrick let out a silent curse when he saw Arthur flying high above his head, bow drawn and pointed at the beast ahead.

  Like Arthur…

  The blonde archer’s eyes flashed in the golden sunlight as he let his arrow loose. Its metal tip glinted in the sunlight before whizzing forward at an incredible speed, leaving no room to react for the snake. The impact was nearly instant.

  The death-grip constrictor let out a high-pitched hiss of pain as its left eye was punctured. Rodrick’s eyes shifted away from the writhing creature and onto the descending form of his team’s archer.

  Arthur’s shriek told him enough of his plan; there hadn’t been one. “Save me!”

  The guardsman’s son’s muscles tensed up below his armor, straining against his self-imposed restraints. He took off with a grunt of exertion, rocketing forward like a dragon diving for its prey.

  Rodrick felt the world blur around him as he moved as fast as he could, leaving a crack in the earth where he took off. The descending form of Arthur was his only focus. I will reach him. I. Will. Reach. Him!

  The warrior grunted as his extended hands nearly buckled under the archer’s weight, but he held on. His momentum didn’t stop there, however, and he kept sliding forwards.

  “Rodrick, stop!” Arthur yelled. “We’ll hit the-!”

  Crash

  After only a brief second of contact with the scaly, tough surface he had just impacted, Rodrick knew that he needed to retreat. I’m right where the beast wants me to be. I need to get out! Now!

  Fortunately, Arthur realized the very same thing. He disengaged himself from Rodrick’s grasp and dashed off, leaving the warrior to save himself. That was entirely fine, as being the frontliner was his job anyway. Now to just get myself-. Oh, fuck.

  The death-grip constrictor was a pretty ordinary species of solitary hunters that could be found all along southern Leoria and southeastern Khatesh. They reveled in lush jungles, assaulting beasts and adventurers alike by crushing them with its tough, scaly body. Most of them were affinityless, as was the beast they were fighting right now.

  Most teams had problems with the creatures because of their tough scales and tendency to single out lone individuals in order to constrict around them. Escaping from the constrictor’s clutches was hard once it caught you…

  Damn!

  Rodrick’s giant battleaxe clattered on the ground as the one-eyed beast wrapped around him in an attempt to crush and kill. This is possibly the worst case scenario! The panicked thought entered his mind, but the warrior steeled himself. What can I do in order to make it better?

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  The tall man’s muscles tensed and the plates of his armor creaked as he calmed himself, ready to weather the increasing pressure as long as necessary. His allies would break him out. They would kill the beast, and its muscles would relax. He could breathe again soon. There was only one thing he needed to do, and that was to survive.

  Rodrick filtered out the noise of combat around him and closed his eyes. There was no need to look around, as everything was dark anyways. Sound was equally as unnecessary, as the clammer of combat around him didn’t concern him.

  Instead, he moved his focus to two things in particular: His muscles and his heart.

  Muscles were important for his survival right now. The beast around him was trying to crush him, and in order to resist, he needed to exert his strength. Rodrick didn’t have his axe with him—which was a shame—but he had his muscles. They would be enough.

  Perhaps even more importantly, his heart was still beating. That told the warrior that he was alive. As long as his heart continued its endless rhythm, he would not give up. For he was Rodrick Steelheart, and a heart of steel would never falter.

  …

  Rodrick didn’t know how long had passed when he felt air finally returning to his lungs. It could have been seconds or hours, but that didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was the sweet, sweet air entering his lungs. It beat out every meal he had ever dined on handily, its mere scent—normally unnoticeable—was enough to make his mouth water.

  The refreshing breeze of salty air was joined by sunlight soon after, and Rodrick opened his eyes. Tears welled up as he looked up at the pale form of Ciel above him. She was hacking at the beast’s scaly corpse with his trusty axe, sweat beading off her forehead as she continued with a fervor that Rodrick hadn’t seen on her face before.

  Air and light were soon joined by sound. It was a less pleasurable experience: Grunts of exertion, hurried shouts and sounds of weapons impacting flesh filled his ears, and Rodrick’s face twisted into a frown. Noisy…

  The last thing that returned was feeling in his body. At that very moment, Rodrick would’ve preferred to continue living without it…

  “THAT HURTS! I WANT A BEER!”

  Carla couldn’t resist letting out a joyous shout as Rodrick’s voice finally echoed from within the curled up snake. Stupid danger noodle almost killed my team leader… But he’s alive! He’s actually alive!

  Even though Rodrick’s survival was a happy thing, Carla found herself doubting her eyes when he was finally dragged out from the coil of leathery scales by the warrior of Team Stormcloud—a similarly built but significantly shorter man than Rodrick. He and Ciel had been integral to getting Rodrick out, as they were perhaps the only ones who had the stamina and strength to hack at the snake’s corpse for as long as they had needed to. Almost ten minutes… He must’ve been without air for the whole time!

  Annoyingly, the fight itself had been quite easy after the constrictor had coiled around their team leader. Their whole fight plan had revolved around avoiding getting caught for the whole team, so when one of them got actually trapped, the snake became much less threatening to the others. One good Ice Lance—strengthened to the limits of Carla’s power, had been enough to strike through the snake’s wounded eye and into its brain. As a bronze ranker, the beast had been as good as dead after that.

  “Nine of the ten minutes, just to get this big oaf out!” Ciel groaned from on top of the corpse. “What the fuck was your idea, Arthur?”

  “I thought it would be a good idea… Faster kill and all that,” Arthur muttered embarrassedly. “I’m sorry.”

  He actually apologized? Arthur Gladstone apologized? Carla looked up at the sky, looking to see if the sky was descending upon her head. I can’t believe it!

  “It’s fine,” Rodrick’s pained grunt snapped Carla out of her musings. “It was a supremely bad idea, but at least you executed it well enough. If you had missed, we would be having a different discussion altogether.”

  “What?” Ciel pointed at Arthur angrily. “His stupid antics almost killed you!”

  “I’m alive, aren’t I?”

  “Barely!”

  Yeah, they were doing great!

  Zeke’s idea to rush to the entrance building for tickets turned out to be a great one. The good seats disappeared fast, so even though they had come pretty early, they only managed to get a place from the 6th row of 12. The three women from house Wendir booked their seats next to Valar and Zeke, although Valar heard some silent curses from Elina.

  “Shitty dad, lazing off in Kilras… We could’ve gotten VIPs.”

  “No, we wouldn’t,” Elizabeth’s answer was quite a bit louder than her sister’s whisper, making the younger girl twitch. “He’s a gold ranker, but we’re in the royal academy. Rank doesn’t really get you much when Gideon Folren is in charge.”

  “Old codger,” Helen scoffed. “He never liked nobility, even though he seems to enjoy our money quite a bit.”

  Valar didn’t dare to comment. Quite frankly, he didn’t know enough about the topic to chip in, so he decided to stay silent instead. That was well and good, as they split up from the nobles soon after.

  When they were alone, Valar asked a question that he had been wondering about for quite a while. “How come you’re still at the academy? You don’t need to learn any runes or spells, so what’s taking so long?”

  Zeke chuckled lightly. “First of all, rude.”

  When Valar blushed from embarrassment, he grinned. “Just kidding, I don’t mind! As for the reason why I haven’t left yet... Why would I? The whole process of ascending through the ranks is a learning process, and as I’m not meant to be an adventurer, what’s a better place to learn than the academy?”

  “But how will you progress through the ranks?” Valar asked in confusion. “Curated encounters with beasts? Those are costly, to say the least.”

  “That, or prolonged dungeon exposure,” Zeke shrugged. “But that’s supposedly really slow, so people like Helen will probably just gather beasts for me instead.”

  “Hearing that, I really wonder how normal people ever manage to ascend to bronze rank without working as an adventurer or soldier.”

  “Most of them just don’t. Even though there are enterprises that are built around supplying rich citizens with trivial enemies to slay, their services are costly beyond the normal means of a citizen. Do remember that most of the people living in Leoria are still at iron rank and will probably never ascend to bronze rank either.”

  Valar frowned, somewhat depressed from the short discussion even when he had already known most of the information beforehand. The whole idea of such an early roadblock in most peoples’ paths just seemed unfair. They go their whole lives without getting a shred of mana. They never ascend… Ascend?

  Zeke caught Valar by the shoulder when he stumbled, looking down at the boy with worry in his eyes. “Valar? Are you alright?”

  “Yeah… Yeah,” Valar’s response was a distracted mumble. “I’m alright.”

  “You feel hot,” the swarthy man grunted in surprise. “Like really hot! Do you have a fever?”

  Zeke couldn’t see Valar’s face clearly due to his unkempt hair falling over his eyes. That was good.

  Because the eyes he would’ve seen wouldn’t have been the boy’s normal brown, nor would’ve they been the green of his life magic. The boy’s eyes, hidden behind shut eyelids, were a bright orange.

  …

  Getting Zeke to leave him alone was a difficult task, but Valar managed the feat just barely. His friend still led him all the way to his dorm, asking if he should call for a healer many times. Even after Valar’s pleas for privacy, the young man only left after he made the boy promise to call for a healer immediately if he felt the need.

  Valar was thankful for Zeke’s concern, he really was. This is just something that I cannot show him… I’m not dragging Zeke into my own problems! He doesn’t deserve that burden!

  When the door finally clicked shut behind the swarthy man and the sound isolation enchantments built into his dorm activated, Valar let out the scream of pain he had been holding in. He collapsed to his knees and clawed at his chest, breathing in short, ragged gasps.

  He knew that it wasn’t his heart that was aflame, but it was the closest thing he could visualize. His core was burning, radiating pain out in every corner of his body.

  The air Valar breathed felt like thick, burning smoke. The cold floor under him felt like hot coals, and worst of all, his own head felt like it was on fire.

  He crawled to the bathroom and dragged himself to the shower. There, he reached out and tapped the sigil that activated the enchantments, bringing him the sweet relief of cold water hitting his sweat-soaked back. He knelt there, just sobbing, for quite a while.

  When the burning pain in his chest finally subsided, retreating back into the background—there, but not enough to draw his full attention—Valar breathed out in relief. That was bad…

  The bout of pain had been reminiscent of the ones he used to have in the orphanage. It had been longer and more intense, sure, but the quality of pain had been the same. It seemed that ascending through the ranks wouldn’t rid him of his pain, just the opposite.

  The topic of ascension was the thing that triggered it, I’m sure. Just thinking about it brought this much pain…

  The next meeting with Felicia could not come sooner.

  Needless to say, Valar did not sleep well that night. The wound in his soul was a constant presence—much closer to the forefront than normally—keeping him awake for hours on end. Still, sleep won out eventually.

  That night, Valar dreamed of a burning forest. Once lush trees burned down and vegetation was scorched to ash. For some reason, the completely natural occurrence seemed incredibly sad…