“So did you complete the quest I gave you?” Bjorn asked the moment Deacon stepped into the lounge of the Sovereign Bdes Knight Order, not even bothering to turn his head fully, and continued to stare at his manaphone with his eyes still glued onto it.

  “Of course I did,” Deacon said, shaking his head hard enough to fling droplets of rainwater across the tiled floor before letting a thin yer of Undying Fme fre across his body to evaporate whatever stubborn dampness still clung to him. The heat shimmered off his frame for barely a second before dying out, leaving only the faint scent of scorched rain.

  Muttering a few words under his breath as he finished reading his manaphone, Bjorn let out a long, slow sigh through his nose. He clicked the device off with his thumb, set it aside, and finally turned fully to face Deacon.

  “Do you have proof of your completion of the quest?” Bjorn asked, lifting a brow.

  In response, Deacon gave the most dumbfounded look he could to his uncle, trying to convey to him his thoughts. Why the hell would I say I completed it if I didn’t complete it?

  “Hey, don’t give me that look. I might believe you wouldn’t lie to me, but the world doesn’t run on blind trust–“ Bjorn expined, crossing his fingers to form an X. “ –it runs on integrity. And right now, you’re a cadet who got a lucky final hit on your First Floor Boss and snagged first and second pce in a tournament. Impressive, sure. It gives people an idea of your skill.”

  “But that doesn’t prove anything about who you are as a person. The System might be all-knowing, but people aren’t,” he said, letting out a short sigh before continuing. “If you want people to trust you unconditionally, you need to build rapport, and that can only be done by having completed numerous quests under your belt and people who can vouch for you.”

  “Only by completing enough quests and building that trust does your name carry weight. That’s how it works,” Bjorn said with a growing smirk as Deacon looked more and more put off.

  Deacon held his deadpan look for a while longer before reaching into his Spatial Sling Bag, holding it in pce with one hand, and hauling out the proof of his question completion with the other.

  With a wet, meaty squelch, he dropped the severed head of the alpha wyvern onto Bjorn’s kitchen table.

  “Proof,” Deacon said simply.

  Bjorn stared at it in silence for several seconds, watching as the stasized blood inside the severed wyvern head began to move again upon leaving his Spatial Sling Bag and seep across the kitchen table. His expression shifted slowly into something dangerously close to a smirk, though he clearly fought to keep his face neutral.

  With a hum that sounded far too thoughtful to be sincere, he lifted the wyvern head by one horn and tilted it in a slow, exaggerated inspection… the kind that made Deacon fight the urge to dump the rest of the wyvern carcasses in his Spatial Sling Bag atop of him.

  Satisfied, set the head back down with absolutely no concern for the blood steadily crawling toward his clean floor.

  “The quest has been fulfilled,” Bjorn announced with a solemn nod that would’ve looked far more official if not for the shit-eating grin tugging at the corner of his mouth.

  Then he slipped a hand behind his back and pced what looked to be a third of a bronze-colored token on the table beside the wyvern head.

  As the metal piece ccked atop the marble kitchen table and reflected the engraved insignia of the Sovereign Bdes, Deacon activated Identify.

  Item Name: Sovereign Bdes Token FragmentType: Tool – Quest TokenRarity: UniqueDescription:A finely cut third of a token marked with the insignia of the Sovereign Bdes, issued only to those who have received acknowledgment from the Sovereign Bdes Guildmaster while on Floor Ten. This piece is one of three components; alone, it holds no function beyond proof of progress. When all three matching tokens are brought together, they bind into a unified Full Token, signifying the Guildmaster’s acknowledgment and key to proceed onto Floor Eleven.Requirement: Deacon Surtr Hayes.

  Ooh, loot! Deacon thought to himself with a tiny spark of satisfaction as he tucked the token fragment into his Spatial Sling Bag.

  Looking up, he saw Bjorn jerking his chin toward the hallway in a clear “move it” gesture and turned on his heel, leaving the alpha wyvern head to bleed across the kitchen table without even sparing it another gnce.

  “Did you get the Power Strike skill?” Bjorn asked as they crossed into the wide stone archway leading to the training field.

  “Yeah,” Deacon answered, matching Bjorn’s stride. “There wasn’t really much else I liked or didn’t already have or was very simir to it.”

  “That’s to be expected,” Bjorn said with a snort. “You’re only Level 20 in your Css and 19 in your Race. The System isn’t going to shower you with interesting skills yet.” His chuckle deepened as they stepped out onto the outdoor ptform. “Cool skills will come; however, you need to put in the work and effort in order for them to actualize."

  Before Deacon could get a word out, Bjorn shifted his stance by barely an inch and drove his heel into the ground. The earth reacted immediately to the sudden attack that Deacon could barely react to.

  A fraction of a heartbeat ter, the ground in front of him shot upwards, transforming into a column of packed earth that kept on rising until it stood a little over three meters tall.

  Bjorn gave the pilr a gnce just long enough to confirm it was the right height, then turned his attention back to Deacon.

  “Use Power Strike on it,” he ordered. “I want to see what I’ll be working with.”

  Deacon nodded, shifted his footing until his weight settled evenly across the balls of his feet, and lifted Echoform Reliquary into a high guard. His feet were still a little raw from the earlier fall, so he adjusted his stance until the leather of his boots sat comfortably against the sore spots.

  Drawing in a slow breath through his nose, Deacon tensed his upper back and biceps for a brief moment before activating Power Strike.

  Immediately, he was assaulted with a concentrated rush of energy that pushed up through his arms, like every muscle from his fingertips to his shoulders had suddenly been packed with more strength than they were expecting.

  However, it wasn’t like maniputing mana, nor like guiding vital energy. And yet, just like both, it felt strangely intimate and familiar.

  So, this is what boosting stamina directly feels like, Deacon thought as he felt more stamina funnel through his arms and gather along the length of the bde.

  “And this is—" Deacon muttered under his breath as Echoform Reliquary began to vibrate in his grip, not violently, but with a rising, uneven tremor that crawled up through his forearms. The stamina he’d pushed into the bde wasn’t settling the way mana did; it felt raw and uncooperative, like trying to force packed sand through a narrow funnel.

  “Release your strike now!” Bjorn barked out the instant he saw Deacon’s elbows and his wrists begin to writhe around as though they were cramping.

  Snapping out of his concentration on trying to manipute stamina, Deacon lunged forward and drove the bde downward onto the stone pilr.

  Liam sat at the desk in his rather spartan dorm, elbow braced against a stack of half-finished notes while he looking lost in thought as he stared in front of a bnk page, absentmindedly tapping the desk with the tip of his fountain pen.

  The candle beside him guttered with every faint draft slipping between the slightly ajar window, making the shadows waver around the room.

  “There’s just no way father would agree…” he muttered to himself as he let his eyes drift over the empty page, and felt the oh so familiar feeling of irritation begin to settle in within him. “… But mayhap grandfa-”

  Liam’s muttering and train of thought were cut off as a three-beat knock echoed against his door.

  Liam’s brow tightened, and his absentmindedly tapping came to a halt; his free hand slid across the desk until it closed around the elm walnut wand resting beside the books his elbow rested on.

  Pcing his fountain pen back in its inkwell, Liam cautiously palmed his wand and silently crossed his room.

  Approaching the door cautiously and quietly, he leaned toward the eyehole.

  “Konnor Elkrot?” he muttered softly to himself in confusion.

  The heir of House Elkrot — a barony house that was known for its Silver and Copper Mines, which their ancestor one hundred and twelve years ago found when he cleared a Hidden Quest and cimed it as his nd after striking a deal with the El Hindi family, the de facto king of all noble families.

  Even so, Konnor’s appearance was… notable.

  A dark bruise had already begun to flower beneath his right eye, swollen around the edges. His usually crisp dark green dress shirt he wore to emphasize the complexion of his skin was wrinkled around its upper hem and along his left side, with a singur button missing entirely.

  Liam swept his gaze down the hallway.

  Then he lifted his eyes upward.

  Letting out a soft, weary exhale, Sam closed his eyes briefly.

  “…This is happening faster than I expected,” he muttered as his eyes began to open.

  Angling his wand upward toward the stretch of ceiling just beneath the doorframe, Liam began to compress mana within his wand.

  As the mana within his wand began to change its shape to form a spiraling Wind Spear and begin to tremble within his grasp, he dropped his hold on his dorm room’s wards.

  And in the space of a single breath, the spell unched from the tip of his elm walnut wand in such a burst that it snapped his hand backwards in recoil.

  Wind Spear tore through the wooden door as though it were made of paper, creating a perfectly circur hole the size of a baseball and drilling straight through the ceiling and would have torn into the floor above it.

  Instead, blood spttered across the ceiling as the spell drilled through the skull of an assassin pstered ft against it — tearing through their invisibility cloak like wet tissue and shredding the enchantment instantly. The corpse peeled away a heartbeat ter and hit the hallway floor in a wet, muted thud.

  Konnor jolted backward on instinct, as his eyes went wide with panic and fear.

  However, before he could do anything, Liam had already gathered enough mana into his wand for another spell.

  He thrust his wand forward through the hole in the door and released Wind Arc, a sweeping crescent of compressed wind, further supplemented by the glowing green earring that he wore on his right earlobe.

  It tore through the hallway, ripping easily through his mundane wooden door and cleaving directly through Konnor.

  However, the spell did not stop there.

  Behind Konnor, where Liam had felt them waiting, four more assassins stood with their bodies pressed ft against the hallway wall.

  In that same instant, Wind Arc tore through all of them along with their invisibility cloaks – shredding their enchantments on the persons that wore them and revealing them wholly.

  The five figures stayed upright for a few seconds before their upper and lower halves split in two, and thudded onto the carpeted hallway floor with muted thuds

  After several more seconds had passed by without any other presence revealing itself, Liam calmly unlocked his door with his access key and pushed it open.

  Gncing at the corpses decorating the entrance of his dorm room, he flicked his wand in an upward gesture. Using pure wind manipution, Liam caught all six bodies instantly, Konnor included, and hoisted them off the ground.

  Without a word, Liam guided all five of them into his dorm room, pulling the ruined door shut behind him, unbothered as it began to repair itself automatically, as the wards pced on his dorm room hummed back to life.

  Thraksius