Polymath Redux – The conga line for the Hellgana style death trap is this way
Chapter XIV
The ‘Spring Palace’, an inn that was widely recognized as the best in all of Xagontetia; with the best services and facilities, it served as a pinnacle example of what life as an adventurer could become. It would be an affront to even start comparing this inn with any other, that is how great the difference between this inn and the other’s were.
The best part of this was that since this inn was specifically owned and operated by the adventurer guild all patrons were able to lodge there for free. However there was a small catch, of course there was, the only people allowed to lodge were those who were above S rank. Since the prospect of an adventurer ever reaching the S rank was that rare, it was in the guild’s best interest to keep them in their city once they have reached it.
The Spring Palace was a large ornate building, nearly 20 floors high with each floor containing their own pool, spa, hot springs and recreational rooms, all of which were powered by uncountable amounts of mana crystals. The inn was enough to put even 5 star hotels in Mordred’s world to shame, of course the clincher to all of this was that there was no free wifi here, nope. In any case since the guild didn’t want to lose their esteemed S rank + guild members and wanted other people to strive for the S rank they operated this extravagant inn even while incurring a net loss.
Leona ushered the small girl(Mordred) to their room passing a few customers on their way who greeted Leona. Of all the patrons in this place, Leona was the MVP, not only was she a royal princess, which was widely known fact, she was also the leader to the most prestigious adventurer party the Hywel Knights. There was no person in there that didn’t want her position.
Amongst the people Mordred had passed on their way there was no one of note except for one. A young man by the name of ‘Sven Serus’, a simple S rank adventurer who soloed most of his jobs. His looks alone weren’t that impressive, pale earthy hair that covered most of his face, seemingly short sighted as his eyes were hidden behind thick framed glasses. He didn’t have much muscle mass to speak of, only a small, unimpressive bronze dagger by his side. Even his armor was just poorly made leather and cloth armor, which was only slightly better than normal clothing.
If judged on mere looks alone it was surprising that this man was even an S rank adventurer. However the thing that had caught Mordred’s attention the most was that this man was hiding behind a considerable amount of power, in fact by comparison alone from what he had seen, Sven would easily overpower Leona in a one on one fight.
Which was odd considering he was supposed to only be an S rank. That being said, Mordred didn’t quite see Leona in action and he had only judged them based on what he could read in their movements and subtle actions, so there was a room for an erred judgment.
“Good morning Miss Leona.”
Sven greeted them with a pleasant smile, his hair and glasses covering his eyes making his expressions hard for Mordred to read clearly.
Leona nodded.
“Hi.”
“Did you just get back from the guild? You’re a pretty hard worker huh? I guess that’s why you’re at OMEGA rank and I’m still S rank.”
He jest.
“You’ll improve too if you keep at it.”
Leona replied giving sound advice but this entire exchange seemed fishy for Mordred. It might have been prudent for Mordred to also tag him but currently he had his hands full with the Hywel knights and didn’t really want something else to distract him from his work.
So for now he let it pass without much objection.
“Is this your sister?”
Sven asked as he took a glance over towards the small girl.
“No, she’s… I guess you can say our new client?”
“Oh?”
Sven made an interested face but didn’t bother to pry into the subject any more than that. After saying his farewells he had left the premises, all the while Mordred was still trying to figure what that man’s game was, though Leona apparently didn’t see anything wrong with him.
As they reached the 20th floor by the way of magic elevator platforms… also powered by mana crystals, they stood in front of a large white door. It felt like the door itself was worth more than the entirety of Vardis inn at this point but Mordred let it slide. However what he could not ignore was the sounds coming from inside the room, it sounded like someone was fighting in there?
Leona let out a sigh as she suddenly opened the door. With a burst of wind it revealed the contents of the happenings inside. Two people were fighting, one giant man over 2.2 meters tall and another wolf-like man. From expert deductive reasoning Mordred had come to the conclusion that one of them was from some sort of giant race and the other was from a therianthropic race.
There were two other women sitting on their beds as they watched the men duke it out with each other. When the door was suddenly opened everyone inside the room had frozen up as though time itself had stopped. It took them a few minutes to get back to reality but when they did the noise was even louder than before.
“Leona! Listen to this!”
The wolf man ran up and held her hand.
“Stop it you fool!”
The giant man pried the wolf man off of Leona and continued holding him back. While that was happening in the background the two other women came up to see what this was all about. On closer inspection one of them was an elf and the other was an average human in skimpy clothing.
“Welcome back Leona~ who’s this child? Gasp! Don’t tell me it’s yours?!“
“WHAT LEONA HAS A KID?! WHO’S THE FATHE-”
The wolf man came running in rage, but before he could finish that sentence she was punched square in the face by Leona.
“No.”
Leona replied, not feeling an ounce of guilt from punching her comrade in the face.
The elven woman crouched down to Mordred’s level and greeted him with a smile.
“Hello little one, how are you? What’s your name?”
Mordred pretended to act meek by hiding behind Leona.
“Aww, don’t be like that. I’m not going to hurt you.”
“I’m Mor- umm… Mor… ialia. Morialia.”
Mordred wasn’t too great at coming up with names, not especially when he had to adlib. However he thought that the name he chose for this form was adequate.
“Morialia, huh? I’m Rio. Rio Heart, nice to meet you!”
Rio extended a hand to greet, to which Mordred acted the part and hesitating accepted it. When the cute little girl accepted Rio’s hand she felt the need to embrace that cuteness with a full contact hug.
“So cute!”
Not knowing how to respond to that, Mordred just stood still; frozen up. He wasn’t a very sociable man, in fact, while he knew how to drag people around against their will, when it was happening to him it was a different story. If Irina was here right now, even Mordred’s words wouldn’t be enough to stop her from burning down the Spring Palace, so all in all it was a good thing she wasn’t here.
“P, please stop.”
Mordred ask in a meek voice.
“Ah, so sorry, you were just too cute.”
Rio apologized while making apology gestures.
“So who’s the kid?”
The other woman asked, not being too fond of children herself she didn’t know how to deal with them. Especially when one as cute as this came along, she really felt uncomfortable, most likely this was due to some trauma of her past, probably.
“Our client.”
“Eh? Client?”
Rio parroted. That was the most appropriate reaction to hearing that a child who was no older than 9 or 10 was their client. Because to them, clients were usually people with money, and while this little girl did look like the daughter of a noble she herself probably didn’t have money.
“A kid? Leona… you probably felt pity for her and brought her along to help right? No way, we’re not volunteer workers. If you want us to move then show me the money first, the money.”
The other woman brushed off the entire thing and was heading for her bed.
“Aww~ don’t be like that Stella, why don’t we help this cute kid? Isn’t it fine once in a while?”
Rio tried to convince her but to no avail.
“G… gold! I have gold! I can give it to you! Please help me find my brother!”
Mordred once again acted like the innocent and vulnerable child. As a man… he didn’t have much problem with appealing to and manipulating people’s emotion to make them move. He had done that hundreds of times back on Hellgana during PK missions, so why start feeling guilty now?
Mordred took out a small pouch of gold out from his [inventory], of course he did it in a way so as to not get the existence of his [inventory] known. It made a small jangling sound, the kind that only heavy gold coins would make. This sound piqued the interests of the entire guild and hurdled around to see for themselves.
Stella took the bag and opened it up revealing a small fortune’s worth of gold, though in Mordred’s eyes it was the equivalent of a rich CEO buying a kid a one dollar ice cream. He had much more money, so much in fact that he didn’t know what to do with them.
“H, how much is this?”
Stella tried to count but her eyes started getting blurry from all of that gold.
“There’s got to at least be 50 gold in there. We could live off of that for an entire year without working with that much gold.”
Wolf said as his eyes also started getting blurry.
“S, so will you help me find my brother?”
The first to answer that question was Stella who answered with a thumbs up.
“Don’t worry kid! Wherever your brother is, we’ll find him!”
“T, thank you!”
Unbeknownst to everyone but Mordred had a satisfied smile on his face right now. Everything was all going accordingly.
…
Covered by a darkened robe so as to not be recognized, a lone man entered the empty church. The day of worship had yet to arrive so the understandably the church was empty. The man walked to the front row of the seats and knocked three times on the wooden chairs; a secret code for secret meetings. Often times such signals were used by unsavory people, this time was no different.
The man sat in the chair for about a minute before the priest came out to greet him. However this wasn’t just any priest, this was the ‘Grand Cardinal’, of the upper echelons of the church of Xagon. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that he was the ring leader for all of the church’s on-goings in this city.
The Grand Cardinal had taken a position within the shadows, not because of he was afraid of the robed man but because one of the grand cardinal’s powers was to control ‘shadows’. A rather ironic ability but also rather fitting as he did not attain this position through a bloodstained path.
“What is it… Sven? Why have you come? Our usual meetings don’t start until next week.”
The cardinal asked, a little disgruntled by his sudden intrusion.
“There was a slight alteration in our plan. Do you remember the red dragon that we were going to use?”
“Of course I do, what of it?”
“It’s most likely dead.”
A tense and shadowy silence filled the room like slow rising magma, the shadows boiled violently but did not cause destruction. The cardinal felt a tingling sensation of fury rising up at him, he thought he could go on a rampage throughout the city in light of this revelation. However he had managed to suppress his anger and continued the conversation.
“How?”
“Well we don’t know the details of that, simply that we lost contact with it. I mean it could still be alive, you never know but if we don’t have it anymore it might as well be dead.”
Sven answered.
“So? What happens now? Does the Luminary want all of us to gather?”
“Pretty much. He wants us to meet at the usual place at 11PM.”
The cardinal sighed.
“Haa… fine, tell him I’ll be there.”
Sven nodded and disappeared without a trace.
“God… Dammit!”
The cardinal shouted in anguish.
Rebirth Online World 