The Academy's morning was marked by a phony calm. Lectures and martial drills, as usual, were waiting for the elite boys and girls as well as the ordinary students. There were no uproars in the corridors, no steel engaged in a fight. The Noble and the Royal were not to let the whole body of students see the subtleties of the treason audit; hence, the semblance of stability was kept with the accuracy of a surgeon.
Aleric Thorne, from the shadow of the Western Cloister, saw an obsidian and gold carriage passing through the gates. It had none but the tiny, inconspicuous Royal Treasury seal as a sign of the ownership. The first few who got off the carriage were not in armor but dark grey somber robes. These were the King's Inquisitors—men who used ledgers and ink instead of swords for their battles. They went straight to the High Spire, the administrative center where House Valerius controlled the school's power supply. To the students who were passing by, it seemed as if the Dean was just holding a private consultation with some advisors.
Aleric, however, could see what was wrong right under the surface. The mana crystals he had taken away from the docks were the unclaimed fundaments of the House's hidden strength. House Valerius had done this clandestine registration of the harvest to covertly power the Academy's arrays, stealing the official supplies for their own greed. Now that the stones were not there, the deficit was laid bare. Because the stolen mana crystals were illegal bribes, the House of Valerius remained trapped in a suffocating silence—they could not cry "thief" without confessing to their own smuggling.
Aleric, a man devoid of emotions, took a stroll in the courtyard. He realized the power that was only reserved for the King and Queen would soon be available to him. He decided to let the nobi
standing in his empty room, Aleric turned to his travel equipment. He pointed his finger at the bag and the extra sword, marking them with a thread of his own mana. The energy was a very faint cord that linked the things to his power. With a quick flick of his fingers, the air shuddered, and the objects he had marked disappeared at once into the silent void. He needed no speech to cover his implements; only the connection of his own will to throw them into the obscurity.
At the servants' entrance, a guard who was more absorbed in his morning porridge than in the movements of an insignificant student stopped Aleric.
"Going on personal training leave, sir," Aleric said in a thin and unnoticeable voice. "I want to get better before the mid-term exams lest I be expelled."
The guard took a look at Aleric's plain identification. "Oh, alright, go ahead then. Anyway, no one knows you have a lot of ground to cover. Don't get eaten by a stray dog, boy."
Aleric Thorne went out of the gate shedding the mask of the failed student. He lashed out with a swift, predatory grace towards the lower city and arrived at the double doors made of heavy timber of the Adventurer's Guild. He did not go in as the student Aleric; he went in as Auditor.
The interior of the Guild was a cacophony of voices and the smell of stale ale. Aleric approached the counter where a clerk sat—an older man with spectacles and a look of deep frustration.
"Auditor?" The clerk, after glancing at the ledger, looked at Aleric and his facial expression said that he is very sorry. "Oh! Apparently a big mistake has been made. The clerk who handled your Iron-Tusk Boar was... let's say, overwhelmed with a lot of work and just got distracted. She did not realize the actual nature of your kill, and in her hurry, recorded it as a common swine."
The clerk took out a tray and placed it on the counter. On the tray, there was a new token; it was made of cold and heavy iron, and it was marked with the rune of the fourth tier.
"The Guild Master supervised the remains this morning," the clerk went on. "The density of the tusk and the mana-signature in the marrow confirm it: that beast was a mutated D-Rank predator. Killing it with an entry-level registration is something that would never happen. So, as a remedy for our mistake, you are promoted to D-Rank with immediate effect."
Aleric grabbed the D-Rank token that belonged to the Auditor, his fingers encapsulating the cold metal. He did not feel any pride; on the contrary, he felt a grim determination looking at the future. He glanced at the mission board and found a call for the Shattered Reach, a rugged wasteland where the monsters became powerful because of the earth's leaked mana.
"I accept this task," Aleric said in a low and resonant voice like a chime.
He went outside into the dimming light of the day with the D-Rank token shining on him from his belt. He walked for hours while the air got colder reminding him that he was going farther away from the civilized world. By the time the two moons started to rise, he was at the border of the Shattered Reach—an area of floating boulders and purple mists.
He required some time to organize his thoughts.
"Summoning."
An opening of pure, utter darkness appeared in the air in front of him. He did not put his hand into the darkness; rather, he concentrated on the things he needed. With a soft thunk, his traveling cloak and heavy sword fell from the nothingness, dropping into his arms as if the universe itself had casually thrown them away. As he dressed in his gear, Aleric's sense of alertness flared up.
A shadowy figure was behind him, perfectly still, in the shadow of a gnarled oak tree. It did not make any movement at all, and it had no heartbeat, but its being felt like a black hole that even Aleric's magic could not gauge.
A voice from the darkness whispered, "So," sounding like dry parchment being ripped. "The little ghost at last uncaged."
Aleric gripped his sword's hilt, his heart steady, but his mind alert for an unanticipated danger.