Leon felt the urge to palm his face. Of course, nothing handed down by a God would be normal. Now, this ‘simple’ book was threatening to land him into a lot of trouble.
The tension in carriage gradually calmed down as no one spoke, but it was obvious that both sides were not truly comfortable. When the carriage finally stopped in front of the Mercenary Association branch, Leon and Nedra got down first. He turned back to Curtis and nodded his head.
“I appreciate the help you have given us yesterday and today, but I believe it is for the best that we part ways now. All the best of luck in Divinity’s Bout.” He said, before turning away and walking through the open doors of the building.
“Dammit! Look what you caused!” Curtis swore angrily and turned to Damon, who had an apologetic look on his face. He had acted out in the heat of the moment, and had no meant to make Leon leave like that. He could only mope like a puppy now.
“Ha~” Curtis sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. He also understood that it was a heat of the moment thing, but he still blames Damon for not being able to control himself. Now, he had just lost the chance to forge a good relationship with Leon.
The thought of stealing the book from Leon passed through his mind, but at the same time, Nedra’s mischievous red eyes also did, and he felt a chill run down his spine and cast the thought away.
“Ugh, whatever, let’s go and register. I can send a bird to father later and tell him about this.” Curtis thought to himself. While he wanted to keep a lid on this matter to avoid pissing off Leon’s backer, and Leon himself, he recognized that it was for the best if he shared this news with his father.
Leon made his way into the large and bustling mercenary hall. Without paying any attention to the many eyes that were following his movements, he walked over to the counter where someone attended to him. After expressing his intention to register as a mercenary, he was quickly brought over to a testing sight where he overall strength would be evaluated.
Leon and Nedra were led to a large coliseum style arena with a large amount of people seated in the seats as they waited for their turns to undergo the test.
Just as the duo sat down, Leon spotted Curtis’ group following after one of the attendants of the branch. Curtis gave a tight smile before leading his friends to a spot not too far from Leon. It seemed that he knew to keep his distance, but did not intend to completely cut off ties. Leon did not care.
He turned back to the ongoing fight in the arena, wanting to study how the other people of this world fought. The person in the ring at the moment was a mage who focused on ranged bombardment from what Leon could see, but the person was fairly weak, so his attacks looked mediocre and unthreatening to Leon.
By the time he was done, his rank was announced to be Low D rank, and he left with a drooping head.
A few more people fought and had their ranks announced by the testers, before it was Leon’s turn. He had not come down with Nedra, as she had insisted on fighting by herself. Although she was Leon’s Companion Spirit, she still felt like her own person, and wanted to do things by herself.
“Leon Cromwell. Bland name, I hope you can entertain me.” The tester, a slender man clad in full plate armor licked his lips and laughed, as if taunting Leon. Leon did not bat an eyelid, which irritated the man slightly.
“Alright, go on. Throw what you’ve got at me, and when you are done, I will evaluate you.” The man said, unsheathing a sword strapped to his side. When he saw Leon’s sword, he had thought that Leon was a close quarters fighter, so he expected Leon to rush in. Instead, Leon just raised his right hand, his eyes flashing with a strange light as he muttered,
“Come forth, little ones.”
The air in the ring instantly chilled as a black smoke burst forth from within Leon, spreading out to cover half of the ring.
“Trying to sneak up on me? Ha!” The tester misunderstood what was going on, chuckling to himself as he swung his sword in a horizontal arc, blowing away most of the black smoke. His eyes went wide at what was uncovered in the absence of the black smoke.
Screeee!!!
Like chorus of war cries, dozens of black millipedes raised their front limbs that were shaped as sickles and declared the strength of their master to all the onlookers before rushing forward like an unending tide of black ash.
Tatatatata!
Their footsteps drummed against the reinforced floor of the arena as they rushed straight at the tester from all directions.
Cocky as he may be, the tester was not a newbie. He quickly righted his mindset upon seeing such strange magic, and held out his sword. Flames burst out from his sword as he brandished it to slice the first millipede he could reach. The two halves of the millipede immediately burst into a cloud of black smoke that seemed as though it would dissipate at a moment’s notice.
But unlike what usually happened after a millipede under Leon’s summon died, the black smoke did not dissipate, but instead, congealed and reformed another millipede!
“Hehe.” Leon chuckled as he saw this. He had experimented a bit on this. Why let the essence that made up the millipede dissipate after it was killed. All of that essence was still mana. Instead of letting all that mana go to waste, why not recycle it to create another millipede.
When he shared this idea with Nedra, the first thing she had said was quite predictable.
Brilliant!