[ Static Acceleration ]

He accelerated the energy to go from his left hand to his right and move forward to the other side of the library, he focused deeply on merging with the energy and going with it, closing his eyes in the midst to sharpen the edges of the thought.

Eventually he started to open his eyes again, he first heard a voice—Violet’s voice, muttering something similar to his name. His ears ringed quite a noise, it was barely understandable. The sight of his eyes faded with a blur due to the static overload on his brain. He finally noticed why she was yelling out his name, he had appeared right at the spot the energy was aimed at…well a good couple steps next to it in reality as he moved his hand slightly in the progress and lost the intended trajectory…

“I… I teleported?” He thought, since he didn’t move at all and appeared at a new location… But as he walked back to Violet and got back most of his hearing, she was nearly laughing as her hands started to collide—it was a small applause.

“You blinked but not with your eyes… You shortly became energy and emerged at a location within the blink of an eye! That is barely possible among the advanced combinations of intermediate casters!” She remarked as she tilted her head a tiny bit. She only was interested in books and more, but her interest here was due to knowing that if Rineri figured this out, one of the characters of a fantasy book she was reading would come to life… Since they have similar features…

Before Rineri could answer, the sound of a bell interrupted the mood and Violet stood up and left after giving a minor bow. The practical classes had mostly ended, giving free time or for some time to attend to their clubs. Because Violet was the president of the literature club from day one, she had business to take care of and couldn’t stay longer with Rineri. Even if it was only short, it was a greatly impactful and progressive moment for him.

Since he still had unbooked time left—having no club activities or others, he decided to bring a plate of food to Rikka and then try to communicate a bit with her… Since her parents should be worried, he thought so at least.

Shii moved on from the reception after successfully registering as an adventurer. He managed to attract quite a few looks from nearby adventurers since he wasn’t immediately rejected nor did he seem to be registering a quest—in fact, he was actually about to accept a quest!

He stood before the quest board and scouted through the entries—each entry’s title was kept concise while also featuring the minimum rank requirement in brackets.

“Exterminate a Massive-Man Eating-Plant (MMP) [Quenor or Petera]... Escort a noble [Quenor]... Retake demon occupied territory [Sennic]... Lick a noble’s feet [Anem]... Exterminate a band of frost hounds [Anem]...”

The rank names were different from most other organizations; it went as follows:

The starting rank is Anem, where you gain privilege for simple delivery work or exterminations of small fry. 

Followed up by Beite, which allows for various missions around escorting and low-key investigative missions which possess a risk.

After that you reach the Theta, which are adventurers who prove themselves worthy enough to go from dangerous to deadly missions.

From there you need a special feat from a quest to rank up, like Quenor, which is the title you gain when defeating a celestial aged monster.

If you’d ever encounter a Legendary creature, such as a Nixin, you already are a Sennic if you ever manage to return safely to the guild, since those are deadlier than a hundred dragons in heat.

At last, where only three of them exist—Legea are those who have fought and survived; one of them even won.. Against the top of Nixin, as the one defeated was the 14th of the top, Senna, inventor of magic and bringer of the eternal night.

Following the end of the list, Shii became a little disheartened realizing that most of the quests are way out of his league—or blatantly stupid. With an annoyed sigh, he decided on the only feasible quest he’d take—the extermination of Frost Hounds.

“Fine! Time to go slay dogs!” Shii smiled with the dominating thought in his mind and prepared to depart just as a familiar voice befell him once more.

“You need equipment first otherwise you’ll be just marching into your doom”, left the words from behind Shii. It didn’t even take a second for Shii to figure out who the person was.

“U-uh yeah…I was going to do that”, Shii replied while turning around to face the master assassin himself—Xero. The man was hooded, hiding a slender structure that emitted the essence of unwavering authority, peak intelligence and intimidating strength. He had green eyes with an indistinguishable complexion—his entire face was covered in bandaging wraps as a mark of the battles he’d survived.

Xero left to the—now even more so surprised—receptionist’s desk, seemingly talking about business. Shii started walking towards another stand named “Weapons & Equipment”. Looking around him, Shii realized that he had attracted even more looks—thanks to the adventurer Xero acknowledging him.

“What equipment would you like to purchase, kid?” The equipment vendor asked Shii with a monotonic yet intriguingly silky tone. “Well, normally I wouldn’t sell you anything for your age but since you’ve registered, that’s a different matter now”, he told Shii and awaited his choice from the vast array of weapons & what not in the stall.

Swords of all sizes, shields, knives, modest to massive bows, and so on—the selection of weapons was the only thing Shii set his gaze on because he knew he was too broke to afford anything but a single weapon at most.

“A recurve bow and a full quiver of 20 arrows, please”, Shii placed his order after eyeing on a certain modest bow fit his needs.

“That will be 1 gold and 24 silver pieces”, the vendor replied with a smile and put the said equipment onto the counter for Shii—making it even harder for him to refuse.

Shii unhappily laid his beloved gold and silver coins and collected the equipment. He strapped the quiver onto his belt, hidden by his robe while holding the bow in his hand. Finally, he left the guild building in anticipation of what’s next to come, given that it had gotten late.

“I can’t have anyone from the academy seeing me like this… I can’t just stay out all night either or else the authorities will get suspicious…” Shii sighed in contemplation of how he’d cover up.

“I’m glad I chose a recurve bow…it’s small enough to fit in my robe…just about barely. I’ll get easily caught if someone looks carefully at me though…” Shii said and began to run towards home again.

Eventually he returned to the academy once more, passing by with a rigid walking style as one of his arms was visibly inside of the robe, holding onto something to his left side. At the same time, there was the faint sound of sticks being shuffled together with each step he took.

Nonetheless, he made it successfully through into his dorm without getting caught—thanks to the guard being lazy, talking to each other while most of the students had returned to their rooms.

Shii finally entered his room, locked the door and dramatically dropped onto the floor with a sigh of great relief. His exhaustion once more kicked in, but not enough to have him faint on the spot. He stood back up and began concealing his equipment behind his desk.

“I should get changed up and then sleep…” He yawned while glancing above, in front of his desk—the window was open, letting in a gentle breeze. Shii felt unease from the breeze, as if it was the gaze of prying ill-intentful eyes in the form of wind. He shut the window and continued onward with his normal student activities…

What he didn’t know was that, outside the window, there truly was a pair of eyes with an unsettling intent. Gazing at him through the bushes…