The following three weeks were rough ones. Valar ended up slipping up a total of two times, regretting his decision immediately after each incident. They were both during the night, in a similar situation similar to the first one. Waking up from a nightmare, he sought the feeling of security the spell gave him, and just like that, he was channeling Aspect of the Tortoise.

  Both times, he lost his sleep and went to Felicia’s office as soon as she was free from her other work. They talked about it, Valar cried, and Felicia helped him steel his heart against the vice. They didn’t end up visiting Elaine’s office again, as it was their last resort, or so Felicia said. That didn’t mean that there were no consequences, however.

  When Valar slipped up the third time, just about a week later after his first slip-up, Felicia made him do a particularly painful thing: She had him write a letter to his team.

  The letter’s contents weren’t anything particularly imaginative. They detailed that he had learned his first body enhancement spell and was soon to learn his second one in addition to the fact that he was struggling with a burgeoning addiction. At Felicia’s request, he advised his teammates to pay attention to his usage of body enhancement spells when he inevitably arrived in Kilras. It guaranteed that his teammates would know about his problem—which was a good thing—but gods above, was it embarrassing to write!

  That incident was finally enough for Valar. He didn’t cast Aspect of the Tortoise without supervision for the entirety of the remaining three weeks with Felicia.

  That didn’t mean that he didn’t cast the spell at all. When supervised by Felicia, he cast the spell numerous times in order to train the spellframe and get used to its effects in a safe environment.

  To avoid the less wanted effects of the spell, addiction included, Felicia had him go over the negative aspects of it before ever delving into the positive ones. The goal was to make him ‘respect’ the spell, or so she said.

  At times, Valar wondered why his tutor seemed to have such a fine grasp on treating his problems with such a taboo spell without being able to cast it, but he didn’t question it overly much. Felicia was a mental health specialist; of course she would be able to treat issues related to addiction.

  The sudden change to a stricter routine and more meetings with Felicia wasn’t exactly nice by Valar's reckoning, but he couldn’t argue with the results. Not only did his desire to cast his new body enhancement decrease, but his progress with his second spell, Aspect of the Panther actually increased. In the end, he managed to learn the second spell in only three weeks, leaving him with a week leftover.

  As for why he chose Aspect of the Panther over the Ursa… His choice boiled down to simple preference. Both spells were excellent for the more battle-oriented life mages, but Valar couldn’t really imagine himself standing at the frontline with a raised shield and mace. Sure, Aspect of the Ursa would’ve let him specialize in far more diverse aspects of combat, but did he want to go that route? He already had the knife Ciel had given him, and she had offered to teach him…

  And then there was the matter of his first ever ‘real fight’. His opponent hadn’t been a Behemoth Ursa nor had it been a tortoise beast; it had been an Umbral Terror.

  Well… it had actually been an iron rank rat, but Valar couldn’t count that. More precisely, he didn’t want to count that.

  The only new rune for Aspect of the Panther was claw, so the process of learning the spell wasn’t anything that special. He didn’t even need to learn body again due to already learning it for Aspect of the Tortoise!

  That left Valar in a tough spot. He didn’t have any new spells to train, and his other courses were all over, since he had taken longer than he expected to get out of the academy. The last week was truly just spent visiting Felicia to get his addictive tendencies under control, preparing to leave, and just plain old relaxing.

  Elizabeth was already off adventuring, so Zeke was his only close friend left in town. Unfortunately, his freeloading days had come to an end as well. The abstract mage could rarely be seen at the academy, as he was being dragged who knows where constantly. He wasn’t even allowed to talk about it, as he was forbidden from divulging state secrets!

  That was all fine and good, however. Valar had a lot to do, and those things didn’t include spending time with his friends.

  First of all, there was his therapy. Felicia was positive about his progress to combat the desire to cast body enhancement spells recreationally, although she still met with him at least three times during the week. These times were spent in a mix of training to cast the spells responsibly and regular therapy stuff, although the topic of addiction was still a frequent one.

  Secondly, he actually needed to get a caravan to accept him. Valar could’ve of course just bought a ticket to travel as a customer—he certainly had the money for it—but experience traveling with random people would be good for his career. To do that, there were some hoops to jump through, however.

  Valar’s first visit to the guild was mostly a formality. He had lingered in the city for around 10 months now, but he still hadn’t managed to drag his ass to the guild to upgrade his badge to a bronze rank one. In all honesty, it was pretty embarrassing to walk around calling himself an adventurer when his badge hadn’t been up to date for so long…

  Heidi, the front desk clerk of the Rhondell branch’s office, took him in with a polite smile. When she heard about his outdated badge, her tone shifted.

  “Really? You haven't visited the guild for 10 months?” she asked incredulously. “Gods, this is going to be so much paperwork…”

  “No, how so? I was at the academy, so there was no reason to visit.”

  In an act that seemed to get a few hearty laughs from adventurers around the room, Heidi grabbed her hair and buried her face below the desk .”Adventurers, adventurers, adventurers… Why did I have to start working with adventurers?”

  When she finally gathered herself, she rose back up from her defeated stance. The clerk didn’t bother to brush her disheveled brown hair back in shape, fixing Valar with a venomous stare.

  “You were part of the Rhondell expedition, weren’t you?”

  At Valar’s flinch, she sighed. “Since you were part of that expedition, the process of upgrading your badge won’t be so simple, at least not with my tools.”

  He lifted his eyebrows in shock, starting to speak. “What? Am I being punish-.”

  Stolen story; please report.

  “No, no…” she raised her hand to stop Valar, explaining herself. “You should’ve gotten a star from that contract. Every surviving adventurer received one, as your goal was technically achieved. The Crimson Talon is no more, broken up into much smaller groups of disorganized criminals without their leader.”

  “Oh, that’s… good?”

  “Good for you, bad for me,” Heidi chuckled mirthlessly. “Leave your badge here and come back the day after tomorrow. I’ll run this matter through the branch leader once he gets back from his mission tomorrow.”

  “Mission?” Valar couldn’t help but ask. “Isn’t he an onyx ranker? What’s big enough to warrant his movement?”

  “Oh, you’d be surprised,” she grinned. “There is plenty of work to go around for onyx rankers as well, but it’s not up on public boards. At that level of power, adventurers are requested personally if they fit the mission.”

  “But what could he even be fighting? There can’t be that many onyx rank threats lumbering around the nation!”

  “Dungeons and beasts arriving from the sea!” a gruff silver rank adventurer with a giant mace resting beside his chair shouted from one of the tables, taking a swig of his ale. “There’s a reason why both of those places are considered dangerous, kid!”

  Unlike when he had started his bronze rank studies, Valar didn’t take offense to the man calling him a ‘kid’. Felicia had helped him turn his idea of the word on its head, and now, he treated it as kind of a title of honour. The man was speaking the truth—he was a kid—but so what?

  Valar was young, exceedingly so for a bronze rank adventurer. Abyss, he was young for an iron ranker, so of course people would think of him as a child! In all honesty, he still felt a spark of teenage hormones trying to anger him when people used the word, but with Felicia’s help, he was able to ignore it almost completely.

  Besides, what the man said was much more interesting. With his interest piqued, Valar turned his head to the middle-aged silver ranker with a rough beard. “Dungeons I get, but the sea?”

  “Yeah, the sea.” the man nodded. “I wouldn’t recommend going there, be it on a boat or through high rank magical items. Some even say that there’s a leviathan lurking in the depths of the eastern sea. If we’re to believe the stories, they are always diamond rankers…”

  Yeah, Valar wasn’t going swimming anytime soon.

  …

  Aside from the adventurer’s guild, Valar had other things to do as well. First and foremost, he needed to upgrade his equipment!

  The trip to Kilras would be a lengthy one, and his stay in the city would last a couple months at the very least. His team could even decide to base themselves in the southern city for a year or two if the contracts were plentiful enough!

  Based on the letters he had exchanged with Carla and the others, team Cookie Sandwich didn’t have any intentions to leave the city even after the one year timeline they had initially given him. Valar would be leaving for Kilras after just about a 10 month stay in Rhondell, so he would need a lot of stuff with him.

  Luckily enough, budget wasn’t a big issue. He still had just under 10 gold in his coffers, so he could splurge on some equipment and other travel-related things before leaving for the southern city.

  Winter had come and gone as he studied, but honestly, it hadn’t affected Valar’s life much. Now that he was travelling even more south, it would be even less of a problem. He seriously doubted he needed to prepare for colder weather in any way, but he did buy one thing: a heat stone.

  Being one of the cheapest enchanted goods available, heat stones were something basically every adventurer owned. Abyss, even regular iron rank workers bought them sometimes, although the four silver price was still kind of painful for regular people who were living hand-to-mouth. Spending a fourth of your monthly wage on a simple stone that heated up when mana was poured into it was kind of a painful affair.

  Other than the mage’s robe he was wearing, he had never owned any enchanted items. Still, his lessons on magical theory were plenty to understand how the simple item worked. In the simplest of words, it took in mana and outputted it as heat. Heat stones were so-called generalist equipment, as they didn’t need any particular affinity’s mana, accepting any variety and using it as simple fuel for the enchantment. Their cost was also variable, so there was no 'minimum' amount of mana you couldn't channel into them.

  This way of creating magical effects had tons of downsides, which resulted in the fact that generalist items were absolutely trash for anything other than simple effects with absolutely horrendous efficiency. So horrendous, in fact, that even if Valar poured all of his mana into the item, it wouldn’t be able to cause any real harm to a person. Sure, the stone would become damn hot, but not like ‘stovetop hot’, but ‘stone under direct sunlight on a hot summer day’ hot.

  The limitation to simple effects was pretty limiting as well, resulting in a situation where most of the items were absolutely useless. Valar only got one other ‘stone’ for his adventures from the merchant district, that being a light stone. It did the exact same thing as the heat stone, but instead of producing heat, it produced light. Really complex stuff…

  Armed with his new heat and light stones and 8 silver poorer, Valar waltzed out of the store for adventurers, looking around at the district around him. The merchant’s district never disappointed with its hustle and bustle, although he was pretty glad that he didn’t need to live within it. The sheer volume…

  Valar would have some purchases to do in the coming days, but he wanted to get one out of the way today. In all honesty, he had wanted to get it done months ago, preferably even before his iron rank adventures started. Unfortunately, Valar wasn’t an all-powerful time mage, so that wouldn’t be possible.

  The next best thing was getting it done then and there. Valar just needed to have a bottle of alchemical fire on his person! As for the reason… lies, falsehoods and deceit, of course!

  After his encounter with Edwin and subsequent discovery by Carla, Valar just knew that he needed to have something that he could use as an excuse with him at all times. The most simple thing he could have was the lie he had been using all along: a bottle of alchemical fire.

  Valar walked into a reputable-enough looking alchemy shop, choosing to avoid the biggest store around. Based on what Elizabeth had told him when she was still at the academy, the biggest store was always the most expensive one.

  Stepping into the dimly lit shop, his nose was assaulted by the scent of magical and non-magical ingredients alike. The easiest ones to pick out were of course the tea leaves, but some really pungent ingredients almost overpowered them as well.

  “Greetings!” Valar was shocked out of his musings by an elderly voice. “Welcome to Erowyn’s Alchemical Wonderland! Can I assist you, or are you just looking around?”

  The young life mage’s gaze shifted to the counter, where an old man with grey hair and a short beard sat on a plush seat. “I… I’m looking for alchemical fire. Just a bottle should be enough.”

  The man’s face twisted into an excited grin, and he let out a shout full of glee. “Yes, someone who wants something that isn’t tea leaves! A bottle of alchemical fire, you say? Let’s see what I can get you…”

  The early bronze rank alchemist rose from his plush seat and grabbed his back, letting out a pained grunt. “Damn, I should’ve pushed for a higher rank when I was younger… My back is killing me!”

  The man’s steps were halting at first, but he gained some pep in his step as he moved through his shop, pointing at different things. “That there is either scorpid venom. Getting stabbed by a dagger coated with it makes drawing runes on your skin extremely painful for a day or so…”

  He spoke at length about each and every object he passed, and Valar’s interest kept decreasing second by second. The shop wasn’t big, but just moving through it seemed like an impossible effort. Until…

  “And that is a dilution of fireblossom seeds and purified water with some fire mana from an infernal lycan core mixed in! See how the mixture is a bit unstable? That glass orb would probably blow up if the liquid inside ever touched the air!”

  Needless to say, Valar’s interest experienced a sudden and significant increase. “Wait for a moment. What’s the difference between that and alchemical fire?”

  Erowyn raised one grey eyebrow and let out a hacking laugh. “What’s the difference, he asks… I would’ve taken you for an expert on the subject based on whatever has happened to your arm under that robe of yours!”

  Ignoring Valar’s evident shock and wince, he soldiered on. “Alchemical fire is exactly that: fire that has been essentially trapped in a bottle. Sure, it looks similar from afar, but that’s just because highly concentrated alchemical fire will kind of look like liquid. Do not mistake alchemical fire for an infernal blossom! One will light you aflame while the other…”

  The crazy-looking alchemist moved his hands apart, spreading them wide with a grin on his face. “Kaboom…”

  “An infernal blossom, you say…” Valar’s lips seemed to have problems with staying still, and his eyes glinted with newfound excitement. “Is there any chance I could get one of those instead?”

  “With pleasure.”