The Adventurers’ Guild
The Adventurers’ Guild stood near the center of Srome, occupying a large stone building reinforced with thick wooden beams.
It served as one of the city’s most important establishments, where adventurers registered missions, accepted requests, exchanged information, reported monster sightings and collected rewards for completed work.
Despite the poverty that had spread throughout much of Srivi, the guild remained one of the few places where life still seemed to move with genuine energy.
The large wooden doors swung open as Javier entered with Alaric following closely behind.
The smell of roasted meat and spilled ale immediately mixed with leather, sweat and steel, while dozens of voices filled the spacious hall.
Adventurers crowded around wooden tables, some discussing their latest missions while others counted coins, studied maps or argued with one another over the rewards they had received.
Weapons leaned against chairs and rested along the walls, and bursts of laughter occasionally rose beneath the high wooden ceiling.
The atmosphere began to change almost immediately after Javier entered.
One adventurer noticed him first and lowered his voice while nudging the man beside him.
Another followed his gaze, then another, until conversations throughout the hall gradually faded.
Dozens of eyes settled upon the blindfolded Crown Prince walking through the guild with Alaric at his side, and whispers soon replaced the laughter that had filled the building moments earlier.
“Isn’t that the blind prince?” someone muttered.
Another adventurer leaned closer to his companion.
“Seriously? That’s the new Chief Minister of Srome?” A third quietly scoffed.
“How is someone who can’t even see supposed to manage an entire city?” Several people snickered, but one man sitting at a nearby table seemed particularly eager to be heard.
He leaned back in his chair and deliberately raised his voice.
“If he can’t even see where he’s going, how’s he supposed to see the problems in Srome?” His companions immediately burst into laughter, several of them striking the table in amusement.
Alaric stopped walking.
The muscles in his jaw tightened as his hand slowly moved toward the hilt of his sword, and the pressure of his mana began stirring beneath his restraint.
“Your Highness…” Before he could continue, Javier raised one hand without even turning toward him.
“Leave them.” His voice carried no trace of anger, almost as though the insults had not been worth acknowledging.
Alaric clenched his teeth, but after a moment, he forced his fingers away from the sword and continued following him.
Javier walked on without allowing the mockery to disturb his pace.
His posture remained straight and his footsteps steady, but beneath that apparent indifference, his senses were carefully observing the entire hall.
He could hear chairs shifting across the floor, boots turning in his direction, breaths changing whenever he passed nearby, and the subtle movements of dozens of heads following him through the guild.
A sudden disturbance tore through the air.
Something was moving fast.
Javier’s head shifted slightly toward the sound just as a dark blur shot across the hall.
THRAK!
A large knife slammed through the wooden table of the men who had been mocking him. The source of this chapter is g.com.
The blade punched straight through the thick tabletop and buried itself deep into the stone floor beneath it, causing the entire table to shudder violently.
Cups rattled against one another and several coins rolled from the surface before scattering across the floor.
One of the adventurers stared at the knife embedded only inches from his hand, the color draining from his face as the laughter around him disappeared.
The guild fell silent almost instantly.
Heads slowly turned toward the direction from which the knife had come, revealing a man standing several meters away beneath a dark cloak that concealed most of his body.
A hood cast a shadow over his features, while the lower half of his face was covered by a black mask.
Only his eyes remained clearly visible.
One hand was still raised before him, and a thin layer of mana curled around his fingers with such precision that Javier immediately directed his attention toward it.
The stranger said nothing.
He merely stared at the men sitting around the damaged table, yet there was something deeply unsettling about the pressure surrounding him.
His mana was not overwhelming, nor did it spill uncontrollably through the guild like that of someone attempting to intimidate everyone around him.
It was restrained and deliberate.
Every trace of it seemed to move exactly where he intended, with almost nothing wasted.
The adventurer nearest the knife swallowed and slowly pushed his chair backward.
“W-We should… continue the mission.” His companions needed no convincing.
They quickly gathered their belongings while deliberately avoiding the masked man’s gaze.
“Yeah. Let’s go.” Within moments, the entire group hurried toward the exit and disappeared through the guild doors without another word.
The masked man lowered his hand, but Javier had already stopped walking.
His face turned slightly toward the stranger as he replayed the attack in his mind.
It was not simply the speed of the knife that had caught his attention.
Something had happened while it was travelling through the air.
Javier had heard the blade cut through the space between them, initially moving along a straight path before its trajectory changed without striking anything.
No physical force had touched it.
The mana had moved the knife.
More importantly, the blade had accelerated immediately before impact.
Javier concentrated on the faint traces of mana still lingering around the weapon and reconstructed what he had sensed.
Mana Control…
Fifth Rank?
His fingers moved slightly at his side before becoming still again.
The precision was too refined for that.
There had been almost no wasted mana during the attack, despite the change in direction and sudden increase in speed.
No…
Javier’s expression grew more serious.
Reaching that degree of Mana Control was rare even among experienced mages.
Whoever this man was, he had not thrown the knife recklessly and relied upon raw power to carry it forward.
He had controlled its movement throughout the attack and used only as much mana as necessary to produce the result he wanted.
“Who is he…?” Javier murmured.
Before he could examine the stranger further, a woman’s voice suddenly came from behind the masked man.
“Captain Hans!” A young woman with dark reddish hair approached him with a bow strapped across her back.
She slowed when she noticed the knife buried through the table and into the floor, then looked from the weapon to the masked man.
Her brows immediately drew together as she placed one hand against her hip.
“Don’t tell me you started another fight with those barbarians again?”
Hans offered no response.
He simply raised his hand and moved his fingers once.
A faint pulse of mana passed through the guild.
SRAKK!
The knife violently tore itself free from the stone floor.
Several adventurers flinched as the blade shot backward through the air at incredible speed, spinning once before abruptly changing direction in midair.
Hans did not even turn his head toward it.
He merely raised one hand, and the knife’s handle landed perfectly between his fingers.
The movement was so smooth that it almost seemed effortless.
The young woman stared at him for several seconds before releasing a tired sigh.
“You really are impossible.” Hans remained silent, slipping the knife beneath his cloak before turning away as though nothing unusual had happened.
Javier, however, did not move.
Hans…
He quietly committed the name to memory.
Yet it was not the stranger’s name that remained at the forefront of his thoughts.
Even after the knife had disappeared beneath Hans’s cloak, Javier could still sense the faint remnants of that extraordinary Mana Control lingering in the air.
There was something unusual about this man, something Javier could not yet understand from a single demonstration.
His face remained turned toward Hans as the sounds of the guild slowly began returning around them.
Who exactly is this man?