NOVEL NEXT (Chpt. 16) Mithril rank?
We stood in front of a big wooden door, the door was intimidating in itself. ‘I did not notice the door was this big.’ As I was thinking, the receptionist approached the door and knocked on it.
“Come in.”
I heard a deep manly voice that when hearing it made me feel like the person was right in front of me, it was quite hard to describe but I felt like the owner of the voice was strong, the receptionist opened the door that creaked due to its weight, and gestured us to pass, when Ari was about to pass the receptionist said in a friendly yet unwelcoming tone.
“This is as far as you go.”
“W-...”
As Ari was about to speak the receptionist quickly shut the door. Well that is pretty rude if you ask me, I paid it no mind because I thought it was better to not have Ari in here. It was a wide room, the room was lit by a single window that was the length of the entire room. The window divided in multiple pieces due to its size, the room had a big conference table and chairs, there was a map on next to the door, and a board on the back-wall. As I was glancing at the board I saw him.
A hulking figure sitting down, it looked like a 40 year old man, I could only describe him as manly, he was packed with muscles, I could see muscles through his casual shirt. He was quite intimidating if I say so. The man casually spoke.
“Aizen and Yami, was it?”
“”Nn.””
We nodded without even thinking about it, the man was quite strange. I have never seen someone with so many muscles, Aizen also had a distorted face. After we nodded, the receptionist gestured with her hands to take sit on the chairs across the man.
We sat down, the receptionist just stood at the corner of the room that was behind us. The man began speaking in an apologetic tone.
“Yami.”
“Yes?!”
I was quite flustered by his sudden approach, however after I said ‘yes?!’ almost reflexively, the man banged his head against the table top placing both of his hands below his head. He spoke in an apologetic yet fast tone that was full of regret.
“I am sorry, even though you are incredibly strong we must follow proper procedures so we cannot give you a high adventurer rank!”
“eh.”
I completely froze, I don’t even want a high rank! That would be troublesome, right now I want information about the world. I do not want to be a celebrity or something! After he finished talking, he lifted his head and returned to his original sitting posture, however his expression looked somewhat regretful. I decided to answer his declaration with an unwavering serene voice. I looked at him with a solemn expression.
“I do not want a high adventurer rank.”
“Eh.”
This time the man said the stupid ‘eh’ sound. Touché! I win! Aizen had an amused smile from this and began speaking.
“We did not even come here to become adventurers, we wanted to know what comes after this rank.”
As Aizen was finishing her sentence she took the [Obsidian] tag from before, as soon as the man saw it his eyes opened wide. He began speaking after a brief silence.
“Well, I guess since you already know that there’s a rank above it then I guess I can tell you...”
He paused for a moment, he seemed reluctant to ask but ended up deciding to do so.
“Do you girls know all of the adventurer ranks?”
We just shook our heads, the man grumbled and stood up, he started walking towards the board, he stood in front of it and started writing with his finger? The board started reacting to his mana, it basically allowed the mana to be used as ink. He kept writing for a minute, after he was done, he said in a somewhat fed-up voice.
“Take a look.”
He was pointing at the board, the board displayed:
Adventurer ranks:
E- [Iron]
D- [Copper]
C- [Silver]
B- [Gold]
A- [Cobalt]
S- [Obsidian]
“What are the letters next to the ranks for?” Aizen asked in an innocent but curious voice. The man frowned by having to explain this to us, he sighed and began talking.
“They are the rank of the monster they can subjugate in a party, an obsidian rank party can kill an S rank monster..”
Oh, so that’s how it was… Wait, wasn’t Aizen SS rank? I looked at her from the realization, she had a wry smile from what the man just said. I decided to ask about something.
“What about SS rank monsters?”
The man after hearing my question had his eyes wide open and froze, as if he was thinking ‘How does she know?’ after a few seconds the man recovered his composure and talked in a more serious tone.
“I do not know where you heard about that monster rank. It shouldn’t be public information. But when such a monster exists, there’s another rank called [Mithril] only given to adventurers which have reached 5 digits in all of their stats, however there’s very few of them.”
He answered truthfully, his face lit up a bit as if having realized something however it became regretful, like earlier.
“Yami, I am sorry, even though I would love to give you [Obsidian] rank. A level 40 summoner, I-”
“eeeeeeeeeeee-.”
As the man was about to finish speaking he was cut off by a high-pitched childish voice that came from behind the heavy wooden door, the receptionist opened the door, Ari fell on the ground as if having lost support to put her weight on. Ari recovered quickly and rushed to me.
“Yami, you are a level 40 summoner?!” She said while looking at me with an expression full of disbelief.
“Nn.” I just nodded. Ari hurriedly asked in a somewhat excited voice.
“Where are your summons?!” I froze, Aizen froze. Ari noticed the weird reaction and her face looked like she regretted asking the question, I had to answer.
“I ended my contract with my last summon yesterday…” I answered truthfully, the man had his eyes wide open from hearing this, Ari looked at me expressionless and with somewhat pitiful eyes as if saying ‘Why would you do that!’. Aizen was looking out of the window as if the conversation didn’t concern her… Wait where’s Fenri?
After a few seconds of awkward silence, the man spoke as if not having heard anything.
“Like I was saying, we cannot give you a high rank because of rules, most we can give you is [Copper].”
“What about [Iron]?”
The man had a troubled expression and started scratching the back of his head after hearing this question, he spoke in an unconvinced voice, as if saying ‘that’s not a good idea.’
“[Iron] cannot take monster subjugation requests.”
“That’s f-”
“And they don’t get free entrance to towns.”
The man hurriedly interrupted me after I was going to answer, I looked at Aizen, she nodded.
“Then I guess [Copper] is fine.”
I reluctantly said, the man nodded. He started looking at Aizen and declared in a mocking tone.
“You are going to be [Iron].”
“Eh, why?”
Aizen flinched but quickly questioned the man, the man just looked at her with wide open eyes as if saying ‘are you serious?’ the man grumbled, and after a brief pause said.
“You have no class."
“So?” Aizen said in an uninterested voice.
“So? What do you mean by so? So you are weak!”
The man exclaimed after Aizen’s uninterested answer, somehow Aizen did not kill the man, I guess she really did change. She started talking while looking down on him.
“Okay, let’s do this old man, if you can lay a single finger on me. I will not even attempt to become an adventurer.” The man was red now and frowned. He started speaking as he was lifting his body from the creaking chair.
“You, who do you think you are looking d-” He froze for a second as he was finishing his sentence and then he recovered, just as fast as he froze, however he was no longer speaking, he was silent, there was sweat running down his head. He sat down again and after a brief silence he spoke.
“You can become [Copper].”
Ari did not understand what happened she looked at Aizen with a confused expression, I just shrugged. Does this dragon need to threaten everyone to get her way? At least she isn’t killing people anymore. After that, we registered with the receptionist as [Copper] ranked adventurers, inside the room next door, she gave us a card and a copper dog-tag that looked more updated? I don’t know, the design looked fancier compared to [Obsidian] tag Aizen had, we had to list a class on the card, I wrote [Tamer] and Aizen wrote [Mage]. The translation skill was very useful.
* * *
The guildmaster was sitting down in his office, piles of documents on the ground, yet his desk was clear. The man was hitting his desk every time he swore.
“SHIT!”
Who is that girl?! What did she do?! I was about to stand up, at that moment I felt like my heart was gripped. It was like I was going to die at any moment, it only lasted briefly, but what was that? That is only something a monster could do.
“Hahaha… Of course, that is not human. It’s a monster.”
A monster… A monster… A mon-.
“Wait could it be?”
About 30 years ago I heard a story from a far, far away country. Apparently a little girl claiming to be the [Legendary Dragon] destroyed a kingdom, every now and then I would hear about the girl destroying another kingdom, but after a while I stopped hearing news. All I heard is that a spell called [Ruin] was discovered, and the church categorized it as Forbidden. Could it be? No, what I am saying, even if it was that girl, she should be an adult now. This girl, was still a child, she did not look that much older compared to the Yami girl.
Wait… Level 40 summoner? Wouldn’t she be famous, specially with that unique appearance? I haven’t heard a single thing a new max level summoner, moreover she has no summons? What type of summoner is that? Why would she end the contract? However, even if she has no summons, I have to report to the main branch every time someone with a maxed class shows up. Well there’s no way her second class is over level 10, even prodigies only reach level 60, and the hero that died 30 years ago was said to be level 110 the strongest human alive of all time. No one knows how he died.