“John! I knew I heard you in there.”
Tana spotted me not long after appearing.
She, along with the others I had once teamed with, came to greet me.
Umara and Heubert smiled as we shook hands.
“Hey, where have you been all week? You just disappeared.”
“I was on a business trip.”
“Is that what gave you the new scar on your head?”
Umara moved to my side and traced the wound on my temple. Even Heubert moved over curiously to see it.
I shrugged.
“It was a bit eventful.”
“Apparently.”
“Listen up!”
Suddenly, we were interrupted by the Puppet Master.
Everyone turned, seeing him standing at the door to his monitor room.
“For the next several days, I will be running scenarios for all of you. Your trip is coming up at the end of the week, and I intend to prepare you all. These scenarios will all be difficult, and very few of you will be able to get perfect scores. I will also be shuffling the teams twice, so you will need to learn to cooperate with others you don’t know. This means you need to prepare yourselves for several days of exhaustion and pain. Remember that recovery is also a part of battle, so I won’t be hearing any excuses. And none of you are allowed to skip!”
“Well isn’t that great...”
Everyone groaned, already feeling the oncoming torture.
After that, we were let go. I walked with my little group back to the dorms.
“Hey John, what exactly do you do? Beyond the Magisterium, I mean.
Heubert suddenly asked. When I looked at him, I could see him eyeing my coat.
Well, everyone eyed my coat at some point. It was subtle, but if you got a decent look at it, it wasn’t hard to tell that it was expensive.
I smiled a bit sheepishly.
“I’m just a delivery man.”
“Delivery? What do you deliver?”
“Oh, you know, just whatever packages need to be moved. People call the company I work for and request deliveries between them and a client. I’m responsible for picking up those packages and making sure they get to the customer.”
“Wow. Sounds simple enough. Then, how much does delivery work pay?”
“It depends on the job honestly. Regardless, I just worked and saved as much money as I could before entering this place. I don’t have many things that I can call my own, but the few things I do are valuable enough.”
“I see.”
Heubert nodded, as did the two girls. My words were vague, but it wasn’t like they would guess that I worked in the black market.
But then, Umara tilted her head.
“So that business trip was a delivery, right? So what exactly gave you that scar?”
“I uh… A package fell on me, had some metal items in it. I barely dodged, but it still cut the side of my head.”
“But you got it healed, no? It’s a new but healed scar. And usually when you get healed, scarring doesn’t occur, especially not that badly…”
“I only got it partially healed, enough to stop the bleeding and seal it. Unfortunately I didn’t have enough money to get it completely healed and erased.”
I made something up on the fly, interrupting Umara’s train of thought. It seemed she was rather sharp, or just enjoyed digging into other people’s business.
Thankfully she dropped it with a shrug. It wasn’t like I was adamant about keeping my line of work a secret, but it also wasn’t something I intended to broadcast either.
The fewer people who knew about who I was, the better. After all, I had a not so small target on my back. I had killed no small amount of people and pissed off far more. Despite being neutral, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Clockwork Association put a bounty on my head.
It seemed Tana and Heubert were still a bit suspicious though, which I couldn’t do much about.
Not long later, we arrived at the dorms. Saying our goodbyes, all of us retired for the night.
……
…
The following days were filled with constant stress.
The Puppet Master was serious about getting us ready. Every day, he had a new scenario which involved different monsters and different maps.
From dark forests to bright white deserts, he threw us into every situation imaginable.
One scenario required us to hunt down a particular monster hidden within the aforementioned dark forest. Another required us to hold off against hordes of monsters within an established base. We even had to escort a person from one base to another, the person being a puppet who wasn’t allowed to be hurt during the transport.
All of the scenarios had us on our toes and stressed our wits. They all also lasted between 4 and 8 hours.
Needless to say, the following mornings were all dreadful. I had no time to cultivate my Authority or practice controlling my Aura. My main focus was just surviving each day and trying to do well.
Another downside was how I was slotted with a different team every single scenario. I saw no person twice. This required me to get to know a couple dozen elites and operate around their skillsets. Luckily, because the different types of Magi only fell into three categories, it got easy to guess what each person could do as a baseline.
For example, I could generally predict how capable a Warlock was and how they fought. I knew that Knights were either defensive or offensive, not having much utility at all, and were almost always close combat fighters.
As for summoners…
I only saw one of those. And he was an interesting fellow. We got along well.
That summoner was a hot summoner, as opposed to cold, who could summon ethereal beasts to his side. It was the textbook example of a normal summoner.
He was able to summon three beasts, one of which was a serpent while the other two were a bear and tiger. He made a contract with those spirits at the beginning of the scenario, and they stayed with him throughout the entire thing.
But, unlike me who actively communes with my spirits, he had to give them payment upfront. This meant that his Psyka was massively drained before anything even began, and sending the spirits back early would waste some of the Psyka he spent. It was a generally strict system without nearly the same flexibility mine had.
Of course, because he was also an Authority 5, his spirits were powerful. They could go toe to toe with several of the puppets we fought, holding the line just as well as a Knight.
Only, when one of his spirits was killed, he suffered backlash. That was yet another downside of normal summoning.
Either way, I got a perfect score for 3 out of 5 scenarios. It was rather exciting, and even the Puppet Master was impressed, though he tried his best not to show it.
Like that, the end of the week came.
Only the fourth years were to leave for their trip at this time. Everyone else had another month or so before they would go.
So a few days before our departure, the entire fourth year dorm was flooded with letters regarding the trip.
In it were the details.
At the end of the week, we were to take a Rail out of the Capital and head to the frontier military installation known as Calatrop Base. We would be accompanied by several fourth year instructors, one of which was the Puppet Master.
Once there, we would be given assignments and groups. And although we were being treated with a bit of special courtesy, it was generally expected that we learn to live in the military environment as normal soldiers. This meant we would have tight bunks and need to know certain protocols and rules. Of course, we were also granted a bit of leniency.
Not only had we students not gone through basic training, but we were also talented and powerful individuals. Everyone in the fourth year of the Magisterium was young yet much more capable than the rest. If you couldn’t hit certain benchmarks, then you would leave early for basic training, continuing your magical advancement within the walls of a base. If you made it to the fourth year, you were almost guaranteed to reach Authority 8 at some point in your life.
So although it was naive thinking, to expect the fourth year students to be able to hold their own wasn’t unfounded, even in a military environment. They had some weight to throw around, especially when most of those in the general population had no magical power to speak of. That held true even in the military.
I was curious to see how things were run, if I was being honest. I wasn’t completely unfamiliar with the military on Earth, and I knew that medieval armies lacked organized training and systems compared to modern militaries. I wondered if that were true here, though I doubted it considering humanity was constantly under attack by the Scourge. They couldn’t lack military development, otherwise they would’ve fallen long ago.
So I looked forward to it all. More than that, I looked forward to truly facing the Scourge for the first time.
Thankfully, the Puppet Master gave us the day before our departure off. I didn’t even go to classes that day, just spending my time taking care of business.
I had a few people to talk to, the first being my mentor.
……
Standing outside the Black Spider Hotel, I saw as carriages came and went, each of them dropping off rich or influential figures.
This place was always full of those individuals. You couldn’t come to this place otherwise. Of course, there were lucky exceptions like myself. But the vast majority of people would never so much as hear about this place, let alone knew what existed behind the luxurious exterior.
I entered after some men in suits and robes. At the desk, I saw the Key Master checking them in and handing them bronze keys. Afterward, they all disappeared into the elevators.
I walked over once he was free, smiling.
“Good day, Key Master. Having fun?”
“John! A pleasure to see you here. And I always have fun checking in esteemed political guests.”
“Is that so?”
I leaned on the desk, looking to where those political figures disappeared.
“Who were they?”
“Two Marquesses and three powerful merchants. They’ve come here to discuss business, as many of such stature do. This place not only acts as a hotel, but a grounds for diplomacy and exchange. You could say it’s a neutral territory guaranteed by the Hotel itself.”
“By the hotel? Not the Polaris Family?”
“Indeed. The Black Spider Hotel is its own entity. The Polaris Family operates behind the face of the Black Spider and within its market.”
“Wow. I guess that makes the Hotel powerful.”
I mumbled while visualizing everything in my head.
How powerful did you have to be to have the Polaris Family, a known behemoth in the black markets above even the Tavera Family and Apocryon’s Trenches, hide behind your authority?
It implied that this Black Spider was much more than just the name of the market, an entity all to itself, and one that held more power than the other factions. All of which was shocking, because I had never heard anything about this before.
I thought I knew about more than the average, even within the black markets. After all, I had basically uninhibited access to both markets and worked with a few large organizations within each.
This was all afforded to me by Plex, but my point still stood.
And sitting even deeper in the darkness of the black markets was an invisible monster I had never even known about until the Key Master gave me this subtle glimpse.
It took a bit of self control on my part to not take a look at the Key Master, trying to hide the complex thoughts in my head.
I was also questioning the identity of this man behind the desk.
Unassuming and always treating everyone with professional courtesy, he seemed like nothing more than his station, a simple clerk.
But, he was always here. Always. I could enter this lobby at any hour of the day and he would be here. In fact, his absence was rarer than otherwise. According to Plex, if he wasn’t there, then the entire black market would be on high alert.
Just how powerful was the Key Master?
‘Shit, my Aura.’
I suddenly snapped out of it. I forgot that I couldn’t conceal everything about my state of mind. My Aura was acting out of my control.
With a deep breath, I forced myself to forget about everything, turning back to that unassuming clerk.
“Well Key Master, don’t work too hard.”
“You as well, John. I hear you’re about to leave for your hunting trip. Calatrop Base, correct?”
“...Yea.”
I was half surprised, and half expectant to hear him say that. It was another peculiar thing about the Key Master.
He seemed to know everything.
He knew when I was going to meet Maxwell for the first time. Back then, I assumed it was because this hotel was under the jurisdiction of the Polaris Family, and by extension, the Key Master knew about some of the affairs within it. If he was notified to look out for my arrival, then it was expected.
But if this hotel was its own separate entity, then the Key Master wasn’t affiliated with the Polaris Family. He shouldn’t have known.
And maybe I was looking too far into it, but I didn’t think he should know about my destination.
But I quickly pushed all that to the back of my mind.
“I’m planning on talking to Maxwell about some things before I go.”
“Understandable. Then I won’t take any more of your time. Please go ahead. An elevator is waiting for you. When you come back however, I have something to speak to you about.”
“Oh, well alright. Later then.”
With a bit of awkwardness in my step, I walked past the desk and entered the elevator.
Like that, I entered the market where I found my way to Polaris’ headquarters.
I entered Maxwell’s study with a sigh.
“Hey, Maxwell.”
“Oh, hello John. I was expecting your arrival.”
He set down a book, looking at me through a magic monocle.
“I see the Puppet Master has been getting you ready. Good.”
“Yea, he’s really wearing us to the bone. I just wanted to ask if there was anything I should prepare.”
“Well, not as if you can’t bring most of what you own with you. Just make sure you have the White Crystal and the cultivation formations. I expect you to make good progress while you’re gone.”
“Really? It feels like I’m going to get nothing done…”
I scratched my head. The formations for Authority 4 were incredibly complex, and understanding them was proving to be several times more difficult than that for Authority 3.
It felt like I would need at least several months. I didn’t believe I could finish before the end of the year, at least, which was in 3 more months.
But Maxwell thought otherwise.
“Authority 4 is a watershed. Your mind will go through great changes in the process of advancing. Unlike the previous Authorities which merely required you to accumulate before breaking through barriers, you will change the very essence of your Psyka and go through an evolution. This is why the formation is far more complex, because it will guide you through the process of that evolution. So, think of it not as one large array for simply gathering power, but a guide for circulating your power step by step.”
“...Alright.”
I recalled the formation as he spoke, realizing that I should take his advice and change the way I was approaching comprehending the formation.
After that, he leaned back into his seat.
“By the end of the month, I expect you to have comprehended the entire formation. After that, it will probably take you around 4 months to advance.”
“Oh. Well, I guess that’s not too bad.”
I scratched my chin. It was a bit shorter of an estimate than I expected, but reasonable. The hard part though was comprehending the formation. It seemed I had my work cut out for me.
This trip would be difficult in more ways than one.
“John! I knew I heard you in there.”
Tana spotted me not long after appearing.
She, along with the others I had once teamed with, came to greet me.
Umara and Heubert smiled as we shook hands.
“Hey, where have you been all week? You just disappeared.”
“I was on a business trip.”
“Is that what gave you the new scar on your head?”
Umara moved to my side and traced the wound on my temple. Even Heubert moved over curiously to see it.
I shrugged.
“It was a bit eventful.”
“Apparently.”
“Listen up!”
Suddenly, we were interrupted by the Puppet Master.
Everyone turned, seeing him standing at the door to his monitor room.
“For the next several days, I will be running scenarios for all of you. Your trip is coming up at the end of the week, and I intend to prepare you all. These scenarios will all be difficult, and very few of you will be able to get perfect scores. I will also be shuffling the teams twice, so you will need to learn to cooperate with others you don’t know. This means you need to prepare yourselves for several days of exhaustion and pain. Remember that recovery is also a part of battle, so I won’t be hearing any excuses. And none of you are allowed to skip!”
“Well isn’t that great...”
Everyone groaned, already feeling the oncoming torture.
After that, we were let go. I walked with my little group back to the dorms.
“Hey John, what exactly do you do? Beyond the Magisterium, I mean.
Heubert suddenly asked. When I looked at him, I could see him eyeing my coat.
Well, everyone eyed my coat at some point. It was subtle, but if you got a decent look at it, it wasn’t hard to tell that it was expensive.
I smiled a bit sheepishly.
“I’m just a delivery man.”
“Delivery? What do you deliver?”
“Oh, you know, just whatever packages need to be moved. People call the company I work for and request deliveries between them and a client. I’m responsible for picking up those packages and making sure they get to the customer.”
“Wow. Sounds simple enough. Then, how much does delivery work pay?”
“It depends on the job honestly. Regardless, I just worked and saved as much money as I could before entering this place. I don’t have many things that I can call my own, but the few things I do are valuable enough.”
“I see.”
Heubert nodded, as did the two girls. My words were vague, but it wasn’t like they would guess that I worked in the black market.
But then, Umara tilted her head.
“So that business trip was a delivery, right? So what exactly gave you that scar?”
“I uh… A package fell on me, had some metal items in it. I barely dodged, but it still cut the side of my head.”
“But you got it healed, no? It’s a new but healed scar. And usually when you get healed, scarring doesn’t occur, especially not that badly…”
“I only got it partially healed, enough to stop the bleeding and seal it. Unfortunately I didn’t have enough money to get it completely healed and erased.”
I made something up on the fly, interrupting Umara’s train of thought. It seemed she was rather sharp, or just enjoyed digging into other people’s business.
Thankfully she dropped it with a shrug. It wasn’t like I was adamant about keeping my line of work a secret, but it also wasn’t something I intended to broadcast either.
The fewer people who knew about who I was, the better. After all, I had a not so small target on my back. I had killed no small amount of people and pissed off far more. Despite being neutral, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Clockwork Association put a bounty on my head.
It seemed Tana and Heubert were still a bit suspicious though, which I couldn’t do much about.
Not long later, we arrived at the dorms. Saying our goodbyes, all of us retired for the night.
……
…
The following days were filled with constant stress.
The Puppet Master was serious about getting us ready. Every day, he had a new scenario which involved different monsters and different maps.
From dark forests to bright white deserts, he threw us into every situation imaginable.
One scenario required us to hunt down a particular monster hidden within the aforementioned dark forest. Another required us to hold off against hordes of monsters within an established base. We even had to escort a person from one base to another, the person being a puppet who wasn’t allowed to be hurt during the transport.
All of the scenarios had us on our toes and stressed our wits. They all also lasted between 4 and 8 hours.
Needless to say, the following mornings were all dreadful. I had no time to cultivate my Authority or practice controlling my Aura. My main focus was just surviving each day and trying to do well.
Another downside was how I was slotted with a different team every single scenario. I saw no person twice. This required me to get to know a couple dozen elites and operate around their skillsets. Luckily, because the different types of Magi only fell into three categories, it got easy to guess what each person could do as a baseline.
For example, I could generally predict how capable a Warlock was and how they fought. I knew that Knights were either defensive or offensive, not having much utility at all, and were almost always close combat fighters.
As for summoners…
I only saw one of those. And he was an interesting fellow. We got along well.
That summoner was a hot summoner, as opposed to cold, who could summon ethereal beasts to his side. It was the textbook example of a normal summoner.
He was able to summon three beasts, one of which was a serpent while the other two were a bear and tiger. He made a contract with those spirits at the beginning of the scenario, and they stayed with him throughout the entire thing.
But, unlike me who actively communes with my spirits, he had to give them payment upfront. This meant that his Psyka was massively drained before anything even began, and sending the spirits back early would waste some of the Psyka he spent. It was a generally strict system without nearly the same flexibility mine had.
Of course, because he was also an Authority 5, his spirits were powerful. They could go toe to toe with several of the puppets we fought, holding the line just as well as a Knight.
Only, when one of his spirits was killed, he suffered backlash. That was yet another downside of normal summoning.
Either way, I got a perfect score for 3 out of 5 scenarios. It was rather exciting, and even the Puppet Master was impressed, though he tried his best not to show it.
Like that, the end of the week came.
Only the fourth years were to leave for their trip at this time. Everyone else had another month or so before they would go.
So a few days before our departure, the entire fourth year dorm was flooded with letters regarding the trip.
In it were the details.
At the end of the week, we were to take a Rail out of the Capital and head to the frontier military installation known as Calatrop Base. We would be accompanied by several fourth year instructors, one of which was the Puppet Master.
Once there, we would be given assignments and groups. And although we were being treated with a bit of special courtesy, it was generally expected that we learn to live in the military environment as normal soldiers. This meant we would have tight bunks and need to know certain protocols and rules. Of course, we were also granted a bit of leniency.
Not only had we students not gone through basic training, but we were also talented and powerful individuals. Everyone in the fourth year of the Magisterium was young yet much more capable than the rest. If you couldn’t hit certain benchmarks, then you would leave early for basic training, continuing your magical advancement within the walls of a base. If you made it to the fourth year, you were almost guaranteed to reach Authority 8 at some point in your life.
So although it was naive thinking, to expect the fourth year students to be able to hold their own wasn’t unfounded, even in a military environment. They had some weight to throw around, especially when most of those in the general population had no magical power to speak of. That held true even in the military.
I was curious to see how things were run, if I was being honest. I wasn’t completely unfamiliar with the military on Earth, and I knew that medieval armies lacked organized training and systems compared to modern militaries. I wondered if that were true here, though I doubted it considering humanity was constantly under attack by the Scourge. They couldn’t lack military development, otherwise they would’ve fallen long ago.
So I looked forward to it all. More than that, I looked forward to truly facing the Scourge for the first time.
Thankfully, the Puppet Master gave us the day before our departure off. I didn’t even go to classes that day, just spending my time taking care of business.
I had a few people to talk to, the first being my mentor.
……
Standing outside the Black Spider Hotel, I saw as carriages came and went, each of them dropping off rich or influential figures.
This place was always full of those individuals. You couldn’t come to this place otherwise. Of course, there were lucky exceptions like myself. But the vast majority of people would never so much as hear about this place, let alone knew what existed behind the luxurious exterior.
I entered after some men in suits and robes. At the desk, I saw the Key Master checking them in and handing them bronze keys. Afterward, they all disappeared into the elevators.
I walked over once he was free, smiling.
“Good day, Key Master. Having fun?”
“John! A pleasure to see you here. And I always have fun checking in esteemed political guests.”
“Is that so?”
I leaned on the desk, looking to where those political figures disappeared.
“Who were they?”
“Two Marquesses and three powerful merchants. They’ve come here to discuss business, as many of such stature do. This place not only acts as a hotel, but a grounds for diplomacy and exchange. You could say it’s a neutral territory guaranteed by the Hotel itself.”
“By the hotel? Not the Polaris Family?”
“Indeed. The Black Spider Hotel is its own entity. The Polaris Family operates behind the face of the Black Spider and within its market.”
“Wow. I guess that makes the Hotel powerful.”
I mumbled while visualizing everything in my head.
How powerful did you have to be to have the Polaris Family, a known behemoth in the black markets above even the Tavera Family and Apocryon’s Trenches, hide behind your authority?
It implied that this Black Spider was much more than just the name of the market, an entity all to itself, and one that held more power than the other factions. All of which was shocking, because I had never heard anything about this before.
I thought I knew about more than the average, even within the black markets. After all, I had basically uninhibited access to both markets and worked with a few large organizations within each.
This was all afforded to me by Plex, but my point still stood.
And sitting even deeper in the darkness of the black markets was an invisible monster I had never even known about until the Key Master gave me this subtle glimpse.
It took a bit of self control on my part to not take a look at the Key Master, trying to hide the complex thoughts in my head.
I was also questioning the identity of this man behind the desk.
Unassuming and always treating everyone with professional courtesy, he seemed like nothing more than his station, a simple clerk.
But, he was always here. Always. I could enter this lobby at any hour of the day and he would be here. In fact, his absence was rarer than otherwise. According to Plex, if he wasn’t there, then the entire black market would be on high alert.
Just how powerful was the Key Master?
‘Shit, my Aura.’
I suddenly snapped out of it. I forgot that I couldn’t conceal everything about my state of mind. My Aura was acting out of my control.
With a deep breath, I forced myself to forget about everything, turning back to that unassuming clerk.
“Well Key Master, don’t work too hard.”
“You as well, John. I hear you’re about to leave for your hunting trip. Calatrop Base, correct?”
“...Yea.”
I was half surprised, and half expectant to hear him say that. It was another peculiar thing about the Key Master.
He seemed to know everything.
He knew when I was going to meet Maxwell for the first time. Back then, I assumed it was because this hotel was under the jurisdiction of the Polaris Family, and by extension, the Key Master knew about some of the affairs within it. If he was notified to look out for my arrival, then it was expected.
But if this hotel was its own separate entity, then the Key Master wasn’t affiliated with the Polaris Family. He shouldn’t have known.
And maybe I was looking too far into it, but I didn’t think he should know about my destination.
But I quickly pushed all that to the back of my mind.
“I’m planning on talking to Maxwell about some things before I go.”
“Understandable. Then I won’t take any more of your time. Please go ahead. An elevator is waiting for you. When you come back however, I have something to speak to you about.”
“Oh, well alright. Later then.”
With a bit of awkwardness in my step, I walked past the desk and entered the elevator.
Like that, I entered the market where I found my way to Polaris’ headquarters.
I entered Maxwell’s study with a sigh.
“Hey, Maxwell.”
“Oh, hello John. I was expecting your arrival.”
He set down a book, looking at me through a magic monocle.
“I see the Puppet Master has been getting you ready. Good.”
“Yea, he’s really wearing us to the bone. I just wanted to ask if there was anything I should prepare.”
“Well, not as if you can’t bring most of what you own with you. Just make sure you have the White Crystal and the cultivation formations. I expect you to make good progress while you’re gone.”
“Really? It feels like I’m going to get nothing done…”
I scratched my head. The formations for Authority 4 were incredibly complex, and understanding them was proving to be several times more difficult than that for Authority 3.
It felt like I would need at least several months. I didn’t believe I could finish before the end of the year, at least, which was in 3 more months.
But Maxwell thought otherwise.
“Authority 4 is a watershed. Your mind will go through great changes in the process of advancing. Unlike the previous Authorities which merely required you to accumulate before breaking through barriers, you will change the very essence of your Psyka and go through an evolution. This is why the formation is far more complex, because it will guide you through the process of that evolution. So, think of it not as one large array for simply gathering power, but a guide for circulating your power step by step.”
“...Alright.”
I recalled the formation as he spoke, realizing that I should take his advice and change the way I was approaching comprehending the formation.
After that, he leaned back into his seat.
“By the end of the month, I expect you to have comprehended the entire formation. After that, it will probably take you around 4 months to advance.”
“Oh. Well, I guess that’s not too bad.”
I scratched my chin. It was a bit shorter of an estimate than I expected, but reasonable. The hard part though was comprehending the formation. It seemed I had my work cut out for me.
This trip would be difficult in more ways than one.
