This world's rays of sun passed through the window beside Emery's bed, warming him to a good morning. As he opened his eyes, the soft material the bed was made of, its pleasant smell, and the wonderful scenery outside his window, was telling him he had a nice day ahead of him. It felt like a dream though, to wake up in this place, because as he stared at the ceiling, his mind was already preoccupied with the nightmare of yesterday. What happened to Morgana? What kind of fate awaited her?
He checked the circle-split-in-half-symbol in his hand and saw there was still [89 days] before he returned to his world. Sighing, he thought this would become the longest 89 days of his life. The ancestral gods had been cruel with him. Just one or two minutes was all he needed.
Emery sat upright on his bed, trying to shake the thoughts of her. He was here now, there was nothing he could do although he still wished to go back with all his heart. Getting off his bed, he went to the living room and ordered the personal cube attendant to ready his meal.
As he waited, his mind wandered to the things he should do to improve himself. He needed to get better at making decisions and not just stronger, so people wouldn't be dictating his actions; rather, he himself or them to his. Like what the old man had said, his parting advice of 'observe first, listen, and think before speaking your mind', was something he should start doing. In fact, this wasn't just that old knight's advice, Killgragah had a similar statement to him while he had been training inside the Khaos spatial space.
Emery finished his meal and sat in the living room and began processing what had happened yesterday since there were still a few more hours before his meeting with the others. His first thought, he wouldn't believe that Silva had become lazy or something of the sort. In fact, he was neither satisfied with Magus Minvera's explanation as well… there must be something behind Silva not returning. Second, the overly interested actions of his classmates from Kalios were odd. Emery had his doubts because they didn't seem to be the sort of bunch who simply offered hands for the sake of relationships. Thirdly, about the Magus Games, there was something that felt amiss for him, but he couldn't point a finger too as to what it was.
His eyes then fell on the personal attendant who was hovering and picking up the meal he had finished. That was it, information about the Magus Academy. There should be a recorded history of the past classes before somewhere and hopefully, this cube had information about it.
Calling for the small cube personal attendant, he asked it to give him information about the Magus Academy, however, it rejected his inquiry and answered that it could only give general information about the Magus Games, the Magus Academy, as well as a map of the whole place. There wasn't much he could access since he didn't have any authority. Emery fell back on the couch, thinking of more ways how to get more information. Magus Minerva wasn't an option, in lieu of his new mindset, he couldn't just reveal his intentions by asking her, also there was that statement from her yesterday to not bother her with unnecessary questions.
As he racked his brain, the face of a certain person came into his mind. Cedric, his senior in the apothecary institute. He should know more about this place and the situation. He should be able to help Emery. With the right motivation and compensation of course, Emery believed he could get something out of the opportunistic person. Settling on that idea, Emery decided to find Cedric the first thing as soon as he had a chance.
He glanced at the symbol on his hand and decided it was time. Getting up and exiting the house, he went back to the stone platform to meet with his four friends and the three possible new teammates.
"Are you all ready?"
"Ready, are you all now?"
"All ready, are you?"
A headache was threatening to split Emery's mind. They were weird! Couldn't they just pick a single person who would speak for them instead of hearing all three sentences with the same meaning?
As Emery looked at his four friends, it appeared like he wasn't alone in this sentiment. In fact, Julian seemed to be having it the worst, so he decided to speak out his thoughts, "Please guys, for the sake of healthy cooperation, I am sorry but could you all not speak at the same time or better yet, decide a representative who would speak for all three of you."
"Okay, we understand."
"Understand, we do."
"I, Zana, will speak for them," said the one in the middle.
"Okay, that's much better," said Julian. The rest all looked at Julian with grateful eyes.
With that settled, the rest of the group made their way toward the plaza where a crowd of entering and exiting the portals. Zana led them toward a portal and after they entered it, they were transported to a place to a tunnel-like location with no windows. They traveled on the tunnel, which had a lot of colorful drawings on the ceiling and once they reached the end, the view of a multiple window counter revealed itself and once they got out of the tunnel, it shifted into a circle hall with a lot of people walking around on the spiral stairs.
Zana introduced the place and said, "This is the Magus Hub, run by the Magus Academy. This is the place where you get items or information that cannot be given by the cube in our room. This is also the place we could get a task." Pointing to one of the window counters, which was not occupied by another acolyte, he said, "There's an open spot, let's go."
After they stepped before the window, a beautiful lady in a white uniform behind the counter that didn't have a badge on her collar greeted them with a bow and a wonderful smile, making them feel welcome. She said, "Welcome to the hub, dear acolytes. What can I do for you today?"
Zana turned to them first and explained, "Here you can ask for any open task given by other institutes or magi. There are many kinds of tasks, varying from item finding, hunting, information gathering, protecting people, and a lot more others. The difficulty is set by the Magus Academy, and as for the information about the task or quest, it is provided by the person or institute who created the task. The lady behind the window was one of the many task masters of Magus Academy."
"How do you know all these?" asked Klea.
"Well, isn't researching and asking for information the most basic things one should do before acting on something? Actually, I went down here last year but tasks for first year acolytes are very rare."
Emery was fascinated with the way this person from Zaiueo thought. Maybe this was what Rowe from Kaleos meant that a more advanced world would have a broader mind in doing their tasks.
Zana asked the girl behind the counter to show them the list of available tasks. She complied and then from the edge of the window counter, it opened a small hole wherein a flying cube went out. A light came out from the cube and foreign letters showed up, but despite it being unknown to them at first, the symbol on their hands reacted and made them able to understand the written words. They were now able to see the list as well with their minds.
[Choose Acolyte task]
[Difficulty level]
[Reward]
[Types]
Each of the choices was like a way to sort and categorize the hundreds of tasks.
"This one!" shouted Thrax, looking all excited and such. He showed them the information which said:
[Giant hunting]
[5,000 contribution points]
[Difficulty A]
"I want to fight a giant! That sounds really amazing. Can we get this one?" asked Thrax to the cube hovering above them.
[Minimum rank 8 acolyte needed]
"Damn!"
"Guys as we are doing this just to measure our teamwork, I suggest we choose the one with the lowest difficulty and the safest to clear," reminded Emery. He recalled the task Master Grom had issued in Elder's Respite, which was about gathering for the moon clovers, although it looked harmless at first glance, the place he went to was full of dangerous beasts. Three of his companions at the time ended up dead. Hence, he wanted to make sure his friends not to underestimate even the simplest looking task. It was safer to measure the difficulty one at a time.
"We agree," said Zana, "I think this task is the most beneficial for our current condition."
[Gather Mineral]
[200 contribution points]
[Difficulty D]
"That sounds really boring! I want action," complained Thrax.
"You will not be bored with this, we think. The description says this will be in a low level savage world, so we will see some action. Also this job was given by the blacksmith institute, so it'll give us favor with them so we can upgrade our equipment. What do you think?" said Zana.