Chapter 45 - 44: The Mission Hall

Chapter 45: Chapter 44: The Mission Hall

Chapter 44: The Mission Hall

Once the marrow hit its limit, there was no point in staying. Noah wasn’t willing to strain his marrow just to speed up his breakthrough by a week or two. A few hours left before evening, and even with a decent reserve on hand, he understood how important the magic stones were to him as a source of training. So he took the Academy map and headed to the mission hall, hoping to find ways to raise his income of magic stones.

The hall was on a level below the residential area, wide and packed with students. A few large boards were pinned to the walls, mission sheets pinned to them, and tables for registering the missions and giving in their results were set up at the front. Noah didn’t go to the staff. He stood before one of the boards and started going over the pinned sheets one by one.

Collect twenty stalks of grey blood grass. Reward: five magic crystals.

Kill a full-grown rock wolf and bring back its heart intact. Reward: seven magic crystals.

Obtain the fangs of three low-rank magical mountain hounds. Reward: nine magic crystals.

After that he found similar missions, gathering less rare materials, escorting caravans over short distances, or hunting weak magical beasts living near the mountain roads. Most of the missions a seasoned low-grade mage could handle without help paid between five and ten crystals and even the ones that gave a little more needed a week or two outside the Academy.

Noah had to realize by quick reckoning that steady work, once expenses were counted, might not bring him more than a hundred and fifty to two hundred stones a year.

If he worked it out sensibly, a year’s labor wasn’t enough to cover even a month or two of his consumption. So spending two or three weeks out there for five or ten crystals wasn’t a real profit when the price was his training time.

Noah moved to the boards at the other end of the hall, where the sheets were fewer, but the rewards much larger.

Hunt a middle-rank magical bear and bring back its core. Reward: a hundred and twenty magic crystals.

Wipe out a band of highwaymen on the southern road. The leader of the group is a middle-grade mage. Reward: a hundred and fifty magic crystals.

Find a red moon flower with its roots whole inside the western mist valley. Reward: a hundred and thirty magic crystals.

Noah read a few more sheets before he stepped back a little from the board.

He focused on the first mission quietly. He didn’t simply consider taking it, let alone in his current state. Even if he broke through the middle rank, he wouldn’t risk fighting a middle-rank .

What really caught his interest was the word core. Noah thought it over calmly. If the core would have the same effect as the mana stones but at a higher density, it could change the course of his training in a big way, and then he closed his eyes.

Profit-wise, selling his blood was much easier than spending days hunting, and Noah considered it for a moment. His high-quality blood was of real value in alchemy and the Magic Marrow made him recover faster than others would think. But to rely on that for so long would be an abysmally foolish decision. One sale could be explained by a need for resources, and maybe a second would go right off without trouble, but a new student who kept turning up with fresh amounts of high-quality blood would sooner or later make someone question the speed of his recovery and the density of the mana inside his body.

After he’d gone through a lot of the boards the picture was clear. The Academy had offered students a way to earn but it didn’t enable them to earn wealth. The safe missions had little and the profitable ones required real strength or a willingness to take risks. Noah’s situation was complicated because mana stones were no longer just money. They were time that could be turned straight into progress, and that made it worse to go out for a few small missions.

Maybe there were better ways outside the Academy.

He knew almost nothing about the area around it. The road they’d come in by was cut off among the mountains, and the Academy itself was partly hidden underground, but an institution of this size couldn’t depend on itself. Herbs, beast blood, alchemical materials, and mana stones came through a network of traders and markets and it made no sense for the Academy to be the only place the nobles and mages dealt with.

But this wasn’t the time to go out and search for himself. First he wanted to break the second gate and reach the middle mage rank in secret, then get his hands on enough offensive and defensive techniques before he moved beyond the Academy’s surroundings more freely. And even after that another problem would remain. He could later present himself as a low-grade mage without it seeming impossible, given his age and blood quality, but buying knowledge or techniques belonging to a middle-grade mage would make anyone reviewing his record wonder why he needed them.

So he needed an outside source of knowledge and resources not tied directly to his name inside the Academy.

And he didn’t want to test the limits of the institution itself. From what he had heard so far, the Academy had enough power to balance House Charlemagne. A place the size of this couldn’t be built on only a few middle-grade mages and a few instructors. There had to be at least one high-grade mage behind it, maybe more. Noah didn’t know how those instructors watched over things, nor how well they could detect differences in mana, and he didn’t want to discover it accidentally.

He remembered a term from his past life. The butterfly effect.

It didn’t mean he would run from all risk, but if he could avoid a small step he didn’t need in the first place, why leave it to open a chain of problems in front of him? Better to leave his footprint as small as possible until he could handle it on his own.

Noah finished going over the board and turned to leave but he heard a familiar voice behind him.

"Noah?"

He turned and saw Charles standing a few steps off, a folded sheet in his hand. He came over and said:

"I was wondering when I’d see you."

Noah looked at him a moment before asking:

"You weren’t on the Magic Balloon."

Charles smiled.

"There were more candidates than it could hold. They split us into more than one group, and you were on the first trip while I got put on another."

The answer was simpler than Noah had expected.

"I see."

Charles looked toward the mission board.

"Already after a mission?"

"Going over the options."

"That’s closer to what I’d expect from you."

Noah looked at Charles quietly before he caught the faint mana leaking around him.

"Low-grade mage."

Then he put his hand inside his clothes and pulled out the short weapon made of dark metal that he’d taken from him on the trip and held it out.

Charles looked at the weapon before he raised his eyes.

"I told you before, I gave it to you."

Noah didn’t pull his hand back.

"I’m not returning it."

Charles’s look changed a little.

"Consider it a payment."

Charles looked at Noah, puzzled. "A payment for what?"

"Information."

Charles stayed quiet for a moment and then he had a small smile on his face.

"Hmm. Interesting. Go on, then."

"I want information about the areas and towns around the Academy and especially the markets the nobles use."

Charles raised an eyebrow.

"Hmm. Why do you need all that? If you try to head out with your strength, you might not come back alive."

Noah smiled, "Do you ask a client about his goals after taking a payment?"

Charles laughed lightly, then tipped his head toward the hall door.

"All right... all right, same as always. Let’s step out first."