Chapter 190: Northbound

Arthur stayed after Combat Conditioning on Thursday evening.

Morwenna took him straight back to one of the recovery drills he’d struggled with earlier in the week: taking a hard shove off balance and getting his feet back under him without using Shadow Step.

The first attempt was ugly. His legs were tired, his back ached, and he stumbled before he could brace properly.

Arthur reset his stance, dropped his weight, and waited.

The second attempt was cleaner. He absorbed the hit, turned his hips, and caught his balance before Morwenna could force him backward.

"Better," Morwenna said.

She walked past him to grab a towel. As she handed it over, her eyes dropped to the faint shine of salve on his wrist.

"Wrist?"

Arthur rotated it. "Fine."

Morwenna gave him one more look, then picked up her own bag.

"Go eat."

By Friday morning, every step reminded Arthur that Morwenna’s "better" still involved getting thrown around for another twenty minutes.

He sat down heavily at the breakfast table, grateful the week was finally ending.

The rest of the group was already there, dealing with their own problems. Felix was glaring at a blank sheet of parchment like it had personally offended him.

"Professor Vale wants a full evacuation plan for a collapsed subterranean ruin," Felix groaned, dropping his pen. "I have to map chokepoints, secondary exits, and hazard containment."

Arthur reached for the eggs. "Have you tried writing ’leave’?"

Felix stared at him.

Cedric didn’t look up from his own plate. "Please don’t help him."

Cedric wasn’t in much better shape. His hands trembled around his knife and fork after two days of movement-casting drills with weighted focus rods.

Leon and Alicia joined them a few minutes later. Alicia dropped into her seat with one of Leon’s gauntlets in her lap and started stitching a torn strap while he ate.

Arthur watched her pull a heavy leather needle through the torn material. "You know they sell those."

Alicia didn’t look up. "He’ll break the next one too."

"That happened once," Leon protested mildly.

"Three times," Alicia corrected without missing a beat.

Cedric glanced over at the gauntlet. "If he breaks the replacement, I’ll enchant the strap myself. The mana drain will be terrible, but it won’t tear."

Leon looked horrified. "Don’t."

Arthur smiled and finished his breakfast.

Professor Vale spent the late morning on old-site exploration.

"Maps become unreliable the moment a structure outlives its original purpose," Vale lectured, pacing slowly across the front of the room. "Old mines become monster nests. Temples get expanded underneath by cults. Drainage routes collapse. Old doors get sealed, new ones get blown open, and later settlers build right over the original entrances."

Vale put a faded schematic of an ancient ruin on the main board.

"If you found this map before entering," Vale asked the class, "what would you actually trust?"

Cedric pointed to the old ward lines and argued that some of them might still be active. Felix went straight to the marked exits and questioned how many were still open. Other students called out monster nests, collapsed passages, and ventilation shafts.

Vale eventually looked toward Arthur’s row. "Vance?"

Arthur looked at the schematic. He thought about Sylas’s shifting tomb, Sector C’s flooded branches, and Saint Orlan’s waiting north of the city.

"Nothing drawn underground unless somebody has physically checked it recently," Arthur said.

Vale paused. "Why?"

"Because people lie," Arthur said. "Maps get old. And monsters don’t read municipal plans."

Vale nodded once and turned back to the map.

Between classes, Arthur pulled his phone out in the crowded corridor and checked the regional map again, staring at the saved pin for Saint Orlan’s Wayside Shrine.

Emily fell into step beside him and caught him looking at the screen.

"That’s the same map you were staring at yesterday," Emily noted.

Arthur pocketed the phone. "Possible guild work."

"Where?"

"North."

Emily waited for more.

Arthur looked straight ahead. "That’s all I’ve got."

Emily gave him a long look, snorted softly, and kept walking.

Weekend plans came up over lunch. Felix was stuck with Vale’s assignment and a shield inspection. Cedric had another weighted-casting session. Leon and Alicia already had plans. Emily was free, and Chloe had Saturday open once her Friday infirmary shift ended.

After his final class, Arthur took the city transport down to Warehouse 9.

Sylvia was buried behind a stack of Iron Anvil figures when he walked in. She slid an annotated sheet across the desk before he’d even sat down.

"Brokk wants volume estimates before he gives us a rate," Sylvia said, rubbing her temples.

Arthur looked at the page. "I preferred him when he just insulted me."

"He still does that," Sylvia replied without looking up. "Now there are just numbers attached."

Arthur spent the next hour working through Brokk’s numbers with her. They settled the expected order sizes, argued over what rush work should cost, and Sylvia shoved the pages into the outgoing folder.

When they finished, Arthur leaned back in his chair.

"Anything north this weekend?" Arthur asked.

Sylvia looked up, her expression wary. "How far north?"

Arthur walked over to the map near Sophia’s desk and pointed to the area around Saint Orlan’s.

Sylvia stood up, walked over to the active contract board, and started pulling files. She found a few mundane contracts covering the northern routes: a caravan escort, an abandoned-road survey, a missing trapline investigation, and a merchant route inspection.

Arthur flipped through them until one caught his attention.

Contract: Old North Road Survey

A minor trading cooperative wanted someone to inspect a disused branch of the old northern road. Two separate carts had reported low-level undead sightings near the road at night. Because a newer, safer toll road existed further east, the city guard had made it a low priority, and nobody had been seriously injured yet.

The merchants simply wanted to know if the older, cheaper route could be safely reopened without paying for a full guard escort.

The designated survey zone passed within three miles of Saint Orlan’s Wayside Shrine.

Arthur tapped the file. "I’ll take this one."

Sylvia picked it up, checked the payment line, and looked back at him.

"This pays terribly."

"Character building," Arthur said.

Sylvia stared at him flatly. "No."

"How badly are you going to make me regret approving this?" Sylvia asked, reaching for her guild stamp.

"Moderately."

Sylvia stamped the file.

Arthur took the paperwork over to Sophia, who registered the route, wrote down their departure time and expected return, then asked who was going with him.

Arthur found Emily in her room after he got back to campus. She was re-wrapping the grip on one of her combat gauntlets.

"North-road guild survey this weekend."

Emily paused and looked up. "Monsters?"

"Probably."

"I’m in."

He caught Chloe an hour later, just after she finished her evening infirmary shift.

"Want a field run?" Arthur asked.

Chloe stopped beside him and turned. "What kind?"

"Possible undead. Old road. Maybe a shrine."

Chloe glanced back toward the infirmary, then at Arthur. "When?"

"Saturday morning."

"I’ll pack tonight," Chloe said, turning toward her room.

Arthur mentioned the trip to Felix during dinner, but Vale’s assignment and the shield inspection had already eaten his weekend.

"You’re taking Emily and Chloe into an undead site without a shield?" Felix asked, staring at Arthur across the table.

"It’s a road survey," Arthur corrected him.

Felix looked at him.

"Near an undead site," Arthur amended.

Felix kept looking.

"Potentially," Arthur finished.

Felix sighed heavily and put his fork down. "I’m adding emergency expenses to the guild ledger now."

Later that night, Arthur walked back into his dorm room and found Emily already raiding the travel food he had bought for the trip.

"That’s for tomorrow," Arthur told her, dropping his bag onto his bed.

Emily didn’t stop chewing. "Then buy more."

Chloe had already sent him a photo of her packed medical bag: cleansing supplies, spare wraps, salves, everything neatly arranged.

Arthur laid his own gear across the bed: Whisperwind, healing potions, reinforced travel clothes, and more arrows than he usually bothered carrying now that Mana Quiver was Level 4.

A dozen were silver-tipped, with several more treated for undead. The guild kept them in storage for exactly this kind of job.

He packed the Necrotic Dagger too. Decay magic probably wasn’t going to impress a corpse, but the blade was still a blade.

Felix walked into the room, took one look at all the gear spread across Arthur’s bed, and stopped.

"Road survey," Felix said flatly.

Arthur checked the tension on his bowstring. "Correct."

Felix pointed at the treated arrows. "Road survey."

"Very dangerous roads."

Felix shook his head and went back to his desk to finish Vale’s assignment.

Before bed, Arthur checked the route one last time.

The registered guild route ran north. A few miles off it sat the saved pin for Saint Orlan’s Wayside Shrine.

Across the room, Emily had stopped eating his supplies long enough to pack her own bag.

Arthur set the alarm for 6:30 AM. He plugged his phone in, set Whisperwind carefully beside the bed, and turned off the lamp.

Saint Orlan’s was on tomorrow’s route.