Chapter 430: Maria’s Longing

One by one, Adrian watched as the people from the other kingdoms walked in.

He looked at his own people. He looked at Claire, Serena, Aria, Draven, Sigrid, Octavia, Vance, and the two newly acquired S-rank knights.

He nodded at them and they nodded back firmly before walking into the glowing portal one by one.

Remaining at the end were basically just Adrian and Aria. Adrian placed his hand gently on her head and tapped it.

"Let’s go."

Aria nodded and walked straight into the light. Adrian followed right behind her, and the girl from the Magic Tower stepped in last.

As the girl entered the portal and exited from the other side, she looked around. Everyone was gathered right there, standing inside a massive, beautifully decorated room.

She turned around and looked at the wooden frame hovering in the air.

There was no more glow inside the center of it, but one of the carved slots was still there. She reached up to the only single open slot and put her finger inside. She injected a tiny burst of her own mana.

Far away, back on the docks of Avarice, the wooden frame basically disintegrated into dust. The eight mana crystals instantly turned into pure mana and dissipated into the atmosphere. It was highly wasteful, yes, but that was the exact task given to her by the headmaster to complete the mission.

She turned around once she was done with her task.

"You are all free to explore. You can come back to me at the end of the day right here, and I will guide you to your rooms."

Adrian nodded, and everyone else did too. But all of a sudden, Adrian got an idea.

"Can we directly go to the other continent instead of staying here and sleeping?" Adrian asked.

The girl hesitated. "I mean... you could. The headmaster didn’t explicitly tell me that it is mandatory for you to stay the night, but he did instruct me to tell all of you to explore this place first."

Adrian thought about it. "Well, if that’s the case, then can we leave immediately once we are done exploring?"

The girl nodded slowly. "Yes, sure. I will head over and talk to the elders. I will let you know if it is possible or not when you return."

"Well, that is great then," Adrian smiled.

He turned around to look at his people.

"Well, you guys can go look around. Meet me back here once the sun sets. You have a lot of time, so have fun. Use this time to buy anything that you are interested in. And do not skip your lunch."

He took out a bunch of spatial rings from his dungeon and handed one to each and every person in his group except Claire, Serena, and Aria.

"Buy whatever you want. Consider this a bonus," Adrian said easily. "Be smart about your purchases, though. Just because I gave you a lot of money doesn’t mean you can just spend it on dumb things."

As he spoke, Draven, who was a powerful noble himself, looked at the contents of the ring and shook his head in disbelief.

"This is way too much money," Draven muttered. "Who in their right mind even gives away ten thousand gold coins to each person just like that? Are you alright in your head?"

Adrian chuckled. "Yeah, I am fine. You don’t have to worry about me. I am just giving it to you because no matter what you buy, you are still under me. Whatever you buy is going to be incredibly useful for this mission anyway. While I am giving you free money, it is basically an investment. An investment in my people, and an investment to increase the chances of success for this mission."

And then, he smirked. "And we’ll also get a head start by going there earlier than everyone else so that’s a bonus too."

Everyone else in the large room just watched this casual exchange. Almost every single person from the other kingdoms couldn’t help but feel a deep sense of envy and there were also those who began to change their plans about staying to night too. People usually didn’t like loosing but the ones in the room especially didn’t wish to lose against a man who threw away gold coins like they were stones. All they wanted to do right now, was to do better than Adrian and prove that his claim of increasing chances by spending money was wrong.

Though, not eveyone was competitive. One of the female knights from the large Western Kingdom just looked at Adrian with longing eyes.

’He is so generous, and handsome to boot,’ she thought. ’If only he was my king instead of that fat pig. He keeps trying to grope me and he doesn’t even give me any bonuses.’

She let out a soft, depressed sigh and looked at the girls standing beside her and she sighed once again.

She looked at the knights from Adrian and Crestwall’s side. They had S-rank knights casually standing there, while on her side, every single one of them was only an A-rank knight.

She couldn’t help but feel defeated already. With another soft sigh, she watched as Adrian and his party walked out of that massive room, following closely behind the petite guide.

Right as they left, everyone remaining in the room began to mutter among themselves.

One of the S-rank knights from a Crestwall Empire looked at her team before turning to look at her own teammates. Just as she was about to over hear their talks, she heard her own name being called out.

"Maria, we need to leave for the new continent as soon as the sun sets. We cannot stay here the whole night and there’s no way we should let Oresfall take the upper hand."

Maria looked around the room as she nodded. She could easily tell that every single team in the room had the exact same thought process. No one wanted to give up the potential advantage of being first to arrive on the new continent.