Lucas wandered through the streets, looking for a familiar place. To him, it wouldn't take long before there were people hunting him down. So it was only a matter of time before a fight would take place.
Before any kind of fight occurred, Lucas wanted some kind of safeguard. Walking into a familiar blacksmith's shop, he planned to order not a sword but something else entirely. After exchanging some pleasantries, he moved to the topic at hand.
"Do you have something to contain mana in?"
The big man scratched the back of his head. "Just use a magic crystal."
"No, can't you have like a ring that can serve as a second container for mana?"
The man shook his head, "You can just do that with a magic crystal, the higher the quality, the more it can store. But if you really want me to, I guess I can try to forge a crystal into a ring."
"That would be perfect.", the man didn't understand Lucas's reasoning, but simply nodded. Who was he to shoo away a customer. Lucas provided the crystal as well as the funds to make it, giving the blacksmith no room to negotiate.
Exiting the place, he was meant to come back in a few days. The next and final place Lucas wanted to visit was the church. He wasn't religious by any means, but he wanted to see what happened to Micheal.
Of all the people he knew, the only one who could become a Saint was Micheal. He was caring, generous, respectful and always helped those in need. Never did he allow injustice to take a stand.
The church still looked the same, the only difference being that the church was now filled with people of all ages. The elderly were honestly praying while the children tried to stay quiet at the sides of the large hall, playing around.
There were multiple priests at the altar and walking around, listening to the people's troubles and giving them advice. Approaching one of them, he focussed his attention on the blond haired visitor.
"Hello there, my son, what has brought you to this place of worship?"
"I was wondering if I could meet Micheal here, he was a friend of mine."
The man's eyes opened wide as the people listening in turned their heads in disbelief. "You know Saint Micheal?", disbelief was plastered all over his face as he grabbed Lucas's hand, clutching it between his own.
Lucas felt eyed by so many people he felt uncomfortable. They looked like fanatics, blinded by their faith. "Well, I only spoke to him a few times, but I want to see him again. I was wondering if he was here.", playing it as naively as he could, the priest and the onlookers's enthusiasm quickly died down.
They turned their heads away almost with an annoying look, the priest himself also felt less sympathetic than before. "Our dear Saint has left for the Holy Kingdom to receive proper education on his role and responsibilities as a Saint. He's not here."
"I see, thank you.", Lucas removed himself from the church and heaved a sigh.
'They've all gone crazy.'
'Hahaha, what did you expect? If we still had that ring they would've been all over us.'
'That image just gave me shivers. But I do wonder what happened.'
'What do you mean?'
'They weren't always this... loyal?', Lucas still had strong memories of when he first visited the church and while there were some people, they acted like people. Now all that was left was a strange obsession with Micheal.
Lucas had long thought Micheal was merely putting on a mask, and while that idea wasn't gone from his head, he was starting to think it was perhaps his true personality and all the people around him were the crazy ones. Still, Lucas avoided the church like a plague from then on.
Since he needed a place to stay safe, Lucas decided to stick around the public buildings. While mages were extremely powerful and could easily kill everyone in some random town. Doing so would attract the anger from the country and the public. It was a calculated move, although a risky one.
Whether by a stroke of luck or the guiding hand of some god, the ring was completed before the military came. The blacksmith was confused as he gave it back. "Look kid, I know those storage rings are activated by willpower, you just need to think of what you want to pull out, and it'll appear, but this ring doesn't work that way."
"What do you mean?"
"The ring contains mana, if you want to absorb it, you'll have to absorb it by one of your gateways. So I guess, if you clench your hand so that the ring comes in contact with your palm it should work. Although that's really not practical in my opinion."
Lucas ran a thumb over the ring's surface, feeling the faint hum of mana within. A slow, satisfied grin spread across his face. Bidding the man farewell, he moved back to the town hall, there were a few more mages active, one of which Lucas recognized. "Cal, you came."
"Ah, there you are, Conrad. I've heard that you wanted to join our commander's group? Have you finally decided to help out the country?", Cal was all smiles, but Lucas could only reflect a fake one.
Technically, he didn't know where he was born, but he never cared for countries as he was always living by himself. He had no love nor loyalty to anyone at this point. Still, saying that during a preliminary job interview was a terrible idea.
"I wanted to see what I can do in these troubling times.", Lucas said professionally. Cal smiled as he recalled what his commander said to him before he left. "Someone who would deceive anyone as long as they have a good impression of them? What an accurate description."
Lucas felt his image shatter for a moment, but his face never faltered. It didn't take long before Cal decided to take Lucas with him. Cal moved to an open meadow before turning around to face Lucas.
"Can you fly?", Cal asked with an underlying sarcasm. To him, Lucas didn't have the connections to have such a spell at his disposal. This was the first step to reign him in to the army.
Giving young mages access to a special spell like flight instantly brought the favorability of any greenhorn to the max. The promise of more spells was extremely attractive to anyone willing to join the army, and while many fell for this trap, what he didn't expect was a floating Lucas.
"Yes, but I'm not that good at controlling it.", Lucas said with a slight hint of humbleness. Cal felt again that Kasto had a great instinct, to spot such a valuable talent so early on. He was tasked to rope him in, yet seeing his talent, they would have to offer a much larger reward now, something that their budget might not allow since they already splurged a lot on someone else.
Shaking his head to get back on track, he flew upwards and led Lucas towards their current base. As they flew in a straight line, the days passed as they just kept going, Lucas needed a lot of rest on the way there, signaling to Cal there was a limit to Lucas's mana capacity.
Taking notes on his control over his flight, behavior and mana, Cal was making sure they weren't making a mistake taking him in. There were plenty of situations where taking in vagrant commoners only led to their group suffering losses in the end. As such, a decent report had to be made for each potential combatant that wanted to join their group.
"Cal, can you tell me about the current situation in Frigus?", it was a question that he had been holding for some time now. He was oblivious to the current state of the world, there was a front, meaning there was a war. If that was the case though, Frigus wouldn't last a single day against the Holy Kingdom. And besides The Holy Kingdom, Lucas didn't know much about the other neighboring countries.
While Frigus was large, it was small compared to the Holy Kingdom. If they desired so, the Holy Kingdom could rule the entire world, but they didn't have those ambitions for some reason unknown to Lucas.
"Well, to be as transparent as possible, I would first have to explain what's happening with the royalty. There's the elder prince who thinks we should confront the Holy Kingdom in a large battle."
Lucas worriedly looked over to Cal, "That would spell the end for this kingdom."
Cal closed his eyes while trying to hide his frustration, "Exactly, but that man is supported by a few high ranking mages and nobles so he thinks he stands a chance. Second is the eldest princess who thinks we should become a vassal state."
"Isn't that even worse?"
"Depends on how you look at things, but the Holy Kingdom hasn't shown any sign of wanting to take over the kingdom. So this might be pushing it a little. Either way, they're both bad choices compared to the third."
"Which is?", Lucas said with a questioning tone, but he already knew what it would be. He was the one who suggested it in the first place. He never expected it to blow up so much, but it certainly made him feel good.
"The third option is the youngest princess. She's opting for neither fighting nor giving ourselves up. She doesn't want a confrontation since that would be disastrous, but becoming a vassal is also out of scope. She would rather set some basic rules in the country to appease the Holy Kingdom while retaining sovereignty. The issue is she's weak compared to the others of Royalty."
Lucas nodded, this wasn't exactly what suggested to the young princess, but Cal quickly corrected his thoughts. "She has the support of the commoners and small nobles. Despite vanishing for some time and rumors of her death spreading, she came back with a strong motivation to take things into her own hands. Together with her advisor she has been slowly gaining in power. Sadly, a lot of the smaller nobles are spies for the other factions, but she can't reject them."
"I assume you're on her side?"
"Of course, our entire regiment is made out of commoners. Off the record, she's the only one we can truly support."
Talking more about the current state of Frigus, they moved forward. They flew for quite a long time, passing by multiple towns and cities along their way. To Lucas, this was all completely new, yet he didn't feel all that excited.
He himself realized that most people would be happy to visit places they hadn't before. Whether it be the people, food, architecture, nature or the arts, he saw the same things repeat again and again.
He saw human patterns, no matter where he went, each town or city had commoners and nobles fighting over wealth, the poor living in dire straights while the rich flourished, finding comfort in a religion to answer for their questions that didn't have answers.
Cal noticed his lack of excitement and the almost disappointed look on his face, writing it down in his report. After a while, they eventually landed before a rather large mansion, comparable to Augustinus's.
"We've arrived, let's go inside, we don't have any time to waste.", seeing the guards standing near the gate Lucas realized they were all Rank 2. This instantly lowered his self-worth.
'So much work getting to Rank 2, and now we could be placed as some random guard?'
'Those fuckers look weak as shit though, might just be that they don't know how to fight.'
'That would be quite optimistic, coming from you.'
'Their body doesn't look that trained, they look like they don't do anything but laze around.'
Lucas checked them out with his magic vision instead of willpower, now knowing what it meant, he was going to keep his willpower closer to himself. In the Underground, it was always spread far and wide, but the moment he came back to the surface, he barely used it.
Seeing their cores, Lucas was able to see that their level was about the same as his, meaning a newly formed Rank 2. Lucas hadn't exactly broken through recently, but he wasn't able to make any progress on the path.
Walking inside, the mansion was actually pretty basic. There was no grand architecture like there was on the outside. As if it was all just a facade, keeping the ugliness inside hidden from the outside.
The main hall was filled with a bunch of tables. Men were looking over maps and writing down a bunch of things. Lucas glanced at the maps and the papers to get a good grasp of what was happening here, and his quick thinking reached conclusions he didn't like.
Going up the stairs they moved to a remodeled bedroom. Now a basic office, there was a big desk with a man behind it. Moving some of his papers to the side, he looked at his visitor.
"So you've finally made it, I see.", Kasto's voice was joyful and excited as he received the report from Cal. Reading it through with remarkable speed, he instantly changed his approach to Lucas.
"How have you been Conrad?", Lucas smiled and started with a basic request. "Please call me Lucas from now on."
Kasto's face didn't even twitch in the slightest as he slowly nodded. He had plenty of commoners under him, and had experienced himself what it was to be hunted by nobles. A simple but effective trick is to simply change your name. A noble's name holds importance and weight, but a commoner can easily change it up day after day without having too much of an effect.
Laughing out loud, he instinctively knew why Lucas would request such a thing. "Hahaha, but of course, Lucas, that's not a problem at all. Cal, change the records.", Cal nodded as he started to write down all the moments he mentioned the name so he could change it later.
"Assuming I'm correct, you're here to request immunity?", Kasto got right to it, skipping any kind of normal pleasantries Lucas had grown tired of around nobles.
"That's correct.", Lucas nodded, he was quite confident in how this conversation would go, and that was for a single reason. The man before him was also a commoner from birth, meaning he had gone through the same process. Hiding things from him could potentially be beneficial later on, but there was no certainty on that.
"I'll be transparent with you, Lucas. All my men are commoners, we have no nobles here. This means that our group is discriminated against by the entire army."
Kasto had no problem putting his own group down in front of Lucas and that was for a very simple reason. Lucas wanted, no, needed immunity, meaning that all the power of this negotiation laid in the hands of Kasto. No matter what he said, Lucas would have to accept it.
Lucas found his argument strange. This just meant that he should join someone else's regiment. What was the point of lowering their value in front of him?
"Hahaha, I can see your confusion on your face, but let me explain. All the other commanders won't take in commoners except if it's for cleaning duty. With that you also won't get any immunity."
"So you're saying that I'll have to pull my weight around here to get it?", Lucas could see what Kasto was trying to say.
"Exactly," Kasto smiled widely as he continued, "gaining immunity doesn't come so easily, especially since I can tell you've already gained the ire of one family."
Lucas frowned. "I can tell someone already left a mark on you. If we were to accept you, we would be able to remove your mark and give you ours. This would hide you away from them while also giving you protection of the army."
"Gaining freedom and being tied to someone else?", Lucas muttered the reasoning displayed by Kasto. It was perhaps a good way to gain temporary, but then he would be chained down here.
Suddenly, the door behind Lucas was opened and a familiar voice was heard, "Or you could become a mercenary working under the commander."
The slight arrogance hidden in those words instantly made Lucas realize who entered the room. Turning around he saw the dark blue hair of a well-dressed man.