- Akeno Himejima -
Those foolish Knights had attacked the old man… Archmage Antonidas not understanding the difference in their levels. She did hear that Scan Type Skills only worked for two or below tiers above the user's Tier. So a T5 Sword Knight like him wouldn't even be able to see the stats of class of the Archmage.
Meanwhile, the Princess was wearing some kind of equipment which prevented her stats from being seen by others with Scan or similar skills.
Safe to say that they were crushed one-sidedly. It was only then that she realised that the previous spell was cast by the Princess alone and not the Archmage himself.
In front of the Archmage, they didn't even have the chance to take two full steps before they were on the ground, unconscious and tied up.
The Archmage looked at the lead Knight of their group.
"Could I please inconvenience you to arrest them all, maybe drop them off at the next town to be judged?"
"Umm, Lord Antonidas… we could… these people are criminals who even tried to attack you. If we have your permission… we can take care of them here. No need to bring them anywhere." One of the Knights offered.
The Archmage however shook his head. "I stopped them because I saw these people attacking a group with children, whom you all were clearly trying to protect. They even rejected the chance to talk and attacked the knight who tried to communicate. This alone is enough to show they were not carrying out some kind of justice. But as much as I want to, it is not my authority to punish them for their crimes. The Magic Tower remains neutral from the internal affairs of any Kingdom. So you can only take them to the nearby city to be judged. Don't worry. You don't need to fear retaliation from anyone. It just so happens that I have a meeting with an old friend of mine in the city. I will personally put in my name as the one who did this and request that they be punished appropriately for their crimes."
"We thank you, Lord Antonidas." They agreed to the man's request… which was more or less their only option at this moment.
Even if they left, there was no guarantee that they wouldn't be chased by the people of Viscount Falkner for revenge.
Not to mention that their carriages were mostly destroyed. Only two of them were barely working so they had no choice but to find a way to get help in the nearest town.
It didn't take them long to get packed. Even the Knights took over the horses of the enemy and tied the prisoners behind them.
All the children somehow adjusted on the two carriages with the rest of the group surrounding the carriages as they proceeded slowly towards the next town.
The kids were still a bit shaken from the incident before but were somehow holding on with Mari and her assurances. To her surprise, even the Princess was trying to keep the kids calm, telling them stories of distant lands.
Akeno took the chance to talk with her while in the same carriage. She found out that the Princess was actually a T6 High Sorceress and was studying at the Magic Tower's Headquarters under Archmage Antonidas.
She was here to accompany her teacher to meet someone, whom she didn't mention. Akeno didn't ask any further.
The Princess was quite easy to talk to and Akeno took this chance to ask her about the Mage Class as there would be very few people who could match her in knowledge. Even a bit of information about the Class Advancement would be like a boon for them.
From her, she found out that the Mage Class has two main routes which people generally take.
These were the High Mage Route or the Sorcerer route.
In the first route, a Mage concentrated more on combat magic and became High Mage, a T5 Class.
High Mage is mainly focused on Elemental Magic.
To advance further, a High Mage has to master three spells of two different Elements each and then do the Class Advancement Quest.
A High Mage would then become a T6 Master Mage. After that came Grand Mage and then finally the level which her teacher was at, Archmage.
For the Sorcerer route, it was more focused on field control.
The tree for that went from Mage to a Sorcerer, then High Sorcerer, Grand Sorcerer and then Sage.
Akeno was more interested in Elemental Magic before but now she was thinking if she should become a healer instead.
Their group didn't have any healers and that could be a big problem in the future.
Princess Jaina was kind enough to give her some good advice on magic related studies and what to do to prepare for the Class Advancement Quests.
She also found out that they were here on some personal matters and thus they forbade her group from speaking about them with anyone without their permission.
It was safe to say that no one denied it.
Who could, after seeing that display of power from before?
Moreover, now that she understood more about the Archmage, she understood exactly how up he exactly was in the grand scheme of things. A person on the same level as the King of this Kingdom…
It was on the evening of the same day that they reached the nearby city.
Mari, Akatsuki-chan and she quickly gathered the group and took the kids to the inn to live for the night while Arthur and Naotsugu went to find a way to get the carriages fixed or at least find a way to rent new carriages for the rest of their journey.
The City was named Moonshade and was a mid-sized city, one grade higher than their previous one.
Accordingly, the prices of things were a little higher than they had been in their town. They realised this when they got accomodation in the Inn for everyone.
It was around twenty percent higher than before.
"Do you think we should sell some of our products here to make money? The destruction of the carriages has caused us some losses." Mari asked, worried, unlike her usual cheerful self. Even the usually stoic Akatsuki-chan looked quieter than normal.
"We managed to salvage some things from the wreckage of the enemies and they can be sold for a decent price. Apart from that, the horses we got can also be sold so we can more than make up for the losses in the attack."
"Hmm. Then Arthur and you can go and check where we can sell them off. We will keep an eye on the kids in the meantime."
"Alright."
They discussed the next plan of action while Arthur and Naotsugu-kun also came back and they found out that the earliest the carriages could be fixed was three days and that was with some extra payment.
But they wanted to get away as soon as possible so they agreed to this condition.
After the discussion, they had dinner and put the kids to bed. They had been very scared after last night's incident and exhausted from the days of travel.
Getting a proper bed was like a boon at this point so all of them fell asleep quickly.
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"Just two hundred and thirty five thousand for all this is too low." She argued.
"If it were all in good condition then it would have brought you five times more price but this equipment is all damaged. I can only fix the less damaged ones and for the rest, I will have to melt them off to get the metal, no different from scrap metal. This price is more than enough for this much."
She let out an internal sigh. It's not like she didn't know that. This was the fifth shop they had visited and this was the best price already. She looked at Arthur and both nodded at each other before agreeing to the price.
"This with the three hundred and eighty thousand from selling other loot will be more than enough to get the carriages fixed and even get two new ones. Too bad we couldn't take the mission reward." Akatsuki-chan said from the side lightly.
Mission reward…
Who knew that it wasn't those people's first time raiding this territory. They often kidnapped and sold people from here as slaves, something which was highly illegal in this country.
They had high bounties on their heads.
Unfortunately they couldn't claim it as they were not captured by their group but rather by Archmage Antonidas and Princess Jaina Proudmoore who handed them over to the Knights. Thankfully, their names were kept completely out of the whole mess to prevent them from getting targeted later.
As they walked out of the shop, towards the place where carriages were made, she bumped into someone around the corner of the street. The voice made her instantly realise the identity of the person in front of her. The same girl who had accompanied them to this city was in front of her with another man with blonde hair and blue eyes. "Princes… I mean Miss Jaina."
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Author's Note:
I am back with another chapter of 'Soul Art Online'.
I will be honest, I wasn't expecting the conversation with Kuroka to drag on for so long.
I was in a flow and it kept on becoming longer.
Anyways, I will try to increase the pace of the next few chapters to catch up to some good stuff once more.
We have had enough character development chapters for now.
Enjoy the new chapter.
Good Day, Peace Out.