Chapter 16: Mission Hall

The next day, Nadran approached the mission hall. He knew that the points provided upon being accepted into the academy were insufficient for anyone who wanted to progress with any kind of speed, and Nadran naturally wanted to get stronger.

The building was several stories tall and decorated with a stylized depiction of a bulletin board, with 'Mission Hall' written just below. Nadran walked into the building, finding himself in a large, open room. The entire wall opposite the entrance was covered in slips of paper. The wall was broken up into different areas, with large letters written above each section. From left to right, they read D, C, B, A, and S. These seemed to be the rankings for the tasks, and the higher the ranking, the fewer the number of paper slips. To the sides of the room were information booths and mission registration desks, while the center of the room was wide open, allowing people to walk freely.

Nadran walked over toward the D grade missions and began to check their contents. He quickly realized that these requests were organized internally, as well, with the martial requests separate from the alchemy requests, which were separate from the general requests. Overall, there were almost a dozen separate categories contained within the section.

Nadran looked through the D grade missions for a few minutes, then shook his head. Most of these missions were incredibly easy, but monotonous tasks, and the alchemy requests were trivial, asking for unranked or low-slate pills that were substantially easier than the entrance examination. He quickly decided to move to the C-ranked requests, hoping for something a bit more interesting that also had better rewards.

The C grade missions indeed seemed to be a step up in difficulty, and Nadran decided to once again check the alchemy section. After all, he had gotten into the academy through alchemy, and thus it was likely his strongest field for now.

[Maybe I should just stick with alchemy instead of focusing on improving my combat strength,] Nadran mused, considering the idea. It seemed he had some degree of talent in it, and it could be quite profitable. In addition, he could enlist the aid of powerful cultivators to protect him and his family.

In the end, however, Nadran decided against it. He had also had some insights regarding sigil realms, and if possible, he didn't want to rely on others for protection. While he could potentially attract powerful figures with alchemy, they could betray him for larger benefits, and Nadran strongly disliked the concept of his life being in the hands of someone else. He could only feel safe if he could protect himself, and that meant improving his comprehension of sigils.

Despite thinking this, Nadran still decided to take an alchemy mission. After all, he wanted to complete the easiest task with the best reward, and since Nadran's sigil realm was still low, that meant alchemy was his best option.

There appeared to be 3 different kinds of alchemy tasks. First were requests from the pill hall, where the hall requested the refinement of pills, usually in large quantities. There were not many alchemists in the academy, especially compared to the number of pure sigil cultivators, and so the pill hall would always have requests for large numbers of pills due to limited manpower. These requests were posted both here and within the pill hall itself, and the rewards were pretty good.

The second kind were individual requests; cultivators who needed a particular pill that the pill hall did not currently have in stock. The pill hall could accommodate for some of these, but the disparity in the number of requests and the number of alchemists resulted in many requests ending up in the mission hall until they were answered.

The final type were informational requests, from tutoring to help in diagnosing a unique injury and what type of pill would be suitable for fixing it. These were questions elders and instructors could answer easily, but their time was much more valuable and limited than fellow students. While there was no guarantee that a peer could fix your problems, a specialist could still help. Besides, if you ended up hurting another due to bad diagnosis or false information, it would be investigated and punishment would be distributed to those in the wrong, so many people would still be willing to give these kinds of requests, despite the risks.

In the end, Nadran decided to take a forging request from the pill hall. The pills they were asking for were common enough, and the only catch was that they wanted a lot of them. Of course, the price they would pay for them was not set. The better the quality of the pill, the higher the price. The pill hall would buy the pills, mark them up slightly, and then sell them to the students. While it was technically possible for people to request alchemists to refine them these kinds of pills directly via the mission hall, it was rarely done. First, it was inconvenient to submit a request and wait an indeterminate amount of time when they could just buy them directly. In addition, most alchemists weren't willing to go through the effort of forging a single low-level pill for one person, considering the paltry reward. It was much more efficient to make 10 pills at once and get a single reward as opposed to making 10 pills one at a time and getting 10 different rewards that added to the same amount. This is all not to mention the fact that most people were unwilling to offend the pill hall by deliberately trying to bypass them over such a minute price difference.

Nadran took down the slip he wanted and brought it over to the registration booth, quickly registering his intent to take this mission on. Before he could leave however, he heard footsteps behind him and felt an inexplicable foreboding feeling.

He turned around to see a boy, probably only 12 years old, walking toward him. His face was adorned with the kind of smirk Nadran had become all too familiar with. [Who is he, Kalio Version 2? While his appearance is pretty different, his insufferable air totally reminds me of Kalio, except this guy is younger and somehow seems even more overconfident.]

Unaware that he had just earned a strange nickname from Nadran, the boy walked up to him and began speaking. "I feel that someone as weak-looking as you shouldn't be taking on C grade missions. How about-"

"Hello, Random Person I Have Never Met Before In My Life," Nadran interrupted blandly, his expression neutral. "Here, I'll save you the trouble of coming up with an excuse. What do you want?"

The boy's eyebrow twitched as he stared at Nadran, taken aback. He quickly managed to regain his composure, though. "I was just curious about the skills of the person Tyval mentioned. A freshman who could get Tyval's attention couldn't be too unskilled, could he? So I was just hoping I could see their abilities for myself."

"So you want to fight," Nadran said calmly, but his eyes narrowed. It seems that Tyval was behind this. [He works fast,] Nadran thought. [I know Tyval attends this academy too, but I haven't even been here for more than a day and he's already sent someone after me.]

Kalio Version 2 maintained his cool better this time. "Are you scared?" he sneered, looking arrogantly at Nadran.

"Not really," Nadran responded casually, "But I just got here yesterday, and I haven't even had a chance to pick up a sigil from the sigil hall. How about instead, we fight…"

Meanwhile, the boy (whose name was not actually Kalio Version 2) was looking on in amusement. [What, does he think he can catch up to me with a bit of time? I'm sure I could still destroy him a month or two from now, or a year, or a decade from now, but I won't wait that long to show him his inferiority. Maybe if it's only a couple weeks he wants to set the fight back by, that might be fine, but any longer would be a total waste of time-]

"…tomorrow," Nadran finished his sentence, causing the boy to nearly fall over in shock.

"What do you think you could possibly do in a single day? You think too highly of yourself! I'm a high slate cultivator, and what are you, are you even a low slate cultivator?" the boy shouted, unaware that the pitch of his voice had raised by nearly half an octave.

"Yes, I reached the low slate sigil realm yesterday," Nadran said with a faint smile. "Now if you'll excuse me, I would like to go and pick out a sigil to learn." With that, Nadran turned and walked toward the entrance, leaving a half-surprised, half-enraged boy in his wake.

[Oh yeah, I forgot to ask for his name,] Nadran thought as he walked toward the sigil hall. [Oh well, I'm sure he'll come and find me regardless.] He was not particularly looking for a fight, but he knew that when it came to people with that type of arrogant personality, there was no way of trying to talk them out of anything, and so Nadran couldn't be bothered to try.

The sigil hall was even larger than the other halls Nadran had been to, and it stood a full 5 stories tall. Nadran quickly walked in and began browsing through the sigils. Like the other halls, it was busy, but it was not quite as busy as the cultivation manual hall. [A lot of people have probably already gotten their sigils before I got here,] Nadran thought as he browsed through the sigils. [Let's see, the ideal combat sigils for me would probably be dragon-attributed so that they match with my cultivation manual, but there don't seem to be that many of them.]

Nadran looked around for almost half an hour, but only found a few dragon-attributed sigils. He also wanted a movement sigil to increase his evasiveness, but he decided a real attacking sigil took priority. [I can dodge all I want, but I won't win if I can't damage them,] he thought as he finally decided on the sigil he wanted. It was called 'Wyvern Claws,' and was a technique that strengthened the power of his melee attacks, enabling his hands to slice into an enemy like claws. It was fairly straightforward, and Nadran felt that he could make good use of it.

[Now that I have this sigil, it's time for me to get busy. I need to refine a bunch of mid-grade pills for the alchemy mission, and I also want to learn the basics of the Wyvern Claws by tomorrow. Based on my recent sigil learning speed, that shouldn't be impossible. So much to do, so little time…]

Nadran soon left the sigil hall, ready to improve his strength in order to survive the trials that lay ahead.