Arrival at Haven

I departed from the Church building and made my way back to the guild. I ran at top speed and experimented with some of my new stats to try and familiarize myself with them. It was awkward at first but I spent a bit stalling before I had to go back. I totally wasn't afraid of the hell I was about to face for disappearing. Again.

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Before leaving The Church I used Moonlight magic to sooth my muscles to the point where they were not going to bother me any more and I focused on getting my speed under control. I sometimes undershot my target, but most the time I went past. I was lucky that accelerated thinking also slightly increases perception so I could better see what I was doing and make adjustments a little easier. Still took me a few hours to get it under relative control but I was ready to go back home.

I ran back to the guild and upon arrival I remembered why I was so adamant about leaving the church. The Adventurer's Guild Competition was this week and it was not taking place in Elysium. The competition cycles between the seven major cities and this year it was in Haven, the capitol of the Holy Kingdom. The Capitol was typically anywhere from a one month to four month journey depending no your method of transportation but luckily we had a teleportation shrine, that allowed us to move between the more prominent human cities. This was a exclusive method of transportation, as typically it was reserved for important people namely nobles, and other rich individuals. However, spending months traveling between the cities would be a massive waste of time, and students would miss a lot of instruction, wasting potential, so this was the simplist most cost effective alternative.

Reguardless of transportation time, we were still going to depart a few days early so that the Guildmaster's had a few days to reconvene and talk about future projects and the current conditions of the cities in which they reside, and to prepare for the next competition.

I didn't know when we were to leave but I didn't want to be left behind.

It is still relatively early in the morning, when I walked into the guild doors but, once the Attendant at the desk saw me she immediately left to go somewhere.

I continue to move towards the direction of my room but an intercepted by the Guildmaster and pulled into his office as I was passing by.

" Alice you seem to be doing well." The Guildmaster said after closing the door.

" I'm alright, sorry for being gone for so long."

" It's quite alright my dear, I heard about your little hold up from the church. They sent someone to inform us of your injury and the man very dramatically insisted you stay there care until you recovered."

" Well, that's good. Did you tell anyone else?"

" I informed your other classmates when they came looking for you."

" Thank you."

" Your very welcome. Now onto the real reason I wanted to speak with you. Do you think you'll be able to participate in the competition still? You seem alright but I heard your condition was a pretty severe."

" I'm alright, Just got to get used to a few things but I'm still able to participate."

" Good, Well be leaving in thirty minutes, collect your things while I go inform the others."

The Guildmaster left before I could speak another word.

Seeing as I lost nearly three days of precious free time where I planned on doing everything other than training before we left, and had no time to do it now, I quickly run over to the Bath house and wash myself and clothes before we leave because I don't know anything about where we're going, and I still only have a handful of outfits. I move to reconvene with the others in the Guildmaster's office thirty minutes later. As a group along with Mrs Himeko, Talfa, and the collection of students participating in all three years of the competition, we departed for Haven.

The teleporter was located in a reception building connected to a luxury hotel. Typically in the event that a noble or someone from the royal family comes to visit they are immediately taken to there temporary residence. This is for security and secrecy purposes. I've been told that the kingdoms tax collector's are the most frequent visitors from the teleporter, seconded by the king himself surprisingly enough. I've heard he likes to get around and assess the state of his providences himself. Good on him.

The teleporter was a massive magic circle that has been drawn on the ground. This was created so that anyone with mana could initiate the spell in specific conditions. The amount of people with space magic are few, and while they are not that rare wasting most of them on being teleport proxies would be as previously stated. A waste.

We spent five minutes waiting for the teleportation array to be properly set up before we were told to position ourselves anywhere inside the circle there is thirty three of us and we still had plenty of room to add more.

Teleporting was a bit of a weird feeling. The change in air pressure and the spontaneous change of scenery gave you a bit of a headache and made you a little backwards, especially considering the room we were now standing in was an exact replica of the room we were in before only mirrored.

After a minute I shook off the weird feelings and once everyone was ready we left the building, exiting into a whole new city.

Haven was a massive city. It was also a beautiful one. The cities nickname was the city of white, and true to its name the city was a very white place. Majority of the buildings had a untarnished, white exterior, typically accompanied with a small garden. The roads were paved with brick and divided by a line of well groomed trees. Occasionally the road would open up to a large gate that lead to a massive manor.

Haven was a massive city divided by four walls. The largest wall was the exterior wall protecting from any outside treats be it monsters or other people. Between this wall and the next was the outer city. This portion housed most of the workers and laborers that worked within the cities next ring the middle city.

This part of the city is located between the second and third walls, and is the place of majority of the businesses. This is where the laborers go to work and a majority of the shops are located.

The Inner city was positioned between the third and fourth ring of walls and is the rich people area. Only individuals with a crap ton of money could even enter this place. Every noble in the kingdom has an estate in this inner city as well as noteworthy merchants, members of court, and high ranking military officers who have not gained a noble title. Inside the fourth circle was the imperial Palace, the largest most glamorous building in the Kingdom.

We are currently in the inner city because nowhere else would you find people who would actually be allowed to use the teleporters.

Our Journey continued, leading us to the middle city where Havens adventurer's guild was located. Surprisingly this guild was actually smaller than the one back in Elysium, and compared to the other buildings we've seen so far it was rather lackluster. Walking into the guild the inside seemed brighter than the one back home. There was no second floor with any restaurant, and the bottom floor seemed more professional. The corridors to the left and right were similar to what I was used to, left led to the task/reward room and the right was the store and butcher area. The stairs up to dorms and back to the training areas was also the same.

The guild master signaled to the receptionist and she left, returning with a group of people.

" It appears the senile old loon finally decided to show up, we were worried you had forgotten about us, guess you haven't totally lost your mind yet." One of the people snorted

" My you seem to have forgotten your manners, didn't I teach you last time to respect you elders Mr. Abelon" The Guildmaster replied, causing the man to flinch.

"Will you two stop it." A lady from the group said already sounding exhausted. Turning to the Guildmaster she continues "We've been waiting for you to arrive, was there a reason for your late arrival?"

" Why of course there was! I couldn't be leaving my ace back home, besides I couldn't be the only late arrival." The Guildmaster said with a laugh

" Surprisingly, you are the last one. Everyone was excited that we would finally be able to start the meetings on time for once but of course there had to be some issue." Another man said with the most monotone voice I've ever heard.

" Well I suppose none of this matters considering I'll be winning all three of the competitions with my students unrivaled abilities."

This seemed to visibly tick off all of the people who came.

" Bring it asshole" One of the females in the group said voicing the thoughts of the rest of the group.

" Now where are you manners, need we repeat what happened last time?" The Guildmaster said provocatively.

" All's fair in love and war." The lady sneered

" Oh, so you love me?" The Guildmaster said with a teasing smile

" In your dreams you old coot."

The bickering between adults continued as they moved away from us to another room not too far down the hall in the same place the where the Guildmaster's office was back home.

The attendant beckoned us children to follow her to the training grounds, while the teachers told us to behave ourselves before parting off somewhere else.

The training grounds were big, there were a lot of different groups fighting or conversing amongst themselves. A few people briefly looked our way but they ignored us after a glance. We were told to wait there until the rooms we were going to be living in were completely ready. A few of the older kids in our group began having little spars with each other. I didn't feel like doing that right now so I decided to watch the other groups to see if I could figure out what some of my potential opponents may be capable of, but stopped shortly after I realized there were a few hundred kids here and I didn't want to do that anymore.

I finally settled on experimenting with the new skills I got namely Unstable Mana Shot. I already knew that the skill caused some damage to it's user but it was a new addition and I didn't want to immediately wright it off.

I decided to use my finger as a test subject because, why not, and used the skill. I focused the skill into the point of my index finger and Mana began to converge on that point. The Mana began to grow unstable so I focused the point further down in my finger and stability reigned again. Once that started to get unstable I tried to slowly release it. This was so I could get a feel of the power of the attack and how to control it better. Problem was it wasn't flowing back it just kept building and I was progressively getting more and more tired. I could barely pause it much less reverse it. I panicked and decided to shoot it into the sky.

Holding my arm up at an angle, so that the blast would not hit anyone on accident, and it hopefully would be blamed on someone else, I released it. The pain that followed made me cry and I bit my not maimed hand to the point of bleeding to muffle my screams. The launch had mangled my right hand and the lower parts of my arm. My hand looked like a peeled banana and the bone was the soft inside. My hand wasn't bleeding profusely surprisingly enough, but it definitely hurt like hell. I struggled to keep a level head as the pain continuously assaulted my brain in waves, and attempt to heal it.

* KABOOM!*

A massive explosion erupted in the sky drawing the attention of everyone in the arena and momentarily stoped everything going on. I managed to ignore it because I had more pressing matters at hand.

Using gravity and mental shock as assistance to realign my hand a silver light envelopes it, solidifying. My regeneration took control, while I used more Mana to help with the healing. The small amount of moonlight Mana I supplied to my hand acted as a makeshift Ice pack, because it was still a little sore and not fully reformed yet.

After calming down a bit, I glanced at my helpful little HP bar and noticed something shocking.

[Lv: 1/20 Exp: 0/2

HP: 905/1140

MP: 2240/7200

SP: 930/930]

The Attack itself took about 4500 Mana and it wanted to keep going. I immediately make a mental note to not play around with this specific skill, because I'm not a masochist and all this skill brings me is pain and exhaustion.

I just sit and wait for my Mana and the rest of my hand to regenerate itself, which shouldn't take too terribly long and slip back into the group I came with, without being caught.

I may not like the skill, but I couldn't deny the power behind it. One shot and I could have easily killed any student on this field, quite possibly multiple at once.

I stayed as inconspicuous as possible until the attendant came to bring us to our rooms. There were six rooms all thirty of us had to share two for each year one per gender. The first years had it good because we were evenly divided five boys and five girls.

I had to share a room with, Emmy, Caroline, Tanya, and Chloe. Chloe seemed to be really nervous seeing as she was kind of the odd one out of the group. To her the other four were friends and she was now the outcast. I didn't really know what to do in this situation either, and neither did the others so we just kinda stood there awkwardly staring at each other to try and figure out what we were going to do. Chloe wasn't overly social with us. Caroline got bored and decided to go practice inviting anyone that wanted to join. The weird atmosphere of the room warranted everyone to say yes and we walked out together. Chloe was a little unsure but we all pitched in and pushed her out the door.

Moving back to the training grounds, they were a little less populated than they were about five minutes before. We settled in an isolated corner of the area and we decided to play a little game of king of the hill. We drew a big circle in the dirt and a smaller one inside of it. The big circle was about twenty or so meters in diameter, and the smaller circle was about five, I think.

The game was simple we all would start on the edge of the large circle and run inwards to the center circle, then defend it. If you get knocked out of the small circle you had to go back to the edge of the big circle to try again. We didn't use all of our skills and attacks because doing that before a competition is just stupid, showing off all of your cards is not the smartest move, especially when it would be so easy for someone to watch.

For this game all our weapons would be dull and wooden. I decided to use my knives, wooden ones of course.

We all got into position and the game started. I quickly ran toward the center of the circle just barely outpacing the others. Upon arrival I see a ball and chain come flying at my face. I stepped to the side and pulled on the chain causing Emmy to stumble forward. Her stumble was a hoax, as the next second, the ball came smashing down at my feet the chain moving as if it was alive. To avoid it, I jumped and flipped forward, using Sunfire to cause an explosion on the bottomed of my foot to launch me out of the way of a large gale of wind. Landing on the ground I ducked barely dodging a strike from Tanya, I tried to counter with a kick but she blocked it with the guard of her sword. Throwing her own kick , I lean back letting her kick pass in front of my face while placing my foot down from the kick. Feeling something coming from behind me I flip back over a fireball that was now aiming for Tanya's face. The fireball connected and Tanya fell on her butt.

The fighting went on for a little while, I got hit a few times and I accidentally stepped outside the center circle a few times, but it was fun.

We all looked haggard at the end, We were breathing heavy, all of us had slightly burnt, torn clothing bruises and scorch marks on us. Some may say we over did it, but we were just having fun, even Chloe had a smile on her face. We finally packed it up and returned to our rooms.