Chapter 551: Sentinel Guild

Erik POV

Erik trudged into his room, shoulders slumped. He didn’t know why he felt so upset. He knew the odds of his victory were slim at best, but he knew that he had just faced one of the best talents in the Empire. A person he suspected would win the entire thing.

No, he realized that he was so upset at how easily he had lost.

He clenched his fists and bit the inside of his cheek hard enough to draw blood. While he knew victory was unlikely, he truly believed he would force the other boy to work for it. But that wasn’t the case.

He had barely forced the other boy to use any of his true strength. The spectators might have thought differently. From their perspective, it had been a long, drawn-out battle.

But Erik knew the truth. He had seen Julius’s other skills. What he had shown Erik was simply a small fraction of his complete skill set. He hadn’t even bothered to attack him with his constructs, going at Erik with his fists.

Julius had been taking it easy on Erik, and that was what upset him the most.

He was lying in bed, brooding over his loss, when he heard someone knock on his door.

He didn’t move to open it; he stayed where he was.

“Open up, Erik,” his father’s voice rang out through the door.

Erik still didn’t move, despite knowing that he was being childish at the moment.

However, it would seem his father wasn’t going to be denied, and Erik felt an intense pressure from behind the door blast outward. His heart raced instinctively, and he immediately sat up. He was going to head toward the door to open it, but his father had other plans.

The door was ripped from its hinges, and the enchantments that protected the door were similarly ripped apart. Standing in front of Erik was his father, holding the door open with a blank expression as if he hadn’t just torn the door out of its frame.

Horace Grimes was a hulking man. Erik was already quite large, but compared to his father, he still felt tiny. The man had been semi-retired from adventuring for the better part of two decades, but he still struck a terrifying figure.

His aura hadn’t dwindled in the slightest and was probably stronger now than it had been when his father had still been adventuring with his team.

Even as Tier 5s, his father and his friends had been one of the more elite teams out there. Unfortunately, a tragedy befell them at the tail end of the last monster wave, and they had lost Tavlen, their group’s scout and Erik’s godfather.

Erik didn’t know the whole story, but apparently, his father’s team had been stuck between two particularly strong hordes of monsters. Tavlen had taken it upon himself to sacrifice his life to create an opening for his friends to escape.

His father and his team hadn’t quite recovered from that loss, and they all quickly went their own ways. Creating families of their own and settling down. As far as Erik knew, only Uncle Torrance was still out there adventuring, but that man would likely never settle down. Always on the move, wanting to explore new and dangerous regions.

For a mage, Uncle Torrance certainly liked tiptoeing on death’s doorstep. Erik knew his father was envious of this, and that was why he sometimes snuck off with Uncle Torrance for a bit of fun, despite his mother’s disapproval.

Thinking about Tavlen’s death and his father’s own struggles actually put his own issues into perspective. It made him realize that this loss wasn’t that big of a deal in the big picture. Sure, it sucked, but it wasn’t the end of the world. He needed to remind himself of that.

While all of these emotions and thoughts raged in his head, his father stood there impassively, watching Erik.

“Are you good now?” His father finally asked when he saw Erik calm down.

Erik nodded. “Yeah, sorry about that. I got more upset than I should have,” he admitted.

His father placed a heavy hand on his shoulder. “No, it is fine being upset after such a loss. But I am proud that you are already getting past it. Don’t let it weigh you down, use it as motivation to get stronger.”

“I know, but it’s hard not to wish I could have done more. Force him to put a little more effort,” Erik grumbled.

“Did you try the best you could? Did you use every ounce of mana and stamina?”

Erik nodded.

“Then you did all you could,” his father said, shaking him with his hand. “Now come on, I didn’t just come here to rescue you from your pity party.”

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“I was not having a pity party,” he argued weakly.

His father looked at the crumpled bedsheets where Erik had been lying. “Sure you weren’t.

Erik got up before he could get any more embarrassed. “What did you need me for?”

Thankfully, his father didn’t see a need to tease him any further. “The Sentinels Guild sent a message to you. They want you to head over to their headquarters and discuss some stuff.”

An uneasiness settled into his stomach. “Did they mention what they wanted to talk about?”

“No, just that they want to speak to you.”

Erik didn’t know what they wanted from him, but he only hoped that they weren’t upset at his performance and weren’t reconsidering his spot in the guild.

***

Erik couldn’t get his leg to stop shaking. The reason for this was because of the man he was standing in front of. When he had been asked to head over to the headquarters, he had been expecting to talk to Janet or someone he was familiar with.