Chapter 19 – New beginnings.

“What do you mean he is gone?”

A loud booming voice was heard followed by a sound of shattering furniture. A chair was thrown at a wall and it fractured into many pieces on impact.

This all was happening inside a large room, it looked to be some kind of noble house. There were various paintings and bookshelves in this room along with a big crest that had ‘Arden’ written underneath.

“Please my lord calm down.”

Adam the butler used a handkerchief to wipe some sweat from his brow. He had just arrived at the Baron’s office with bad news, his son was missing. The man responsible for keeping watch over him was nowhere to be found and just as him, the boy was gone. The man didn’t send in the weekly report as usual and by the time they sent someone else to check there was no Roland to be found.

“T-The report said that the adventurer party that he was traveling with wasn’t in the city of Carwen either, they might have just left the city together with the young master.”

Wentworth Arden, Roland’s father stood there behind his desk. In a fit of rage, he had tossed his chair at the wall, missing the butler but a hair.

“Get out and send more people! And bring me a new chair!”

The butler just bowed while getting out of the room with haste. The Baron moved over to the couch that was to the side and grabbed himself a bottle of schnapps to soothe his nerves. He looked to be quite angry while he drank. He had seen the whole report, the man that was supposed to keep watch was gone.

There were a couple of possibilities, some better than the others. The possibility of the boy just going to a different city was there but the disappearance of one of his men was strange. The Baron smelled some foul play and he was angry that the possibility of his son’s death was out there.

“Did he escape?”

The man spoke out before taking a big gulp straight from the bottle while contemplating. He knew well that finding his son would be difficult if he decided to run away. He didn’t have enough pull to get the adventurer’s guild to give out his location. Only large Ducal houses or the King could achieve such thing, the adventurer guilds around the kingdom were very adamant with there rules. They also had some powerful adventurers that the kingdom wouldn’t be willing to go against if push came to shove.

“Or did he perish?”

This was the other option on the table, one that he didn’t want to believe in. He shook his head while taking a swig from the bottle again, his chair was already on the way and he needed to get back to work.

Somewhere far away the estranged son in question was sitting in a large moving train. He was looking at the passing scenery with boredom. He had been on the road for a week already, there was no TV or internet here so he was left with staring at the scenery or reading books.

He had already gone through the storage bag that his previous party members gave him. He wanted to go back and throw it at their faces as they left ten small gold coins inside. This was more than he expected, five small gold was the largest sum he was willing to take from the twenty that the girls had.

He couldn’t do his rune scribing as he didn’t have any materials. Neither would it look good to just do it out in the open in a moving train. He had no books to study up either nor was he feeling sleepy and that was probably due to his sleep resistance skill.

This long journey had taken over a whole week but now it was close to being over. He had seen the scenery change quite a bit through his travels. The Caldris Kingdom’s climate wasn’t too warm or too cold, you could see many grass fields and forest areas scattered throughout the land.

The more you went in, the more the climate changed. Where he was going it looked to be colder, more of autumn-like weather. He was also traveling into lands with a higher altitude as many rocky structures appeared. While on the last stretch of his travels, he saw the scenery turn rocky and they were going into a mountain range. There was a reason why this city was known for having blacksmiths.

“Now arriving at Edelgard, please take all of your belongings while going out”

The train drove up at the last stretch, the city of Edelgard was built into a large mountain. You could even see some mine shafts sprinkled in the background and smoke coming out of them. He could see this while the train moved through a large bridge that connected two city parts. Under it was quite the large gorge, a fall from here would spell certain death.

This city made him think about dwarfs from some of the fantasy books he used to read back on earth. In them it was always stated that this race liked to build their cities on or in mountains, some even had ones placed deep underground. He was finally here, he didn’t need to carry his luggage thanks to his spatial bag this time around.

‘I have arrived!’

He walked out half nervous and half excited. This was a new place filled with opportunities that could come to fruition. This was also a place filled with uncertainty which made his belly feel like he had a swarm of butterflies in it. There was no one to greet him here or help him out, he was truly alone. He wasn’t lonely though as he was used to working solo, the short time he spent with those three girls was the exception to the rule.

‘Ding…ding…ding’

He heard the sound of a large bell. He turned to it and saw two people in robes. The robes were white but due to time they now looked gray. There were some yellow patterns here and there but the most glaring thing was the large yellow sun symbol on their backs. These strange robe-wearing people were close to the exit so he needed to move there. Roland already had an idea of who these two people were.

“Praise the sun traveler, may the Goddess Solaria bless you on your travels, would you like to join us for prayer?”

The person in the robe called out while waving the bell around. The voice was an older man, next to him stood a second person that was smaller and of the female gender. She was holding a large plate in both her hands and holding it out as if asking for something.

Roland knew about the identity of these people. They belonged to the Church of the Sun, they worshipped the Goddess Solaria. From his more modern point of view, he found people like this a bit strange. Nevertheless, people from this church were granted the acolyte class that could then evolve into the cleric, you could even become a paladin.

A sound of metal dropping on a plate was heard as Roland dropped some copper coins on the collection plate. Even though he never liked churches, in this world they were in a strong position. The class changing stones that were a necessity were actually produced by these people.

No one knew exactly how it happened, the Churches only revealed that it was all thanks to the power of their god. The stones were rumored to be a gift from the gods that allowed people to change classes and grow in power. This church wasn’t the only one that was able to produce this commodity, thanks to that the prices didn’t go that overboard even though the stones weren’t that cheap.

“Praise the sun!”

Roland nodded while passing the two priests that saw their next target behind him, he finally left the train station and went outside. He could see a lot of smoke coming out of the chimnies from this city. Most of the houses were made from rock or bricks, it was hard to spot any wooden structures here as he passed.

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His first destination was the adventurer’s guild, even though there was no dungeon located next to this city, it still operated in it as in the others. The adventurers here were mostly used as hired muscle and they worked as bouncers, guards and even cleared out some monsters that showed up from time to time. Even without dungeons monsters existed in the wild, so there was always some work to be done.

He asked for directions and headed out, he followed a dark rocky road that would lead him to the guild. While walking he took in the sights, the first thing he noticed was a large number of dwarves. There were also another interesting race that he didn’t see before, Gnomes. From what he knew, this race was very creative and intelligent which made them good crafters by default.