Chapter 206 – Old acquaintances.

“Leave me alone you musclebrain, I won that money fair and square it’s not my fault that you are too dumb to understand a simple card game!”

“Shut up you runt, give me back my money!”

Roland’s eyes were drawn away from the two familiar-looking men down on the ground to a voice that he found suspiciously similar to someone he knew. Yet where he expected to see that person instead there was another.

‘Is that something like a halfling? She is really short…’

Finally, the mystery was cleared up, the barbarian woman had lost money in a game of cards. While perhaps cheating was involved it didn’t seem that Grisalde had any proof. Probably after losing enough games in a row she finally snapped and started chasing the small girl around. While she did look young her age was unknown to him, the number of magical races in this world was quite staggering and hard to section off.

‘Well, it would be too much of a coincidence if she was the one here, those two did form a team if I remember…’

While the chase was going on he turned his head towards the two men that had been clobbered. Both of them were slowly getting up, one was rubbing his chin while the other was holding the eye that he was popped in.

‘They did make progress in all those years, looks about normal.’

When he met these two all those years ago they were still steel rank adventurers, now they advanced into tier 2 and were approaching level one hundred. Yet his own speed compared to others was staggering as he had around forty levels above them.

Grinding the schematics and in high level dungeon areas while living in the city had truly put him above the average adventurer that did things slowly. The two probably went from one job to another without really paying attention if they were optimizing their leveling potential.

The ones that progressed faster weren’t the ones that worked harder but ones that did things smarter. One method, in particular, was to find bunched-up monsters and kill them in bulk for quick experience. It was similar to exploits in games where a player just pelted mobs from range without them being able to reach him.

‘Now what? Should I stop that idiot for old times sake?’

Roland was looking at the two get up from the ground. It was obvious that the person being chased belonged to their party. They would probably involve themselves with the barbarian woman that was just swinging her arms around while trying to catch the halfling.

If it was the old him then walking away would have been the most natural thing to do. Why would he get himself involved in a bar fight where he didn’t have anything to gain. But now after mellowing out at the city he realized that it wasn’t that bad to foster some bonds with other people.

Even now if he didn’t meet Elodia he would not be able to take this task without revealing his true class. Others would think that he was a runic mage and a runesmith instead all thanks to his connections. He was only one man in a vast world in which the strongest could exert their will over the weak. Without any help from others, it would be a truly hard task to progress further.

Yet fostering good relations had its downsides like this one. The two warriors were on their feet and slowly looking towards their party member that could get herself killed by one punch from the barbarian woman. He was already a member of the caravan party and the large woman was a temporary party member.

While he didn’t know her too well if things continued like this it could jeopardize the mission down the line. Working together with someone like this that started fights in cities they didn’t know was not something he was looking forward to.

“Hey, giant woman, leave her alone!”

Before he could make a decision though, Orson started shouting in Grisalde’s direction. The small person was quick to hide behind the two warriors from her party after seeing them recover from getting smacked down. It was three against one but he couldn’t see the two being able to overpower someone that was over thirty levels over them.

“Yeah, leave me alone, you tell her Orson.”

“I see you two didn’t have enough, now give me back my money and I might not break all the bones in your body.”

Grisalde snorted after seeing the two men put themselves in front of the halfling girl he didn’t know. This would have been a good moment to run for them but it seemed that they had their pride hurt and were willing to engage in some fisticuffs. Their weapons were on the ground which was good as then lives could be lost.

“That’s enough, I think you have caused enough damage.”

After assessing the situation he finally made his move. His voice was enhanced by some magic which caused the shouting onlookers to look towards the man in the shiny armor. From the outside, he looked like an armored knight wearing a dark robe over his body. The people standing directly next to him quickly stepped to the side, it was clear to them that something was about to happen.

“Oh, it’s you? Stay out of this tin head these bastards owe me money and no one steals from me and gets away with it!”

“We need to focus on the job, the caravan is going to leave in a few hours, you should get some sleep, and…”

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She cracked her knuckles while glaring at both him and the two warriors that were barricading the way towards the halfling girl. To make things even worse she peeked her head out from behind Orson while sticking her tongue out which Grisalde noticed.

His reply was met with deaf ears as she just bolted towards the location of the halfling girl. Both Dalrak and Orson looked at each other while nodding, it was clear that they were ready to take her on with the help of cooperating. While she was stronger they outnumbered her, if they treated her as a boss monster then perhaps victory could be achieved.

“For the love of…”

Yet Roland had enough of this charade and decided to step forward to place himself between the two feuding parties. A large fist was heading his way though as the large woman clearly didn’t respect him enough to listen to his advice. But what she did not expect was that the person that was supposedly a runic mage moving his hand up to catch the fist.

Mages were considered one of the physically weakest classes of them all. They almost never received stat boosts in their strength stat while scoring minor gains with vitality and endurance. Thus she was quite surprised by the amount of grip strength that Roland was able to exert after he caught her strike mid-swing.

“I said that’s enough.”

While he managed to stop her hand from colliding with his face he needed to use quite some of his own muscles to hold this fist in place. The woman had a similar level to his own but all of her classes were strength-focused.

Roland on the other hand only had his blacksmithing classes that gave him a moderately high amount of that stat. While his runesmith lord class had slightly better progression than regular tier 2 classes he still was held back by his mage and runic scribe class that didn’t add much to his physical stats at all.