Rise of the Nightmare Crestmaster

Aldrich entered the guild hall in his disheveled state, looking frantic and panicked. Many people looked at him in surprise, some of which were examinees like Aldrich himself.

Aldrich grabbed one of the employees and spoke incoherently, "the… quest… monsters… well… help!"

The employee looked stunned for a moment before he nodded and said, "alright, follow me."

He was taken to a room, a woman in the same uniform waited for him there.

"Tell me what happened and start from the beginning."

Aldrich started retelling the story but he obviously didn't mention that he eavesdropped on Sam and Liam's conversation. He also didn't say anything about pushing Sam down to his death.

Instead he changed some of the facts to look clueless and mentioned how Sam in all his valor sacrificed himself so that Aldrich could make it out and warn the poor villagers.

All this time the woman was writing down his story word for word. Aldrich had already memorized the whole story before coming here.

In the end she finally talked about what he wanted to hear the most, "about the quest and the exam—"

"No! I don't care about the exam, I know I failed but the importantly, you have to send someone to eliminate those monsters… the villagers are in grave danger. This is what Sam would have wanted."

The woman sighed, "I understand how you feel but… you could be considered to have passed the quest and can move on to the next phase."

Aldrich smiled and hurriedly asked, "really? You're serious?"

"Yeah, you found out what happened to the two missing victims and the reason for their disappearance. We will still send someone out there to check up on things and finish this matter."

The woman looked like she wanted to say something but she found it difficult to talk about it for some reason, "These two guides… they are the ones to blame for how things turned out…"

"What? How can you say that! Take that back! Sam and Liam are heroes." Aldrich exclaimed all the while inwardly nodding in agreement.

"They were probably aiming to get promoted through this quest."

"But just completing the quests would have been enough right?" Aldrich had believed that to be the case but Sam's actions then didn't make any sense later on.

"Yes, completion alone will get them a good evaluation but if they went above and beyond the requirements of the quest and resolved the danger at the same time their evaluation would have allowed them to immediately rise to rank two Assistants."

Hmm, so that's what was going on. His thoughts were right but he just didn't have a clear enough understanding of how the system here worked.

"Alright, get going you need to wash up. Your name is Aldrich right? 2A? I will report that you passed and moved on to the next phase. Come back here tomorrow to join up with the rest of your peers to form teams and get your second phase quests."

Aldrich got up with spring in his steps but he was stopped before he walked out.

"Oh, and tomorrow you will get to see one of the Ringed knights, the white blaze spear. He will give a speech to motivate you rising youngsters."

"Ohh, what?" This time Aldrich was really excited.

The knights of the last Sustar, this was the name of the guild but the word 'knight' did not refer to Crestmaster knights. Within the guild there is an inner circle that acts as an independent order and the center of the guild, the Ringed knights.

These were the backbone of the guild, and adventurers could rise to that level by completing quests. It was very vague what the knights did and what their purpose is.

However one thing is clear, the Knights are widely respected and hold incredible influence.

The power threshold to get invited was unknown but some people predicted through patterns that the peak of grade two should be the qualifying factor.

Aldrich returned to the workshop: Leaf it to me. He decided to return the sword, after all he had his own and he felt bad that the owner lost four of the swords that were rented out.

"So, you're telling me that you could only bring me this?"

The elven woman was upset.

"For now only. Later on the guild will send someone there. Obviously they will retrieve the bodies and equipment too, so you just have to wait a bit."

"Wait a bit? You know that if the items are not returned by the time you agreed on the price increases?"

"Uh, lady I think you're mistaken, I'm not the one who rented these swords from you. I was just being nice by returning this back to you."

"You were with Sam when he did this, and now that he's dead you have to pay me my money."

"You can't be serious he did that on his own, I am just here to return this sword. The rest of this matter has nothing to do with me."

This lady was clearly hysterical if she thought he was going to pay anything. That asshole already did enough damage by almost causing Aldrich to fail.

"You…"

Before she could say anymore Aldrich walked right out of the door, he was already exhausted from all the acting he dis today he was not about to go through a pointless argument with this crazy lady.

Back in the apartment Aldrich took a nice long bath and cooked some nice grilled steak seasoned with a spicy garlic honey sauce, and finally some cold beer to wash it all down.

He checked the essence orb harvest today and chuckled, 30 red orbs from killing those Moji. Not bad, not bad. Unfortunately the next quest was bound to be… complicated.

Bandit extermination. And then right after awards he will have to make to the ancient land bridge.

Back in the nightmare realm, Aldrich didn't dare to travel by jumping on rooftops so he decided to just teleport to the Underbridge area where Uldin, the merchant of Leng stayed currently.

Unexpectedly the teleportation cost him ten red orbs, but when he went back and forth to the Fractured chapel he didn't have to pay anything. Almost as if to encourage him to go there.

The next day, the first thing he did was take a carriage to Lunsken district, the Grinning aatax. Here he met Cole again.

"So, how are things on your end? What did your friends say?" Aldrich had to know if their previous agreement still stood.

Cole thumped his chest, "they both said it was fine. Actually finding two more talented people was definitely a good surprise for them too. And since we can make a grand party whatever the last two quests may be it won't stop our rise to the top! Cheers!"

"Yeah, cheer!" Aldrich coughed, "but, eh, there's just one little, tiny thing you have to know."

Cole's smile died and said, "what is it? Were you injured in the first quest? Did your friend not make it past the first quest?"

"No, no, I'm perfectly fine. It's about my friend, you see his girl is also taking the exam and he has to take it with her, so if he joins us then so does she…"

"And I take it this girl is not like us, is she?" Cole cleverly identified the crux of the issue.

"Yeah, but she took the oath recently and she'll ignite her crest soon, and she's also quick on her feet. She's a half decent archer too."

"Alright you don't have to sell her anymore, we'll take her."

"Really? You sure?" Aldrich asked doubtfully.

"Yeah, we have a team full of capable people we don't have to worry too much about taking someone… less experienced."

"Will your friends be alright with it? It might not be as simple as that…"

"It's fine, enough nagging already."

Aldrich sighed, "thanks, I just wanted to let you know in advance. You can consider this a favor to me."

"Well, I'll take it."

"I'm leaving we'll meet at table 2A today to officially make the team and take the two remaining quests."

"Yeah, drinks after the speech are on your friend because he has a sweetheart and that makes me seriously jealous!"

"Yeah, he ought to treat us." Aldrich absolutely agreed.

****

"… you've got to be kidding me." Ayemon was exasperated.

Aldrich smiled warily, he didn't know how to reply to that. Even he didn't expect that the first and supposedly easiest quest would end up being so messed up.

"In the end things played out safely and I completed the quest so, it's fine."

Ayemon nodded, "like I said things could and will go wrong that is why you have to be on your toes."

Aldrich told Ayemon the whole story honestly without hiding anything from him. This was not something that he had to hide from Ayemon, perhaps it might even be better to let him know so that he could better deal with any repercussions.

"Well, it's about time. I have to go, my friends are probably there already and I don't want to be late." Aldrich said as he got ready to leave for the guild.

"Hmm, are that excited to see the flaming spear?"

"It's the white blaze spear."

"Whatever. Don't be fooled that guy is not as impressive as he sounds. Just a fancy title, a big head and nothing to show for it."

"Don't you like anyone?"

"I like myself."

"Someone else, anybody other than you?"

"Hmm, no one that I can think of at the moment besides our great Emperor."