Carrion. A strangely named kingdom placed between clover and spade, a place Griswold personally did not mind existing. As a commoner who had been spending the past three years prior to becoming a magic knight in the forsaken region, he was glad that there was some sort of buffer between it and the spade kingdom. The forsaken realm was such an easy place to hit, which was quite sad when taking into consideration the amount of problems it was already facing due to poverty, roaming packs of wolves, raiders and other problematic things. Hage for instance was still in the process of rebuilding, while the Cromwell farm was facing quite a bit of issues as a result of a raider attack that took place two years ago. The fact that these people were still struggling after so much time proved that the gap between the forsaken realm and the noble realm was massive, humongous, gargantuan even. Truth be told, there was no word in the dictionary that could do the size of the gap justice, and that was a problem.

So as he was flying his broom towards his location, he wondered about why exactly he had been asked by means of letter to come to an estate that was owned by the Ravencrest family. And by that, he did not mean that he had no idea why he was asked there, as the reason seemed to be for training purposes. It was more of a question as to why he in particular had been asked for when there were probably a lot of other magic knights who could not wait to suck up to one of the noble families. That said, the few Ravencrests that he actually knew were not exactly the worst people in the world, which was saying quite something as Griswold did not exactly match well with the average noble. For obvious reasons, as there was really no way of explaining away the fact that people could frolic about in castles and mansions and practically bathe in gold while others had to work from dawn until dusk and still run the risk of maybe losing everything they had spent their lives building up.

The Cromwell farm was an example of that. Griswold’s very reason for becoming a magic knight was quite simple, to help people similar to the ones that had helped him when he needed it, and to send the majority of his monthly earning back to the farm. Because if he could do something to help out the Cromwells, maybe they would be able to expand their farm and make more money. And if things went really well, which depended in part on how well Emery could do business and how quickly Griswold managed to ascend the ranks, they might even be capable of employing other townsfolk so they and their families could share in the wealth. But all of that seemed like a distant dream, as all he had really managed to do up until now was climb to the rank of Junior 3rd class. Still though, even though it was not much when compared to other magic knights that had been in the business longer, it was something that he was personally quite proud of.

But the pride he felt was something he needed to keep on the down low, as he felt that such things would only impede him in his work, and risk making him act and behave like a noble. As none of those things were options he could permit for himself, he sent his broom down now that they had finally gotten close to their destination. As it took him quite a bit of effort to find the place on account of rarely ever leaving the forsaken realm, unless his help was needed in the common realm, places like Carrion required a bit of extra attention in order to properly navigate it. But luckily for him, he had managed to find the estate just fine as it stood out quite a bit. Landing on the terrain, it was not long before one of the people he imagined worked for the Ravencrests met him in front of the estate. Requesting he make himself known, Griswold told the man who he was before being met with some kind words, as well as making it clear that he had been expected.

Whatever it was that was going on around here, the elf thought that it was all quite strange. The one and only time he had actually been around Hania was when they, together with Maglomil, went through a “Dungeon” that had just popped up out of the ground in the form of a humongous castle that was making the surrounding lands sick while warping or killing the wildlife into mutant monsters. Judging by how strong he was, he more or less figured that the possibility of being a noble was there, as being a noble seemed to come with the perks of having quite a bit of magic power when compared to most humans. And since the people Griswold had been around in the forsaken realm prior to becoming a knight, he was inclined to believe those stories. But now that he was being guided around the estate in order to meet with Hania, it seemed that there was not really a whole lot of reason to believe that the guy was not in fact a noble. All of the signs pointed towards this being the case, though he figured that it was still a question worth asking once he got there.

Because the estate was quite big, as he would have imagined it to be since it was a place owned by nobles, there were quite a lot of sights to see. He wondered if Lydia and Michail were around here somewhere too, or if they maybe had estates of their own because they could probably burn money to keep themselves warm at night and not be any poorer at the end of the night. As they were really the only members of the Ravencrest family that he was aware of, he had a bit of a searching attitude about him. As he was looking around for just about anything familiar, he could see Hania up in the distance, as well as some kind of weird creature he had never seen before, but seemed like some kind of bird. When the bird however suddenly disappeared into a burst of particles that seemed to merge with Hania, he saw his hair color shifting to take on some of the characteristics of the weird bird. More than that, as they got close enough to actually see and feel it, his eyes had also begun glowing while the overall vibe around him felt colder.

“So, it seems you have some pull around here, at an estate belonging to the Ravencrests. Does that make you a noble as well? Another member of the Ravencrest family?”

Not really sure what to say as he really had no idea what was going on here, why he had been requested to come here or what that weird bird thing was, he had just decided to state the question that was at the front of the line of questions that he actually had lined up. In time, he imagined the others would also get a chance to shine, but for now, he would stick by what he had asked. If he was lucky, the rest of the answers would also just magically appear, but in the likely case that they didn’t, at least he had the time today to get to the bottom of the others.

1279

When the man who let him in, who was apparently known as William, moved away from him in order to make an attempt at Hania, who in turn seemed to have a hard time maintaining his balance for some reason. Listening to what was being said without really acting as there was really no point in both him and William making an attempt at helping, he would just stay where he was while keeping an eye on how the situation would play out. Surely he knew a thing or two about magic, but that knowledge did not stretch far enough towards whatever this was that was going on in front of him. He had seen what had happened, what with the bird that seemed to be magical in nature breaking itself down into particles shortly before Hania turned into the way he was looking right now. So as he listened, the elf tried to make sense of the things he was hearing.

Of all the things that came by in that moment, he could only imagine that Amnostia was the birdy thingy he had seen for a brief moment, though he had no idea as to what a Spirit Dive was. As things were now, he could only try to deduce what it was based on what he had seen, leading him to believe that it was some sort of symbiosis between a human and a magical animal, or whatever it was. Even though it seemed incredibly weird to someone who had only ever been taught to let nature be, unless that nature was violent to the point where it could not be frightened into leaving, in which case there was only one option left, which was to kill it. So to him, the notion of being able to merge with a magical animal like that, it seemed weird, though not at all out of the realm of possibilities. After all, the people he had originally grown up with had spoken about being “one with nature” ever since he was still a little boy.

Once Hania had told William that he would be fine with it if he stayed around and kept an eye on him, and therefore also on Griswold as he was more or less standing right there in his field of vision, the elven knight was not entirely certain as to whether he was okay with it himself. Being a relatively close person, he did not really enjoy it when people listened in on his conversations, at least when he did not intend for others to hear it. That said though, there was something about the man that made him seem fairly trustworthy, which was quite odd due to the fact that they had never met before. But based on the trust between Hania and this William person, he felt like he could be okay with it. That said, if there was going to be something that went wrong for whatever reason during this “Spirit Dive” business, Griswold would not exactly be the right person to ask to help out with that.

Sure, he knew some first aid, but when it came to such elaborate magic, they’d be better off asking a donkey or a cow for help. So when looking at it from that point of view, the young lad would probably be able to learn a thing or two just by watching whatever this strange merging spell was all about and what it could do, aside from dropping the temperature to less summery levels. When he had concluded his business with William, Hania turned over to Griswold, making it known that he was indeed another noble. To Griswold, the initial shock of people letting him know that they were in fact nobles was almost on par with someone telling him they were dying, though that always left relatively quickly. In this case, it went away even sooner due to the fact that Griswold had more or less already deduced this much on his own. After all, he was standing in what he assumed was a noble’s backyard, so there was very little room for fault there.

“Yeah, I guess it kinda did do that. Or rather, it struck me as weird that you’d ask me to come to an estate owned by the Ravencrests, though that was mostly because I did not really think you were one of them because you did not exactly make it known during our initial meeting. Michail on the other hand made it quite clear that he and Lydia were, and that I should “show respect” to the family.”

It was something that had always stuck with him in a rather vivid manner due to the first time Griswold had met Michail, who seemed incredibly stuck up and somewhat anti-commoner at the time, resulting in the former calling the latter Ravenboy. Instantly met with quite the response regarding how the Ravencrest family name was one that demanded respect and that not showing that respect could get him killed, it had made the elven made laugh a bit on the inside. He had never been one for showing respect to those that did not deserve it in his eyes, and he would sure as hell not give any respect to anyone just because they had a well known last name and a nearly inexhaustible bank account. That said, he had eventually come to respect the three aforementioned members of the Ravencrest family based on their merit, not because they were born into the right family by chance. He had seen all of them fight for what they believed was right, and they all fought like lions, and that was worth something in his eyes.

It seemed that he had done something that was worth being praised over during the time they had first met as a team of people who had been sent out to deal with what was being called a “dungeon”. To Griswold, that whole encounter seemed more like an ecological disaster that killed everything around it, not to mention that the whole place seemed to revolve around authority and pain, like a warped kind of royal capital. When the conversation moved away from how one of them was apparently a noble and moved into a far more interesting one that carried a lot more weight for anyone who could call themselves a magic knight, the subject of the royal knights was being brought up. At first, he believed that this was likely just some sort of fancy name for a bunch of people that had the right last name, like Silva or Vermilion. This was also because he had not heard anything about this message that had supposedly been shared by the wizard king himself.

“I’m sorry to say, but I haven’t in fact heard about this message, though this is likely my own fault. You see, I’m not the kind of person that enjoys spending time around headquarters or within the confines of the royal capital. In fact, I do my best to stay away from the noble realm altogether as there are far more pressing matters that need to be taken care of in the other regions, the forsaken realm in particular.”

Luckily for him, Hania made it quite clear that this “Royal Knights” business was something people could sign themselves up for, though he imagined they would likely need to meet certain requirements. Bringing up that this was the reason why Hania had called for him to meet up here, so the two of them could do some training to become strong enough to make it through the selection process, he wondered if such a thing would really apply to someone like him. After all, he was a commoner who had only been a member of the magic knights for little over a month now. There was still an insane amount of stuff about magic that still made no sense to him and required a lot of work just for him to figure it out, and he had only recently managed to utilize spells that packed more power than the average fireworks any person with some spare change could purchase from a store in the capital.

Continuing about the subject by claiming how he himself had been trained since he was about seven years old, Griswold felt that much more out of place. As a child, he had never really been capable of using magic, which was why he had focused on his physical prowess instead. While he could not utilize his mana, he could punch someone rather hard, and the strength with which he could punch someone. And when he had been more or less forced away from his ancestral home on account of it no longer existing for whatever reason, it had been almost two more years before he actually obtained a grimoire. So as a magic knight that had about a month and a half worth of experience as a combatant in the field with roughly two months worth of experience when it came to using a grimoire filled with spells, it seemed quite logical for him to doubt whether or not he was a good fit for such a force as the royal knights.

“To be honest, I don’t really think I’m fit for the royal knights, or for the magic knights for that matter. The only thing that really matters to me is getting stronger so I can protect the poor and the downtrodden who can’t help themselves. For that reason alone, I would very much like the opportunity to get stronger, though I imagine I don’t need to be a magic knight in order to do that...”

For whatever reason, the conversation had taken a turn that made it rather personal for him. Because in truth, nobody really knew a thing about him or where he came from, which was something he had kept that way for a very good reason. He had seen plenty of people in the noble region looking down on him for no reason other than the fact that he was a commoner, which had often made it hard for him to really continue being a magic knight of the kingdom. That said, the only part of the kingdom he had ever really fought for, and would continue fighting for was the region further to the north, as well as the realm that bordered on it. Most nobles who had issues would be able to pay for help, which was not something the average peasant or farmer would be able to do, and that was why Griswold always patrolled those regions in particular. So far, he had already been quite honest about himself, though there was always something he would keep to himself.

The fact that he hailed from an elven enclave from deep within the fringe, that he had trained under his mother to become a hunter and a tracker, and trained under his father to learn more about botany and farming, which made sense for someone who showed little to no aptitude towards magic at all. All of the people he had known in the past, all of the faces he had grown up with suddenly disappearing overnight had left a massive hole in his chest that could not be filled no matter how hard he tried. And try he did, with just about every single mission or job he took that legitimately made the lives of others better as a result. But as he could tell anyone who asked, there was no amount of hard work that would ever be able to fill up such a hole, it would only cover up the fact that it was there for the time being by giving one that temporary high. Unfortunately, a few hours later, that much would already be gone again, and he’d be once again left feeling the way he usually did.

“What does it mean to become a royal knight? And while we’re at it, what does it mean to you to be a magic knight? I’m not asking for any philosophical reasons, I’m asking because I am often having trouble convincing myself as to whether or not this is the right path for me.”

2044 (3323)

“Yeah, you’re just about the first member of a noble family that I’ve met that thinks the same way about it as I do, and I respect that. In my case, when I first took the magic knights exam, there were several captains, vice-captains and a whole lot of nobles who just looked away from the fight. And not because we did not put on a show, but because of the fact that I did not have a single drop of blue blood running through my veins. Because of the fact that I was a commoner, many of them would not as much as spit in my direction since they considered me to be inferior.”

Speaking in response to how Hania was someone who wanted to be known for his own merit rather than for his title, his last name or the people he either knew or was related to, it was that kind of stuff that Griswold could respect in a person. Mostly because he was just about the same, but yet different at the same time. When he transitioned from the elven enclave that had just disappeared all of a sudden, along with everyone and everything he had ever known inside of it, and made his way to the clover kingdom, he had dropped his first and last name, allowing that part of him to die so Griswold Cromwell could rise. Solarian Shadesinger was an elf from the fringe that no longer had any ties to the world, while the name Griswold Cromwell was a promise to the people with the same last name who had saved him, a promise that he would keep them and people like them safe from any kind of harm that might threaten them.

For obvious reasons however, that was not something everyone needed to know. But aside from that, it was quite funny to him to think about how both Lydia and Michail were related to Hania, mostly because they all seemed to be so different in their own way. Though they had one thing that they all shared to some extent, this being that they were surprisingly distant at first, but opened up to people not much later. At least, that seemed to have been the case for at least two of them. Because for as much as Michail seemed to not like peasants and commoners, the fact that he had taken a bullet for him during their last mission meant that much of that bravado was just that: Bravado. Sure, the bullet had been made out of molten cheese, and neither of them would have died or actually been hurt beyond the point of maybe receiving a bit of reddened skin, though it was the gesture that counted.

“As for your relatives, I think Lydia tried to save me once. I mean, I had the situation mostly under control after some lunatic decided to blow up a store and rip the person who owned it to pieces in the middle of the street. When I was close to beating her into submission, your sister popped up and pretty much exploded her guts all over me. While that is a day I would rather forget, it is still a gesture that I appreciate, even though I do regret the loss of life that took place that day.”

Even as he thought back to that day, Griswold could still taste Crissandra’s blood in his mouth after she had been blown all over him by a spell that had seemingly dealt more damage than anticipated. The fact that he was in the middle of talking to her while exchanging fists had not really done him any favors, as it had been what had allowed all of that blood to just gush into his open mouth in the first place. To say that he had been brushing his teeth and gurgling with spring water and mead for about a whole day after that would actually not be much of an understatement either, especially when taking into consideration just how long he had been bathing to get all of the blood off. Had it been up to him, he would have liked to see the woman put into a correctional facility rather than a furnace given her age, as she seemed to only be a little bit older than he was. But he understood how the vice-captain had seen it as her duty to protect one of her own squad members from a traitor to the clover kingdom, so he had come to terms with that.

“As for Michail, he came off as a bit of a turd at first. Truth is, he can still behave like a bit of a turd at times, though I feel like the last two times I’ve been sent to undertake a mission with him, he opened up to the idea of working with a commoner at least a little bit more. And from some people, I guess that’s about the most we can realistically expect.”

As the conversation pushed onward, it became clear to him that Hania did not much appreciate the way Griswold looked at nobles in particular, and that much was to be understood from another noble. But the thing was, the vast majority of the nobles he had met up until now had not exactly treated him like much of a human being to begin with. Sure, there were some examples, though the fact of the matter was that at the end of the day, the average clover noble felt they were better than the average commoner. After all, they had the wealth, the political power and the magical power whereas most commoners had none of that. And as much as some of the nobles might want to believe that things were different, it really wasn’t. Only those that had actually lived live as a commoner, or rather, as a peasant toiling in the forsaken realm would know what it was really like, and nobody who had been born with a silver spoon in their mouths would be able to say otherwise.

“While I truly would like to agree with the whole “if one of us suffers, we all suffer” mentality, we both know that that isn’t true. Even before the shattering, some people were born into a life where they had to wake up at the break of dawn, work the field while living off of bread and water until the sun set or after, only to barely make a living wage. I’ve seen people who worked their asses off day in and day out that eventually lost everything because it was simply not enough. Meanwhile, there are nobles down south in the capital that have more money than they can spend in a dozen lifetimes that do not lift a finger to help, even though a single gift could help those people out of the gutter for years. So while I would love to believe that this mentality of yours is truly the case, the simple fact is that it isn’t, though people would love to believe otherwise.”

So as he made that statement, part of him imagined that he would likely not be allowed to stay at the estate for a whole lot longer. That said, he had no idea how tight the noble families were among one another, and if badmouthing one of them reflected badly upon all of them. Obviously though, that much was silly. Griswold knew very well that there were some noble families that were trying to make a difference, but to say that the poverty and strife in the forsaken realm was something that affected everyone in the kingdom was simply not true. It couldn’t be true for one specific and simple reason. If people were really bound together through hardship and wanted to make things better for everyone, there wouldn’t be a caste system. There wouldn’t be a country divided in three sections based on how much wealth and importance someone had. But that was something that had been a part of the country for a very long time, and he imagined that it was going to remain the case for quite some time to come, at least until all of the people in power could agree that it had to change.

Until that day came, Griswold would focus his attention on the poorer zones as the noble realm had plenty of people who were jumping to get a chance at getting into their good graces. Hania had said so himself, he did not tell people what his last name was during missions because he did not want anyone to suck up to him because of who he was and who he was related to. Still, as he had been arguing the case that not everyone was treated differently or felt the pain of others, there were some name drops that seemed outlandish and strange, even after it was made clear who or what these people were. And the answer was, not people, but demons. Speaking of several archdemons and similar vermin such as Aamon, Asmodeus and Lilith, Griswold could say that he was not exactly familiar with them. Even though he had heard some stories, the fact that he had been a magic knight for little over a month and had spent that time holed up in the forsaken realm fighting wolves, goblins and other lesser threats had kept him quite out of the loop.

So even if he really had no idea what all of this was about, he still wanted to do his best to keep up with what Hania was telling him as it seemed important. Not just to the noble realm or the forsaken realm, but to all of the realms, as well as the rest of the world. The very idea that something had been kept from people since the whole attack on the capital was quite a strange thing to be confronted with, as he really did not know what to make of it. Because for all intents and purposes, Griswold was really just a Junior knight of the third rank that had only recently begun earning a few golden stars for the Crimson Lions by fighting lesser threats to the country, primarily in the region that was furthest from the royal capital as one could possibly get. So when he heard that the witch queen was in fact the very same person as the arch-demon Lilith, there was also only so much he could do with that information. Truth be told, he had never really been diving into the whole witches forest thing much. He knew about them being there, though he had never really met a witch or even so much as thought about what they and their territory was like.

Such was the fate of those who lived a relatively single-minded existence. Because for him, life had always been about how he could best help out his new family on the farm, how he could go about helping as many commoners and peasants at the same time or how could he get strong enough to take on different threats of more challenging levels. Those were the things that occupied his mind, rather than really pondering on the matter of demons, witches and possible wars. Though the way in which all of this stuff was being phrased made it quite clear that it posed a threat to the very people he had spent so much time trying to keep safe, and that was quite the bothersome issue. So even if Hania was really just reciting something, likely the message that had come from the wizard king, the same message that he had missed at the time of broadcasting, part of him wanted to ignore it. Even if some arch-demon had been tricking a lot of other magic knights into doing things she needed to get done, that she had been toying with them, it really only showed how inferior he was.

“You know, as much as I would love to help as this seems like the kind of threat that endangers the lives of everyone in this country, as well as those who live in other countries near us or in parts of the world we have never seen or heard of before, I don’t possess the same level of power or aptitude you or Lydia do. I’m just a junior knight who fights goblins, wolves and the occasional elemental made out of cheese. Compared to the captains and the Senior knights, someone like me would just get in the way. Or don’t you think people such as me, when faced with the threat of demonic royalty, would just get in the way?”

No matter how anyone looked at it, the way Griswold saw it, it was a legitimate question. For someone who went around running from town to town, forest to forest, cavern to cavern, all for the sake of squashing large spiders, chasing off wolves, beating up goblins and debating right from wrong with trolls, fighting a demon was just such a massive leap out of the kiddo-pool and way, way into the deep end. For the first time in a long time, the thought of something that was on such a big scale was beginning to cloud Griswold’s mind, drowning out all of the positive things he had achieved recently with doubt. And for good reason, because all of his successes had been achieved against foes that made an enemy such as Asmodeus or Lilith look like ants. So even though the elven knight had no idea as to who either of those demons were or what their powers were like, their names alone were enough to make them seem like some really, really, Really dangerous entities within the confines of his own psyche. And they were not the kind of threats that he could deal with. Not the way he was now at least.

“Or do you believe that someone like me could get ready for such a massive undertaking in however few days or weeks are left before those exams begin. Because don’t get me wrong, if there were actually anything I could do for the sake of the people of this country, I’d be all for doing it. But if my only purpose would be to act as a human shield, I’m not sure how much good I’d be when matched against something that would give even the captains of those three squads a run for their money.”

With the threat of not one, but several demons of the highest order looming over them made the whole noble versus commoner discussion feel like a small spot of dirt next to an oil leak of catastrophic ecologically disastrous sizes. So while the things Hania was telling him with regards to how he had come to enroll into the magic knights, how he had obtained his grimoire and how he had done so during a war between two countries, it still paled in comparison to having to fight such otherworldly threats like demons. Because no matter how strange it might have sounded to someone who did not believe in any form of afterlife, the idea of demons being real meant that all of the other stuff might have been real too. When Yugo had at some point stated that some of the enemies they had fought together in an old elven ruin had been possessed by demons, Griswold had shrugged it off as the ravings of someone who did not know any better. But all this coming from the wizard king, as well as Hania, who was a person he had fought alongside once before, it just made it all feel so much different. So much more dangerous.

“But you’re right. Having the tools of a magic knight at my disposal does make looking after the forsaken realm a lot easier. So if you are sure that someone like me could make a difference when fighting threats of such cataclysmic proportions, than I’m ready to start training like my life depended on it.”

Due to his own uncertainty, he would leave part of the decision up to Hania, a magic knight who was younger than he was, but had seen much more of the worst things one might encounter as a magic knight. When Griswold had arrived, Hania said something along the lines of how he had impressed with how the elven magic knight had handled himself in the dungeon, so that must have meant something. That, and in the short period of time he had spent as a magic knight, he had managed to learn so much about his own personal magic that people such as Michail were surprised at how quickly the commoner had grown stronger, strong enough to undertake missions and jobs of greater difficulties and threat levels. So if it was any indication of what might still happen, of the potential that was still untapped, maybe Hania knew of a way in which he could bring it out and elevate him to a level where he would no longer be just a gnat compared to the demonic royalty that was awaiting them.

2873 (6160)

When he listened to the story Hania told with regards to the people who were looking at his fight, or rather not looking, it was entirely possible that he was remembering things wrong. After all, he had been fighting another mage in an attempt to prove himself capable enough to actually make it into the magic knights to begin with. But when he had looked up at the end of the fight, he knew that many of them were not looking at him but at one another or just away. Now that he thought about it, it was also quite possible that they were talking among themselves with regards to what had been going on in the fight, judging whether or not they believed him to be capable enough to actually join up. Maybe it was true that he had remembered things wrong because he was tired after the fight and had a certain predisposition towards nobles due to the sorry state in which the people he cared about had to live. Still, that would really only have mattered little as far as things went.

Even without a whole lot of input from the other squads, he had managed to make it into a particular one that seemed to also be rather filled up with nobles. The fact that he was the only commoner in the squad proved that it was at least trying to change from the others that seemed to be quite keen on only allowing those of noble birth, and he could respect that quite a bit. So while he pondered on how accurate his memories were, he listened on to hear how there were several nobles placed in high stations that were actually quite busy when it came to trying to help commoners and peasants after all of the bad stuff that had happened in recent times. It was strange how little he actually knew about any of that. He heard mentions of things every now and again, though he had no idea that certain things were going down in the way that they were. When Yugo had brought up demonic influences a couple of days ago, he had just called the guy a nut and continued doing what needed to be done at the time.

But for obvious reasons, he had come to reconsider his stance on demons being a real thing when he looked around in the elven ruin they had ventured into together and finding a wall that actually stated how specific demons had been sealed away hundreds or maybe even thousands of years prior to the present. Due to the wear and tear of time however, it wasn’t possible for them to actually figure out who or what this had been about in particular, though Griswold respected the elves of old enough to know that they would not casually bring up the sealing of demons on a mural if they were not actually serious about it. At that point, he had begun to understand why Yugo had become so obsessed with anything that had anything to do with demons as a whole, though that understanding had only begun increasing as he was listening to the things he had heard just now. What with Aamon, Asmodeus and Lilith, which seemed to be the three big names behind all of the demonic activity he had clearly been oblivious to all this time. But not anymore.

So before he would cut into that particular cake for another slice of information, he just waited for the tale regarding the philanthropist nobles and captains to end as he did not just want to break him off in the middle of a story. After all, Hania was sharing all of this information with him so that he would in turn be capable of making more capable decisions with regards to how he felt towards nobility and how they were treating the rest of the world that had not been born with a silver spoon up their mouth, or in some cases, up their asses. So even though most of the names that were being thrown in his direction would likely take a seat in the deeper recesses of his mind, it was good to know that people like them were actually out there. Whether they were acting out of entitlement or because they legitimately felt for people however, that was something that remained to be seen with his own two eyes, though the simple fact that something was happening to those unfortunate souls that were hit by all of that misfortune was a welcome thought to say the least.

When the subject switched to his grimoire on account of him often times feeling inadequate, Hania claimed that his particular grimoire was “nothing to be sniffed at” and that it had the potential for great growth. It was probably because of this that he had been able to, even if only slightly, had managed to keep the promise he made mostly to himself, but told himself that he made it to Lydia. After the killing had come to an end and he had gotten to hear exactly what Lydia’s thoughts were on things like the correctional institutions and facilities in the kingdom and how it was always going to be more important to look after the many rather than looking after the one, he had come to the conclusion that he needed to stop being untrue to himself. He needed to no longer spend time around the crimson lion headquarters and sleep in a comfortable bed in a room where he could take a bath or get a shower, to basically return to the basics and to nature.

And truth be told, having to bathe in creeks, rivers and basins all over the country was incredibly refreshing, even if it was incredibly cold and at times incredibly dangerous too. But spending so much time wandering the outer regions of the common realm, working hard in the forsaken realm and at times wandering around the fringe had really pushed him towards increasing his offensive and defensive capabilities. Increasing the density of his mana skin to more notable proportions, expanding his repertoire of spells which had only existed out of two actual spells prior to that point that were also of an extremely low level of potency, he had already managed to turn himself into a mage that could stand his ground to most of the threats that would arise within and around the kingdom. Goblins, cheese elementals, elven wraiths and banshees, grave robbers and bandits, wolves and wargs, even mandrakes and hags. They were all things he had fought and beaten, showing just how much he had grown in a month. That said, all of that hard work, it all amounted to nothing when standing in the colossal shadow that was being cast over him now.

“Yeah, I guess you’re right about that much. For the past month, I’ve been focusing really hard on developing my magical capabilities, developing spells that would be useful enough to actually use in battle. Though I imagine you’ve already seen most of those in use during the time we spent inside of that dreadful castle. Still, it’s good to hear that there is at least something about me that show potential and room for growth.”

And he wasn’t lying when he said that either. Sure, he had grown quite a bit already, but if he was to somehow live up to people along the lines of captains and vice-captains, as well as demons and their followers in this world, that just meant that there was still way more that still needed to happen. There was no getting around the fact that if he went into a situation like the one described to him before, what with taking the fight to the archdemons, he would just get splattered all over the pavement before he would even have realized what was going on. That was, unless someone else got hurt or killed while trying to protect him, which was arguably worse than dying himself. In a way, he had already been saved once by someone who believed they were doing the right thing, and probably were. But if he had been stronger at the time, he would not need to have been saved by anyone, nor would anyone else have had to die. Had he been stronger, he could have taken care of the situation on his own, and that was something he had to live with for the rest of his life.

“I imagined that something had been off about that encounter. I know Lydia is incredibly powerful, as I imagined anyone would be when they utilize a type of magic that is as rare and potent as light magic. But I could tell that the magic sword was meant to pierce and slice, explosive power did not seem to be part of the deal. However, the person I fought utilized fire and black powder magic, so maybe that’s what caused that volatile outburst on contact. Regardless of what happened though, I honestly hope that it was the last time I’d be forced to taste someone else’s blood in my mouth.”

Not really being overjoyed at having to remember that day, or the taste of blood in his mouth that was not even his own, it was strangely relieving to hear that if Hania had been that lunatic, that Lydia would not have hesitated to kill him either. It was to show what he already imagined would be true, but could not actually know for sure until he actually heard those words. Griswold hadn’t exactly imagined that she would have gone about things differently if the lunatic had been a noble, or someone she knew that had gone bad. Still, he imagined that if it was somebody she knew, she might have tried to approach them in another way before actually heading in for the kill, but that was just the way he imagined things to go if he had been in her shoes. If his magic was well enough developed to do anything even remotely similar to what she could do with her light magic, he would probably have tried to talk people down before attacking as a means of incapacitation, eventually resulting to killing them only if all else had failed.

But that was just the kind of person he was. At first, he could not even stomach the thought of having to kill sentient creatures such as Goblins, even if they were the more cunning and vile kind of greenskin wandering about in the clover kingdom, let alone kill a bunch of ordinary grey wolves that posed a threat to livestock within the forsaken realm. Now though, he had gotten over the initial shock posed by death and having to kill things, believing that people were correct in assuming that the lives of the many outweighed the lives of the few, especially when it came to non-humans that he did not even know or like in the first place. It was where his human teachings as a magic knight clashed with his elven teachings from the shadesinger enclave, which had taught him to respect all sorts of life equally, whether they be humanoid or beasts, even monsters. So when the illusion of importance had been presented before in the shape of Michail Ravencrest, he understood quite well what Hania meant.

“You know, I am a foreigner myself. I actually grew up in the fringe in a place known as the Shadesinger enclave. It was a place filled with people just like me, and we were taught to respect nature, in every single one of its forms. Whether it was a human, an elf, a dwarf, a dog, a deer or some grotesque monster, every life had value to us. We did not eat any meat either, unless our hunters and huntresses had been forced to kill something that encroached upon the enclave and threatened to destroy it or could hurt and kill the people inside it. Those were my favorite days as we got to actually eat something other than mushrooms, nuts, vegetables and fruits for once, and I always really enjoyed monster meat.”

Thinking back to those days, he considered the idea that he might not be doing the right thing by bringing all of that up here and now, as it was something that had always existed outside of the knowledge of the four great countries. They had always been a self-sufficient settlement after all, located right along the border of a strong magic region, so no one had ever needed to know about them as they did not need to trade anything with anyone or go anywhere to buy or sell their stuff. They had no use for the concept of trading or buying as they looked after one another like one huge family, so the need for currency was just not present at all. In a way, it was the perfect way of living life, at least that was how Griswold had seen it. There were no leaders, no one who was more or less than the other as the used referendums when needing to make any sizable decisions that affected the enclave as a whole.

As there was really no need for any leaders, they had every youngster training for the kind of job they wanted to take within the enclave, which was usually a choice between two particular fields. One either became one of the hunters and huntresses tasked with protecting the enclave, meaning they would be trained in the art of stealth, armed and unarmed combat, tracking and learning which animal left which kinds of tracks, as well as several courses in setting non-lethal traps in the surrounding area directly around the enclave. The other one was to become a farmer that learned how to tend to all of their food, how to tell whether a crop had gotten sick or was infested with some kind of bug or parasite, when something was ripe and when it was not, as well as knowing exactly how far apart to plant seeds and stalks so each plant would have exactly enough room to not take up needless space while still being able to grow to their absolute best potential. Both were admirable ways of going about life within the enclave, and both were treated with equal amounts of respect.

“Where I came from, the whole notion of nobles, commoners and castes was a foreign concept that did not exist, which is likely why I am still having trouble going about it like I am now even after spending the past three years here. Had it been up to me, I never would have come here either as life was just a whole lot better there. Though the thing is, there wasn’t really much of a choice for me in the matter.”

Once he had been picked to train to become a hunter, he had been out one day in order to set some of his self-made traps, only to return to a crater where the enclave had once been. No matter how hard he looked, there was nothing remaining in the surrounding area or the crater itself that seemed like it had ever been the site of a settlement. There were no bodies or material remains, no signs of any buildings or tools, it was as if they had just been erased from the face of the world entirely, and he had been the only one “lucky” enough not to get caught up in whatever had happened. Spending the next couple of days doing nothing but frantically searching for his people, or any sign as to where they might have gone, eventually ended up wandering into the clover kingdom, dehydrated and malnourished. Passing out there, the locals believed he had died and looted him for all he was worth. Had Emery Cromwell not appeared to take him with him to his farm, he would certainly have been dead within the next hour as well, meaning there would not have been a single Shadesinger elf left in the world.

“One day, I went out to do my duties, and when I returned, everything I knew was gone, along with the entire enclave. I’ve never managed to figure out what happened to them, or if any of them are even still alive. I’ve searched for them for days, and eventually passed out near a small town. A commoner from the forsaken realm called Emery Cromwell took me in, saved my life too. It’s part of the reason why I’ve always prioritized the region over the noble region, because I truly believe those people can take care of themselves, whereas the forsaken realm is just more vulnerable to anything bad that happens. Think of it this way, once a war breaks out and an invading army wanders in, the forsaken realm is the first to get hit, and it’d become a war zone for sure.”

Even though it had been over three years ago, it was still hard for him to talk about the time he had lost everything he knew in one blow. What just made it ten times, if not a hundred times worse was the fact that he had to guess as to what had happened to them, that he would never actually know whether they needed him in their final moments and that he had simply not been there to aid them. His parents, his grandparents, his uncles and aunts as well as his nephews, the neighbors, his teachers, the farmers, the hunters and huntresses he had trained with, as well as his friends and rivals. Gone faster than he could blink his eyes. It was a stain on his sanity, on his reputation and the kind of damage to the mind and soul that would probably never be able to go away as it could never properly get settled and given a place to rest within his psyche. It was for that same reason that he had always been so hard at work to get stronger and more respectable as a magic knight and a champion of the people, as it was the only thing that really took his mind off of things.

But what could easily be considered the best thing to come out of all of that misfortune was the fact that he had met the Cromwells, his adoptive father Emery, as well as his adoptive brother and sister, Henrik and Paige. It was entirely because of them that he had given life another chance, becoming an entirely new person that would eventually grow towards becoming a magic knight so that he could send back his earning to the farm, hoping to one day turn it into a business that was doing so well that they could use their success and wealth to employ everyone who wanted the job to benefit from it, lifting at least one town out of poverty in the process. As someone who had not been born into nobility, it was the only way in which he could truly go about making the world a little bit better, aside from actively trying to eradicate evil wherever he went of course. Speaking of eradicating evil, the more the subject of demons had been coming on top of the table and put into the spotlight, the more he started considering the fact that demons might have been responsible for what happened to his people in the fringe.

“But knowing what I know now, I am guessing it is quite possible that they might have been eradicated by a demon as well. They did not really have the kind of defenses the clover kingdom has, so I imagine they did not have much of a chance against such a being, even if it wasn’t even one of the archdemons. But that’s just what I’m thinking might have happened at this point. The sad thing is, I’ll never really know because I wasn’t there to help them. So you could say that I’ve been given a second chance at doing better this time, with a new country with new people in need of protecting. And I’d rather not turn my back on things twice, even if the first time had not exactly been intentional.”

If nothing else, he hoped that explaining a bit about his past would shed some light on why he was having so much trouble getting used to the whole idea of one person being considered a noble while another was considered a peasant, and that one of the two naturally bore a certain amount of respect while the other was not really considered to be a whole lot of anything at all. So when he was told by Hania that it would probably be better not to call another member of the Ravencrests a turd while standing on their very soil, it was a warning that was not overly well received. Even though he knew that it was most likely more of a warning to not call any members of other noble families turds or worse when they were around, he did not exactly like having to mind his vocabulary just because someone around him might or might not have been a noble that took offense to such things. This was ever more so the case when he considered how often he had been called a turd around the farmland when he did something wrong, or simply just out of affection.

“As for speaking my thoughts, I figured we were in a free country among people we could trust. Michail knows quite well what I think of him, though there is a reason why that tur- that fine young man and I have gone on several missions and excursions already. Think of it as more of a nickname than being impolite, unless the reasons for calling people something is not allowed on noble soil. Among us commoners and peasants, we call people names all the time out of affection, rather than ill will towards one another. But if that is a crime, that just goes to show that there is still quite a gap between noblemen and common folk.”

Getting rather serious all of a sudden, Griswold did not really enjoy the idea of having warning tossed in his direction, especially when meeting with someone outside of a work environment. He had not come here to be threatened, so if that was to be the way in which they needed to get along here, with the other holding their nobility over their head and how they could apparently not handle a joke made by a commoner with regards to another noble from their own family, than that meant that he was not supposed to be here after all. For him, it had already required quite a bit of willpower to put aside his feelings towards nobles to just oblige to being summoned somewhere in such a fashion, even though that had allowed him a bit of insight into the situation that was going on regarding the royal knights exams and the threat of demons. So if he could not even speak his mind because he was on some noble person’s soil when it came to a related nobleman, that was simply not something he could abide by at all.

Had a member of noble descent called a commoner “filth” to their faces while in the forsaken realm, there would not be anything they could do about it. In fact, it was for that reason that there was such a gap between people in the first place, one side being able to do everything they wanted with little to no fallout to their actions. But if a commoner or a peasant had the audacity to say the same thing to a noble, either within the forsaken realm or on the nobleman’s own front porch, that suddenly turned them into an enemy of the state. So while he did not assume that Hania or Lydia would actually attack him over it if he said it again, the fact that he needed to be warned over how he addressed someone of noble birth because it was not considered polite to say such things on their grounds. Well, that really did not make him feel all that welcome here as someone who was not of noble descent, it made him feel the opposite of welcome, even if he knew Hania, Lydia and Michail to some extent. Deciding not to make too much of an issue of it, there was but one more thing he wanted to say about the matter before he would drop it.

“You realize how this is exactly the kind of behavior that makes people like believe in the gap between commoner and nobleman right? I mean, even if you were joking, there are quite a lot of people who actually treat one another in that manner. If our words are considered impolite and need to be addressed when spoken on your lawn, where does it end? Do commoners get to tell nobles who come to the forsaken realm to hunt stags and boar get to be told to take their shit and leave because they are on common soil? That hunting in the forests of the forsaken realm is considered impolite as it steals food out of them and their children's mouths? Just something to take into consideration. But don’t worry, I’ll refrain from calling him a turd in the future and go with something more worthy of his status, something like Sir Stool….. I’m actually going to keep that one handy for next time we meet, see how likes that zinger. Hehe.”

While the first half of what he was saying was rather serious, as he really felt like that was something the people were struggling with these days, the latter was obviously a joke with regards to the present situation they found themselves in. Even though the two of them had been fighting together in the darkened castle, and even though Griswold and Michail had met up several times in order to fight for the sake of the civilians of the clover kingdom, he still felt like the need for a warning had given rise to a bit of tension. The very same tension that had more or less disappeared shortly after he had come to the noble estate in the first place. Because as much as he wanted to try and

“But I realize why you’re telling me that much, as I know that not all nobles are anything like you lot. I’ve heard of some of the more vile nobles going as far as purchasing hired muscle just to bust up some peasant for looking at them wrong in passing. So while I value the warning, I can’t promise to abide by it at all times. After all, nothing is going to ever change if we need to treat nobility like gods on earth and peasants as dirt.”

If that meant that he would end up receiving a beating because of some noble scumbag, even though he was a magic knight that put his life on the line to keep everyone safe, than that would be the end of that and the beginning of something new. If a noble, any noble, ever got the idea through their thick, inbred skull to give him a beating for acting the same towards them as he would to anyone else in the kingdom, he would not seek to train himself to protect them from demons. Instead, he’d work his ass off so that he would be the one that could eradicate them with his own hands before the demons would ever get the chance to touch them. Respect was earned by doing respectable things, not by having exactly the right kind of last name or parents, and that was not a philosophy he was ever going to stray from. It was the kind of philosophy that he wished to entrust to the rest of the country too, which was one of many reasons why he had become a magic knight in the first place.

It was something he had never realized until Michail brought up the fact that he wished to become a magic knight captain himself. Even if it sounded weird due to all of the captains being ridiculously strong, it was something Griswold himself wanted to strive for too. Not because he wanted people to respect his strength, but because he wanted to build something that could act as a foundation for change across the entire country. One that would make one group of people stop treating the magic knights as their personal guards and babysitters, and free them up to be able to do more in the regions that needed them for things other than taking a cat out of a tree, moving a heavy closet or looking after their kid while they went to a fancy fundraiser or diner party. And yes, he had actually heard of people doing those kind of things while calling them missions, just like he would call chasing off a pack of ravenous wolves from a farmland a mission. That said, looking after some snooty kids probably earned the squad in question more money, so to some degree, Griswold could understand why they’d allow it.

Everything had to be funded in some way or shape, and if there was one group of people that had a lot of funds to go around, it wouldn’t be your average farmer, it would be the noble that needed their kids to be looked after. For the time being though, all of that was just a bunch of semantics that he did not wish to argue, nor did he want to really bring up the fact that he wanted to become a captain some day as it was something that seemed so incredibly far away that it would probably never happen to begin with. Still, he felt that it was at the very least something to strive for. So with that much out of the way, he heard Hania out on how he had scolded a Vermilion once for being a dumbass, as well as claiming how there were magic knight squads stationed all over the country, including in the poorest regions. When hearing the former, he could only hope that it was in regards to Taiyo being called an idiot or worse as he really hadn’t a good word to say about that tool.

As for the latter, he wanted to say that Hania was right about that, and that it was a good thing that there were magic knight squads stationed everywhere, though it would give rise to an entirely different conversation if he did. Even if there were a few squads in the lesser regions, the fact of the matter was that the strongest three were located inside or close to the royal capital, which was not exactly a very fair distribution of power. He understood that people wanted to protect the capital, though even if that was their reasoning for putting the strongest squads inside of it, they probably forgot that most of the actual threats such as armies would have to first move through the forsaken region or the common region to get there, sometimes having to traverse both just to get there. So if the kingdom was going to be more smart about it, they’d put one of the stronger squads out in the common realm or forsaken realm too, a squad such as the Crimson Lions. After all, if nothing else, the royal capital also had the freakin’ Wizard King to protect it.

“So, if you don’t care about my social status, and I don’t care about yours, I guess that at least means something about nobles and commoners being capable of getting along.”

Again, he primarily brought this up as a means of jesting and joking, though that did not make it any less true. If a random peasant boy who spent the vast majority of the past three years working on a farmland, tending to cows, sheep and cabbages could get along with someone who was pretty much the heir of an entire country, that meant something for the future at least. From there on, he just continued hearing the guy out on whatever it was that he had to say with regards to their training process. To say that it all sounded quite interesting would be an understatement, as Hania planned for Griswold to stay here at the estate. From the change in tone, a tone that had not even really been all there when he had been warned about his own behavior towards nobles and the kind of behavior that might bring about towards himself, it would seem that this much was not exactly up for debate. Truth be told, given the amount of times he had spent under the stars in a ragged sleeping bag, an actual bed might not be all that bad for a while.

Claiming that this kind of training would be too much for him to just go through and still fly his way to wherever he normally went once he was done, Gris would be lying if he said his interest hadn’t been piqued. While he would likely regret this at some point afterwards, for the time being, he believed that this was exactly the kind of thing he needed if he was to become anything like the senior knights that were being asked to partake in these royal knights exams. Making it clear that this training was a requirement if he expected to get anywhere near ready in time, Hania rubbed the fact that the demon that had caused the shattering was but one of the triumvirate in his face, which would go to show how much damage all three of those monsters could cause if they were all together in the same place. Choking on his own saliva for a moment as he heard how one single demon had caused all of that damage around Hage that he had been trying to slowly take part in rebuilding for the past month or two, and how that was really but one of the places hit by it, he swallowed rather notably.

“I’d say you’ve made your point quite clear, Hania. Demons bad, Archdemons worse, and these three are about the worst of the worst if I’m hearing all of this correctly. The thing is however, now that I know all of these things, I can no longer pretend to be in the dark about it like I had been before. I also know for a fact that I’m nowhere near strong enough to make even a slight difference in a fight on such a scale, meaning my best chance at becoming stronger would be to stay here and train.”

And that was the truth about all of it, as it was really that simple. Even if he were to leave her and not train with Hania, he’d just find some other place to train by himself, though the amount of work he would actually be able to put in and the amount it would lead up to would more than likely pale in comparison to the outcome Hania and Griswold could amount to if they worked together on this. Hania was already strong, stronger than he could realistically become ever if he went through the training process the guy had planned out for the both of them. He even had a rather interesting bird he could fuse or synchronize with that made him even stronger, and he still clearly feared what these demons could do, which meant only one thing. For all of his strength, even he was not going to be any match for even a single one of these demons, which just made Griswold all the more as to who might be able to make even the slightest difference against one of them, let alone three of them at the same time.

He knew Lydia was strong, just like he knew the captains of the magic squads were powerful , really powerful. What made him think however was why only three particular captains had been mentioned in the message from the wizard king that Hania had relayed to him. One would imagine that if they were to be dealing with such an insanely high level threat such as not one, not two, but three blasted archdemons that had the power to destroy everything they touched, that the kingdom would send out every single one of the magic squad captains, as well as their vice-captains in order take them down. It seemed like a far more sound strategy that would likely hail greater results than sending in a ragtag bunch of magic knights hailing from various magic squads, spearheaded by the captains the wizard king had handpicked, among whom only two were actual magic squad captains and the other was the crimson lions vice-captain. Sure, Lydia was likely just as strong as your average captain, though that did not mean that had to come at the cost of just not sending in another actual captain too.

Hell, the exact reason as to why one would only send in Lydia, Ardere and Zaven, but keeping Malcolm Watanabe, Aias Simerail, Alyssa Lilygate, Aika Kazama, Torvald Sven, Nicodemus Silva and Barron Castle out of the actual fight seemed like nothing short of insanity. Moreover, this seemed like exactly the kind of fight that should for all intents and purposes be handled by the nine captains and be spearheaded by the actual wizard king himself. Why this was something that could not be realized was something he would probably not be able to get an actual good answer to, just like it would most likely just make him sound stupid just for coming up with it. Still, it seemed like a very legitimate thing for one such as him to ponder on, and for obvious reasons too. But the wizard king had decided that this was the way to go about things, and if he believed that this was the correct way of going about it, than that was likely because he knew a whole lot more about the situation than he did, what with him being something that had only gotten this information within the last five minutes.

Receiving another quick rundown with regards to the training methods they would be going through and claiming that it would be hard for even Hania to really go through it properly, and that someone called Victoria was likely trying to kill him it, it made him believe that this was the person that had come up with routine to begin with. An interesting bit of knowledge to say the least, as well as a fairly frightening one at the same time. Following up by making it clear exactly who Victoria was, making her sound like somewhat of a regent that looked after all of Carrion while Hania’s sister was gone, he figured that it sounded like the type of person that might end up coming up with a killer training routine that actually had the potential to kill those taking part in it. But for however frightening it was, the fact that Hania seemed to believe that he had the potential to actually rise to the occasion meant something to him, as it was something he was clearly not all that certain of himself. The step from fighting wolves in the forsaken realm to fighting archdemons in some witchy forest was rather big after all.

Actually, it was so big a step that it could not even really be called that. It was a leap, and a leap of insane proportions too. So having someone around that was a great deal more powerful than he was showing some modicum of faith in his present abilities, as well as in his ability to grow to levels far superior than what he was now was perhaps everything he needed to really push himself. Because when mixed with the promise he had made to Lydia, saying he would be vastly stronger and more superior to the fifth rate junior knight he had been at the time that was only capable of using a grand total of two spells, it became a three way issue between Hania, Lydia and himself. Because so far, the promise to be way stronger when he met the vice-captain of the Crimson Lions was one he had already kept true to, though the idea that he could still push himself even further before that time actually came was a very welcome bonus. Even though the promise had probably mattered much more to him than to Lydia, who had probably already forgotten all about it and him, it still held weight as far as Griswold was concerned.

“So that said, I think my path is already decided in that there is no point in leaving now. Either I stay and train here with someone who’s done all of this before, or I leave and train on my own, spending a similar or maybe even greater amount of time training while yielding far inferior results at the end of it all. So by all means, feel free to share exactly how we’re supposed to be going about this, and where I should start. Once I know a bit more, I can get myself ready for it a bit better.”

And with that, he would stop trying to change the subject or really argue about semantics between nobles or commoners on his own accord, though he still very much welcomed the arguments none the less. After all, it was not every day that he could argue with a noble without getting tossed into jail or have his knight status stripped from him. But at the end of the day, he realized that he had not come here to discuss the quality of life as compared between the average noble or commoner, he had come here to get stronger and benefit from what someone far more powerful than himself had already learned through hard work. And that was all there was to it, no more and no less.

7077 (13237)

“You know, it’s quite weird that I have two magical properties. Not so much the fact that there’s two of them, but rather the fact that they are more of the same is what strikes me as odd. As a solar mage, I can already utilize fire among other things on a far more elaborate level than just throwing around magical flames. There are times where it just feels like a placeholder, as if my grimoire is still in a chrysalis state, waiting for me to get stronger before truly realizing the true potential of this dusty old tome. Do you think such a thing is possible, or are such things entirely unheard of?”

Because of how Hania made things sound, it made him wonder if such a thing was actually possible in his case, as he often felt that him having both Solar and Fire magic at the same time sounded like some kind of joke. As if some kind of celestial force responsible for the actual grimoires had decided to pull some prank on him by making it seem like his grimoire was quite special, while at the same time making the thing that made it more special not be special at all. Even though it was something he had only pondered on briefly from time to time in the past, the moment that it was being brought up now just made all of those pondered up memories and internal discussions he had had with himself rise up to the surface, which was why he had tried his best to put it in words that Hania and he would understand. Still though, the idea of a magical book actually evolving past the thing that it was at this time sounded rather ludicrous, though Griswold was not exactly an authority when it came to grimoires in the first place.

Up until now, he had had very little time to actually get used to the idea of using a grimoire, in spite of being twenty-one years old. The simple fact being that he had only acquired his tome five to six months ago, which was three months and a few days before he actually took part in the magic knights exam meant that he had about as much time to train as the average fifteen year old had when they received their grimoire in a ceremonial display and got to try out to become a magic knight themselves. In that sense, he was several years behind many of the other junior magic knights that had signed up and either passed or failed during the same exams he had been a part of. But at the same time, he felt like he had managed to already grow faster than many of them, especially when he looked at some of his fellow junior knights within the crimson lion squad. When he had seen them last, he knew that he had developed himself in more ways than they had, likely because they still believed that life was some sort of game and that being a magic knight was some kind of novelty title that came along with them passing an exam.

Given the amount of death and destruction he had already seen up until now, it was that kind of reasoning that bothered him quite a bit, though not enough to call them out on it unless directly provoked, which had actually more or less happened during the time he had been condemned to doing a dungeon delving mission with the two of them. His manner of behaving was so incredibly childish and stupid that it could very much have gotten the both of them killed, all of them even if that behavior was allowed to fester. It had been one of many reasons as to why he had called the guy out for being a childish dimwitted idiot, as well as the main reason as to why he had straight up abandoned that particular dungeon. Trying his best not to think about that time all that much because it still managed to rile him up even now, he turned his attention towards something Hania brought up with regards to their captain. How he apparently had a rather low level grimoire, but had in turn been chosen by something called “Salamander” to be his companion. Clearly, none of this really resonated with him.

Because of how he was not much of a church goer or a believer in any kind of greater powers or whatever, he really only knew the name “Salamander” as something that belonged to the church as one of the four spirits. That said, aside from knowing the name and the name of what the church itself believed in, Griswold had no idea as to what any of these spirits actually were, figuring Hania was in some way trying to tell him that the Crimson Lions captain had been chosen by the church or something along those lines. As such, he was not exactly impressed by it, as he had had his fair share of superstitious people doing this or saying that, and believing a triangle was a square because some imagined higher being told them so. That much changed when the story continued, and it became clear to him exactly what was meant when Salamander had been mentioned as some sort of companion to the captain. Noting the bird that had recently reappeared after merging with Hania and claiming that it too was a spirit, Griswold’s eyebrow rose as if by it’s own before squinting his eyes at the creature.

What he had been led to believe due to stories of the past and the things he had encountered on his travels so far, spirits did not look like that. He had seen several spirits about a week prior to their journey into the cursed castle, the lost souls of ancient elven royalty who had been buried in a tomb beneath an elven ruin. Having been called back from beyond the grave after a pair of grave robbers had taken a magical staff that belonged to the head of the family, a long dead elven lord called Anneamdil, the power of the weapon had given their souls a forced ticket back to the land of the living in the shape of banshees and wraiths. Cursed with the knowledge that they would only be able to return to their afterlife once they reclaimed the staff from those who had stolen it and put it back on the pedestal it belonged, right beside the personal tomb of Anneamdil, they were to roam the halls and the foothills surrounding the ruins until they found whoever was responsible.

As the time went on and they did not get the staff back, the curse began to fill their minds with a haze of anger and hatred, overriding any reasonable thought with a single minded drive towards retrieving the weapon by all means. If it meant having to kill an entire kingdom just to get it back, that would have been what they’d have set out to do, though luckily things never came to that point because Griswold had managed to defeat the men who had stolen the staff and return it to the place it rightfully belonged. So after a quick conversation with an elven king who had passed away hundreds of years ago, the spirit had caused the tomb to collapse upon itself, leaving only the actual ruins above intact so that no one could ever take the staff from where it belonged again, and the horrors that had transpired would never come around a second time. At the time, he had seen what a spirit looked like, and those spirits looked nothing like the bird that was sitting by Hania as if it were some kind of trained falcon, ready to be sent out to catch a hare.

“So you’re saying that you have been blessed by that spirit, and that the captain was blessed by one of the actual four spirits that I imagine those church goers pray to, or sacrifice to… I actually don’t know what they do in church. But still, if a whole religious system is based around them, that must mean they are incredibly powerful. Wouldn’t they alone be enough to take care of the demons?”

To Griswold, it seemed like a fairly valid question as he had no idea as to what the full extent of the power of one of these “spirits” was, or how well they would fare against one of those archdemons, let alone the three of them. Luckily for him, it seemed that Hania had already figured that someone like Griswold, who had been oblivious to the notion of demons actually existing in this world would also have no idea as to what these spirits were, what they could do and what it actually meant to be chosen by one of them. It had been plenty strange enough for him to see a bird disappear and merge with a human being like that, though knowing that it was not an actual bird of flesh and blood somehow made it seem less weird, even though it should probably have made it more weird to the uninitiated. He did so by making it clear that spirits were unique in that they possessed quite a lot of power, and picked whoever they chose to bond with, so to say.

To think that one had to actually be chosen by a spirit as opposed to them choosing the spirit themselves seemed like quite the hassle, especially considering one would be left to the whims of a spirit to do as they pleased. If they were in a fight and such a spirit did not want to lend them their powers because they did not feel like it, that meant that they would simply not be able to draw on the full totality of their power, which meant that they could die in the worst case scenario. And the idea that such a thing might happen was rather frightening to him, as Griswold had never enjoyed the thought of being at someone else’s mercy, to have his fate resting in the hands of someone, or something else and that he had no control over the outcome. In that regard alone, he had to commend both Hania and the captain for their willingness to work with such beings, as it must not have been easy to get along with them all of the time. That, and it seemed like it would take quite a lot of work just to synchronize with one of them in order to bring out greater levels of strength on the battlefield.

Wondering what it was that made a spirit actually want to choose a person, it seemed that one needed to be exactly that which it was looking for, which was different for every single spirit in existence. This obviously gave rise to the question of how many spirits there actually were in the world, and why the church chose to only really recognize four of them in particular when it came to the idols and pillars of their faith. But the more he thought about it, the less he actually worried about such a spirit abandoning their chosen magus in their time of need. Because after all, why would they choose someone if they were just going to let them struggle and die when they themselves did not feel like coming out and actually doing some fighting. It did not make a whole lot of sense, especially when taking into consideration how one was supposed to nurture their bond as one would do with their friends and companions. Because at the end of the day, all bonds were formed on trust, so at least that much was something he understood quite well.

When two people, or in this case a person and a spirit trusted one another, they would be capable of doing so much more than two people who just happened to be tossed into the same gauntlet could. Whether it be combining their attacks to come up with a stronger one, utilizing one anothers strengths and weaknesses in order to come up with strategies that would draw the best out of both worlds, it all just added up really well. As for Hania, it seemed that this kind of symbolical union between him and his spirit went deeper than that, claiming that that was how he wished to view the world. As one big symbiotic relationship where if one group thrived, everyone thrived. Though the thing about that was that it seemed like it would never be realized, and would forever remain a dream. For as much as Griswold himself would like to believe that something like it was possible, it would mean that they would first need to somehow get the people in three regions to stop seeing one another as strangers, or worse, having to recognize a particular group as their betters.

And that would just be the start of it, because just getting the commoners and the peasants to really get on board with one another seemed like it might not be the hardest step to take. They clearly had a lot of things in common due to the way in which they all more or less performed the same kind of work, while the gap in earnings was still big enough to warrant for a little bit of animosity between them. That animosity however was something that could be fixed in his opinion due to the simple fact that they had more in common than they had that divided them as a group of people. But the one group that would be hardest to reconcile would always be the nobles, as there were too many of them that looked down on those that did not live in their particular realm for a plethora of reasons. Whether it was because they all just did not have a whole lot of mana when compared to a noble, they were considered dirty or smelly because they did not have their luxury, or because they were incredibly rough around the edges and foulmouthed.

These were all things that would always clash with one another until a systematic change was implemented that would truly break the current caste system. Because even if there were also a lot of good nobles in the world such as the people Hania had named that looked after those who were less fortunate in these harsh times, the vast majority was not like that. It was due to things like looking down on others that they in turn earned the ire of the average peasant, as well as quite a few commoners in turn. Noble children were often groomed towards behaving in a certain way by their parents and relatives on account of them one day having to take over as head of the family, which placed quite a burden upon their shoulders at a very early stage in their life. Coincidentally, when growing up around such vast amounts of wealth often warped the mind of a kid and caused them to get stuck in a mindset that just made them view others as either less significant than themselves, or insignificant altogether.

So when someone who had been groomed throughout all of their youth got to meet up with a peasant, who did not have the luxury of taking a shower or a bath with scented soaps and perfumes, who had not learned the proper ways of addressing someone above their standing, and simply did not have a lot of money to get around with, it often gave rise to ridicule. And this in turn obviously made the average peasant think of nobles as snobs who took baths in liquid gold, all while rubbing their butts with taxes and becoming that much more rich off of their hard work and effort. While they bled and grew callouses on their hands and feet, they received manicures and massages without having to do any actual work for a day in their life. And that was exactly what had also happened to Griswold. As someone who had spent the past three years a commoner, or rather as a peasant himself, he had heard plenty of stories about how the nobles were a blight on their country.

Taking over that belief as he went on to become a magic knight, it only made sense that he had developed a disdain for those of noble standing. After all, who wouldn’t have when they came from an entirely different place where wealth, standing and currency weren’t a thing, only to be thrust into one where he obtained the lowest standing of all and would need to make due with the idea that those with more money would likely look down on him and ridicule him, based on the stories he heard. But up until now, there were various nobles that he had actually managed to get along with rather well, Hania being one of them, even if their ideas were stark opposites at times. They looked at things through different lenses, though they could both agree on the fact that they wanted the clover country to be save and for the demons that threatened it to be dealt with properly. It was in that knowledge that Griswold knew that he could argue the points Hania came up with without the two actually becoming enemies as a result of it.

“While I get what you’re saying, it’s the general idea behind it that makes me rather iffy. Without the peasants to work the fields, provide the raw materials from quarries, look after livestock, fruits and vegetables, this country would likely starve. This much is true. But to think that those people would not be able to govern themselves seems odd, because they are already looking after their own places of business as it is. If they wanted to, the common and forsaken realms could become entirely self-sufficient by cutting out the noble realm. While it might be chaotic for a while, I’m rather confident in the thought that they’d make it all work out because the gap between the commoners and the peasants is heavily outweighed by their similarities. Which can not be said for the vast majority of commoners.”

And that was what his thoughts on the matter were, to put it plainly. He knew that in order to truly be a country, people like the nobles might be needed for things such as becoming soldiers, simply because they were born with the most mana and magical aptitude. But truth be told, that was also the only thing they were needed for more than anything else, and was likely also going to be the thing they wouldn’t do even if they really had to. Sure, you had some magic knight squads that seemed to be filled entirely with nobles due to obvious reasons, though that was not so much the case he was referring to. If the commoners and the peasants were to take the nobles out of the equation and run themselves, making their own trade deals and seeing to the things they already did on the side, all the nobles would be able to do was to sit on their money as they wouldn’t be able to make any more over the backs of the less fortunate. It would mean investing their money in entirely different ways that would be much, much more beneficial to both parties involved.

As for those who wouldn’t do such a thing, they would be left with two options. Either to sit on the vast amounts of wealth they had amassed, knowing that it would one day run out as they could spend a whole lot of it, but no longer make anything in return. The way he saw it, most nobles would likely choose death over the option of running out of wealth and shaming their family name and their ancestors, so this would likely not happen for the majority of them. So at that point, it would all come down to either financing small businesses and farms with their own money in order to create a symbiotic link between the two, where if the farm did badly, it would reflect badly on them too and vice versa. Or, if they did not wish to do anything that was beneficial for someone other than just themselves, they would need to enroll into the magic knight squads, regardless of their age so as to have monthly income. Though this would in turn mean that they would be expected to fight for their country, and not just the noble region.

Truth be told, this was exactly the kind of world Griswold was fighting for, one that was exactly like the one he had just described. By taking a certain modicum of power away from the nobles, namely the power of control, wise investments and financing would be the only way for them to keep their incomes and their positions as nobles, though it would mean putting large swaths of money into the hands of commoners and peasants too. As such, it would gradually level out the world, even if only a little bit, though it was that little bit that Griswold himself was entirely content with. Because if even a fraction of every single noble family could be split across all of the small businesses and families in the common and forsaken realms, it would put an end to all of the hardships they faced for several generations to come, given the chance to do so at least. Because even if they could somehow make this new system take place over night, there would still be one thing standing in the way of it, and it wouldn’t be the nobles.

“I’d have liked to see a world where the commoners and peasants weren’t so much governed as they are now, but became more independent. If the nobles were to be forced to either make investments in businesses and become partners, it wouldn’t change much for them as they’d still have way more money than they could count, as well as a steady income. On the other hand, the people toiling away in the forsaken realm would actually have enough money with which to make a decent living, making the common realm and forsaken realm more or less the same. If such a thing could be realized, that alone is something I would consider to be worth fighting for. Though that still leaves one problem, or rather three very big, powerful, demonic problems.”

Wondering what Hania would think about the way in which he had pictured it all going down in his head, he figured that it would be much more like the whole symbiotic relationship he had pictured for the world. Because if everyone got to keep living the way they wanted to, doing the things they loved while also possessing enough wealth so they would not have to worry about starving after one bad harvest, that would just make the whole world into a far, far better place. Having made himself quite clear as to how he had come to consider these demons to be the biggest threat to their country right now, and that he was now one hundred percent on board with trying to stop them if he could, the next step was figuring out exactly how this training was going to be going down. Because as had been the case for Hania, which was something he had just stated, training by his lonesome had also been a rather therapeutic thing for Griswold as it allowed him to just put all of his thoughts on the back burner and focus entirely on his magical and physical prowess.

Whether it was doing sit-ups, push-ups, working on his biceps and triceps, strengthening his back or just running laps in order to keep his legs from falling behind and making sure his cardio remained on point, there was something about physical exercise that always made him feel better ever since he was a child. Because of the fact that he had always struggled with mana and magic ever since a child, which was why the other villagers in the enclave believed he possessed no real aptitude towards it whatsoever, he had always thrown himself towards doing the one thing everyone could do if they put enough time into it. And that was building up a decent physique so they could perform better in the field of manual labor, as well as get good with weapons and unarmed combat forms. Because his aptitude for magic only recently surfaced with the acquisition of his own grimoire, training himself by magical means had also just started becoming a thing during the past four to six months. That said, it was something he enjoyed a lot.

Learning how to go from firing small projectiles the size of golf balls to firing condensed bombs of solar mana, launching shards of sharpened lunar rock, releasing bursts of concussive force from his person to any that might get close enough to get hit by it, it all just felt great. Not just because he liked to improve himself and rise above his own perceived limitations as often as he could, but also because he got to stick it to the people that had doubted him ever since he was a child. Unfortunately for him, as well as for them, Griswold would never get the chance to show his family or friends any of the things he had achieved since they had left him, though that would not keep him from striving towards ever greater heights. And with the looming threat of demons just past the horizon, him getting stronger had never been quite as important as it was now. After all, even though he was just a foreigner to these lands, there had never been such a rush towards self improvement as there was now.

While on the subject of being a foreigner, Griswold was quite shocked to hear that Hania was a foreigner, much like he himself was. But now that he brought it up, he figured that there was indeed a bit of a difference between how the average clover noble dressed up when compared to how the magic knight dressed. Hearing that he had been abandoned by his parents at a young age, and that he came from a country known to some as the red dragon or the sleeping giant, the elf could say with full honesty that he had never heard of either of these things before. Sure, he knew what dragons and what giants were, though he had never heard of a country being associated with these, even if Hania believed that he would likely have gotten along well with the people there as they held some customs that were similar to the ideals with which Griswold himself had been raised. One such thing being that one should not kill more than they needed to survive, which was by far one of the best things one could ever learn while growing up.

Believing such guidelines should be bestowed upon children everywhere, whether they were nobles, commoners or peasants, he believed that the very idea of not taking more than you needed just built better people in general. Making it rather clear that there were other countries he could move to if he really wanted to, it wasn’t like he had never considered trying such a thing. There were so many things about this country that were just rotten to its core, and needed a whole lot of work just to set it all straight. It was more than one could achieve in one lifetime, perhaps even in several lifetimes, though that did not mean that it wasn’t worth putting in the effort. Because even if he could not change the entire country, there were still things that he could do on his own. His very reason for joining up with the magic knights after all had been to receive a paycheck for doing what he wanted, which was keeping the common and forsaken realms safe from harm by eradicating it wherever he could find it.

Sending most of this money back to his adoptive family at the Cromwell farm, which had happened exactly once now due to how short of a time ago it had been since he became a knight, he wanted to keep investing his own money into something that might grow from a bud into a beautiful flower. Because even if Hania insisted on calling his ideas and ideals bullshit that needed to change, that wasn’t going to happen any sooner than the nobles would go about bringing change and some form of equality en masse. If he could bring change to even a small piece of the map, which was what he had intended on doing through means of using the Cromwell farm, then it would all be worth it. After all, the more the farm grew, the more people they would need to help out around the place, meaning employing those from the nearby towns would be the best way to go about it. Besides, doing so would put food on the tables of a lot of hungry families, and that was worth all of the effort. Whenever he thought about such things, Griswold always became slightly more hopeful for the future.

However, he got pulled out of that train of thought rather abruptly when Hania began talking about the shattering. This wasn’t so much because of the fact that he did not want to think about that, or because he did not like it when people brought it up, but because it was something that related to his original family. The thing about the shattering was that he simply had no idea what it actually was, he just knew that it had left some damage here and there that he had been trying to fix with his own two hands. Rebuilding houses that had been destroyed entirely or just became unstable, he imagined that it had been some kind of earthquake or something. But when Hania said that it might be possible that his people were still alive, and that it might be better if he were to not go out and look for them, the elven mage really did not know whether he was to take this as a joke, take the advice to heart or just get extremely mad over it. As such, he decided to go with none of the above for the time being.

Due to the time they had spent so far, there had not exactly been a reason for either one of the two to lie to one another or say things that were hurtful for hurtfulness’ sake. As such, there was likely a reason as to why he had said what he did, why else would he bring up the fact that his people might be alive and that he shouldn’t try seeking them out. Claiming something with regards to timelines that did not really make a whole lot of sense to him, it sounded like they may have been taken to another dimension altogether, while the people who existed within that dimension were switched out and brought here instead. As a result, that would mean that while they had the same faces and possibly the same names, that they would have no idea as to who he was, or might even see his face and think of him as someone other than who he was here. The more he thought about it, the more it felt like it was just going to give him a massive headache, and he really did not enjoy headaches at all.

“So you’re saying one of those demons has the ability to affect space and time? Because I really don’t think anyone of us has the kind of power that can stand up to someone who can just age us into dust or swing us into another dimension altogether. Not even if all of the captains and the wizard king were to join up in the fight. Power like that is just too damn much, so there has to be some kind of requirement for such things right? He can’t just do that kind of thing without the proper setup? I mean, why else would the country still be here if that weren’t the case?”

Yet more questions that he deemed to be beyond proper answers, as he himself could only answer his own questions with more questions. So even if he did ask them of Hania, who was fairly bright and well learned for his age, he imagined the book of tricks, or rather the instruction manual on “how to archdemon” was likely not one of those books that he had stashed away inside of his library. Because if it was true that this demonic overlord could just bend space and time at his whims, there wouldn’t be a force in the world that could stand up to that. No spirits, and especially no human beings, which made everything seem rather pointless at this moment. But in spite of how pointless it all might seem, he would not be able to forgive himself for just laying down in a hole and wait for death to come. Even if it would all be pointless in the end, the only way to go about it would be to face it head on and either win or lose, knowing they had at least tried to stop the coming onslaught. And that was really all there was to it.

After hearing out everything the boy had to say with regards to how he believed things were, claiming that there were only noble locations that had been attacked, and that their small country was the one that stood between clover and spade as a first line of defense, there were things among it that Griswold could resonate with, as well as some things that seemed off. He knew for a fact that he had taken on a job once as stated by the wizard king’s office that would have him fixing up some of the damage caused to the town of Hage, which had been caused by the shattering. So whether Hania was aware of this being a thing or not, it did not really matter as it was something he had personally held in his hands as far as missives went, as well as being something he had personally worked on alongside another magic knight from the black bulls squad. More than that, he had been working along the citizens of Hage for days on end, heading over to help whenever he had the free time to do so and was in the area.

And while it was true that Carrion stood between the two countries, as Hania himself said, it was a place that had various powerful generals, Hania, Michail, Lydia and undoubtedly others that would bolster the defenses. Between Carrion and the forsaken realm, there was no denying that one was far more militaristic and capable of taking care of itself, whereas the other clearly did not possess the offensive capabilities to hold its own ground. So if by any means a war were to come, and Carrion were to fall, that would mean that the forsaken realm would simply be swept away next. So while it was true that there was always going to be a buffer between the forsaken realm and a war with spade, there was no telling if enemy forces might some day come from another place entirely, such as was now potentially the case with the witches forest and the archdemon Lilith. Carrion as a country was only going to act as a shield if it was directly between the two places, and unless Carrion had been built on legs or had the ability to fly itself elsewhere, and that was the simply truth.

So even if the two were going to find common ground on that issue or not, he decided to leave that for what it is was. Even in the best of cases, not everyone would always agree with something the other person said, and what one person considered to be bullshit was someone else’s reality. And even if the boy had been born in a foreign place and had been abandoned, only to be taken in by another place altogether where he was now an heir, that did not mean that he knew. While Griswold could not speak for how well he remembered everything, as Hania could not have been anything other than a truly young child at the time, the fact that he was where he was now made him far more lucky than many others. Even if he had to worry about people such as the generals who seemed to want to try to “kill him” during training, at least he would not need to worry about starving or having to watch those around him starve. At least not anymore, and that was still the reality of a lot of people who were struggling to make an honest living in the forsaken realm.

So while there was some truth to it that the forsaken realm might not directly be the prettiest location in all of clover, the outstretched meadows, the foothills, the calmly flowing streams of water and occasional river, as well as the various forests, quarries, orchards and farmlands made up one of the most diverse regions of the country. Between that and the people who were always going to say it as it was and do their best to live their lives to the best of their abilities, that just made it a place where Griswold could truly find himself. Besides, whenever he was to do a mission or job within the region, it never really felt so much as work to him, as it was something he did with joy. That said, he did not enjoy all of the times he had to go about setting some wolves straight or have to actually kill them, though it was either that or risk farmers and their livestock getting hurt or killed. And at that point, it was a decision that wasn’t all that hard to make. So when he was getting called out, shortly after making it known just how underhanded many nobles could be in sending someone after someone’s loved ones just to teach them a lesson, something momentarily snapped.

“You may call me a brat and a preteen, but you really don’t get to make that distinction. Even if I am not always happy with my lot in life, I’m trying to make the best of it for other people’s sakes. I work as a magic knight so my paycheck can make other people’s lives less bad. I can tell you this much, if I had even a fraction of the political power and actual power you nobles have, I’d make sure there would actually be changes for those who have it way worse than I do. So before you go around calling people brats, please tell me how often in the past month you’ve had to worry about yourself, your sister or any of your new family dying in their sleep due to starvation. Because for all of the strain you people might be under, I doubt that that is one of the things any of you need to worry about while you sleep in comfortable beds. But that’s all I have to say about it, because I did not come here to argue who has it worse, who has more money and who spends said money better, nor did I come here to be called a child by an actual teenager.”

For all of the amounts he had heard how his reasoning was either bullshit, stupid or how he was a brat or a pouty child for believing the things he did, he had kept his mouth shut about it throughout most of it. But something about hearing that his family might still be alive in some other dimension, how nobles were apparently just at the top of the pecking order and that that was okay because even nature had pecking orders according to the teen, and how he was not allowed to compare a wild animal and a forest to the way things were in the world, even after just using a similar reasoning regarding pecking orders and how all of that was clearly okay because it put nobles at the top. That was where he would draw the line, as he had not come here to be insulted by some noble. Besides, he was the one who had been invited here, not the other way around, and it was about time for the guy to show a bit of that same “noble upbringing” and proper behavior that he had been preaching to Griswold no more than a minute ago with relations to Michail.

“Besides, you keep pulling up one thing after the other as a means of proving me right, or calling the things I say crap, while your reasoning falls short for the exact same reasons. You criticize me for comparing a wild animal and a forest to a person’s home, claiming it’s a faulty rhetoric, yet you stand here claiming the noble pecking order is something that’s just fine and dandy because “nature has a pecking order too”. Either practice what you preach, or don’t fault me for speaking in the same manner. Also, whether this is a lawn or not and you want me to not call people by their nicknames, that’s something I can abide by, and I’m more than willing of dealing with the fallout of my own words and decisions, no worries there. But don’t for a second believe that you can stand there in your fancy robes and your high and mighty noble attitude, and believe that I’ll just take whatever insult I get swung in my direction like some kind of small town pariah. Because let’s not forget, you’re the one who invited me to come here, not the other way around.”

And that was the reality of things. For all of the stuff Hania had said to him that he did not believe in because he had seen otherwise, he had done his best to maintain a somewhat respectful retort, rather than resulting to calling things crap or bullshit or anything along those lines. So for someone who wanted him to respect someone belonging to his family, he sure knew how to set a pisspoor example. Because when he joined the magic knights, he knew that there would be times when he needed to deal with nobility and royalty, and he was more or less fine with that. As long as people treated him with respect, he would treat them with that same respect right back, as was the way things were supposed to work. He wouldn’t for a second take the time of day to treat someone with the required honorifics that came with their titles if they had gone out of their way to put him down as some kind of small town idiot who was out of his league and had no idea what he was doing or what he was talking about.

And at this point, Hania was well on his way towards losing the respect he had built up for himself during the time they had spent fighting in the castle dungeon. After all, there were only so many things he could forgive him for, and with all of the things he had been scolded for right now by someone who was literally close to sitting on what he could only assume would be some kind of golden throne as the heir to the family, he was on thin ice. Just like how Griswold had done his best not to drag Hania’s family into anything, he would have in turn considered it to be quite the wise decision for him not to bring up anything about Griswold’s family either. Because if there was one thing he really did not want to talk about all that much after just learning how they might not be dead, but had been swung into an entirely different dimension, he really did not know which of the two options was worse. If they had died, that would have just been the end of it, simple as that.

However, if they were still alive somewhere in a different dimension, that just meant that while they were fine, that he would never get to see them again anyway. So while it did not make much of a difference to him, it made a big difference to the people in question. That said, he imagined that he should just be happy about the possibility that they were all still alive. Still, he did not appreciate the boy making claims about how his enclave had supposedly worked, especially after he had taken offense to Griswold making claims about how his own family might work and how he disliked the way things worked with nobility. All of it had been turning into a bit of a back and forth with two people spitting out one thing after the other and expecting the other to just sit there and take it, even though one of them had been getting increasingly bold and disrespectful about his approach. And as things were now, that was either going to end right here, or he would make it end by himself.

“As for my other name, it’s not something that is important. It’s a remnant of bygone times, so Griswold will do just fine. I don’t consider something as a name to be a mask, because what you see when you look at me is exactly what you get. It’s really that simple. So are we going to be training, or do you want to go another round of name calling, because we can do that, but don’t expect me to hold back anymore. That ship has officially sailed, so if need be, just say the word and I’ll be on the next broom headed back home.”

By the time the explanation came with regards to the training regiment, he could honestly say that he was not exactly looking forward to having his bones broken in the process of it. So far, he had only broken his rib once, and had been quite lucky that one of the village healers had been around to get to it as quickly as they did so as to not have his lung perforated by moving around. But if that was one of the things that stood between him and getting strong enough to actually protect people from things stronger than your average wolf, than that was a price he imagined he would just have to pay. Besides, it made sense to think that there was most likely someone around here that could heal that kind of damage, seeing as how he himself could really only heal superficial damage at this particular point in time. So if they were capable of reconciling their differences, at which point the training could actually commence, at least he knew that there was going to be a lot of pain involved.

In the process of sharing what the training was going to be like, it seemed that Hania himself had also never fought against one of the archdemons before, which meant that Griswold was wrong about his earlier assumption. At this point, he also knew that his earlier question regarding the space and time bending powers of one of them was likely going to remain unanswered for the time being, as those who had not actually been there to witness it most likely did not know how his powers worked. Besides, it seemed unlikely that a demon lord was going to just give away the inner machinations, drawbacks and limitations of his own powers towards those who were actively getting in his way and trying to figure out ways in which to kill him. So troublesome as it was, he imagined that just meant that both Hania and himself would be going into this whole thing blind. That was, if they both actually managed to get picked to become royal knights in the first place, which at this point still seemed unlikely given how he was but a junior knight.

Compared to him, Hania likely did not have a whole lot to worry about as he was a lot stronger than he was, and he was also fortunate enough to be picked by one of the magical spirits of this world. So even if the guy had a lot riding and pressing down on his shoulders, there were a lot of things going right for him too, as not a whole lot of people could say that they had a legendary spirit entity backing them up in battle. Still, it made him wonder what such a spirit, or any spirit such as Salamander, who was likely going to also get drawn into the fight would be able to fight against someone who used chronomancy like lord Asmodeus. For a moment, nothing about that sentence really irked him, though that was when he took note as to the mentioning of honorifics towards the demon lord, which seemed odd. Wondering why Hania had used that word to describe their enemy, he looked him over for a bit, finding that he was even more pale than he normally was for some reason. Not really knowing what he was supposed to do about it as he himself was not really known for having the most gentle personality, he just looked on for a bit.

He looked on to see how the spirit bird had turned black for some reason, which he could only imagine meant some kind of discontent towards its chosen magus. For the first time since ever, he could clearly tell that Hania was frightened, though he did not really understand the reason behind it. Watching him as he went about his business, using his magic while temporarily moving away in order to talk to someone or leave a message for someone, the only thing he could hear in spite of the whispering was the name Lydia. Wondering how she fit into all of it, it was not long after that he wandered back and let Griswold know that he had some health issues to worry about. But truth be told, it did not really seem like so much of a health issue as it was some kind of psychological thing that went down. It made him wonder if continuing along the lines that they were right now was really the best thing to do right now. Even though he knew better than to believe that he would be able to win in a fight, if overexerting himself might make whatever health issues he had worse, than that clearly meant that training would not be the wisest decision right now. Still, it was not up to him.

“Are you okay there kid? Because we can do this another time if it helps. Don’t want to make whatever you’ve got going on any worse for you than it already is.”

8599 (21836)

Continuing to hear the guy out, he could tell that through their discussion regarding politics, views on the quality of life and the future directions of this country had put them off on the wrong foot. As well as they had managed to work together while in the castle dungeon, that’s how many times they had clashed over deviating opinions. At some point, it was clear that things had turned into a pissing match with one watching the other for the slightest thing to fall over, at which point that would become the next topic to be picked apart in their debate. What this told him was that they both felt strongly about their own beliefs, and that they were only willing to budge so far to give leeway to the other. Every so often, one of them had to give points to the other for tackling a point that they had not exactly thought about in that manner, which went to show that they were at least both capable of dealing with outside input.

For as much as he would want to strive for change, there were a bunch of new things that Griswold had never heard about up until now, for instance how things went in the spade country. Apparently, that place was supposed to be a dictatorship, which was not exactly something he had been aware of. Still, it went to show that he had made a good decision by traveling south as opposed to traveling north after his family and his home suddenly disappeared. Finding that there were plenty of people struggling here, he could only imagine how bad things might be over in the spade country. At least, one would imagine that it would be worse than it would be over here, as the whole concept of dictatorship usually invoked such ideas within the mind. Though that did not need to be the case, as there were dictators that were just solitary rulers who did not bend to anyone. Truth be told, most kings were dictators.

After all, a king was not chosen by the people, he was born into the right family and would become king because he had the right last name and was born before his brothers and sisters. That was usually all there was to it. So once they became of age, they would become king, and would be able to sway the country into whatever direction they would like. Sure, they would have advisors that would be able to temper their choices and lean them into a specific direction, though he imagined that even the worst of dictators had people affecting their choices to some extent. In that sense, he imagined that the clover country was rather different in that it would have an actual king, a man of royal lineage that was the official ruler of the country, as well as a wizard king. Whereas the former was born for the role, the latter was one that grew into this position by being the strongest mage within the magic knights.

Because of how rarely he visited the royal capital or the crimson lions headquarters, he never really knew a whole lot about how things like that would work, having essentially two kinds of kings within the same country. As far as he could imagine, he figured that the wizard king was the one directly calling the shot within the magic knights and was overall a beloved symbol within the country itself. But above him, you would have the actual king who directed the country in all other forms, including the magic knights if there were to be something that he wanted to see changed. From what he could imagine from where he stood, it seemed possible for a king to overrule the wizard king if he were to want to do such a thing, but figured such a thing would not happen all that often for rather simplistic reasons. After all, why instate someone as a “wizard king” and task them with overseeing the entire magic squad if one had no faith in their ability to rule and reason?

“Hmm… I see your point, though I imagine all kings are in essence dictators in the fact that they are solitary rulers that get the final say in every important decision made within the boundaries of their country. It is theirs by birthright after all. But I do understand what you mean when you say “Dictatorship”. You mean that the leadership of the spade country is just far more tyrannical than the clover kingdom, which I imagine is quite a good thing. For us at least.”

That said, until he saw what the place was like with his own eyes, he would never actually get to make a real decision as to which of the two had it worse. Because in a dictatorship, there were two possibilities in most cases that he could picture in front of him. One was where you had everyone other than the actual tyrant being treated like crap and made to work for him, whereas on the other hand, it was also possible that a tyrant along with his other friends in high places were treating everyone else like crap together. In that regard, he would rather prefer the former to the latter, because if everyone was being treated like crap regardless of their heritage, at least there was some form of equality, not to mention a greater chance as a rebellion taking rise. But as far as things went in the land of clover, he imagined that something as drastic as a rebellion would never really be needed.

Because for as bad as some people had it, the majority was quite capable of making a living, even though some of them had to work for it from dawn until dusk while others were just getting richer even if they spent the whole week under the covers of their comfortable beds. For the time being, as long as he was free to focus on those households that could not keep their heads above water by themselves, Griswold figured that the country could probably stay as it was now, judging by how many people in high places had started looking after the less fortunate since the time of the shattering. And while it was sad that it had taken a disaster for some people to finally wake up, at least now they had seen that their help was needed in other places where one would usually not go to visit. For many, the forsaken realm was not exactly the kind of place people liked to come because of all the poverty and because it was primarily farmland and forest.

But as far as the subject of terrain went, Griswold preferred that type of area over the city, enjoying to just feel the fresh outdoor winds and smell nature, rather than all of the strange smells accumulating in the city. That said, he could imagine how people might get accustomed to such things when they lived a life of comfort, as the very idea of comfort was often hard to find in the region of the peasants. Figuring that enough had been said about that particular subject, he was more or less done arguing the case of nobles and peasants, how things should change for the better and where such things were meant to begin, he was rather glad that Hania was starting to get more into the subject of demons and spirits, as that was currently where his focus was. After all, he had already established for himself that if he was going to one day make an attempt at changing the country, he was going to have to survive long enough to do so.

But more importantly, the country had to survive long enough to do so, and if the demons were not to be handled and taken care of properly, none of it was going to matter as there wouldn’t be a system there to change for the better. So while he was nowhere near vain enough to believe that him managing to become a royal knight or not would change the outcome in any way, he figured that if nothing else, him trying out and being around during the actual fight would allow him to be of some use. While not anywhere near the level of skill required to deal with something as powerful as an archdemon, or any other kind of demon for that matter, as long as he could do other things such as serving as a distraction, guiding people to safety or whatever else might be needed of him, Griswold believed that every little bit would be beneficial in such situations. After all, if he could take care of the small fry stuff, the big guns could focus on the actual demons.

Depending on the kind of training Hania had in mind for him, he did not see himself going toe to toe with any of those monsters any time soon anyway, whether they were demonic royalty or just the guys that were cleaning the toilets in hell. Judging by the way demons were being described, it did not sound all that different from certain places in the country, places where loyalty and honor did not exist and it was everyone for themselves. It did not come to him as much of a shock that whatever underworld those things crawled out of was going to be like that, as the places he had visited so far that were even remotely like that either did not have a lot of people around, or had a lot of people around with a lot of others either disappearing or popping up in a morgue. To say that such circumstances naturally bred strong individuals was not much of an understatement at all, though those who were raised without compassion were also left with massive holes in their lives and psyche, that much could not be disputed.

When fighting entirely and solely for oneself, there would always be a limit to what one might achieve. So even if the magic knights were weaker individually when compared to an archdemon, it was the fact that they were stronger together and could pool together their powers as a means of enhancing their strengths and covering their weaknesses as a collective fighting force. And that was what he considered the royal knights to be, and why he imagined that an admittance exam was required. Some people were strong, but really did not work well together with other people, which meant they were the kind of unguided projectile that would likely get him or herself killed along with someone else, all while maybe dealing a bit of damage to the opposition. As that was clearly not something he imagined the magic knights a whole were going for when picking those who were arguably the best among their ranks, one of the things he should work about was his skill as a team player.

But since that was not the kind of thing they were likely to be training here today, he imagined that that was something he could work on while working on any of his missions in the not too distant future. And seeing as how he did not often get to take on missions with the same person repeatedly, he would both get to know new people in the process while also being capable of tinkering on just how well he could work and attribute to various forms of team work. Important as the subject was, the most important thing that they could possible discuss aside from the whole training method they would actually be utilizing was obviously the three main players in this game, as well as their powers. Learning that one of them indeed used chronomancy, which was a form of time control magic rather than bending both time and space, the demon had likely utilized some other kind of means of boosting his powers when bringing about the shattering, as it seemed like time along would not also allow him to bend reality and tap into foreign dimensions.

Funnily enough, Griswold had never before been forced to ponder on such matters, even though his level of intelligence would allow him to do so. While someone should not come to him with mathematical problems or questions regarding precise sciences and their applications, he did know a lot about nature and mana as a whole, which also granted him a bit of insight as to the workings of most forms of magic. Still, as useful as his brain and insight might be, the real applications of time magic still eluded him as he had never witnessed it himself. And the more he thought about it and heard what Asmodeus was capable of doing, he was quite sure that he would never want to actually see it be used either. Hearing that one of the other demons used beast magic, a few bells started ringing as he actually knew more about that one, having seen it be used by a boy who primarily used it to buff up his physical prowess when the two had been put together by fate to take care of a pack of recently summoned ghouls in a forest.

So while it was still a very formidable and rare type of magic, it was not something he would directly want to worry about as much as the chronomancy angle that their side of the board also controlled. From what he could imagine, the beast magic user was likely going to be some sort of frontal assault type character that would try ripping people apart in close quarters, likely utilizing superior hand-to-hand prowess and durability, both of which would likely only be elevated to more extreme levels through the use of his magic. Finally, the last of the three was supposed to have world tree magic, which was most likely the most powerful natural form of magic in the known world. Using not just trees as the name suggested, he knew that it held strong connections to life force, and could therefore interfere with the natural process of death and bring people back from the brick. Either that, or it could just suck the life right out of you and leave you behind as a dried up husk, only to die moments later.


“So between the three of them, there is one who can bend time to his will and can likely affect people both on a personal level, as well as one a large scale to mess with everyone at once. Then there is a beast aura user, which I assume is likely going to be an incredibly powerful hand-to-hand combatant that is next to impossible to just bring down, and will rip you apart the moment he can wrap his claws around you. And finally, world tree magic, which would probably be on a whole other level of difficulty if approached while still in the witches forest, as I imagine she’d be quite capable of camouflaging her own spells among the already present plethora of trees. That makes them next to impossible to stop if they were to be taken on all at once...”

Pondering out loud as he tried to formulate some kind of a scenario inside his head, he did not really mind if Hania heard it. In fact, him hearing what he was thinking was probably not the worst thing at all as it would at least show that he had registered all of the information he had fed to Griswold to begin with. Hearing out the rest of the story with regards to his spirit Amnostia and how it could be a pain in the ass at times, how one had to go about fighting and training alongside a spirit, as well as making it clear how he did not really know how it would work when it came down to things such as the main spirits, which Griswold imagined would be Salamander along with those of wind, water and earth that he did not know about, there was also something to be said about the people Hania had lost. One in particular, someone he had considered to be like a sister to him that had been killed by the same parents that had abandoned him. Finding it hard to believe that any parents would willfully leave their child and do such horrible things, there was only so much he could say about it.

“Well, for what it’s worth, I imagine the people we’ve loved and lost are never really gone entirely. I mean, mine might not even be dead to begin with, just swung into a space where I can never reach them again. But if I may speak plainly, I’d say that those that are gone have left us with something to strive towards. Whether it is to avenge their deaths by making those that brought about their ends suffer before they perish, or to live the way they wanted you to, part of them will always be around… just not physically.”

The more he thought about it himself, the more he came to realize that he too was being handed the chance to take revenge for what had happened to his family, his friends, his relatives, for all of the people he had lost during what he now knew was merely another bit of fallout related to the shattering. Having always imagined that it might have been the work of another mage, the fact that he would have felt something, seen something when it happened, it all just never added up. But aside from how outlandish it all sounded, he had to believe that Hania was right about this and that it was all the work of a demon. As things were now, trying to avenge those he had lost was about the only thing he could do to honor them, as he had strayed so far from their teachings and ideology that it was almost as if he had become an entirely different person. Which was in a way quite true, as Solarian Shadesinger had completely evolved into the person called Griswold Cromwell.

“Given how hard I’ve failed at upholding their teachings, I imagine taking revenge for their loss… or displacement or whatever is just about the only thing I can at the very least attempt. I won’t fool myself into believing I’ll make a difference in the fight to come, though I would like to at least be part of it. Because even if I die in the attempt, at least I’ll know I’ve tried before the end. So, what’s next? Where do we start?”.

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“A woman sits on the throne of Clover? Heh, who would have thought. Not that it really matters, though I would not have expected something from a country that seems to be so high on traditions. As for a divine right, I’m not all too big on that, mostly because I do not believe in anything divine. Hell, until about ten minutes ago, I did not even believe in demons, and look at how that turned out. Still, if I had to choose one over the other to believe in, I’d sooner believe demons to be true over their supposed counterparts.”

Referring to divine creators and their enforcers which in some cultures and countries were referred to as either angels or lesser gods, the very idea of such things existing was something that Griswold himself could not find himself behind. As such, the belief of them existing did not exist within him. Over the course of his life, he had seen too many acts of complete and utter evil to believe that there were actually creatures out there that were supposed to exist as the antithesis to demons, meaning they were supposed to be creatures of good. And that was exactly where things clashed within his mind. The way he saw it, there were no creatures that were innately good or evil, there was only circumstance, as it was entirely up to the person in question whether they would allow themselves to be swayed to the side of evil, or if they would make the choice to be good people in spite of all the hardships that got tossed in their direction.

In Griswold’s relatively short life alone, he had been given plenty of chances to get swayed towards the side of evil, what with his family disappearing, his home disappearing, the majority of people who found him laying in the street either ignoring him or stripping him of all that he had that was of some worth, and seeing the harsh environment in which his adoptive family had to make a living. But it did not stop there, as there were plenty more examples of evil that crossed his path either previous to those moments, or after them, such as the psychopathic woman who had blown up a store and tore a man to shreds right before his eyes in the middle of the street. Though she had been dispatched sooner after, she had the belief that magic knights could really not save anyone, which was a rather dark and limited point of view when taking into consideration how many lives each individual magic knight most likely saved in one lifetime.

That, and there was also the chain magic user who had been killing peasants, commoners and nobles alike in the port city of Raque, after which he developed a taste for murder and escalated to the point where he began hunting down junior magic knights, and actually managed to kill a member of the Purple Orcas and a member of the Silver Eagles before eventually meeting Griswold entirely by accident. Though he had been out looking for the murderer along with a junior knight from the Black Bulls which he had brought along as bait, which was something the knight in question was personally quite fine with as long as it meant getting the guy who had become a threat to all visitors of Raque. Obviously, when he had encountered the guy, the two came to blows and based on what his vice-captain had told him about how she did not believe in correctional facilities, that some were beyond saving and that the lives of the many outweighed those of the few, Griswold had killed him.

Funnily enough, while it was the third person that had actually died around him, this was the first time he had killed an actual human being with his own hands. That said, he had no idea whether or not the Hag he had encountered along with Verena inside of the cursed forest counted as a human, though he personally did not believe so. But that place was just another location where he encountered human bodies in various stages of decomposition, partially eaten or dismembered, as well as having parts carved clean off of the bone to be put into a stew or other dishes. In a world where all of these things happened uncontested if it weren’t for the magic knights, it seemed like the presence of innately good beings that fought against evil was way more impossible than the presence of demons, seeing as how there was so much strive, death and violence in the world. At times, it seemed like all the evil was only barely being tempered, and that was due to the actions of other mortals.

This train of thought was only amplified further when he heard about the presence of a group known as the Dark Triad, which were responsible for killing the previous royal family of Spade before taking over the country. Apparently, they were every bit as evil as the archdemons they were currently facing, if not more so. Using everyone below their station as soldiers or in the worst case as fuel for some kind of fortresses, Griswold was starting to understand exactly what was being intended when the word Dictatorship had been used. An entirely fitting name for such a horrible group of people. For a moment, it made him wonder why the land of clover was not dealing with this problem yet as a means of saving those in the spade country that were actively being tortured for fuel or forcefully conscripted into their armies. But as soon as he actually thought about it rationally again, he realized that the main problem they faced right now were demons.

This in turn made him wonder as to whether or not the demons they were facing right now were just acting as a means of distraction. If the three of them could beat the land of clover, all the better, but should they fail, they were at the very least going to be successful when it came to buying time for the dark triad in their attempt to do whatever they had planned that would let them bring more demons into this world. Even if this was already common knowledge to everyone else, it still would not change anything, at least he did not think that it would matter. After all, they could not risk dividing their forces between a whole country and three archdemons, meaning one would need to be taken out of the equation first. And as things were now, it seemed like spade was not exactly taking any actions against clover yet, which meant that they were most likely working on marshaling their forces for an actual war while their mages were working on whatever they had planned that would let them reach the world where the demons dwelled.

It seemed like the more he spoke to Hania about all of these issues, the more he became aware of just how big a threat the country was facing, and why they would not have the time or the resources to actually consider changing the way things worked between nobles, commoners and peasants. How could they, if they risked an uprising from some of the stronger people in the country and having to fight demons at the same time, that would make it a rather dauntless task to begin with. As such, whatever he believed was the correct way of going about things with this country, it would need to sit on the back burner for a while. But should they manage to live through all of the issues they faced with archdemons and a looming war with the land of spade, well, that was when such problems should be raised. After all, it was going to be the best time to bring up anything that was this impactful, as it would be the time where everyone realized they had won by pulling through as a united front.

But that all seemed to belong to the distant future, as there was no way they were going to get around finishing the royal knights crew any time soon, which meant that a frontal assault against the archdemons was perhaps months away, after which whoever was left would need to band together and fight the land of spade, at least if all of this was to be true. There was always the chance that they’d fail and get killed by the very demons they tried to summon into the world, meaning they’d have to instead focus on sealing whatever route they used to get here without having to fight the soldiers and the leaders of spade at the same time. Of all of the possibilities, he liked that one the most, as he dreaded the idea of having to fight demons enough already. Adding hostile mages to that list just seemed like overkill of the worst kind to him. So after he received a quick rundown as to what the expectations were with relations to the archdemons and their magics, he was glad that he wasn’t too far off.

“As cheesy as it sounds, I imagine you’re quite right about raising your arms out of a need for revenge. Still, as it is right now, it is one hell of a motivator towards the goal of getting stronger any time soon. And seeing as how time is of the essence, I fully intend to use that motivation for all the difference it will make. At least for now.”

What Hania said about his family was right. But as he had already established previously, there was very little left of the person they had raised him to become and the edicts and teachings they passed down to him, if any at all. They would not want him to fight based on hatred and a need for revenge, though the fact that both of those things were incredibly present within him created the kind of duality where he really wanted to take revenge, while at the same time knowing that he shouldn’t. At the end of the day however, the fact that they were going to have to kill those same demons regardless of motivations seemed clear as day. They would likely not be able to just bind them and seal them away somewhere, as that would just be a way of containing the threat and saving it for another day. Because even if all went well, there were always those people who craved havoc and death, and would seek out ways to unleash them from their prisons. And that was not so much a case of if, but rather a case of when.

Finding it hard to get all of these things out of his head now that he had been presented with all of these new problems that were just as much his as they were the rest of the countries’ problem, it seemed that the time for talk was more or less over now, and that they were about to get down to the actual training part. It was something he was likely going to have a lot of difficulty with if Hania was to be his opponent, even if based on nothing other than the things he had seen in the castle, the amount of mana he had and the fact that he was someone who had been chosen by a spirit. With everything seeming like the kind of situation in which he was just going to get beaten around like a rag doll by a superior opponent, he had to wonder for a bit how such a thing would attribute to his training in the slightest, as it seemed like it was just going to bring him a bunch of broken bones, a lot of scars and frostbite to boot. As all of these things lined up in his head, he could honestly say that he was not looking forward to what would come next at all.

So as the boy and the spirit were starting up a conversation as to how they needed to use what little time they had left in order to truly push themselves, it made him wonder as to whether they had actually looked for the right kind of opponent as there was really only so much that he could do against an opponent that was already stronger than he was. Mixed with the fact that he was going to have to take on someone who had once again merged with his spirit, it would seem that they would not be giving him a whole lot of time to actually think about what to do next. Only giving him a slight warning in the sense that they would now start “Sparring”, he was given little to no time at all to respond to what was happening as he began crossing the distance between the two of them mere moments after the fact. When his hand began to glow blue, Griswold imagined that the guy was going to come in for a close ranged attack, as that seemed to be more or less in line with his earlier claims about how he would likely receive some broken bones as a result of this training.

Without anything he could do about it, Hania closed the distance between them and struck him with more force than expected. Though entirely as expected, he got flung across the estate grounds as the air was struck out of his lungs, causing him to pass out the moment he hit the ground. But that was the difference between them, as there was nothing he could do to fend off a superior opponent who was in turn also infused with the power of a spirit being.

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