This was because his opponent was covered head to toe in heavy steel armor. In fact, he wasn’t even sure it was Chad, because not a single sliver of the human wearing the armor could be seen.
Actually, how was Chad even able to move, under the weight of all of that armor? Gust couldn’t help but wonder.
Meanwhile, the system announcer was busy hyping up the match. “As you all know, Chad, the village tanner, lost his son to young Gust over here in the arena yesterday! Clearly, Chad has taken his loss to heart, and has pulled some strings to secure himself Fevi’s famous Heavy Steel Set! Just look at the thing! I promise, folks, this’ll be a battle for the ag- huh?”
“Wait, Gust, where are you going?”
Gust had already jumped off of the arena stage, grabbed his bag from Wesley, and looked to be heading for the stadium exit…
“What the hell you mean, you idiot! How the hell am I supposed to fight that? I ain’t suicidal, the guy could stand there all day and I’d never make a dent. He could kill me just by falling on me, screw that, I’m out.”
“Wait, that’s against stadium rules! You have to fight!” By now, the stadium announcer was growing panicked, as the audience had begun booing.
They’d made a fair amount of money advertising the duels of these two kids, but if Gust didn’t fight, they’d probably be inundated with demands for a refund.
“Alright, fine.” Gust quickly turned right back around, and ascended the arena stage yet again.
“Alright!” Perhaps worried that Gust would leave again, the stadium announcer no longer hyped up the match, but skipped to starting the fight.
“Ready?”
“Ready.”
“Ready?”
Chad lifted the two-handed mace and pointed it toward Gust. “Ready.”
“Fight!”
As soon as this word was uttered, however, Gust quickly said “I forfeit!” and jumped back off the stage.
The system announcer was nearly about to cry. “What are you doing? Go and fight!”
“I did, didn't I? The fight started, and then I forfeited.”
The crowd showered Gust’s words with boos, but he didn’t mind at all.
“Wesley, we’re leaving.”
The two casually made their way out of the stadium to collect Wesley’s earnings, then left to the same restaurant they had visited the day earlier.
As the two chowed down on some more comfort food, Gust brought up the duo’s next plan of action.
“Hey little man, I don’t think we’re going to be able to get much more from the stadium here, how bout you?”
“Mhmm.” Truth be told, Wesley was just glad that he’d come out victorious in his first solo battle. The delicious food they’d had the last two days had been another large benefit, but after having proved himself, he wanted to continue the journey to the Reiniad Kingdom.
It was time to leave.
After the two finished their meal, they headed out of the village, due East.
However, just a few minutes after they left, several armored men, riding horses, could be seen congregating near the eastern entrance of the village.
One of them lifted his helmet’s visor and addressed the one on the lead horse. “Chad, must we really go these lengths? True, your son was killed, but you can always have another one. Besides, it wasn’t as if he was murdered in an abandoned alleyway - he died an honorable death in the arena.”
Chad glared at him. “Remember, I’ve saved your sons life before. The least you can do for me is to avenge mine.”
“...I’m here, aren’t I? Still, I don’t like this.”
Other than Fevi, the village blacksmith, there were several others, mercenaries who had been passing by the village.
While Gust and Wesley had been relaxing, eating their mid-day meal, Chad had angrily stomped over to the village pub, and thrown down his savings to recruit this squad of mercenaries.
At the high price of fifty silver coins, Chad had hired a small team of mercenaries, eight strong, to aid him in his cause.
At the price of another ten silvers, he had rented horses for the entire team, and now, they were ready to chase down their prey.
Meanwhile, as Gust and Wesley were walking down the eastern road, Gust reached inside his bag and started moving stuff around.
‘Any minute now…’
“Hey Wesley, get ready to fight.”
“Hmm? Why?”
“I think that Chad guy I pissed off is going to come after us.”
“Oh, okay.”
“Speaking of, can you build stuff other than walls? And in something that’s not as slippery as ice?”
“What do you have in mind?”
“Hm, just a stone pillar or something that we can stand on, circular, about 5 feet in diameter and 15 feet high?”
“I can write that, but I don’t know any non-ice seals yet, so I would need about thirty seconds of lead time.”
“I’ll let you know.”
…
Just a few minutes later, Gust’s perceptive ears picked up the sound of hooves in the distance.
“Wesley, get started.”
Just a few seconds later, Gust could see a dozen horses, mounted by armored fighters, closing in on them from the direction of the village they had just left.
Another few seconds, and Gust and Wesley had been surrounded. Gust reached his arms out, protecting Wesley from the horses. Meanwhile, Wesley concentrated on writing his spell.
From his horse, Chad taunted his prey. “Did you really think you could just leave like that, Gust? You should have just let me kill you in the arena! There, I could only have killed you, but here, haha, I can torture you for hours, and nobody will be any the wiser!
“As for your little friend there, don’t worry, I’m sure I can sell him off to some mage to experiment on.” Chad’s face couldn’t be seen, but one could hear the malice in his voice.
“Oh no! Please, spare us!”, cried Gust.
Despite his words, a hint of mischief could be seen in his eyes, a gem grasped in his fist.
Chapter 17
Just as Chad was about to rub salt into the wounds of his prey, a large stone pillar suddenly surged out of the ground that Gust and Wesley had been standing on, raising them higher than those that still surrounded them.
“Hmph.” Chad wasn’t impressed. “I’ll just smash your little pillar to bit, and then what will you do?”
“Well,” said Gust, “Something like this.”
He threw the chaos gem in his hand down toward Chad, then quickly reached his into his bag, and pulled out a large crate, far larger than his bag itself.
The top of the crate had been removed, and inside, were hundreds of chaos gems. Grinning, Gust grabbed fistfuls of the gems and threw them towards the unfortunate victims below.
Chad had been knocked off his horse by the force of the first chaos gem’s explosion, and was struggling to stand back up, trapped under the weight of his horse.
Before he could push the horse off of himself, Gust had already thrown the second batch of chaos gems. Multicolored explosions erupted all around the stone pillar, coupled with the dying screams of a few unfortunate souls.
After a bit, Gust stopped throwing anymore chaos gems - he only had a few thousand, after all. Besides, it didn’t seem like any of their enemies were still moving.
“Hey Wesley, lower us a bit?”
“Okay.”
A while later, the stone pillar shrank back into the ground, allowing Gust to safely slide down.
As soon as he landed, Gust quickly ran to each body, and stabbed it a few times with his kukris. After confirming that everyone was dead, he looked up at Wesley. “Hey little man, help me clean this place up, okay? After all, we’re respectable men of society, we can’t leave the road looking like this.”
“Mhmm, you’re right.” Wesley began writing spells to return the road to its former shape.
Then, he walked back to Chad and Fevi’s bodies,
and sat down. For the next few minutes, he painstakingly dragged the broken, dented armor off of their corpses.
The steel would sell for a decent price.
Having finished his work, Gust stood over Chad’s body, then kicked his head. “F***ing idiot, this is all you bring to deal with this godly warrior? Huh? Huh? Next time, take your damn armor off yourself!”
He kicked Chad’s head a few more times, then moved on and scavenged the armor off of the several mercenaries as well. After doing so, he packed it all into his bag, along with the crate of chaos gems.
“Ah…” Gust craned his head toward the sky, and stretched his arms out. “We’re going to have meat to eat for the next few days!”
Of course, Gust wasn’t a cannibal - he was referring to the meat of the unfortunate horses that had died in the incident.
A while later, Gust and Wesley resumed their trek, and all that was left of the incident were a few bloodstains on the road. If one investigated further, a pile of bodies, casually pushed behind some trees along the side of the road, could be found as well.
…
A few weeks later, Wesley and Gust found themselves at the entrance of the last bastion of civilized humanity before the Alaki Mountain Range, aptly named as Border Town. The two strolled into town, looking left and right for a stadium to compete at.
After all, not only would this be their last stop before the Alaki Mountain Range, it would be the last chance for them to test their mettle in the Larwin Kingdom. Of course, the additional money wouldn’t hurt either.
Of course, this was under the assumption that they could win their battles. As Border Town was far larger than the village they’d previously visited, and was right along the edge of the Larwin Kingdom, next to the Alaki Mountain Range, the town was filled with seasoned fighters, and more than just a few mages.
With that, however, Border Town’s payouts were similarly far higher. Gust and Wesley were both hopeful - Gust could feel himself getting back in shape, his joints no longer struggling with some of his more acrobatic moves, while Wesley had been learning from Thomas in his dreams on a consistent basis - he was now very confident in his abilities.
Furthermore, as of recent, he found that he was no longer completely blind. Although he couldn’t identify anything even when he waved his hands mere centimeters from his face, he could perceive blotches of colors.
His world, was no longer dark and hopeless.
“Hey Gust, where we going to sleep tonight? I want a soft bed to sleep in.”
“Little man, we don’t have that much money left.”
“So? We’ll have money after we win tomorrow, and then we can worry about the rest afterwards.”
“Tch, fine. In return though, we have some errands we’ll need to run first. Before we go to the hostel, we’ll need to visit the town stadium, a dark alleyway, and a blacksmith.”
“Huh, why do we need to visit a dark alleyway?”
“Because it’s important.”
“...”
The two quickly found the town’s stadium, and registered for fights. Gust would be fighting a similarly equipped “light-armored fighter”, whereas Wesley had been paired against a fellow mage initiate, but had requested to be paired against a Rank 3 Elementary Mage instead.
After they left the stadium, the two scouted the town for a blacksmith shop. When they finally found one, they scouted around it, and found a dark alleyway to hide in.
While Gust rummaged through his bag in the alleyway , Wesley symbolically stood guard at the entrance. After a few minutes, Gust tapped Wesley on the shoulder, and they left the alleyway and walked to the front of the blacksmith shop.
Although they were still standing outside, the two were assaulted by a wave of heat emanating from within the shop, threatening to burn their faces to a crisp.
As if the heat weren’t enough, numerous loud metallic bangs rang from the shop’s backroom.
“Hey, anyone here?”, yelled Gust.
The metallic banging continued.
“HEY, ANYONE HERE?”
The metallic banging continued, but this time, a young man covered in soot stumbled out of the backroom.
“Hey there, my name’s Allen. What can I do for you?”
“Hey Allen, I got a bunch of dented and broken armor pieces, as well as a dozen or so weapons that need repairs. I’d like to sell them all, you see, my little brother here is blind, and we’re trying to scrape together some money to look for something to help him.”
“Ah, I see…” Allen glanced Wesley, pity in his eyes. “Well, let me see what we can do for you.”
Gust smiled back with shining eyes. “Thank you so much!”
Chapter 18
Just hearing Gust’s fawning voice, coupled with the pity-grabbing story, Wesley almost threw up.
However, he soon brightened up once everything had been sorted and priced - he and Gust had earned a small fortune for their troubles!
The two left the shop with a small bag of coins in hand, smiles on their faces, some swagger in their steps.
“Alright Wesley, where shall we eat? Today, your nose makes the choice!”
“The nose leads the way!”
Wesley and Gust strolled through the town’s streets, before they finally ended up before an exquisitely designed, two story restaurant.
Wesley’s nose twitched a few times before he stopped and pointed.
“The nose says here!”
‘The kid really has an expensive nose.”, thought Gust. Despite that, he led Wesley into the restaurants, where they were promptly shown out the door by the hostess.
“Get out! The two of you smell like donkeys, you’ll ruin the experience for our guests! Looks for handouts somewhere else!”, she had said.
Back on the street, Wesley sniffed a few more times. “Hey Gust, do we really smell? I don’t smell anything?”
“I guess.” Gust promptly turned around. “Come on, let’s go. We can wash up at the hostel, and we should probably buy new clothes while we’re at it, too. Our clothes have been through a lot.”
…
An hour later, the two exited from the front doors of an inexpensive inn they had found, refreshed and energized from their baths.
“How expensive are clothes?” Wesley asked Gust.
“More expensive than a few meals but less than we’ve got.”
“Does that mean we won’t be able to eat at the nice restaurant after we buy new clothes?”
“We’ll probably be able to afford it again if we win our duels; the payouts here are pretty big, almost comparable to the Larwin Kingdom’s cities.”
“Hmm.”
“We’ll be fancy boys.”
“Fancy boys!”
The two strolled their way into a tailor’s shop, and tried on several garments. Gust being Gust, he quickly chose a very flamboyant piece, somewhat reminiscent of the colorful feathers of a peacock.
Likewise, he chose an outfit for Wesley that suggested the look of a, well, lesser peacock.
Of course, he didn’t forget to also purchase more subdued outfits for himself and Wesley to travel in. This kind of wear was barely appropriate in towns and cities, and was certainly not appropriate wear for physical exertion.
Exiting the store, the two waltzed their way, now in their peacock-ish clothes, to one of the cheapest food stalls in town, and filled themselves up with barley bread and porridge.
Those in the area looked at them with confused, sometime even disdainful, gazes, but the two didn’t care.
Cause they were fancy boys.
After they finished their meal, the two retreated to their room at the inn, and rested for the night.
The next day, they stomped their way out of the inn, and toward the town’s stadium.
Today, they would win… to be true fancy boys!
The two entered the stadium, and proceeded to the registration office.
Before entering, however, Gust quickly checked his and puffed his chest
out. Then, he pushed the door and strolled in, while Wesley followed closely behind.
A fierce-looking, young lady looked up. “Ah, Gust and Wesley, good timing. The duels today have just started. Let’s see… Gust, you’re due for a fight in about an hour in Arena 1, while Wesley, you’re due for a fight in two hours or so in Arena 3.”
Memory Seal- Volume 1 Page 12