Mason, who had received the mission to tag along with Desmon Bard, the 23 year old Duke, and bring Don along with him to the Duke's estate in his Dukedom, was feeling like exp was just falling into his lap as he enjoyed in luxury.

It had taken the group around a week to travel to the Dukedom's largest city, one that was near the southern border of Bard. Back when he first arrived at the palace-like mansion in the centre of the city, he, along with the silent Don were completely dumfounded.

"Waa~"

It was also Mason's first time seeing the usually indifferent Don letting out any sort of emotion, or any sort of sounds in general!

"Haha! Don't need to be so shocked. This is where you kids will be living for the time being. Don't worry, you will be my guests for your time in the estate, so just enjoy."

Since the system had given him benefits as well, Desmon did not reject the two, especially since one of them was directly responsible for him being alive today, and the other one was following behind the one that saved his life.

However, for the past week, Mason and Don, had done absolutely nothing. They were just resting in their rooms, whiling away time by eating, sleeping, and just shilling with each other. In this time, Mason had realised that Don was, although rather reserved, still a kid of age 15, just barely considered an adult in some nations. Since he had not sent a lot of time with kids his age due to having to work to survive, Mason was not sure what to do with Don.

However, Don and mason did get along just fine discussing about the system, and playing rather enjoyable games that Don came up with.

The most interesting game was a game called "Chess".

Today was just another one of those days where Mason and Don were playing an extremely challenging game of chess mage from hardened dirt that Don had pulled in from the grounds outside the window using his speciality of Earth magic, and mason carved into the shapes Don wanted using wind bullets.

Don could roughly control and shape Earth, and he could even harden it to hold its shape. However, the shapes he wanted were too detailed to make using simple Earth magic, and So Mason had to lend a hand as well. Naturally, it had taken almost 3 days to create the dirt 'chess set' during which Don had taught Mason the rules and had practiced in theory.

However, on this day, someone knocked on the door.

"May I enter?"

"Sure"

The door opened and a maid entered with the head butler before bowing and retreating from the duo's vision.

"The lord has requested your presence."

"Desmon? Sure" Mason shrugged, while Don just nodded.

As the two left the room, the butler took another glance at the chess set that the two were using and his eyes almost seemed to sparkle in interest. However, he turned away and followed the two who were following the maid to Desmon's study.

"So, how has your stay been here?"

"Good." Mason said with seemingly no signs of etiquette, which he had naturally never learnt in his life as a commoner orphan.

"…" Don did not even speak and just nodded along with Mason.

"Haha, good. I will be heading out for a few weeks so tell the butler if you have anything you need to get done." Desmon did not mind the lack of proper conduct as he spoke.

However, Mason suddenly recalled something even more important. The mission had told him to help out Desmon, not to loaf around in the mansion!

"Is it for business related to the Dukedom?"

"Yes… why?"

"Done and I will come with you."

"…" Don simply nodded to whatever Mason said as though he was a robot, while looking slightly down so that his rather long and messy brown hair would cover his golden eyes.

"Why?" A strange emotion flickered past Desmon's blue eyes, almost as though he already knew the answer.

"The Lord told us to."

"…" Don just nodded along.

"… Alright." Desmon waved them away while continuing, "Go and clean up. Cut your hair and have a bath or whatever. Get some good clothes and prepare to leave in two days."

"Where are we going?" Mason asked just before being pushed out of the room by the head butler who was intending on getting their measurements to make the clothes as soon as possible.

"Ferdin, the Capital of course."

ShadowMagus

I needed the time skip to keep the plot moving since it was stagnating a lot, and I know some of you should have felt it too. It is incredibly unrealistic to have things occur around our main characters continuously on a daily basis, even for a fantasy novel. At least I feel that some novels take this too far and have too many things happen to the mc every free moment he has to spare, and forget about accumulating things through time. That is why such mc's require quite a bit of plot armour when a strong enemy arrives. Hopefully you all also think the time skip was a good idea, sine nothing much happens, I would just be reciting the daily routines of the mc's.
If you guys liked it then please give some stones!
I'm rising soo high, let it rain over me, Ay ay ay, ay ay ay let it rain over me, Ay ay ay, ay ay ay let it rain over me
Such an old song, but a banger for sure. Also, anyone heard this new song? Well, maybe it is not that new to you guys since it came out like 11 months ago but I just found it. AJR-Bang. Another banger of a song.
I know my music taste swings in a lot of directions, but just ignore that.
If you have successfully read through to this part of my rant, then congratulations on wasting 1 minute of your life you will never get back, sorry and thank you for your support. Peace.