I woke up early, as usual, on Monday. The excitement in the air was palpable. Adrian was already shuffling around getting his stuff together, something I wouldn’t have to do because I still owned no possessions other than the clothes on my back.

Adrian glanced over as I sat up, stretching slightly.

“Sorry, did I wake you?”

I shook my head, “No. It was about time for me to get up anyway.”

He looked out the window of our room, the window faced east so it gave us a fairly good view of the sun as it started to rise.

“Yeah, I guess it’s about that time.”

“Nervous?” I asked him.

“Hmmm, maybe a little. But I think I’m more excited, this is kinda what we’ve been preparing for and it’s also the kind of business my family has been in for a while so I’ve been prepping for something similar probably longer than most other people. I guess that’s where the nervous part is coming in, I don’t want to let them down.”

“I can understand that,” I said while nodding my head, “My parents always wanted what was best for me, and because of that, they pushed me. Hard. Tried to make me the best person I could be in sports and academics. Which, there’s nothing wrong with that, you should always try your best. But it does get to be a bit overwhelming, I think I ended up being pretty resentful about it for a while there. I still am, honestly.”

Adrian nodded knowingly, “Yep, that’s pretty much exactly it,” He chuckled slightly, the tone tinged with a bit of sadness, “But hey, that’s what parents are for right?”

“Supposedly,” I said with a smile.

“Got any plans, besides going on your mission? Maybe things you want to do after your stint with the NSA?” He asked, changing tactics.

I thought about that for a minute. What did I want to do in life here? Really I had two major goals, find a way back home that still allowed me to come here, and kill Ili’kithari. But what about after those had been achieved? What would I want to do then?

That might bear some thought.

I shrugged in response to his question, “I’ve got a couple of goals that I plan to achieve, the NSA is my best option for gaining the strength to be able to do so. They’re pretty far-reaching goals though, and could possibly take me years, maybe decades… hopefully, not centuries. But I guess… I guess I’m prepared for the possibility it could take a lifetime. I need to be.”

Adrian nodded slowly, before turning back to his stuff that he was packing away.

“My father once said something to me ‘To succeed at something shows the world that you’re capable. To fail and try again shows the world that you’re dedicated. But the moment you surrender, it shows that you were never interested in succeeding,’” he shrugged slightly, “Basically it boiled down to not being afraid of failure. The world doesn’t see much of a difference between someone who succeeded and someone who succeeded after a hundred attempts. The world actively scorns people who give up and will remember their failures.”

That… wasn’t entirely incorrect. You would think that it would just be better to be perfect, always succeeding at everything you do. And to a degree that’d be correct, except no one is capable of that. No one is perfect and everyone at some point fails at something.

Olympic athletes fail hundreds, thousands, possibly tens or hundreds of thousands of times before they perfect their techniques. And yet they don’t let those failures discourage them, they press onwards attempting to just get a little bit better each day.

So the main point is that even though you’re going to fail, you shouldn’t let that stop you, if you do you’re worse than just a failure. You’re a failure who doesn’t want to be better, you’re content with failing.

And that’s not something I’m fine with.

“I think I understand, there’s a saying where I come from ‘If at first, you don’t succeed, try, try again.’ There’s a bit of contention about who originally said it first, but I think it came from a poem,” I shrugged, “but the spirit of the quote is the same either way.”

Adrian snapped the case shut that had all of his stuff packed away in it, before turning to smile at me.

“Pretty much,” He agreed, “Well, Alex, it was nice rooming with you. Hopefully, we’ll meet again at some point in the future. If you’re ever running through the western region and end up in Delthine, my family lives out there. We’re not terribly high in the social ladder, but my father is a baron, just let them know you know me from here, tell them ‘The birds sing blue,’ they’ll know what it means.”

With that, he stuck his hand out for me to shake.

I stood up from the bed and grasped his hand firmly, “Likewise, unfortunately, I have no family to pull favors from,” I said with a bit of self-deprecation, “but if you ever need more manpower you can call on me.”

He just smiled, before grabbing his suitcase and heading out the door, stopping before he did, “Good luck with your mission.”

“You too.”

Then he closed the door behind him as he stepped out. I couldn’t help but feel a wave of sadness wash over me, the telltale feeling of change. I didn’t like when things changed, but I hated when things stagnated even more.

I looked out the window of the room, seeing the sun rising in the distance.

“Well, no time like the present. Let’s see what the future has in store.”

 

***

 

I gathered up the few things that I had, mainly just the thinnels. The books we had turned in on our last days of the respective courses so I didn’t have to worry about any of those.

Given that I basically only owned the writing utensils and the clothes on my back, I didn’t have a lot of things I needed to carry, so cleanup was quick.

With all of my stuff gathered up I left the room for the last time and made my way down to the training rooms again. I took a bit of time to just meander through the hallways.

I’d only been here a month but it had become another home to me in a way that nowhere really else had. The longest I’d ever stayed in one place in this world so far was in Alixia. And that had been an unwilling event.

I actually wanted to be here, and I had certainly enjoyed my time. I had learned a lot about magic, about the history of this world, and about pointless alchemy.

I would have much preferred to learn about real alchemy instead, but beggars can’t be choosers.

After taking a bit of time to survey the compound grounds one last time, I made my way down the training rooms and ended up in the same one we’d been using the entire time.

Surprisingly, I was the last one to show up today. Jazz and Lea were both already in the room talking about something, the conversation cut off as Lea turned to me with the same polite smile she gave everyone.

“Alex! Great, you’re here, we were just getting ready to discuss the terms of our assignment. They delivered it to me this morning, before I left my room.”

She produced a letter that was sealed with a stamp of the symbol of the NSA, a set of scales balancing on a sword, superimposed onto a shield. The symbol apparently stood for ‘Defense in the name of justice,’ or something like that.

A bit corny if you ask me.

Lea gently opened up the paper, breaking the seal, and read through the paper rapidly, her eyes quickly taking in all the information.

“Well, looks like they’re giving us something easy to start with. We’re to head to the northeastern region and dispose of the outlaws stationed up there. But… hmmm.”

She frowned slightly as she read through the paper.

“But?” I pressed her, trying to get her to finish the thought.

“It doesn’t say who the outlaws are or how many, I have to assume they just don’t know and only know that they’re in the area. Which is… annoying, but not impossible to handle. Well, it’s simple enough. We’ll start by going to Lustirne before making our way east, there’s a small village about a week's walk to the east of Lustirne named Istvel. That’s where we’ll station ourselves out of and see if we can get some information from the people there. Any questions?”

She glanced at the two of us, but neither of us had anything to say. She nodded her head, “Good. Let’s gather some supplies from the quartermaster, and then we’ll make our way out of here as soon as we’re ready.”

With that, she led us out of the room that we were in and started making our way to the section of the building the quartermaster operated out of.

For such a surreal moment she managed to make it seem ordinary and natural, truly the mark of a good leader. Or so I assumed.

It didn’t take particularly long for us to make it down there and for Lea to start rattling off the supplies that she wanted and then multiply the amount by three. Three sleeping bags, three tents, three fire kits, three everything.

It didn’t take long for it all to be put together in big bags for us to carry, along with a few gold pieces for us to use for mission purposes. The excess was expected to be brought back and every expenditure was recorded for auditing purposes. Just to make sure people weren’t stealing things.

Which was understandable, although I didn’t know why people would steal a couple of gold, I’d heard of people doing more idiotic things before, so it wasn’t entirely unbelievable.

When the person operating the supplies quarter handed us our stuff, Lea then handed it off to each of us. I took mine and began shrugging it onto my shoulders, trying to get it to situate comfortably.

Jazz looked at him like it was the plague, Lea made a noise in her throat and shook it at him a little before he finally grabbed it from her. She then nodded approvingly, giving him her award-winning smile, before moving to place hers on her shoulders as well.

Lea looked at the two of us, “Everyone has everything they want? If you want or need something, now’s the time to say so.”

I shook my head, “This is probably more than what I’d think we need, but better safe than sorry.”

She just nodded, “Alright, let’s get moving then.”

And with those words, she started our trek out of the city. It felt weird to be leaving the capital after being here for so long. Not that I’d really done anything here other than just stay in the compound.

Hell, I hadn’t even seen Fiona or them since I’d started my courses in the compound. I wonder if that was because I hadn’t gone out to see them or if they’d left the city on some mission. It might’ve been nice to receive a letter from them or something, but it wasn’t like I’d never see them again.

I’d try to see if they were around when I came back to the capital. From what I understood, we always returned here after missions, both to recover and to gather our next assignment. Hopefully, they’d be around when we did return.

It didn’t take us long to make it out of the compound and then to make our way to the north end of the city. We didn’t rush, mainly because it was easy to cause an accident if you started moving at high speeds around a bunch of other people. And not everyone had the stats of combat-based classes.

Even if people were the same tier, there was a massive power difference between someone like a carpenter and a fighter. A carpenter might have over a thousand strength at the same rate as a fighter or berserker-type melee. But they wouldn’t have the stat boosts that those classes would acquire as well which would push their stats even further.

Because of this power disparity, we made an effort to be careful. Especially because not everyone was a tier-three. Many were children who hadn’t had the time or the opportunity to try gaining levels in anything.

It’s hard to gain levels in something when you’re six, I would imagine.

It took us around thirty minutes of walking to make our way outside the city.

Lea glanced back at both of us, “Alright, I’m going to start picking up the pace. We’ll probably have to set our speed to something that Jazzosaur can handle, but if you two are ready?”

With nods from both of us, we slowly started picking up speed.

And in the distance behind us, Elendar fell away.