Chapter 28 - 28

"Nervous?"

Alex asked Sheri who was staring at the entrance of the association.

"I haven't been to a place like this before." Sheri replied.

"And what about you, why are you staring at the entrance like that?" Alex asked Lucas.

"I'm just a bit curious about the United Adventurers Association. According to what you told me, there must be a lot of strong people in there. I am very excited to become an adventurer, but I haven't fought any mana beasts before. I don't know if I should be excited or nervous. I think......"

Since Lucas showed no signs of stopping, Alex had to cut him short,"Do you know how to use a sword?"

"No. I just thought that a sword is the weapon that I am best suited to, so I bought one yesterday." Lucas said, touching the hilt of his sword.

After some casual talk, the three of them entered the building.

The building was bustling with people. Since Lightwell city was the territory of a Battle God, most of the people residing there were mercenaries or soldiers who worked as adventurers when they had nothing else to do.

Alex and his group entered the building and immediately walked towards the reception for the newcomers. This was where they would be assigned their first mission and only after that could they officially enter the association or the various guilds affiliated with it.

Alex, Lucas and Sheri lined up and waited for their turn.

After all the formalities, all the people who registered as new adventurers were gathered and led to another room. There were around a hundred people in this room.

Alex scanned around. Most of these people were tier 1 or tier 2, with only a few tier 3.

All the people were whispering amongst themselves, some who knew each other formed small groups while some continued to look around.

"Sheri, you should limit your power to mid stage Tier 2 at all times from now until I tell you otherwise." Alex said in a firm tone.

"Why.....alright." Sheri replied in a confused tone.

"I will tell you the reason once you grow up a bit. Right now, you are too young to learn about these things." Alex teased Sheri with a smirk on his face.

"I am not a kid. I am just a few months younger than you." Sheri replied with her cheek puffed.

Alex only laughed in reply. He liked teasing her because the reactions that she gave were too cute and interesting. It reminded him of his elder sister from his previous life.

While everyone was busy talking, the door at the opposite side of the room opened and a middle aged man entered the room. He was wearing the clothes of the association.

"Alright everyone, I am Michael Crust, the one who will be presiding over your missions today. As you all know that the association requires you to take a bronze mission and complete it for you to be formally accepted as an adventurer. So what you are going to do today is that very same mission. A bulletin board is kept near the entrance of this room. You will all have to take a mission from it, register yourself for the mission and then proceed to complete it. There is no time limit and the methods to complete it are at your discretion. You can also choose to take it alone or in groups, you just have to finish it."

Everyone in the room had already received their licenses and batches, so this mission was only a formality. People began to Immediately walk out of the room with uninterested faces.

Alex and the other two also went out. Alex carefully observed the bulletin board to find any missions that could help him with collecting materials for his weapon and picked up a mission.

Just after Alex left the door, two people approached him.

"Hey, I am Dirren and this is my friend Thomas. We are also going on our first mission, so I think we should team up. I am at the peak of tier 2 and Thomas is a tier 3, so we can protect you people from the mana beasts. So what do you say, we should team up." A brawny man said, putting his weight on Alex's shoulder and giving him a creepy smile.

The eyes of the two were glued to Sheri and the greedy expression of their faces couldn't be more obvious.

Sheri wanted to kick their asses off, but Alex caught her hand, signaling her not to.

"Thank you for your help then." Alex said and signaled Lucas to bring the carriage." We can meet at the Southern gate of the city tomorrow morning."

While returning, Sheri was pouting all the way with imaginary fumes coming out of her ears.

"Why are you so angry?" Alex asked.

"Those two were giving me strange glances and also they were acting so overbearing in front of you. I would have beaten them to pulp if you didn't stop me, even so you decided to take them together with us." Sheri complained while her pouting continued.

"Don't worry, they may be useful to us, otherwise as your guardian, I wouldn't have allowed them to look at you a second time." Alex replied, patting her head to calm her down.

"You are not my guardian. I am stronger than you, so I will protect you and be your guardian." Sheri replied with a smile and began patting Alex's head instead.

Alex was caught off guard, but regained his composure very soon.

"You need to be mature to be my guardian, but you can still be my bodyguard. I'll even pay you with good food. What do you think?" Alex asked.

Sheri was really tempted by the condition of good food. She tried to decline the offer, but ended up nodding her head in approval at the end.

After that, Alex took the other two to buy some gear and basic armor. Alex picked up a storage bag and a new system notification appeared before him.

[External storage space detected.]

[Host can link the external storage and the system storage.]

[This can help in facilitating foreign objects in the system storage.]

[Proceed with linking?]

[Yes/No]

This was truly a great help and Alex immediately pressed yes. The two storages were linked and Alex could now store his things from the five cubic meter space of the storage bag to the seemingly limitless system storage.

After experimenting with a few things, Alex was happy to find out that he could virtually put anything in his system storage through his storage bag. The storage bag acted like his transit linking the outer world to the system storage.

After they were done shopping, Alex returned with the other two.

" Hey Alex, we brought nearly 500 gold coins and more than half of them have already been spent in just two days. Aren't we being a bit too extravagant? I told you that I didn't require this armor and stuff. We could....." Lucas said, but was interrupted once again, but this time it was Sheri.

" No. This is all necessary to protect the two of you. Who knows what we will face out there in the wilderness, so it is necessary for the two of you to be prepared."

"That applies to you too, and don't worry. I have chosen a mission from a portal, so the chances of running into something stronger than we expect are nearly zero." Alex replied to the other two.

"What exactly are portals?" Sheri asked, her eyes brimming with curiosity.

"Being adventurers, we will most likely receive our missions or the material that we want in three different ways. They are...."

Alex proceeded to tell Sheri and Lucas. The jobs regarding monster hunting were divided into three main classes.

First was forests. There were many mana beasts that ran amok in the forests and would often cause trouble to people who lived nearby or the passing travellers or merchants.They would post missions regarding escorting or clearing up the area of mana beasts from time to time at the Adventurers Association.

This was the most rewarding because the adventurers got to keep all their loot along with the rewards given by the employer.

But, this type of missions were filled with uncertainty the most. Stronger mana beasts could attack anytime without warning and the information provided in the missions may be incomplete or worse completely wrong, but it was compulsory for adventurers to take up these missions every once in a while.

Second were the dungeons. These were fixed structures which consisted of various levels, each harboring a multitude of mana beasts which got stronger by each level.

All the dungeons had some magical mechanism wherein new mana beasts would spawn in there from time to time, thus ensuring a never ending population of monsters. These were the most common type of dungeons that were present in games of Alex's previous life.

Some dungeons were also said to serve as eternal prisons for the demonic race members and were termed as Abyss.

The third type were portals.

All races developed domains once they reached Tier 7 and it continued to grow with the creature it belonged to, including mana beasts. When mana beasts grew strong enough for a promotion to level 11, they would create a phenomenon called 'gathering' wherein, all the mana beasts in a few hundred mile radius would gather near them. If this promotion was successful, the domains solidified and the mana beast, it's domain and the gathered creatures, all got teleported to an alternate dimension out of the main world.

These solidified domains were like large asteroids with a radius of several thousand miles.

Over time, these domains grew larger and some were even comparable to the size of the moons, needless to say that these existed for times immemorial.

The hierarchy in these separated domains was very well defined. The stronger a mana beast was, the closer it would be to the creator of the domain.

The weaker creatures dared not enter the zone of the stronger, who in turn despised coming to the zone of weaker creatures. These zones would often collide with the dimension of the main world, leading to portals opening between the two. These portals were strictly monitored and given codes based on the batch that an adventurer needs to enter them. There were bronze portals, gold portals and others depending on which zone of the domain overlapped with the main world.

After his explanation was over, Alex looked at Sheri and Lucas who had their mouths open. They had never imagined that there were such things.

Next morning, Alex drove Sheri and Lucas to the southern gate. Another carriage was waiting for them with those two people from yesterday.