Irregular - Chapter 6

The first to step up after Jer was another young man named Strem, now he was strange to look at. His very skin was translucent, and his eyes glowed, she was pretty sure they glowed! And his HAIR! It floated, like he was underwater, and it was WHITE, like not the old people silver, but an actual white, like Ivory Ore once it was melted white. He was about as tall as Jer had been but a good deal thinner, she tried to do her job like a proper professional yet couldn’t but stare. A glance at his tag told her that this poor boy had gone through a similar experience as Jer. Once she handed him his tag the boy added with a wink, “Thanks for the effort, OH blooming rose, if all guilds have such lovely ladies as you working at the reception then I shall have to visit more often!”

Maia was to stunned by his words to even react as he walked away, the next one to step forward was a girl that was just as strange as her predecessor. She had bark for skin, making her skin a darkish green, it looked as if it was bark covered in a thin layer of fresh moss, her hair was like grass, but not at all green, it was pale, almost silvery but without that silver shine to it, very strange, she wore her hair in a loose braid and there were flowers pinned in her hair making her look a bit like how she imagined a dryad to look like. The girl really had a noble presence to her, carrying herself with natural grace. She gave her the tag, and saw that her name was Yinta. “I’m sorry about that flirtatious fool, he really has no sense of etiquette.”

“That’s fine!” Maia quickly answered. “I’m used to it!” She flinched mentally almost as soon as she said it, she felt like she was bragging, but the girl just took it at face value and nodded.

The next girl to step forward was hairy, hairy might not be the right word as this did not seem to be the same stiff hair she had seen on some particularly hair adventurers, she had the weird urge to run her hand over her head, the girls hair was matted and untended giving her a wild appearance. Her eyes glittered a near golden amber color She wasn’t much for conversation it seemed, as she simply took the needle dropped a bit of blood on the tag, waited for her to return it then walked away.

“Sorry about Valana,” A deep voice said “She is not a sociable person, only with us she feels somewhat at ease I guess.”

She looked at the person the voice had come from, she expected to stare into his face when she turned instead she ended up looking at his stomach, she leaned back to look at him, then leaned back some more aaaand a bit more, before she finally saw his face, this boy had to be at least ten feet! He was tall, seemed armored plated, but at closer inspection it seemed that was his skin. She looked back at the boys face only to find that it was surprisingly, child like. His face still had some of that baby fat that rounded it out, he was surprisingly cute despite his size. She gave him his tag after telling him it was alright, she was polite compared to some of the people she had to work with.

The next one to step up was a cute looking girl with blond hair, she had a loose pony tail, with her bangs falling down at both sides of her face, She near bounced up to the desk. “Hi!” She said, eyes glittering as she gave Maia a dazzling smile,

“Uuuh hi?” Maia said, slightly overwhelmed by the girl’s energy.

A ripple of orange ran over the girl’s skin, Maia had to blink to make sure she wasn’t hallucinating. “So now I have to do the blood prick thing right? I wonder if it hurts, I bet it hurts, probably doesn’t hurt so much as a knife though! A knife really hurts, but spells hurt more, so its fine!” The girl kept babbling about this and that, as Maia got her tag made and gave it to her, the girl’s name was Sumi apparently. She bounced off back to her group, talking animatedly with the others.

The next one to step up was a tribal looking girl, with one side of her hair shaved and the rest falling loosely over one shoulder, her skin was slightly dark as one might become if they worked their lives in the blistering sun, her eyes shone with a fiery red. The girl did not say much and simply smiled politely as she took her plate and headed back to the group. When she walked away Maia gaped in awe as she saw sparks and flashes of fire travel through her hair and across her body.

The last boy to step forward had middle long hair, blacker than anything she had ever seen. His skin was as white as Strem’s hair, his eyes unnerved her to be hones, no eye white, no pupil no nothing, just black. The boy stepped in front of her and just stared. She handed him the needle and the tag, the boy just stared at them and then back at her. “You need to drop some of your blood onto the tag.” The boy kept staring from the tag and needle back to her then back to the needle, he turned around to his friends but Jer was already on his way. “Sorry madam, he doesn’t know how to speak properly yet, he understands some of what you say but doesn’t know what to do with it yet.” Jer made some strange movements with his hands toward the boy, causing the boys eyebrows to raise. He dropped some blood onto the tag, and she took it to the press, and thus the last plate for their irregular band of misfits had been made.

Three looked down at the status plate he had been given, then back to the confused receptionist. She was telling him something about the status plate, but he couldn’t understand so he looked over to Jer. Jer explained to him that there were some things she didn’t understand about the status plate, Three couldn’t read what it said anyways so he let Jer take a look.

Name : ???

Age : ???

Lvl : 1

Occupation : N/a

Class : N/a

{Skill : Lesser-regeneration, : Skill level 84}

{Skill : Pain-tolerance, : Skill level 63}

{Skill : Tough-body, : Skill level 72}

{Skill : Iron Skin : Skill level 81}

{Perk : Mana-sustenance}

{Perk : Battered Body }

{Inheritant-Core – ?????}

Jer took a look at the status plate and frowned, “Well his age is the same as the rest of us, as for his actual name neither us nor he himself knows what it is, we have taken to calling him Three and he refers to himself as such.” Jer signed what he was telling the receptionist at the same time to Three so he could understand what they were talking about.

Maia nodded taking out a strange device like a needle but larger, She pressed the point of the needle to the status plate and Three watched with interest as the needle-shaped the metal on the plate, Jer explained that she was adding his name and age. Three nodded and smiled slightly as she gave him the status plate, now including his name and age. He ran his thumb over the plate, a content smile on her face. She then spoke to Jer about some other things, Three couldn’t understand them anyways so he headed back to the group. It took a while for Jer to return, he had a thoughtful look on his face.

[I think we should split up] he signed.

The rest stared at him frowning, a lot of people disagreeing at the thought that they should separate, they felt safe and comfortable as a group and saw no reason to change that.

[Let me explain,] he said stroking an imaginary beard [the hags know of us as a group, and the eight of us really stand out, we stand out even more when we are together as a group. We need to gain some strength in order to properly defend ourselves should they come back. We need to make connections, allies and hopefully even friends, most importantly we need information, if we spread out in different directions away from the hag lair, it would be harder for them to track us.]

[I don’t really want to split up but I get what you’re sayin] Flit answered, [Well at least tell us how you plan to split up, in 2 groups, 3? 4? Each on their own?]

Jer shook his head, [I plan to split us up in pairs, I’d like to avoid putting girls together, we might be very hard to kill but we have no offensive capabilities or strength what so ever, besides our natural abilities. The girls are pretty, and a lot of people would consider making coin from it, some might prefer to have, fun , so I’d propose one of the girls be paired with one of the guys.]

Three, pulled on his earlobe, [I still don’t want to split up, I barely understand anything, I can’t read or write,]

Jer nodded, [Actually I had already thought out the pairs, Three and Sumi would stay here in the village, learning from the nearby Adventurers post, I heard they have a competent mage here, there is also a small chapter of the warriors college, giving you guys the opportunity to learn. The other pairs would leave the village, Kolstum and Flit would head to the east, Yinta and Strem to the west, Me and Valana to the south.]

Strem stretched his back, folding his hands behind his head. [I don’t mind setting out in pairs that much but I still don’t understand why you think it’s necessary.]

[I assume all of us want to go out exploring,] Jer answered [The best way to do that would be to join an adventurers team, these teams consist of five members, meaning as a group we are too large for one team, if we did make a team composing of only our members, I fear we would become infamous within a short amount of time.. If we join teams in pairs we will learn different things from different people, the goal is to make the people in our respective teams our allies, if we grow together with our team we will grow stronger, not just us but our potential allies as well, meaning the hags won’t have to go after just us eight but twenty trained adventurers in total. Perhaps most importantly, it’s just a feeling i have. I have had the feeling for a while and tried to think about it logically myself. I give you the same answers i found for myself. It’s necesarry, although i couldn’t tell you why]

[Alright,] Yinta said folding her hands, [You have convinced me, there are probably multiple other reasons you have for doing this that you won’t tell us, but we shall rely on your intelligence as we always have]

The rest of the group grinned and nodded.

[We should at least meet each other every so often! Perhaps in this village every month?] Sumi quickly added.

Kolstum shook his head, [Every month does not seem feasible, every six months might be do-able however. We could always meet in the whiteroom whenever we want so even that might not be necessary, meeting up once a week or month to check on progress in the white room might be a good idea however.]

The rest agreed, now they realized that even if they did split up and moved different ways that they would not be as far apart as they had thought at first, the whiteroom was indeed always available to them. Because of this they split up without any further ado as they each headed in a different direction, Sumi stood next to Three as she waved them goodbye, Three turned back to the Adventurers Post, Before he completed the turn Sumi hopped on his back and put her head on his shoulder. Sumi barely weighed anything, with her new cloth body he doubted she weighed more than thirty pounds, That and he himself was rather tall, 6,6 the only reason he didn’t stand out so much was because Kolstum had been large on an entirely different scale.

“So, what are we going to do?” Sumi asked

[Join team] Three answered. Sumi giggled at his response, “Well you’re right, then let’s go back to the receptionist lady and ask her how we do that.

Three nodded, returning to the building with Sumi on his back, he walked up to the receptionist, letting Sumi do the talking.

Maia POV

Maia was still reeling from today’s events, her stomach in turmoil because of the information on those status plates. She realized that each of those kids had to have been excessively tortured to get skills like that, she had never even HEARD, of anyone with a regeneration skill above fifty. Those kids had a strong defensive set, she pictured them as adventurers and realized they would be very hard to kill, even if their offensive skills were severely lacking at the moment, she assumed that even a rank D team, could overpower the group simply by the advantage in levels and stats. Thinking about stats she realized another odd occurrence, they were all still level one, their stats had not even been unlocked yet, they had to level up at least once first. She wondered what kind of stats they had.

She blinked as the tall dark-haired yet so very pale young man came in through the door, she had somewhat noticed that the group of them was splitting up, yet she had not assumed they would be back so soon. She straightened up ready to do her job when her mental state was once again knocked off balance, by the cute dazzling smile of Sumi who was peering over the dark boy’s shoulder.

“Maiaaa,” Sumi said in singsong, “We need to join a team, preferably a nice team, with fun members, positive energy! We don’t know how, or what to do, or how, so we came to ask!”

Maia gave her a smile, “Well since the two of you haven’t reached level five yet you would have to go to the warrior’s college first, normally you would have to choose between either the warrior’s college, the hidden camps, or the mage’s guild. But this village is on the smaller side so the mage appointed to this outpost moved in with the warrior’s college if either of you want to go to the hidden camps you would still have to contact the warrior’s college.”

“So how do we get to the warrior’s college?” Sumi asked.

“Just head out the door to the right and keep walking down the road, you will recognize the college when you see it.” Maia told them, before she had even completely finished her sentence Sumi was pulling Three towards the door, the slightly intimidating young man surprisingly turned around before he left and waved her goodbye. She blinked before quickly waving a goodbye of her own.

Guess you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, the boy is surprisingly polite. Well I’m interested in what they will get up to I’ll make sure to keep tabs on them! Maia said sinking back into thought.

Three POV

Sumi was holding his hand and dragging him down the road, the glances he got from the villagers was still somewhat unnerving, but they were no longer hiding their kids so he would count that as a win. The village was indeed not that large, compared to the stories he had heard from the others about cities larger than the eye could see. He had never seen this many people out and about before today, he hadn’t seen any other people other than his friends and the hags actually.

A few minutes of walking down the dirt trodden road through the rustic, yet well crafted wooden buildings and they ended up at a much larger building, with a lot of open space around it. He was pretty sure this was the warrior’s college he had been told about. Sumi kept dragging him straight to the wooden door, he had wanted to knock as it was the polite thing to do, but Sumi seemed to have other ideas, being patient not one of them. She pushed open the door and marched in. Three followed behind her only to enter a room, with a bunch of other younger people. Children ranging from ten years old to teenagers past their twenties were sitting paying attention to a short, squat man with short black hair and sharp dark eyes.

Sumi ,having no tact what so ever walked up to the group staring at her and announced. “We are here to join a team of adventurers! Who wants to team up with me and dark and brooding?! How do we team up, actually what does a team do, what does an adventurer even do.” She stared back at Three, “Why are we doing this again.”

Three massaged his temples then signed at her, [allies and information].

“Ooooowh right!” She said clapping her hands in realization, “So how do we do that?”

The man with sharp eyes looked at her, “A good start would be introducing yourselves. I, for one, am Cilestius, the head of this college.”

“Nice to meet you I’m Sumi!” Sumi said giving the man a wave, “And this overly-large-and-scary-but-secretely-very-nice-guy here is Three, he doesn’t know how to talk very well yet, but I’m teaching him!”

“Yes you do seem to be well versed in the art of speaking.” The man said, gaining chuckles from around the room. Sumi didn’t even notice the jab at her expense and simply took it as a compliment nodding enthusiastically. “Regardless, if you would join the rest, we are having a short meeting before we return to our duties.” Three not understanding the words but understanding the man’s body language, nodded.

“OK!” Came the energetic answer from Sumi.

Sumi headed and sat next to a somewhat older seeming girl with a dark, braid drawn over one shoulder. She gave the girl a dazzling smile and introduced herself. The other girl answered with a kurt nod and a nice to meet you. Three walked over and silently sat down next to Sumi, keeping his eyes on Cilestius. The meeting what little he could understand from the words, was about the results of last week and what the groups should focus on next week. The meeting went by rapidly with Sumi being surprisingly quite and paying close attention to the man’s words. When it finally ended Cilestius called them over with a gesture, he also called over three others. They followed him further down the hall between various training areas, ending in what Three assumed was the man’s office.

Cilestius sat down at the desk and faced the group, “Status plates,” He said holding his hand out towards Sumi and himself. They handed the plates over and the man glanced at them, eyes widening slightly then narrowing as he read through their status.

Then the man smiled, “You have come at the right time!”