Chapter 703 Back to Alaric’s Training
After he had handed off the captives to Aria and Gwyneira, Marcus made the return trip to Lethallan with the four people he rescued in tow.
When he arrived, he simply dropped them off still unconscious at a guard station in the city and left without anyone noticing him.
Then he flew back into the dungeon and spent a few days scoping out the best places for Alaric to train before returning to the entrance to leave a record of his exit.
'Now I wonder how Alaric is doing. If he was diligent, he might have ranked up to steel by this point.' Marcus thought as he headed over to the guild hall.
'Oh, this place looks livelier than before.' Marcus observed when he walked in.
There were many more adventures around and while they seemed frantic there was also an air of ease. People seemed far less on edge than before.
Reaching out with his telepathy Marcus tired to find if Alaric was currently in range and was lucky to get a hit.
'Irene, you are back!'
Sounding excited Alaric was quite ecstatic about Marcus' return and told him where his location currently was.
Heading through the guild hall he was a bit surprised to hear where Alaric was, but when he arrived, he had a better understanding of what was going on.
In the training hall along with Alaric, was Jarek and the party he had joined called the Depths Delvers.
'Looks like they have been helping Alaric train while I was gone. I guess it really was the right move to introduce him.' Marcus thought as he approached their group.
Alaric for his part looked sweaty and exhausted while the members of the Depths Delvers were all smiles.
The first to approach Marcus as their leader Neal, who was a large man who had long short blond hair in a buzz cut.
"It has been a while, Irene. We heard you were in town with a new pupil, and with Jarek's recommendation decided to give him a bit of training. Hope we did not overstep our bounds?"
"No, it is fine. So long as you did not give him any alcohol like last time." Marcus said with an icy gaze.
"We learned our lesson last time. I promise we have not done anything but help train the kid and give him some our knowledge as veterans." Neal said while waving his hands rapidly in front of his face.
After this opening exchange the rest of his party came up to Marcus, and the one named Lia who was a fairly young woman with navy hair came up to him with sparkling eyes.
"Irene, you have found quite the talented boy. Would you mine giving him to me so I can make him my pupil?"
Taken aback by this, Marcus did not expect such a request.
"Sorry, that is not happening. To start he is a noble and I am just training him because he is a friend of my little sister, and his mother is my friend. If you want him to be your pupil, you will need to work it out with his family." Marcus said, shutting her down.
At this she sighed and slinked away. Obviously quite despondent.
"Irene, look."
Coming up once Marcus had finished greeting the members of the Depths Delvers, Alaric held out a shining new guild card.
However, while at first glance Marcus thought it was his steel rank card. Upon closer examination it was most definitely silver.
"Wow you moved faster than I thought you would. But what about the rank up test? They are normally not held but once every two weeks, and I do not think that the next one was coming up for another five days." Marcus said, sending his gaze towards Jarek who had been pretty quiet so far.
"Oh, yeah, my wif- I mean the guild master made a special exception for him and used her authority to give him silver rank once he had completed the requisite number of requests. He was already strong enough to be a silver rank when he arrived, so there was no reason to make him wait any longer. Anyway, with you training him, he is likely to end up a monster just like your little sister." Jarek said.
Once that was cleared up Marcus turned to Alaric and told him that they could enter the dungeon tomorrow, and that for now he would like to see what he had been working on with the Depths Delvers.
"Sure, I will show you the new skills that each of them taught me." Alaric said with a big childish smile on his face.
With that decided, Marcus and Jarek moved over to the side and watched as Alaric demonstrated what he had learned in the few days Marcus was gone.
"Irene, there is something important I need to speak to you about." Jarek eventually said while they were watching Alaric.
"Yeah, I figured. It is about the Dungeon Marauders, right?" Marcus said, guessing what Jarek wanted to talk about.
"A few days ago, you went into the dungeon saying you were going to scout them out, and now it has been found out that not only base, but the entire area they were in has been destroyed. I did not see it myself, but the adventures that went to investigate sent back a report and said that the sturdy stone pillars were all demolished and even the dungeon was having a difficult time restoring the area. Would you mind telling me what happened?"
Shrugging his shoulders, Marcus saw no reason why not to at least tell Jarek a bit of the truth. As long as he was willing to keep it a secret.
"Jarek, if you promise to just keep this between you and me, I am willing to tell you. But I honestly would rather the guild not know exactly how strong I am. so I do not plan on giving any official report. Is that fine with you?"
"You really did wipe them all out then?!" Jarek said in astonishment.
In response though, Marcus just smiled as he waited for Jarek to promise secrecy.
"Fine I will not tell anyone. I swear this to you on my life which you once saved."
Satisfied with Jarek's answer, Marcus began telling him a bit of what happened. Though leaving out his ghostly activities and that the Marauders were actually not criminals but soldiers from another continent.
"I see. You are far stronger than I thought you would be. To think you could use a tier seven spell that can lay waste to such a large area."
Now that Jarek knew that Marcus had used overwhelming power to destroy the Dungeon Marauder that had repelled a group of high-ranking adventures, it really sunk in how large the difference between them was.
When they had fought the dungeon boss around wo years ago, they were much closer in power, but now Marcus had skyrocketed past him.
"Well, I know you do not want there to be an official record so I will do what I can to make sure you are not suspected. And since no one else will know at least allow me to thank you for getting rid of those criminals."