12 Reckoning Day (Part 1)

"|Aura Blade|!" Irene yelled as she swung her saber at the wooden pillar only a few meters away from her. A white burst of energy shot forth from the cutting edge of her sword towards the target and found its way to the large wooden stump, leaving a long and deep slash across the wood.

"I did it..." Irene said in amazement.

"OOHHHHH!!! Good job Irene!" Dan was the first of us to speak up and begin showering the girl with praises.

"E-eh? Th-thanks..." Irene said, blushing as she squirmed in front of Dan's loud congratulations.

"Nice Irene," Paul commented as he gave her a thumbs up.

Scar nodded approvingly from his place, leaning against the inn's wall. He and Dan had long since mastered this technique, so they were happy to see their friend joining the ranks of those who had begun the road to mastery of martial arts. Paul was almost there as well, able to use his Fighting Spirit in terms of an Aura to make himself stronger, but he hadn't been able to successfully throw a slash as the others could.

I smiled, looking at the interaction between the friends and my students for a moment before I picked up the box I had next to me. Inside it was a brand new saber crafted by one of the finest wordsmiths in the city. It had taken me an arm and a leg to scrounge up the money for it, after all, I had no steady income other than the payments from patrons at the bar who wanted me to use magic and my Unique Skill to sober them up before heading home, so it took me a while before I was able to afford this present.

I approached the trio, making sure to give a knowing look to Scar who hadn't moved like the edgelord he is. He probably thinks he looks cool like that as though this were some kind of anime and he was the cool older mentor instead of me, but I ignored his chunni ways and approached Irene.

"Congratulations, Irene. You've officially graduated from my lessons." I said as I smiled and presented her with the box.

"Master!" Irene called out with a bit of affection in her eyes. She looked at me for a moment before taking the box and opening it.

"This is!" She started in shock but I cut her off.

"It's a magisteel saber. Pretty high quality too. I purified the magic ore it came from myself." I said with a smile.

It was true. In the last few weeks that I had been training myself and testing out the limits of my ability, I had found out some remarkable things. For one, I could use the immense amounts of Holy Energy I was able to create and pour it into even low-quality magic ores to increase their purity and even give them a special property.

To be completely honest, this weapon was a prototype for the weapon I wanted to have created for myself. I had another chunk of magisteel that I would continuously pour my power into every night before bed to increase its purity and strength in the hopes that one day it would become a sword or armor I could use to fight against people like Guy or Milim if I had to.

"Thank you, master!" Irene yelled as she suddenly hugged me tightly.

I was slightly stunned by this but after a moment I made sure to give her a headpat in return for her embrace. She tensed at that and after a minute let go of me, though she still had one of my hands in both of hers as she looked up at me with a happy blushing face.

"Thanks, master. Love ya!"

I smirked "Yeah yeah I know. Everyone loves me." I said sarcastically, running my hand through my hair in a pompous way. Irene giggled a bit to my obvious play.

"Well, I don't love you." Paul sneered with crossed arms at our display. Irene pouted a bit and turned towards him.

"Paul! I'm sure that master will give you something for your graduation too if you lighten up a bit!" She chided.

"I don't know Irene, I didn't get anything," Dan said, pretending to be hurt.

"Come back when your a cute girl and then we'll talk!" I quipped back at him.

"Well, the man didn't have the money nor the sense to reward you back then. You DID master it in a week after all." Marry chimed in, walking into the backyard.

"Ah! Marry! Alaster is being mean to me!" Dan comically yelped and ran to Marry, pretending to hide behind her back.

"And you're supposed to be the leader?" Marry sighed in exasperation.

We all laughed at this, even Dan. It was just another, rather peaceful afternoon in the city. I had almost completely settled in here now, but I knew, somewhere in the back of my mind, that I was forgetting something and that I couldn't settle down just yet.

It was after this laughing fit that Scar approached the group, or more specifically, he approached me. I looked at him questioningly, as he never really spoke, although I can tell from him sleeptalking that he indeed can.

He reached into a bag of his and produced a small piece of paper before handing it over to me. The action was something that happened every once in a while. He only really did something like this when he had a lead on new slavers who were in the region or when something suspicious was going on.

"Slavers?" I asked, not expecting a reply as I opened the note and read it through.

Dan, Irene, and Paul all approached and looked over my shoulders while I read it. Its contents were structured as that of a list. Four names on that list stood out to me. They were all nobility from the Super Magic Empire who we had known as high-ranking slavers. The note also contained times and dates of when they left their respective territories and when they arrived in the city.

"Having this many slavers gathered in one place means..." Paul started.

"Yes. There's almost certainly going to be a large slave auction coming through or someone they REALLY want for themselves and that they don't want on the open market." irene finished.

"Then we really only have one thing we can do!" Dan said, punching his palm as a show he was ready to fight. "Let's bust some rich asshole's heads in and save whoever they have captured."

"That goes without saying!" Paul said as he looked at us with a large smile.

"Dude, what did I say about your smile?" I reminded him.

"Fuck you to!" Paul replied venomously.

"If I recall you said he had a really creepy smile." Irene commented.

"Oh yeah, something to the effect of; 'You're smile looks like the smile of a third-rate mob villain who is used to power scale the mc in a story." Dan quoted.

"Oy! Asshole!!!" Paul yelled at Dan.

"Pfft!" Scar quickly turned his head away while trying not o laugh his ass off.

"You lot!!!" Paul called out in a rage.

"Well well, enough about the villainous smile-" Marry started.

"Eh! Even Marry!?!"

"We need to focus on this problem." She continued, as we all ignored Paul's outburst. "I don't like that it's at the old theater in the slums. These people are nobles and surely they know some form of Teleportation Magic. If the target was a single person they're selling, they'd just teleport them to a much higher-end place in the Empire rather than this border town. Besides, my contact who runs the slaves to freedom warned me last time that there was some sort of 'event' occurring in the Empire, so he assumed we'd only be getting a few more runs through he for a while." Marry explained.

"They must have quite the haul then," Paul added, somehow reincorporating himself into the group after calming down.

"They'll also have a lot more guards," I started, a bit concerned over how we would get through this pickle while rescuing everyone.

"Don't worry. I've got a plan!" Dan said confidently. His teeth positively shone with the toothy smirk he gave me.

"What could go wrong?" He added.

I facepalmed as I heard this and prayed that the flag he just raised wouldn't throw something at us that I was unable to handle.