Leaving

'Damn it! Just leave it! I'll try this again when we return to Ferdon and meet up with the old man again. I'm going to Rachel now.' Daron decided in his mind as he angrily packed up his things and left the room, heading towards the church.

[Master, you are acting like a child] Sirious commented.

'You are one to speak' Daron retorted, to which Sirious remained silent for quite some time before speaking once more.

[Your ability to bite back ate anyone when you are not in a good mood is still the same as ever.]

'And so is yours. Don't forget it, you started it.'

…

While having another pointless conversation with the AI that had known Daron for the longest time, compared to anyone in this world, he moved closer towards the church, and finally arrived at his destination.

Over the past two weeks since Daron had returned to this city and heard the story from Rachel, he had been visiting the church on a daily basis to monitor her situation. She had already fully recovered a few days ago due to the 'kindness' from the church as they kept sucking coins from Daron, however, he decided to let it slide.

He had enough coins for the church to keep extorting him for a month more and still have a tonne more, and that was not including the savings he had in the Union Bank, graciously handed to him by Bob. The second reason was that he was waiting for Sirious to fully wake up, since travelling anywhere, without being 100% prepared, was never safe.

'Bob…' Daron's thoughts wandered for a moment.

With the time he had spent with Traitorous, he had naturally learned about the location of Bob. When the old man had waved his hand, he had actually teleported Bob to a local branch of the 'Phoenix College', the mage organisation that the old man worked for.

From there, Bob was sent over to the are outside the governance of the mortal nations, to the north, where the mages ruled.

Naturally, mages with strong enough power founded their own organisations in the north of the Maradona Continent, and Phoenix College was one of them. Bob had been sent over there, and he should have taken around 2 years for the journey.

Although there were teleportation methods to reach the north, mages were a narcissistic bunch of super-powered children, and so made a 'rite of passage' for anyone who wanted to become a new-comer to any of their organisations. They made it so that the groups of new-comers from any organisation would have to travel through dangerous territories, and survive. Those who survived would be welcomed.

Somehow, Bob had survived and the old man had gotten the news exactly 2 years after Bob vanished. From there, Bob would be sent to one of the planes owned by the 'Phoenix College' to fight for them. Even though knights were incredibly weak compared to mages, they were still used as cannon fodder in large-scale battles, and no mage organisation would give up the opportunity to gain a free slave.

This was the payment that the old man had talked about in exchange for taking care of Daron and Zack's family.

"Daron?"

Rachel's rather sweet voice brough Daron out of his thoughts as he shook his head for a moment and then his gaze focused back onto the little girl in front of him.

"So? Are we going to leave or not?" she asked again, seemingly impatient to leave the city.

"Yes, let's go." Daron said as he motioned to the driver of the carriage he bought in this town to begin their journey back to Marcel.

Inside the carriage, Daron could not practice the mana absorption method, and instead, he leaned into the window sill, and stared out of the carriage onto the moving sceneries.

In reality, he was actually reading the book on the Fire Ball spell. Since he had nothing to do, he might as well do that.

Next to him, Rachel was busy playing with Snowy. For some reason, the little thing, that showed great hostility to Zoey and the rest of Zack's family, as well as the Old man, and pretty much everyone it came across, did not do anything to Rachel, and instead, even went to sleep in her arms more often than when it was with Daron.

To this fact, Daron felt a slight feeling of irritation, but he knew this was an emotion he had not felt in a long time, even back on Earth; jealousy, and so, he decided to savour this emotion.

He had heard from the old man, than mages tend to lose most emotions on their journey for gaining more knowledge and power. That was the reason most mages either turned into arrogant narcissists, perverts, or other random fetishes.

Naturally, there were also those who turned towards the more refined aspect of society like exotic beverages or foods, or eve collecting random things from different planes.

There were also those bunch of bloodthirsty ones collectively referred to as the Dark Mages. These mages willingly chose to let go of emotions and turn to the side of rationality. This way, they would gain incredible efficiency in terms of making decisions, reactions, as well as cold-bloodedness. Putting all of these together made the perfect war-machines who were also the main battle force of the mages. In return for this amazing battle-prowess, the Dark Mages also lost nearly all emotions, which almost made them into robots, just following orders and surviving to the best of their ability.

As the carriage moved forward, they encountered some normal beasts, as well as 2 Rank 1 beasts, all of whom Daron made quick work of, since this trip had greatly improved his battle efficiency against Rank 1 beasts to the point where, excluding his Internal Energy, he could kill a Rank 1 beast with just skill, and he would have no problem dealing with 3 Rank 1 beasts simultaneously with his Internal Energy.

Naturally, the group stopped so that Snowy could drink up some of their blood before it could not anymore and immediately jumped back into Rachel's arms and went to sleep.