Valar had never attended a funeral. He’d of course heard of them from the other children at the orphanage, who were unfortunately young experts on the subject, but he had never gone to one himself. In some ways, even the idea of a funeral was weird to the boy.

  They’re already dead, aren’t they? They won’t be there to see our tears, so why should we cry in the first place?

  Still, duty called on the thirteen-year-old boy. Adventurer funerals were an important part of the culture, and this particular one would be bigger than most.

  “What’s on your mind?” Rodrick’s rumbling voice broke Valar out of his thoughts, and he turned to the warrior with a questioning look.

  “Nothing, why?

  Rodrick chuckled lightly, “Liar.”

  The leader of team Cookie Sandwich wasn’t dressed in his usual adventuring clothes. Matching the spirit of the event they were heading to, he wore a black suit with silver detailing—a much finer set than his armor and leathers.

  Most adventurers really only owned a couple sets of clothing. One consisted of the usual garments that they wore on missions and free time, while the second set was meant for formal gatherings. For an adventurer at bronze rank, those gatherings were almost always funerals…

  The suit and dress shoes that Rodrick had donned fit him well, suggesting that they had been custom-made for the titanic warrior. The dark cloth wrapped around his frame nearly perfectly, making for a much more refined look than his usual one. The silver details depicting scenes of war and bloodshed were a nice touch, although one that set the tone for the event they were going to attend. It was a suit meant for funerals, no doubt about it.

  Valar’s own set of clothing was the set of finer clothing Viktor had gifted him when they left Lyndale for the academy. Funnily enough, this was the first time Valar wore it since that day. At least it finally has a use.

  He looked at himself through the mirror in their room. They were lucky to have one, since most inns didn’t have such luxuries available, although the cost of lodging reflected that. They would have to change inns after today if they didn’t want to bankrupt themselves. One night was fine though. After the expedition, they had needed it.

  “You look good,” Arthur’s comment got a small twitch of the lips from Valar, but the continuing speech turned his lips down once more. “It’s a good set of clothing for an event like this. Darker is better for funerals, or so mom used to tell me.”

  Arthur’s words rang true. Valar’s loose fitting dark robe matched the ambience of the day nearly perfectly, although the image was slightly hindered by the gold detailing on its sleeves and chest. The gold decorations were common for Leorian clothing, so the garment didn’t look as special as Rodrick’s suit.

  Valar’s eyes flitted over to the scarring on his right hand, though it was left on his mirror image. It had gotten worse. Significantly worse.

  The others hadn’t asked about it ever since they departed from the infirmary almost exactly a day ago, but he was sure they had plenty of unanswered questions. Their miraculous arrival at the infirmary was one thing, but the fact that Valar was at the cusp of bronze rank… He didn’t know what to say.

  Valar himself didn’t know what had really happened. The whole event felt like a disjointed mess in his head, and even worse, the parts that he did remember didn’t make any sense! How had he gained so much mana when he was nearly sure Edwin hadn’t died from his attack? What had happened once he passed out?

  And why did he remember feeling the aura of a dragon?

  It was too confusing, too overwhelming, so he shelved those memories instead. Life felt much more rational that way. He liked rational, not whatever the expedition had been.

  “Seriously, Valar,” Rodrick grunted. “What’s on your mind?”

  What is on my mind, really? In truth, Valar knew what was bothering him. He had known that ever since last night, when they had been informed of the location for the mass funeral.

  “I…” Valar started speaking, fumbled over his words, then gathered himself. “This will be the first time I get to see the sea. It was one of the main things I was supposed to do when I got to Rhondell, but things happened, and…”

  “You forgot?”

  “I forgot.”

  That was it. This would be the first time Valar would visit the docks, but it would be marred by all the sadness and loss. When he had first arrived at the city gates, full of excitement and nerves for the coming academy semester, Valar had imagined wandering the docks and marveling at the infinite expanse that was the sea. Now, that childish dream was ruined.

  It was truly a bad day to see the sea for the first time.

  ...

  The team left their opulent inn located in the noble district promptly after everyone dressed themselves. They had plenty of time before the funeral procession would start, but they did have one task to accomplish before the event.

  They had promised to go and get Pixie from her home.

  “No!” Valar flinched at the wail coming from the other side of the wooden door, as did Arthur and Ciel. “I’m not coming!”

  “Yes, you are!” Carla’s shout was akin to the sigh of a teenage daughter’s mother. “You yourself made us promise that we would get you, no matter how much you would resist. Open the door, Pixie.”

  Carla’s words were followed by a bout of silence, occasionally interrupted by faint sobs coming from the other side of the door.

  “Please…”

  Click

  Carla sighed with relief and turned to the team, “I’ll go in and you'll wait, okay?”

  When she received nods in return, the ice mage dressed in a dark blue dress that reached all the way to the bottoms of her ankles sighed and entered the sullen adventurer’s apartment, leaving the door ajar in case someone else needed to come and help her.

  The ensuing flurry of activity and speech was hard to parse all the way from the hallway Valar was standing in, so he didn’t even make the attempt to eavesdrop. Instead, he just waited, and as predicted, Carla’s call for his help arrived after only a minute or two.

  “Valar, I need your help here!”

  And that she did.

  Entering the apartment of an adventurer, Valar hadn’t known what to expect. It was safe to say, however, that what he saw wasn’t the norm.

  Pixie was sprawled across the floor, still wearing the shirt supplied by the infirmary and seemingly in bad shape. The mix of empty and broken bottles of cheap booze told the rest of the story, and it wasn’t a pretty one.

  “Heal her, would you?” Carla asked, her tone gentle. “I’ll prepare a bath and try to find her something to wear while you do that, okay?”

  Valar gave Carla a firm nod and started casting.

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  Casting Lesser Restoration for the first time since rocketing to the peak of iron rank told Valar quite a lot about his progress. Compared to the long and arduous casts at the start of iron rank, the difference was night and day. His mind felt freer, his casting quicker and the runes felt more natural. It proved that the allocation of mana to his mind had been successful, lifting a rock of doubt and anxiety from Valar’s shoulders. He hadn’t been sure if the allocation had been successful since he had been unconscious at the time, but his worries had been for naught. The mana had gone to his mind just fine.

  “Lesser Restoration.”

  The young life mage felt that he could’ve cast the spell without invoking its name but still chanted it just in case. It didn’t hurt to be careful, and he wanted to announce what he was doing to pixie anyway. Just callously channeling the spell without warning would’ve felt wrong.

  As he channeled, Valar had a chance to look around and see the apartment in more detail. It was essentially one big room, bigger than their lodgings at the inn but not massively so. The bed in the corner of the room had snapped in half—most likely during last night—but the rest of the room seemed to be in relatively good shape, save the bottles. The curtains were closed, blocking nearly all sunlight. That left Valar’s green glowing runes as the main source of light.

  “They’re dead…” Valar flinched, almost losing focus on his spell when Pixie suddenly sobbed. “They’re all dead… Jeremiah, Phonis, Lindon…”

  “Yeah,” Valar didn’t know what to say, so he just kept healing the young woman. What even is there to say?

  Soon, Carla returned from the bathroom and lit the oil lap in the middle of the room. That gave them some more light to work with. She started rummaging around Pixie’s cabinets, cursing softly all the while.

  “Pixie, where are your formal clothes?” The young noblewoman sighed for the umpteenth time that day, and turned to the pair on the floor. “I can’t find them.”

  “Don’t own any…”

  “What?”

  “I said I don’t own any!” Valar finally lost focus on his spell as the rogue snapped at Carla. She almost rose to her full height, glaring at Carla with a venomous gaze. Pixie could not hold herself up for long, however, and collapsed back on the ground almost immediately. Ciel was there to catch her, materializing from the darkness with dark purple runes on her bare forearms.

  The somber dark mage had opted to wear dark suit pants and a matching vest with a white dress shirt underneath, keeping her forearms bare to have space for runes. Her dark hair fell on Pixie as the rogue picked up the young woman and carried her over to the bathroom.

  “She’s been healed enough, and we have limited time,” Ciel muttered flatly. “Is the bath ready, Carla?”

  “Yeah, although not as hot as I would like it.”

  “She’ll manage. I’ll bathe her while you try to find something for her to wear, alright?”

  “Alright.”

  As Ciel carried Pixie away and Carla got to work, Valar was left standing in the middle of the room without a job to do. “Carla?”

  “Yeah?”

  “What do I do now?”

  The ice mage shrugged, “Nothing, really. Your job here is done, although you can help me pick out clothes for Pixie if you want.”

  “Do you think I could be of help there?”

  “Not really, but I’d appreciate the company.”

  “Then I’ll stay.”

  As expected, Valar wasn’t of much help when it came to choosing clothing for Pixie. He did chat with Carla, however, and she seemed to appreciate the fact greatly. They spoke of small things while Ciel bathed the sullen rogue in the bathroom, avoiding anything important like the past days’ events with utmost care. The chatter mostly centered around differences between Rhondell and Lyndale, food, and their studies. It was a comforting moment in the middle of an exceedingly uncomfortable day.

  As always, that moment broke all too soon. Just as Ciel opened the door and led Pixie out—this time on her own two legs—Carla leaned against Valar’s ear and whispered. “We have to talk after the funeral. In private.”

  What does she want to talk about? Based on her tone, it was something serious, so Valar just nodded. I guess I’ll figure it out later then…

  It would have been a lie to say that Pixie looked good after her bath, but she did seem better than whatever Carla and Valar had found when they had entered her apartment. Ciel had helped the young woman wash herself thoroughly, and she didn’t seem as broken anymore in general. Sure, she still looked depressed, but it was better.

  “You should probably head out now, Valar,” Ciel suggested, glancing at the towel-wrapped rogue on her side. “We’ll help Pixie dress and come out soon, okay?”

  Valar nodded and got up from the pile of clothes on the floor, walking out without a word. He walked out to the hallway, leaving the door just barely open like earlier. Ciel feels different than normal. More caring, I guess?

  Pixie’s sobs echoing out from the crack in the door gave some context to the dark mage’s unusually caring attitude. They were dealing with someone who was on the verge of cracking completely and needed to tread carefully.

  Valar turned his gaze toward the two other occupants of the hallway, Rodrick and Arthur. “Let’s move a bit further out, shall we? Let’s give them some space.”

  “Yeah, that sounds good,” Rodrick coughed. “That sounds quite private… They’ll come out soon, right?”

  “They will.”

  Unlike traditional funeral processions, adventurer funerals functioned quite differently. This was the result of an unfortunate fact of adventuring life: Team members usually died together.

  The most common reason for adventurer deaths was that the team attempted to push beyond their limits, challenging a beast that eclipsed them in power, and succumbed to their own greed for power. Usually, the beast would claim every single party member’s life without fail. Their bodies—or whatever was left of them—were recovered and burned at the pyre.

  This pyre was bigger than most.

  All in all, the expedition was a total failure. Thirty-two deaths in a group of sixty meant that their casualty rate was just over half. Barring a few exceptions where the entire expedition died to an unexpectedly strong beast or some dungeon deathtrap, the expedition to the Ronaheim forest was statistically the worst expedition of the decade.

  “Wouldn’t their families want to hold a normal funeral for them?” Valar asked. He wasn’t sure who the question was meant for, but he still asked.

  “Some prefer that,” The answer came from Arthur, who seemed to be the least affected of the bunch. The archer’s golden eyes remained calm as he looked on, continuing his explanation all the while. “But usually the adventurers themselves have told their families that they want an adventurer’s funeral. Some reject their family member’s wishes and hold a normal one, but that’s rare.”

  “Quiet yourselves,” Rodrick grumbled. “The ceremony is starting.”

  Team Cookie Sandwich was standing at the very front of the group, since they had actually participated in the expedition, but looking back, the beach at the eastern edge of Rhondell’s docks was practically filled with people. Family members, adventurers and those who had known the deceased, along with random citygoers, were all looking on silently as the ceremony began.

  Two figures appeared in front of the unlit pyre at gold rank speed. To the eyes of most, including Valar, it meant that they appeared in an eyeblink. He recognized one of them—Selin, the Lyndale branch leader.

  The branch leader was dressed in her mage’s robe and jewelry as always. The other person—presumably the Rhondell branch leader—was dressed in his adventuring clothes as well, although the physical fighter was not carrying his weapon.

  “Greetings, adventurers and people of Rhondell alike,” the Rhondell branch leader’s voice rang out. “Some of you may recognize us, while some of you don’t. For those who don’t know who we are, I’m Joakim Dalton, the Rhondell branch leader of the adventurer’s guild.”

  “And I’m Selin Forst, the Lyndale branch leader of the adventurer’s guild,” Selin continued. “As most of you already know, the latest expedition to the Ronaheim forest was a tragic one, leading to a total of thirty-two deaths at the hands of the Crimson Talon.”

  Valar heard Pixie flinching at Carla’s side but didn’t turn his gaze. She could mourn in peace.

  Joakim nodded to Selin in seeming respect and stepped back in front, continuing the speech, “In terms of adventurer casualties, this expedition was a total tragedy, but I have some good news too… Based on all available information, the bandit king has disappeared, and the Crimson Talon is crumbling as we speak.”

  Valar had a strange feeling that the others were looking straight at him but ignored it and kept his gaze on the Rhondell branch leader. He couldn’t answer the questions, no matter how much he wanted to…

  “I’m not saying this to cover our asses at the adventurer’s guild, far from it,” the blonde man grunted. “The expedition was an abject failure at every level, leading to needless pain and loss of life, that much is certain. What I am saying is that these adventurers didn’t die for nothing! Their mission was accomplished, and they should get the respect they deserve!”

  The beach erupted in roaring applause. Adventurers showed their respect to the dead with shouts, claps, whistles and everything else Valar could imagine, and even usually quiet people like Ciel joined in. He found himself joining in, clapping and shouting as loud as he could manage. The loudest of them all, however, was Pixie.

  The young rogue’s scream was by no means pretty, sounding like it hurt more than helped, but the tears flowing down Pixie’s face suggested otherwise. All of her frustration was bleeding out. Valar just hoped that those wounds hadn’t festered just yet…

  After the applause eventually died down, it was time for the actual ceremony. The pyre was still unlit, and while the deceased adventurers encased in wooden coffins, they hadn’t been laid to rest properly.

  “Who is going to light the pyre?” Valar asked. “Neither of the branch leaders are fire mages, right?”

  “Normally, the honour would go to a high ranking adventurer,” Rodrick grunted. “But as this funeral is bigger than most, I expect someone pretty high up will volunteer. I’m just not sure who-.”

  A flaming arrow struck the pyre, lighting it aflame in a flash. Every gaze turned to the direction of the one who had dared to take the honour for themselves, but no voices of dissent rose.

  The arrow had been shot from the very top of the royal palace. Their adventurer funeral had been graced by royalty, and the deceased could finally rest.

  Perhaps today wasn’t that bad of a day to see the sea, after all.