Marked Ones: Advent of the Demon Prince

"Welcome you two! Gods, kid you look worse than I feel. I thought you stuck to juice last night."

Rena looked at her friend and giggled at the massive black circles under his eyes. Though he had never been drunk, and by extension, never had a hangover, he could not help but wonder if that would be better than the state he was in now.

His former master kept him up all night lecturing him on how to use magic and the theory behind activating marks. But that was after he attempted to beat the ever living hell out of him. Every muscle in his body screamed in protest at even the slightest movement.

Now that he was out of the manor, he did not need to keep up appearances, so he freely groaned and moaned about his aches.

"You sound like a grandfather." Lethen chuckled.

"I feel like I wrestled with Fenrir…"

The dull roar of voices in the guild hall quieted down. It was especially noticeable to Lucius.

"What did I say?"

"Bad luck to mention the Forest Lord\'s name. I\'m not really that superstitious, but a lot of adventurers are." Jen advised before clamping a hand on his shoulder. Of course it caused a lot of pain, so he yelped a little in response.

"Oh right, I can help." Rena remembered. "[Lux: Heal]"

Light enveloped her hand then vanished into Lucius\' body when she gently touched his shoulder. A second later he felt a warm energy envelop his being from the inside out, like drinking a hot tea on a winter night.

"Oh that feels nice…" Lucius said. "Hey…why didn\'t you do that earlier?!"

"Revenge." Rena pouted. "For what you said last night."

She puffed her cheeks like a chipmunk and turned her face slightly away from him. Obviously he thought it was adorable, but there was no way he was going to say that. The other members of the party simply chuckled for a moment before Jen brought everyone to attention with a small clap.

"Alright, since we are all here, I already took a job. I\'m registered as party leader so I figured we can do something a little easy to get us acclimated to working as a team."

"Good idea." Paul said.

"Agreed, you\'re the boss!" Lethen said with a mock salute.

Lucius shook his head with a slight smirk. \'Guess this is going to be more fun than I thought. I like these people,\' he thought.

"Our target is an E-Rank twin-headed bear. Should be fine since Lethen and I are Advance Ranks. Paul is Intermediate so should be no issue."

Everyone nodded in agreement and they started to pack up to leave. Lucius checked his pack one more time like he did before they left this morning to ensure they had the basic supplies. He currently had a few days\' worth of rations, a large canteen for water, spare clothes, and polishing equipment for maintaining his weapon.

"Oh, I picked this up for you by the way Lucius, consider it a gift." Paul said while passing him a new weapon sheath.

It was simple enough in design, a basic leather sheath by all accounts on the outside. The inside though was where the trick was. It was made to accommodate a machete on the inside while looking like a broadsword on the outside.

"Oh, for hiding my Arts. Thanks, Paul." He said while swiftly changing out his sheath for the new one. It looked quite nice and would hopefully prevent him from getting crude looks by simply walking through town. Well, at least less than he normally does. A single look at his strange eyes got him all sorts of reactions.

"You got it, kid."

After that, they gathered their things and made their way out of the building. The day was nice and warm and filled with sunshine, so tons of people lined the streets visiting various shops and doing errands around town. A lot of the working folk were out hunting, logging, or in their workshops doing other forms of menial labor to make their daily bread.

The sight made for quite the enjoyable view, foreign to him only a handful of years ago. Even since he had become Rena\'s guardian at her request and his father\'s last wish, he had not been outside enough to truly enjoy what society had to offer him.

While walking to the gates, Rena tugged on his sleeve. "Hey, everything okay?"

"Yeah, I just haven\'t…been out much. Since we aren\'t returning to the manor until after the Grand Raid is over…the town looks different than it used to."

"I take it you didn\'t get out much as a kid?" Lethen asked.

His only response to that question was holding up his left hand for all to see.

"Ah, right, forgot you were one for a second."

Rena gave the elf a sideways glance, but quickly turned back to Lucius. "Hey, I haven\'t been out on the town a lot either, how about when we get back we go check things out?"

"Sounds like a great plan." He replied with a smile.

"How utterly adorable." Jen teased.

Like the first time when they went on their test, the gate had two lines, one for entry with inspections, and one for exits with uncaring guards lazily eying everyone who walked past. This time, Rena and Lucius had guild cards to flash, so they hurried in front of the group to be the ones to do it.

The fanfare was much less than they hoped for, though Lucius did not know why he expected more than a lazy wave from the guard in the exit side.

Once again their party laughed at the antics of the fresh faces. Oh well, it didn\'t matter, as long as Rena was having fun that was all that mattered to him.