It felt awkward to have their eyes on me, but nonetheless I walked up to the better dressed of the two.
"Name's Tero, it's good to meet you," I say, doing my best to sound confident.
"And I'm Sheral."
The man nods. "My name's Lance, head of the New World guild. Pleasure to meet you."
"Pleasure's mine, Lance. I heard you also went into the Elite dungeon?"
"Not me personally, my fine party here did." He gestures towards the rest of the people. Only the other casually dressed one looked up at us.
"That's good, I assume you took the Guildmaster class then?"
"Yes, are you looking to join?"
"Not exactly, just wanted to ask you about your experience inside the dungeon."
"Why?" the other casually dressed man says, standing up and going for a handshake that I quickly accept. "Name's Alden."
"That's a very unique name," Sheral says, sitting at another table and starting to order food. "You're paying for me, right?"
I laugh a little. "Sure." Then I turn back to Alden. "Just curious how it was."
"What can I say? It went fine," he says, a little too quick for my liking. Nowhere in my gut did I feel like he was telling the truth.
"Well then, that's always good. Are you their mage?"
He shrugs. "Yes, I assume you're a mage as well?"
"Yep."
An awkward silence hung in the air for a moment.
"What kind of mage are you?"
"Level 15 switch," he says, not answering my question and instead changing it to something less informative.
For the most part I don't care. Somehow there was already bad blood here, and I think it was because my party was a threat to theirs.
But I'm also leaning on the idea that this mage was just a dick.
"Level 20 switch, but that doesn't really mean too much."
"War Mage," he says, answering my question finally.
"Leyline Strategist," I respond.
"Are you guys planning to stand forever, or are you gonna sit?" Sheral says, knocking us out of our little formal argument.
I give him a nod and gesture to the other side of the table, sitting next to Sheral.
Both Lance and Alden sit at the other side of the table.
"So, that was a little tense, so let's try to calm down and relax. How about I buy us a round of drinks?" Lance says.
"Sure, just a tea for me though," I say.
"Beer, thank you," Sheral says.
It only takes Lance a moment to order everything through the system and give it to us.
"Let's start new, ay? How would you feel about joining New World and becoming our second group?"
Although the recruiting effort didn't surprise me, I still thought he would go about it differently.
"I don't think so, at least not me."
"Well, if you ever reconsider, just message me."
[Lance would like to be your Friend]
[Accept] [Deny]
I only look at it for a second before continuing to talk to him.
"I don't know, I've heard some things about your guild already," I say.
"Oh my," he says, acting surprised. "What would that be?"
"Oh, just some random things. How you're controlling the market mostly."
"Well, we do control much of certain markets, but that's just economics, is it not?"
"Yeah, I get it. Just don't know how I feel about signing to an organization that is already imparting their will on the market."
"Then you're clearly unfamiliar with the feeling of winning as well," Alden says.
I look at him. It's clear that he was annoyed at the whole situation, but I couldn't tell why.
"Well anyways, I'm going to go now. Good luck with everything," I say, getting up and leaving my tea.
Sheral follows, giving me a look I couldn't quite decipher, though when we got outside she cleared it up.
"We gotta do something about them."
"Why?" I say, maybe a bit too callously.
"Why!? Because they're clearly going to make life suck for people!" she says like it's obvious.
"So? Shit sucks, they'll find a way," I say. I didn't really want to get involved in some useless social dispute.
"Nuh uh. It's not that simple, buster." Her insulting tone was coming through in full force now. "I don't know what games you were playing, but this is real life. Real people. You better cut that cool kid, 'the only person in the world that matters is me' attitude out."
"Oh, come on Sheral, it's not like that. I'm just not the guy to be doing this. I'm sure they'll get some competition in a few weeks and everything will even out. I mean seriously, what am I gonna do?"
"I don't know yet, but we have to do something to help out!?"
"It's just making runes a few silver more, it's not a big deal at all."
"To us! But a lot of people don't have 'just a few silver more,'" she reprimands me.
"Sheral," I say, sighing, "not my horses, not my race."
"Really..." she says, raising her hands at me. "Ya know what. I'm done with ya for the day."
"Oh, come on," I say, quickly getting stopped by her simply walking away. "Really, Sheral?"
I stood there for a few seconds after, unsure what to do next, so I just decided to go to the mage tower.
It was sort of out of the way, and I had never been, but I figured it would be a good place to look for new magics and spell ideas.
At least learning new magic could help clear my mind from the little fiasco.
The tower was probably the tallest building in the city, maybe besides the spire on the church, and it definitely made you feel small when you walked up to it.
Going in, I saw that the inside was wrapped in bookshelves from top to bottom. I could see mages above me precariously climbing rolling ladders to get to the higher books on the shelves.
After looking around and getting my bearings, I walked to the front desk.
"Hello, are you new to the mages association?" Her tone actually sounded like a human's. It was a bit comforting.
"Yes actually, is there some sort of onboarding I need to do?"
"Now that all depends on you. We do act as a social club for mages of all kinds to gather and mingle, but if you would like to use our library services or training rooms, you would have to fill out a form with your information, then pay a 10 silver a week fee. Of course, tutoring services will be a separate additional price."
"Wow, that's a lot. Um, sure." I take out 10 silver from my inventory and give it to her. She hands me a form to fill out a second later.
"Just fill this out and we'll be all set," she says, smiling at me.
"Okay, thank you."
I go and sit down at one of the couches, looking over the paper.
[Fill out system information automatically? (Stats, Magic)]
Interesting. Makes me think I could just lie about everything, also makes me think there would be consequences if I did.
It also makes me think there's a chance for this information to be gained by people who might want to do me harm.
But nonetheless, I have the system auto-fill the application.
It's not something I think about much, I'm almost level 30 and plan on changing to a more advanced class soon anyways.
As much as I love the class I currently have, it's not the most amazing class in the world.
It's no 'Calamity Class Mage' or anything, so I figure I'm safe.
"Here you are," I say, handing the paper back.
"Alright, the door back and to my right will lead you to our training rooms, and the door back and to my left will lead you to the study. If there's anything you need, don't hesitate to ask!"
"Thank you so much."
My first stop was going to be the training room.
Although I put it off for a while, I now had more than enough mana to make some sort of defensive spell.
Like my main attack, Magic Missile, I wanted it to be the most basic spell I could make.
Using simple and quick spells has saved me so many times now, and I don't plan on changing my strategy any time soon.