“Are you ready?” Serena asked.

“Yep” John replied.

“Then we start on his signal,” Serena said as she pointed to the random adventurer.

“Okay,” John replied.

The random adventurer pointed his arms into the air and quietly waited for the right moment to lower them.

John was standing in the middle of a giant circle of adventurers in the city. 

‘Won’t it be too dangerous if I use my magic? Well, maybe it’s better this way, at least those guys who were planning on stealing my money will learn how scary reality can be.’ John thought.

The man lowered his arm, and in that instant, Serena started moving while chanting.

John waited it out to see what she would cast. It took 5 seconds for her to finish the chant and another second for it to cast.

The spell she cast made around 10 fire arrows form in the surrounding air.

“Hmm… That’s slow.. What happens if your chant gets interrupted?” John questioned.

“Stop playing around!” She said as she gave the signal for her arrows to attack John.

‘Fire… I usually use ice and never water. All right, let’s create a Water shield.’ Thought John.

“Scutum Aqua” John muttered as he remained still in the same spot.

John had formed a shield of water right in front of himself and it blocked all the arrows as it let out an insane amount of steam.

The crowd which was unusually quiet cheered as they watched.

“Wha-“

Before Serena could finish what she would say, John countered. He had cast glacies while the shield was blocking the arrows and waited for the moment for her to drop her guard.

She tried to dodge, but it was too late, John’s glacies had directly hit at Serena. The area where there was contact froze up and spread throughout her entire body. Covering everything but her face.

“Well, then. Checkmat-“

Before John could finish what he was going to say, Serena began chanting something. The Ice which had enveloped her body melted, and a lion made of pure fire was formed beside her.

“Oh… That’s interesting. You realised that merely casting fire spells won’t work. So you summoned a fire lion.” said John.

“Stop talking so much! Focus on the fight!” Serena shouted.

“Yes… Yes..” John replied.

John watched the lion as he waited for it to attack. The lion observed him as it slowly approached. It pounced at John in an attempt to get in a bite, but he easily evaded its attacks with magic strengthening.

‘Chant magic huh.. chanting is like a script which executes a program. Its strength is limited to how strong the script is and what type of script it is.’ John inferred.

‘With concept magic, you can easily control the magic element however way you want, with practice. It’s like you become the programmer itself and create the script. Which is why, with practice, concept magic should be the strongest magic there is, not to mention you don’t need to say chanting words. Why do I use mine?.’ John concluded.

“The other difference is… Hey Serena, I will try something I’ve never tried before! I’ll also stop holding back, so as a mage you should think of a way to defend yourself while your lion’s fighting.” John spoek.

“Huh? I already kno-“

Before she could finish what she was going to say, A glacies John had cast flew towards her and hit her leg.

“See?” John asked as she was casting a spell to heat up her leg.

Casting takes too long. John could’ve put pressure on her while she was unfreezing her leg, or he could’ve just frozen her head from the beginning to stop her from chanting.

“However, that would be boring. I still need to prove my strength so… No more playing around. Glacies.” John muttered.

Above his finger, a slightly bigger version of Glacies than normal was formed.

“Hey, you know what happens when ice goes into contact with fire, right? It melts. But what if the ice is even colder than the fire? And in this case, will your fire be strong enough to both melt the ice and evaporate the water?” John asked.

“What are you talking about? I thought you said you stopped playing around!” Serena spoke.

“I did,” John replied as he propelled his big Glacies to the Lion.

On impact the lion began to freeze up, the fire spread throughout its whole body before it was completely engulfed.

The crowd which was cheering up until a while ago became quiet before letting out even bigger cheers.

“What… The hell.. You froze Fire!?” She asked.

“Yep, even if it didn’t freeze, the ice would’ve turned to water and turned the fire to steam.”

“Those daggers on your waist… Why don’t you use them?” She asked.

“Why? Well, it’s because we’re having a magician battle, right? It wouldn’t be fair for me to just charge at you with a dagger while you’re casting. I wouldn’t be able to test your skills and you wouldn’t be able to test mine.” John answered.

“I see, So, in the end, you were still holding back. I’m a disappointment as a wizard,” She said as she sat on the floor with tears filling her eyes.

John approached her and sat down next to her.

“What are you talking about? You were able to stay concentrated and focused on casting, even though I was constantly pressuring you with my movements. Not to mention that fire lion you summoned, that was really cool!” John consoled.

She began to look at him as John continued to go on about what he thought..

“You can’t call yourself a disappointment over one loss. Where I’m from people say ‘Losing only makes you stronger’. Anyway, so what I’m trying to say is, don’t cry.” John said.

For a moment, she showed John a really bright smile. “Who’s crying?!” She said as her smile changed into a cute frown.

“Haha… Alright, alright.” John said as he got up.

“But. Thank you… Next time I’ll beat you!” Serena replied.

“Yes… Yes… I’m looking forward to it.” John responded.

“Oi, are you still taking me lightly..” she said as she got John on a headlock.

“What are you talking about… I would never dream of such a thing.” John said as he playfully tried to get out.

“You’re doing it again!” She said.

As John continued to struggle in the headlock, the adventurer who was the ref of the match, asked them. “So who’s the winner?”

Serena was the first to speak up. “It’s my loss, I surrender.”

Hearing this, the crowd let out another round of cheers. As they picked John up and threw him in the air.

“Wa- Sto-“

“JOHN! JOHN! JOHN!” The crowd cheered

——————————————————————-

After the fight was over, The crowd had carried John all the way to the guild, Serena and Ariel followed.

Now, John, Ariel and Serena were sitting on one of the empty tables of the guild.

Most of the people in the guild seem like they trust John a lot more now that they’ve seen what he can do.

‘ Adventurers are weird.’ John thought.

“So.. As our agreement suggested, Ariel will decide on whether or not you join. And I’ll just ask you one question.” John stated.

Serena slowly nodded her head.

“You don’t have to give any personal information to join our party, that comes naturally as we find out more about each other. What I wanted to ask was, why our party? Speaking of which, with your skill, you must be able to join any party.” John asked.

“I arrived at the port yesterday. I was bored and I’ve been travelling by myself. Most parties you see here are only temporary or only stay in this area, not many people actually travel around. I overheard that you guys were travellers.” Serena spoke.

‘Ah.. so it was luck?’ John thought.

“I also heard that you were claiming to beat wolves and bandits like it was nothing. I thought that I finally found a party which I could travel with. And you guys looked like you were having fun so I wanted to join in but before I could do that, I wanted to see how strong you were though so I challenged you to a duel.”

‘Did I really claim it like it was nothi- Nevermind.’ John thought.

“And that brings us to now. So Ariel, what’s your decision?” He asked.

Serena gulped.

“I have nothing against Serena, in fact, I’d love it if she joined the party. The only reason I was mad at you was because you didn’t consult me first, I was even planning on telling you beforehand that I didn’t mind if she joined but you guys rushed into the duel.” Said ariel.

‘Oh…’ John sighed.

Ariel approached Serena and grabbed on to her hand. Before saying “Welcome to the party!”

“Welcome!” John added on.

“Thank you!” Serena said with a bright smile.

“Besides, I was getting tired of travelling with an overprotective guy like John. With another girl here, we’ll be able to teach him a lesson,” Said Ariel in a playful tone.

“Wha-? Ariel?” John asked.

Ariel let out a giggle before saying, “I’m joking. I love travelling with John”. With a smile on her face.

“Oh.. I see… ” John replied with a relieved expression.

“But um… Travelling with John is fun and… And seeing as we are the only girls here… I hope we get along..” Ariel said as she stretched out her hand for a handshake from Serena.

“Me too..” Said Serena as she shook her hand.

John didn’t know why, but seeing Ariel make a friend put a smile on his face.

“John, you too,” Ariel said.

“Yes… Yes..” John replied as he put his hand above theirs

—————————————————————————–

Right now they were heading to a random inn. John had 81 gold coins in total after exchanging the pelt and receiving the bounty, and both he and Ariel were moved up to D Rank.

Ever since leaving the guild, Ariel and Serena have been quite close ever since they left the guild, and have been talking to each other.

It turned out Serena’s 15 and a C rank adventurer. It’s pretty good for her age, John thought.

‘It’s nice seeing her have this much fun talking, but I feel left out.’ John thought.

After they arrived at the inn, John was about to talk to the innkeeper before suddenly remembering something.

“Um Serena, during your interview you said something about waiting for the ship of Atlas to arrive, right? What do you mean by that?” John questioned.

“You didn’t know? The ship comes once every week and you can’t go there unless you go through to the ship, otherwise you won’t be allowed in. The ship will be arriving tomorrow.” Serena answered.

“Wow… I had no idea, thanks.” John replied.

“It’s fine.” She said.

After the discovery, John bought a room for 3 and paid in advance for dinner.

‘There goes 12 silver coins.’ John thought with resignation.

Unlike 3 Silver for a room with one bed each night in Halfaust. When you ask for 3 beds, it’s 9 silver and the extra 3 silver was for dinner.’ 

The reason why John’s paying for everything is to celebrate Serena joining. Besides Ariel wanted to and his money is technically her money too so there’s no reason to say no.

After paying for everything in advance, they were all starving, so they had dinner and went to their room.

Inside, it was pretty big and warm. There were 3 beds aligned next to each other. And another room which appeared to be the shower.

Seeing that, the girls took off their armour and went inside.

“John,” Ariel said.

“Yes?” John replied.

“Can you please heat up the water for us?” Ariel asked as she walked out of the bathroom.

“Yes… Yes..” John replied and did the following.

He walked inside and began to heat up the water in the buckets. Unlike the bathroom in their previous inn, this one was big.

Serena who was watching let out a surprised “Wow..”

“Is something wrong?” John asked.

“No, it’s just I’ve never seen someone use magic the way you do. You heated up the water without any chants and even in our fight, I didn’t see you use chants. Even though I can use fire magic, if I tried to heat up the buckets it’d end up either evaporating or exploding due to the power”

“It’s complicated,” John said.

“I see… If you do not wish to talk about it, I won’t force you” She replied.

John felt bad for not telling her but for her own safety, it’s better if she didn’t know. 

‘Hopefully, Ariel doesn’t tell her, she promised not to talk about concept magic with anyone.’ John thought.

After he finished warming everything up, John told Ariel that he was going for a stroll before leaving the room.

“Where is he going?” Serena asked.

“I don’t know, he always does that whenever I take a shower..” Ariel Replied.

‘I can still hear you guys… The reason why I do it is because I’m trying to keep my mind pure!’ John said to himself.

—————————————————————————

John spent the last 15 minutes walking around the town as he waited for the girls to finish taking a shower.

Nothing happened to him but there were people watching him while he walked so he was guessing that his display of skill in the duel wasn’t enough.

His original plan was to sabotage those guys while the girls were distracted but seeing as how they didn’t make a move there wasn’t a need to.

All John did was say “You guys can watch me, just know that if any one of you tries to hurt them, I’ll kill you.”

They seemed to have heard it and ran away once they realised John was aware of their presence. 

‘But i was bluffing, I think… I don’t really have the guts or resolve to take another’s life, but that might change.’ John thought to himself.

‘Life in this world is so tiring… But as long as it’s fun, I couldn’t care less.’ He concluded.

John went back to his room and saw Ariel and Serena laid down on their bed.

“We’ve finished taking the shower.” Said, Ariel.

“Alright, Well, if you’ll excuse me,” John said before entering the bathroom.

John created water, heated it up and used it in the showers like he always had.

Once he was finished, he put on a new pair of clothes and left the bathroom. John spent at least 10 minutes taking a shower. By the time he got out Both Serena and Ariel were asleep on their own beds.

John never expected to find his third member this fast, but thought that she’s definitely talented.

“Hm? She forgot to take her hat off.” John muttered.

Serena who kept her witch hat on even when she entered the bath, didn’t take it off when she fell asleep.

John decided to take her hat off as it looked uncomfortable. When he did, he unintentionally muttered the words “What?”

Pointy ears stuck out from her Silky silver hair.

“She’s an elf…?”