Chương 164: Want The Job?

When Elicia finished speaking she burst out of her room, tears in her eyes. Damion guessed she was probably coming out to start preparations for breakfast. She was stunned when she saw Damion already up, standing not too far from her room as if he had been waiting for her. What stunned Damion was not the tears in her eyes, but that when Elicia opened the door, she was not wearing one of her usual black uniforms or even her exercise outfit. She wore only a loose shirt with no bra and a pair of white underwear.

When Elicia fully registered that Damion was standing there, staring at her in her sleeping clothes, her face turned red, and she quickly slammed her bedroom door closed. After a while, Elicia still had not come out of her room and Damion felt it was partially his fault. It was almost time for them to start their normal morning run, but Elicia had not come out or made any sounds from her room. Deciding to take the initiative, Damion knocked on her door.

"Elicia, are you alright?"

"I'm fine. Why don't you start your run without me. I'll get breakfast ready." Damion decided it was best to let Elicia have her space and went on his morning run. By the time he got back, Elicia was fully dressed and had set breakfast out on the table. Damion sat down and started eating. Neither he nor Elicia said anything throughout breakfast and as the time was nearing for Damion to head to class he decided to break the silence.

"Was it your grandfather you were speaking to this morning?"

"Oh. Um. Yes. He was wanting an update."

"And?"

"And what? You heard didn't you?" Elicia said, annoyance seeping into her voice.

"I don't speak Tal."

"What? If you don't speak Tal how do you even know the language is called Tal? To everyone else it's just the noble tongue. We never talk to outsiders about it."

"I read about it in an old book," Damion lied. There was no way he could explain to Elicia about the Magic System giving him a quest to learn Tal.

"You could always teach it to me though." Elicia did not have a counter argument for Damion's lie and while she doubted he could have read about Tal in a book she had no alternative explanation for where Damion would have learned the name of the language but not learn the language itself.

"People that aren't born noble are not allowed to learn the language," Elicia told him.

"Grandfather was disappointed that I had not managed to bed you yet and told me I am running out of time before he replaces me."

"Don't I get a say in all this?" Damion questioned.

"What do you mean?"

"You were assigned to me by your grandfather, but it was technically the academy that hired you and gave you the position as my attendant right?"

"Technically, yes. But in reality it is the noble families who decide on the assignments of attendants." This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"But are elite students required to accept the attendant?"

"What do you mean?"

"If I was from a noble family, my family would have assigned me an attendant and the school would have accepted that person correct?"

"Of course."

"Then, why can't I just hire you as my attendant? Wouldn't the school or the Headmaster, more precisely, be forced to accept you?"

"That… that's brilliant," Elicia said as she realized that what Damion proposed would essentially release her from her family's control. Sure, they would try to rope her back in, but she was certain she could resist that temptation.

"Do you want to go tell gramps that you quit? Then, I can go tell him I hired you."

"It will probably be best if we wait until he actually dismisses me for failure. Once he does that he will personally kick me out of the family. If we wait until that happens, when you hire me back, he will have no recourse. If I leave the family on my own, they can try and say I did not have permission to leave and try to force me back."

"I'll let you decide on how and when to break the news to him. Come on. I don't want to be late to Teft's class." Damion and Elicia went through the rest of the day without mentioning the Headmaster or his desire for Elicia to entrap Damion. The rest of the school week went by uneventfully. When it was finally the weekend, Damion headed to the battle simulator to give himself some real experience with his new spells. Damion set the battle simulator to wild encounters.

He had practiced plenty of times on progressive encounters, but Damion found the slow buildup of combat sequences too simplistic. Real combat seldom gave you a chance to learn your opponent's weaknesses before presenting a real challenge. The wild encounters mode allowed Damion to roam fictional landscapes in search of Ferocious Beasts. Today he was actually going through the recreation of a B Rank dungeon.

Ordinarily, the battle simulator would not allow anyone to challenge anything of a higher Rank, but Damion was able to convince Mage Teft that he needed to pit himself against more than just C Rank threats. The dungeon the battle simulator placed Damion in was called the Silent Valley. This B Rank dungeon consisted of a long-forested valley filled with numerous Demonic Beasts that moved and attacked silently anything that made the slightest noise.

The most eerie thing about this dungeon was not the silence, but the fog in which everything unfolded. The entire dungeon was blanketed in a thick fog, stopping anyone from seeing more than five meters ahead of them. The battle simulator started Damion at one end of the valley. The guardian for the dungeon was located at the other end of the valley. As one traveled through the valley the Demonic Beasts would get stronger and stronger until finally all that was left would be the B Rank Guardian.

Damion had an advantage over most people trying to make their way through the thick fog of this dungeon. With True Sight he could see clearly for up to 50 meters and no matter how silent the Demonic Beasts moved his passive spell still allowed him to see them through the fog. However, since they were not real Demonic Beasts he could not tell their Ranks with True Sight, but since he was able to spot them when they believed themselves hidden, he still had a huge advantage.

Moving as stealthily as he was able, Damion made his way through the valley. The first Demonic Beasts Damion encountered were just F Rank. With his Ice Sword in his hand, he was able to make quick work of the feline Demonic Beasts, as agile as they were, they were no match for his blade. As Damion moved deeper into the valley he began to learn from his mistakes. He was able to reduce the noise he made while walking through the forest, but even with his improvements, he was still making too much noise.

The Demonic Beasts were still able to find him and attack him, not that Damion minded, these Demonic Beasts he was encountering were still too weak to offer a challenge. When Damion began encountering D Rank Demonic Beasts he started to exercise more caution. Moving slower, trying harder to mask his footsteps on the forest floor, but it did not make a difference. He could not eliminate all the sounds he made. Even standing perfectly still he still attracted Demonic Beasts.

It took him a little while to realize, but Damion came to understand that his breath, even his heartbeat could be heard by the Demonic Beasts. Once he realized no matter how quiet he was, he would attract Demonic Beasts, he stopped trying to be quiet. A single stomp of his foot would bring every Demonic Beast within 100 meters, which Damion figured out was more useful than being silent.