Chapter 10

I promised to tell about the graduation exercise we had at the end of the academy training. But there is quite a lot to tell about the preparation and the trip so doing that before the actual exercise.

But first I should likely tell that after the incident with the gang, Garis, Nedia and me often went to town on free days to visit the Uiseman house and never again had problems like that.

During the last three months of the training six of us work as a group in all exercises in order to learn teamwork within the adventuring party.

The Adventurer Guild believes in the training value of real problems so as a graduation exercise we are sent on a real, though carefully selected mission, that is supposed to pose a challenge, but should be still fairly easy.

Of course we have all heard of the horror stories about graduation exercises where the threat estimate was wrong, so that increases the tension as the day grows nearer.

The day before the briefing we go through the equipment that each adventuring group is supposed to have to make sure everything is present and in good shape.

It sure is a pain to lug all the stuff around, but most of it had been useful at one time or another in the past training.

At least my personal equipment is lighter than that of a fighter or similar, of course they tend to be stronger then me too. While I have grown two inches during the year and put on almost thirty pounds of weight, most of it muscles, I am still thin at five foot six inches and 103 pounds.

Our group of consists of Garis and Nedia, that have become close friends of mine, me and two others.

Garis is a heavy fighter type in a full plate armor that makes me shudder at the mere thought of the weight. He fights normally with a bastard sword and a heavy parrying sword, but switches to two-handed grip on his sword as needed.

Nedia is dressed in some leather armor with thin mail covering over the torso. She favors a bow when possible, but is quite efficient with a longsword. She is also our tracker and forester.

Slanat is from the heartlands of the Central kingdom and is a common man fighter in mail. He uses a broadsword and shield. While much smaller than Garis, he is still a large, solidly built man. He does have an annoying habit of whistling off-tune while walking.

Anneli is a westerner, with the slanted eyes, yellowish skin and black hair that is common to them. She is a cleric of Cay, the Lord of physical strength and athletic prowess. That leads her to be on the aggressive side trying to prove herself in any competition of might. She is in a silk dress with a reinforced silk breastplate and helmet. Anneli favors a slightly curved single edged sword that looks huge on her small stature.

Ertak is a Duranaki, one of the mysterious forest dwelling humans rumored to have technical marvels not seen anywhere else at their disposal. He is war trained by some great fencing masters and is thus very skillful with his dual short fencing swords. Ertak is quiet and withdrawn in a group and you can kind of forget that he is there very easily, even when everyone is sitting around the same fire. He also deals with eventual traps and similar.

And last is me, with my trusty staff and dressed in my loincloth looking like your typical peasant.

We are finally called to Jaxel Ironheart, the leader of this academy to get our breefing. We are the third group in the morning to be briefed.

Jaxel greets us and congratulates us on passing the training, but cautions us that however good the training, real situations will still be surprising, so we need to be on our guard.

The mission itself sounds easy. Apparently a nearby village is having some problems with some disease and need some herbs collected to make a cure. The herbs should be fairly easy to find, but require traveling in the wilderness and the village does not have any people suitable for that, so they have asked the guild to send someone.

Then Jaxel gives us a map to find the village and tells us that we should go to the village and talk with Mayor Desden to get the details.

After some further words of encouragement and caution he sends us on our way as the day is still young.

As we gather our gear Garis suggests that we go to town and get his riding horse, along with couple of pack horses so we do not have to carry all the equipment. Apparently his horses are stabled at the Uiseman house

As the prospect of carrying the about 150 pounds of common gear and our personal gear is not specially fun, we all agree immediately.

The trip to town through the light rain and the trip though it is without any incidents.