Chapter 20 (Continued): The Return**
The sky above the Adventurer's Guild darkened for the briefest moment—a shadow passing over the sun. Then, with a thunderous
***BOOM***
, Ethan Blackwood landed in the street outside, his boots cracking the cobblestones upon impact.
The crowd froze.
Adventurers, merchants, and guild clerks alike turned to stare, their faces slack with disbelief. Flight was the domain of **archmages** and **legendary knights**—those who had spent decades honing their power. Not some unknown academy student who had just registered Today .
Yet there he stood, his coat fluttering in the wind, his expression as indifferent as ever.
Ethan ignored them all. He strode forward, the crowd instinctively parting before him like waves before a ship. The guild doors swung open before he even raised a hand, the enchanted mechanisms reacting to the sheer density of mana radiating off him.
---
Inside, the hall fell deathly silent.
Every eye locked onto Ethan as he approached the front desk. The clerk—the same woman who had registered him earlier—stared with wide eyes, her fingers trembling where they rested on the counter.
Without a word, Ethan slid his **Adventurer's Card** across the polished wood.
The card, a sleek rectangle of enchanted silver, pulsed faintly with residual mana. Its surface displayed:
- **Name:** Ethan
- **Rank:** C**
- **Mission:** Blackfang Valley Extermination (**White Sigil Verified**)
The clerk swallowed hard. "Y-you… you're back already?"
Ethan said nothing.
A senior examiner, a grizzled man with a scar across his face, stepped forward. "Boy, do you have any idea what you've just done? That white sigil—"
"Payment," Ethan interrupted, his voice calm.
The examiner's jaw clenched, but he nodded stiffly to the clerk.
She hurriedly counted out **200 gold crowns**, the coins clinking into a heavy pouch and handed it to Ethan.
.....
The guild hall fell into an uneasy silence as Ethan approached the front desk, the weight of his recent victory still fresh in the air. The clerk—a sharp-eyed woman with silver-streaked hair—watched him carefully as she slid a heavy pouch of gold across the polished oak counter.
"You completed a C-rank mission in under an hour," she remarked, her voice laced with disbelief. "That's… unprecedented."
Ethan pocketed the coins without counting them, his gaze drifting toward the grand heraldry display on the far wall, where five crests shimmered under enchanted light.
"That knight from earlier," he said, his voice calm but deliberate. "Sophia. Who is she?.
The clerk's lips curled into a knowing smile. "Ah, Lady Sophia Valmont." She gestured to the largest of the crests—a silver sword piercing a dark vortex. "House Valmont is one of the oldest and most respected knightly lineages in the kingdom. Their ancestors were the first to seal away the Archdemon Zalagoth, and their blades are still forged in holy fire to this day."
She leaned forward slightly, lowering her voice. "Sophia is the youngest knight to ever lead a Dawn Patrol squad. Her father, Lord Cedric Valmont, is known as the 'Demonbane'—a legend in his own right. And her brother, Kael, commands the Royal Vanguard. Between you and me, she's being groomed to take her father's place one day."
Ethan absorbed the information in silence, his fingers tracing the Valmont crest on the guild registry.
"Word of advice," the clerk added, her voice dropping to a whisper. "If you're thinking of approaching Lady Valmont, you'll have to survive Rylan's temper, and endure Kael's protective Interrogation
....
Ethan stepped out of the Adventurer's Guild, the weight of the gold pouch in his pocket barely registering in his mind. His thoughts were already turning to the information he had gathered—House Valmont, demon slayers.
With a flick of his fingers, the air around him distorted, and he shot into the sky, the ground shrinking beneath him as he soared toward the Moonlight Magic Academy. The wind screamed past him, but his gravitational field kept it from disturbing his clothes or his balance. The city blurred beneath him, rooftops and streets turning into a patchwork of colors as he cut through the clouds.
But as the academy came into view, something was wrong.
A massive, shimmering dome of energy encased the entire campus—a **magic barrier**, intricate runes pulsing along its surface like veins of light. Ethan slowed his ascent, hovering just outside the barrier's edge.The formation was too complex, too layered.
*Interesting.*
He had never bothered with magic formations before. They were tedious, requiring patience and precision—two things he rarely indulged in. But now, faced with a barrier even his gravity magic couldn't brute-force, he recognized the gap in his knowledge.
He descended, landing gracefully at the academy's front gates. The barrier hummed faintly, its energy prickling against his skin as he reached out to touch it. He then entered though the front gate.