Yale appeared in a city with poor looks; it was completely opposite to Trade City.
As it was a border city, bandit raids were a common occurrence. However, some bandits raids were composed by humans while others by half-beasts.
Both countries weren’t in a war, but the outlaw groups liked to trespass the borders to act. Thus, the cities and towns near the border were the poorest and the most dangerous ones.
The city itself was protected by guards, but as long someone put their feet outside the city the chances of dying would be enormous.
Yale didn’t plan to walk alone to the Anpaes Kingdom from that city; there was a small border town composed mainly for soldiers and people to serve them, that small border town was Yale’s current destination. Yale went by teleportation to the nearest city with a portal connecting with Trade City; small towns didn’t have any portals.
Yale walked to the city government office to ask for some escort to reach the border town. Tar had prepared a proper escort for him, and Yale only needed to show his identity, and he would get it.
“You are dreaming. Why will someone put some escort for you?”
That was the reply from a big man who was in the reception, he was drunk and didn’t seem interested in helping anyone.
Yale took of a document written by Tar and the drunk man’s face changed.
“What? Do you dare to falsify official documents? Who do you think I am? A naive kid? It is impossible that you have a recommendation from the Zuatania Merchant Association chief elder. It seems that you need some punishment for trying to cheat me.”
The man stood up while tossing the document to the ground and was ready to start punching Yale. The man’s realm was superior to Yale, but Yale didn’t move.
Before the man was able to do anything to Yale, he flew towards the wall making a huge hole in it.
“Who let such bastard to work here? Trying to punch someone with an official decree. Do you know that this young man is under the protection of the chief elder and the whole Zuatania Merchant Association? He is even a founder of a Diamond Rank company, with his authority, he would have it easy to fire you and deny your citizenship.”
Those words were spoken by an old man who was the person in charge of the whole city. Tar had methods to contact him, so he knew about Yale’s arrival.
Tar had threatened that if something happened to Yale before he reached his destination, they would pay the consequences. Thus, the elder was scared to death when saw that the first thing happened to Yale was being abused by someone working in the governmental office.
Furthermore, the words of the elder were true, with Yale’s status, he could influence governmental decisions in the Zuatania Republic, firing a small officer and removing his citizenship wasn’t hard.
“Sorry my little friend, I will fire that bastard right now. Come with me; a professional soldier group is ready to escort you to the border town.”
The elder said those words while returning the decree to Yale, Yale’s appearance matched with the one Tar told him and the elder felt that it was impossible to fake the decree.
For faking such decree would mean that Yale was more powerful than Tar, it would be impossible to fake all the spells in the document otherwise. Of course, in case someone was more powerful than Tar and faked a document the elder would still believe the document was veridical, no one would want to antagonize such a fearsome person.
The drunk man was unable to think clearly due to the quantity of alcohol he had drunk before and thus decided to pick a fight when he saw Yale presenting some document; he didn’t even try to check if the document was real or not.
Luckily for the drunk man, he only got fired and didn’t lose the citizenship or his life.
Tar had ordered for the best squad of the city to escort Yale; it was compressed by ten Rank 3 soldiers with a captain at the Rank 4.
Rank 3 was an important rank for everyone who had reached at least Rank 1 because Rank 3 was where the biggest part of the practitioner end their lives and the rank with the highest population excluding the mortal rank.
The Rank 3 was also called Magus Rank or Warrior Rank, depending on the path followed, it was also called Practitioner Rank when speaking of any path.
Unless the circumstances were too bad, armies only recruit soldiers who were at least Rank 3, people at Rank 2 would only be considered helpers and not real soldiers.
Rank 4 was completely different level, only due to having a Rank 4 captain the squad in charge of escorting Yale was considered the best in the city.
The Rank 4 was also called Expert Rank, anyone at that rank was an Expert Magus or an Expert Warrior. Furthermore, it was similar to the Apprentice Rank, anyone at the Expert Rank would find easy to reach the Expert stage in any area, although only enter the expert stage, improving will still be difficult.
That made Expert Rank soldier incredibly more powerful, not only their power was higher, reaching the expert stage in a lot of different areas improved their battle prowess a lot.
However, Expert Rank soldiers were strange because people at such rank usually wanted better positions, the only reason that squad had someone at that level was that the captain was too attached to his squad companions and didn’t want to leave them alone.
When Yale saw the soldier squad for the first time, all of them bowed to Yale.
It didn’t matter that Yale was only at the Novice Rank, they had been informed about who was backing him and escorting Yale had turned into an honor for them.
Furthermore, the captain had also been promised that if the mission ended without any problem, the whole squad could move to a more secure city where they will have a better life.
For the captain moving wasn’t difficult due to his level, but the others only obtained such a chance thanks to the importance Tar put into Yale’s security. With that motivation, Tar was sure that the squad would give their all to protect Yale.
The squad was almost ready to depart, but they still needed to obtain a few more supplies, because the travel will be quite long. After all, the request for the escort to the border town had been quite sudden.
“Young master, do you want to spar with me? Knowing your prowess will help us to plan better the defense strategy.”
Given the fact Yale was backed by the most powerful person in the whole republic it wasn’t strange that the squad called him young master.
They didn’t plan that Yale had to battle in the travel to the border city, but they want to be ready for any scenario it could happen. Thus, the captain wanted to see how Yale acted in battle.
“Sure.”
Yale took out a normal sword from a storage artifact, that was the only storage artifact he had on his body because he stored almost all his belongings in the Storage Space.
Yale attacked the captain without hesitation, the elder had told him that the captain was an Expert Rank dual practitioner, so Yale would be unable to harm him with a normal sword.
The captain blocked Yale’s attacks easily with his sword. The Expert Rank let anyone just to reach the Expert stage, improving more relied only on the talents and efforts of the practitioner. The captain level at swordsmanship was obviously higher he was at the master stage. He had improved his swordsmanship with effort and not relying upon his realm.
After a few minutes, the captain spoke.
“Stop there. It is enough.”
The captain seemed happy, he expected that Yale would be a weakling, but unexpectedly he was at the expert stage in swordsmanship.
“Very well. You are young, but already at the expert stage in swordsmanship, you have a promising future.”
The captain knew very well that just reaching the expert stage was the limit before reaching the Apprentice Rank, only after advancing to the Rank 2 and putting a lot of efforts it’s possible to reach the master stage. However, most people who enter into the master stage only managed to achieve it after entering in the Rank 4, and the biggest part didn’t reach it in their lives.
After all, for most people, even reaching the expert stage was already almost impossible and that was the main requirement to reach Rank 4 besides obtaining enough Inner Qi or magic.
For someone who had already reached an expert stage, as long practices hard, reaching the Rank 4 was possible. Half of the people who remained in the Rank 3 until their deaths were unable to reach an expert stage while the other part was unable to train until the peak of the 9-star before exhausting their life-force.
Having reached an expert stage since a young age made the path easier afterward, that was the main reason the captain had advanced to the Expert Rank while all the others were still unable to breakthrough, stuck into the Practitioner Rank.