Mage Manual-Chapter 183 - 162: Orthodox! Fantasy! Adventurer!
Chapter 183: Chapter 162: Orthodox! Fantasy! Adventurer!
“Adventurer codename?”
“Death Mad Sword Maiden.”
“Gender?”
“Male.”
The camp recorder paused for a moment, his expression unchanged, “Please read and confirm whether you comply with the ‘Adventure Agreement 430’ and the ‘Secret Keeping Agreement.’ Here is the printout…”
“Accepted.”
“Please present your adventurer’s badge.”
Ash, wearing a mask, took out a round badge and swiped it across the glass screen of the checking device. The screen lit up green. The recorder nodded, “Task registration complete. Please enter.”
There was virtually no obstruction, and Ash easily stepped into Camp Observation Point No. 53. A rough earthen wall that rose to thirty meters isolated the inside from the outside. At the very center of the camp stood a Tower, and at the top of the Tower, a deep blue Vortex. That was Ash’s target for this trip: a level 2 Void Turbulence passage.
In the camp, all vegetation had been removed, replaced with rows of benches and seats. Many adventurers gathered together for idle chatter, pulling out bottles of alcohol for a good time and then popping a piece of Moon Candy, convulsing with pleasure—a drink coupled with the candy felt like ascending to Heaven.
Occasional shouts could be heard:
“Flame Group over here!”
“Hungry Wolves, assemble over here!”
“Faraga, Faraga, has the coffin-carrying Faraga not arrived yet?”
Apart from these rowdy folks, there were also many lone wolves like Ash, draped in standard cloaks and wearing masks, watching the chaos with cool, mysterious detachment.
This chaotic sight was the life of the adventurers in the war zone.
When Ash found adventurer information on the Veil, he almost wanted to applaud the Kingdom of Blood Moon for its advanced level of exploitation—because the military expenses required by the conscription system were just too great. So, the Kingdom of Blood Moon decided not to have an army at all!
The Kingdom of Blood Moon had abolished its military 300 years ago, completely transitioning to an adventurer-based system.
The so-called adventurer system was simple: the war zone offered tasks, adventurers completed them, and then received compensation from the war zone. There was only a contractual relationship between the war zone and the adventurers. The adventurers were free to come and go and, in theory, could indeed share some of the military’s responsibilities.
The biggest advantage of the adventurer system was that there was no need to provide training expenses, no need to deal with logistics, and no need for compensation.
The death of an adventurer was none of the war zone’s concern. Adventurers could work if they desired or leave if they didn’t care to; there was always a queue of people waiting to take on tasks. The war zone didn’t need to care about ‘human rights’ at all—they didn’t even count as employers, merely parties involved in a mutual and temporary contractual relationship.
In short, because having an army meant treating soldiers as humans, which was too expensive, recruiting adventurers only required treating them as tools. There was no need to spend unnecessary money on extras like ‘race’ or ‘human rights,’ thus significantly lowering costs.
In the first year of its implementation, the adventurer system saved 80% of military expenses.
And the most wonderful part was that the shift from conscription to the adventurer system had no negative impact on the Kingdom of Blood Moon.
The reason was that the Kingdom of Blood Moon had no hard military needs like suppressing rebellions, defending borders, or responding to disasters.
Rebellions were out of the question to begin with, not to even mention the ‘prohibition of love’ education enforced by the Kingdom of Blood Moon. With everyone’s chip implant in the back of their neck, a large-scale rebellion was simply impossible.
The absence of natural disasters was also quite common, as the Meteorological Bureau resolved all issues before they occurred. As for those disasters caused by Mages in the Void Realm, it was natural for Mages to resolve them; the military could not be of help.
As for the borders, it was said within the Veil, ‘The Extreme Master of Blood Moon has already defended us against foreign enemies,’ so there was no need for an army stationed at the borders.
Matters like maintaining public safety, capturing criminals, and preventing cults were the responsibilities of the Crime Hunting Hall.
Thus, the military was left with only two functions: emergency troops and suppressing the Abyss in various locations. These functions could be entirely undertaken by adventurers, so after the transformation of the military system into the adventurer system, although efficiency did not increase, it did not decrease either, and adventurer groups thus took their place in history.
As a violent group, the components of adventurers were quite complex. There were Combat Mages who focused solely on protecting Blood Moon and honing their skills, as well as opportunists seeking to gain resources from the war zone, and even wanted criminals who came to the war zone to evade capture and pursue a living.
Yes, the war zone was willing to shelter wanted criminals, and the Crime Hunting Hall would not arrest people in the war zone. For criminals who committed serious crimes and were desperate in the City, the war zone was almost their only place of refuge.
For instance, the Woodpecker gang controlled by Selin also had a branch in the Lakeview war zone, specifically responsible for sheltering members who had caused trouble. If ‘Golden Mouth’ Ronald hadn’t been caught, he would likely have gone to Lakeview to become an adventurer, too.
When Ash heard about the adventurer system from Igula in prison, he also asked if they could make a living in the war zone after escaping, embarking on a grand adventurer’s journey to accumulate Merits and cleanse their names, steering the bizarre cult leader’s start onto the right path of a fantasy adventure.
But Igula coldly vetoed his fantasy—the war zone didn’t care if you were a big bad guy with enormous crimes or a small stinker guilty of racial discrimination due to bad breath, but the precondition was that you had to have a chip implant.
Without a chip, criminals simply could not enter the ‘safe rest areas’ provided by the war zone—the name itself made it clear that this area would activate the ‘Attack Restriction’ in the adventurer’s chip, forbidding any form of attack within the safe zone.
Not to mention that Ash was not willing to implant a chip in himself, even if he wanted to, he wouldn’t know where to start. Chip implantation was a monopolized business of the Church of Beloved, and even the black market only provided purification services, not implantation services.
Therefore, after escaping from prison, the five great villains no longer had a way to turn back once their chips were removed.
Moreover, the life of an adventurer wasn’t as glorious as Ash had imagined. The battle zone only accepted merit for transactions, and no amount of money could make life comfortable there. One could even be fleeced and inevitably end up accepting tasks to hunt creatures in the Waterway Abyss for survival.
Statistics showed that only 25% of new adventurers could survive more than a year in the battle zone. Even though many of them returned to the city to work because they could not persevere, this pass rate was still quite alarming.
To cater to such a diverse group of adventurers, the battle zone introduced the ‘adventurer’s merit’ system. All task rewards are in merits, and adventurers can exchange merits for any reward in the battle zone, including but not limited to Technique Spirits, Miracle Techniques, and faction knowledge.
What was most ingenious was that merits were not recorded on the chips, but on the adventurers’ badges carried on their person.
Adventurer badges were unregistered.
As long as you could produce an adventurer badge, the battle zone would conduct the merit exchange, regardless of whether the badge was yours, found, or… taken from someone you had killed.
It was only when Ash discovered this mechanism that he fully understood the Kingdom of Blood Moon’s profound intention behind implementing the adventurer system—just with this move alone, it was impossible for coordinated adventurer groups to exist in the battle zone, and any possibility of large-scale violent gangs was nipped in the bud. As long as the battle zone continued to provide rewards for merit exchanges, distrust would always exist among adventurers.
How could the Kingdom of Blood Moon, which forbade even family units, possibly allow military-like violent groups?
While large gangs didn’t exist, there were countless small adventure groups, with seven or eight just in this camp alone.
Seeing these groups like ‘Flame Group,’ ‘Hungry Wolf Team,’ and ‘Gale Group,’ Ash couldn’t help but feel his eyes moisten—he also longed for such a fantastical adventure life. He imagined forming an adventure group with a few like-minded close friends, setting off on an unknown journey, experiencing epic stories, and then retiring and getting married by the age of 35 to live a quiet pastoral life.
Ideally, he hoped to meet a beautiful and sexy lover, a kind and considerate wife, an empathetic confidante, and a lively and cute girlfriend.
And if they could never meet each other, all the better.
That would be a true fantasy story.
Yet, what he was experiencing now was being arrested → breaking out of prison → fleeing the country. How was this a fantasy story? This was clearly a crime drama!
This 𝓬ontent is taken from freeweɓnovel.cѳm.
He wouldn’t even need to time-travel; if he embezzled funds at the company, he could go through this entire process!
Just as Ash fell into a sorrowful contemplation typical of adulthood, it seemed a conflict had arisen among the adventurers.
An adventurer wearing a cloak and mask claimed to have lost their badge and suspected three people who had passed by of stealing it. Those three naturally denied it, even willing to be searched by the cloaked one.
As the cloaked adventurer searched the first person, that person raised both hands, with the adventurer badge in the right hand, and tossed it to the second person in the cloaked one’s blind spot.
Everyone around saw this act, but no one spoke up, all watching the drama unfold. The maliciously minded didn’t need mentioning, and even those with kind hearts wouldn’t lend a hand—if someone could have their important badge stolen, they might as well give up their life as an adventurer and return to the city to become a cog in society.
As the cloaked one searched the second person, the second person also raised both hands, passing the badge to the third person, and when the cloaked one searched the third person, the third one tossed it back to the first person.
The badge had essentially made a round among the three of them, making the onlookers unable to suppress their laughter.
The three men were just looking for fun at the expense of the cloaked figure, who eventually left with nothing and had to accept their bad luck.
Just when Ash thought this was just an ordinary social beatdown, the three men suddenly let out cries of alarm.
“Where’s my badge? Why is my badge gone?”
“Mine’s gone too! Damn it, it must have been that Goblin bastard!”
“Where did he go!? Quick, find him, my badge had the merits saved up for a Technique Spirit!”
The three men were lividly looking for the cloaked figure but there were too many people wearing cloaks and masks here. Once the cloaked one blended into the crowd, how could they find him? They even stared down Ash, who faced them without fear.
“Ha ha ha, I’m dying of laughter. I saw him snatch the badges from you fools while searching you, but I didn’t say a word, ha ha ha!”
“Why the glare? You can’t even steal as well as others, why are you still losing face here? Do you want to start a fight?”
“We’ve had our laugh, you can leave now.”
Members of the nearby adventure group laughed loudly, their teasing voices overlapping, and the three men trembled with anger and almost teared up in humiliation. They mumbled a few harsh words that nobody could hear and sheepishly moved to the edge of the area.
At that moment, a Goblin dressed in formal attire walked onto the high platform. He was tall, with clear eyes and handsome features, wearing a pair of silver-framed glasses on his nose and a top hat that covered his bald head, making him suddenly seem like a fluorescent green Elf.
A mere Goblin exuded an air of elegance (Ash didn’t realize he was being racially prejudiced), and whether it was the result of cosmetic surgery or natural—the genetic enhancement technology of the Kingdom of Blood Moon was the best in the world.
“Good evening, adventurers. I am the clerk of this task, Kibot Mantlas,” the Goblin said calmly. “Only 90 minutes left until midnight. The camp is now closed to arrivals and departures, and we are moving into the phase of battle preparations.”
“Being in charge of an invasion battle from the Foreign Domain, a task with no risk that could be a career highlight. It seems this Goblin is a candidate for parliament.”
Suddenly Ash heard a familiar voice of keyboard commentary from nearby. He turned his head in confusion to glance at the cloaked adventurers beside him, but couldn’t identify who was speaking.
