Chapter 167 : Chapter 167

Chapter 167. Inspection

Maeve was an ordinary member of the Transmutation School. Starting from the status of a commoner, she had worked tirelessly until she finally became a Formal Mage.

But life as a Formal Mage was not easy either. Finding a good job was harder than climbing to the heavens, let alone preparing for a promotion.

At present, Maeve had no plans to advance at all. Her intention was to gather corpses for the school and, through that kind of thankless labor, earn her way into one of the school’s core societies, where she could then obtain an opportunity for promotion.

Earl Ian came to her not long after she arrived here, asking her to handle the inspection work for the upcoming knight duel. The pay was generous.

Maeve accepted immediately. Chances like this to earn extra money were rare, and she had no intention of letting one slip away.

It was only after she saw the list of prohibited items that she became deeply confused as to why Earl Ian had even bothered to hire her.

The prohibited range on that list was absurdly narrow. Everything banned was either extremely obscure or extremely dangerous.

Weapons and armor made from demonic materials, strength-enhancing potions that damaged the body through overexertion, and certain forbidden poisons.

Every single one of those things was exceptionally rare. Even if you searched the market in Gerd Town, you might not be able to find them.

It was only when the day of the equipment inspection arrived that Maeve finally understood why those contraband items had been listed at all.

She looked at a dagger coated with the death poison extracted from Duskflower. If that stuff even touched a living creature, that creature was basically as good as dead.

Then there was the attendant of one knight, who was actually wearing a suit of armor forged from demonic materials. How in the world had they gotten their hands on something like that?

Demonic materials were not especially expensive. Mages generally disliked how unstable those materials were, which was why their market price stayed low.

Still, the Abyss was so far from here that Maeve could not help wondering how they had managed to procure it. Even so, she did not ask too many questions.

There was also one knight who had pumped his attendant full of strengthening potions. When she asked the man his name, he could not even speak clearly.

She could not get any response even when she told him to turn around. Only when given an order to attack would he charge forward at once.

That sort of thing was clearly in violation of the prohibited-item rules, so she rejected him on the spot.

Still, there were some things that had not been clearly defined on paper, items that existed in a gray area and were hard for her to judge.

For example, right now.

She was looking at an elite-model modified human. Its body had already been loaded up with strengthening potions, and after special treatment by the mage who had modified it—

this modified human still retained a certain level of intelligence. It could understand what she said and could follow simple instructions, though its mouth had been sewn shut, so it could not speak.

“Well then, Mage, do my modified humans pass?” Knight Cliff asked confidently.

Before making these preparations, he had specifically paid Earl Ian for advice on the exact scope of the prohibited items. Then, in a flash of inspiration, he had specially procured these modified humans.

“Hmm...” Maeve pondered for a long time before finally waving her hand. “Fine. You pass.”

She had no choice. This modified human had slipped perfectly through a loophole. On the supplementary inspection notice she had posted, she had specifically written that attendants’ intelligence had to be checked, in order to prevent people from using excessive quantities of strengthening potions.

But this specially treated modified human had landed exactly on the borderline. In the end, she could only let him through.

“Next.”

The next knight to be inspected was Knight Eric. Every movement his group made seemed to make the ground shake twice over.

The moment he stepped into the small inspection booth, one stomp from Eric crushed the threshold into pieces, leaving broken fragments scattered all over the floor.

Maeve frowned and carefully inspected Knight Eric’s group.

This group did not actually have anything prohibited, nor did it even have anything that rode the line. It was just that...

Knight Eric’s group was armed to the teeth. The horse he had brought was covered from head to hoof in iron armor, and thanks to the strengthening potions it had consumed, the whole beast was restless and irritable, stomping heavily at the ground from time to time.

As for his two attendants, they were practically encased in iron armor as well. At their waists hung poisoned hand crossbows, along with incendiary throwing weapons that would burst into flames once hurled.

As for Knight Eric himself, his entire suit of armor had been forged from a special metal. The sort of material other people did not even have enough of to make a weapon, Eric had used to make a full suit of plate armor.

“That thing must have cost fifty or sixty silver coins,” Maeve guessed to herself.

Eric noticed where her gaze had settled and explained,

“My family saved up for three generations to afford this powerful suit of armor.”

There was nothing Maeve could say to that. It was perfectly within the rules. All she could do was wish the other knights good luck.

“Next.”

At last it was Finley’s group’s turn. By now, Finley’s expression had gone from nervousness, to shock, to a faint sort of dejection. He already felt that victory was impossible.

He had no idea why all these people had so many good items on them, and why nearly every one of them had something. By comparison, his own group looked shabby beyond belief.

Maeve was also quite curious about this team. Every other group had come in decked out with all sorts of flashy equipment, so why was this one so plain?

At a glance, the only valuable thing she saw was the light armor Finley wore. It seemed to have been forged from the materials of some powerful magical creature, and it looked extremely sturdy.

The battle axe in his hand had been forged from ordinary refined iron, but it bore two runes. The Enchanter who had enchanted that weapon was clearly very experienced, which raised the weapon’s value considerably in Maeve’s eyes.

But with only that level of equipment, they were probably destined to finish at the bottom in the duel, Maeve thought to herself.

Finley suddenly turned and said to Fran behind him,

“Brother, why don’t you put your black horse away? We don’t stand much of a chance in this kind of fight anyway. It would be a shame if your horse got hurt.”

“There’s no need. My black horse needs a battle like this too, to temper itself,” Fran replied with a smile.

Originally, Maeve had not cared in the slightest what Fran’s mount was like.

But the instant she saw the black horse, she was stunned speechless.

This was a black horse that had undergone multiple modifications. Traces of various surgeries could be seen on its body, and a great many high-grade materials had been used on it.

In Maeve’s eyes, this black horse had probably already reached the peak of the apprentice tier. It could practically be called a genuine magical creature.

“I had a mage help me modify it,” Fran explained.

Bringing a magical creature into a knight duel... isn’t that a bit unreasonable? Maeve thought.

But the prohibited-item list did not mention anything like that either, so in the end she could only let them pass.