Iayui's Examination

Letter: "As your actions begin to stack up, you gain the attention of the Aces and even the Guild Master. So I have come up with a test that will determine if you may climb higher and aim for better riches, or remain low where you are and reap the rewards you currently have. Your goal sounds simple, but is extremely crucial. You will go and get to the top of the Chains holding the chained city. No one to my knowledge has actually went there to investigate and gather data on it. Find a way to the top and get information, and you will be a well rewarded mage. Once you are done, return to me at the Guild Hall. I am not too patient about this, so you have a 24 hour time limit. Also, this is a solo examination, so you may not obtain help from anyone but yourself. I wish you the best of luck.


Objective: Find a way to get up the chained city and gather info on it. Bring the data gathered to Elyx and that will be it. This exam has a 3000 word minimum requirement. You can do this in on post or do posts with a 300 word minimum per post. No other mages may help you on this exam. Good luck!

Life was so much different in the territories of the Black Rose guild. No longer was he in a town full of dangerous assassins, but a place of normalcy with a guild holding those powerful enough to be on par with those that had trained him. Today was a different day for him though, as he had no jobs or contracts to complete. He had not been in the guild very long, a strenuous vetting process with the group known as 'Omen.' They were the group that didn't exist for the rest of the world, and if they did it was just rumors and fear mongering. They were the intelligence, the assassins, the spies, the black mailers, they were anything that needed to be done in secret. It was Iayui's line of work, for the most part, and Guild Master Kakuma Blackflower had instantly pushed him into the faction just off of his failed attempt at killing the groups leader. A group that held nothing sacred, where a kill was a kill and the mission was all that mattered. It was a good fit for the man, if only they would actually give him something to do with his talents.

The man with the crescent scar on his face had only woken recently, an early four in the morning, to see a letter at the foot of his door. It was obviously not a mistake, made obvious when he actually opened the letter to read it. It was from a man known as Elyx Reiaki, the Guild Ace of Leaves, giving him a request that, according to him, had never been done nor completed before. This semi-leader of the guild wished for him to climb up the chains of Vez'loias, which were said to be just over a mile high, and get into the city for a reconnaissance mission. It was quite the interesting task to be given. Climbing that high would stretch the limits of the human body, though he had the magic of a god slayer and this was stronger than even the standard mage of his caliber. Then he would get to do something he was actually trained for; recon. He had not had a job with that in a while, which made it a welcome sight to see for this mission. It also stated he had twenty-four hours, and that he must go alone, both of which were fine with him. He was the loner anyway, part of the job details really, and a climb like this would need him by himself or he would be slowed down by any that went with him.

A single hour later one would find the man looking straight up into the air as he held onto the massive chains with both of his hands. They were very sturdy, and it seemed that they did not sway with the wind as one would expect from such a marvel. ”Well, better start climbing before I start running down my time too much. I'm not sure how much exploring I'll need to do up there to appease Elyx with information so I'll need as much time as I can get.” With those words the single man would begin the longest climb he had done in his entire life. Hand over hand, and one foot at a time finding a place amongst the chains, Iayui of the Darbold Assassin Clan would begin to make his way up the chains that would be linked to his destiny. It felt like hours passed as he reached the halfway mark, which was when he began to have issue with the climb. His body was not sore, nor was he tired from the climb. The wind was picking up this high, and while the chains were not swaying his own body was. 'Keep focus, take it slow. One hand have another and make sure you have a good grip before you move a foot. A fall from this high means death. Even something from lower would kill me at this point.' Words of wisdom, and words to say do not fail, to himself would be thought as he followed exactly what he had thought quietly to himself.

It was when he was starting to reach the top that he got what he would consider the biggest fear of his life; he slipped. A hand had reached a chain's loop and latched on, but not as securely as he thought it had. With a foot already in motion, and off the chains, the slip had made him lose his grip and begin a sudden fall. Memories rushed forth that he had his magic he could use, resulting in him opening the portal to his pocket dimension right below him; causing him to fall into it with only a slightly jarring landing. Heart racing, and lungs refusing to work for a moment, the man sat inside the toxic dimension while staring at his assortment of weapons and armor that he kept inside of it. After a few minutes of blankly looking around, Iayui got to the next big issue he had going for him; leaving the pocket dimension and managing to grab the chains. The directions with the real world and the pocket dimension were the same, so all he had to do was get a running start and jump through the exit he created. A few breaths would be made before he charged in the proper direction, opening the portal again as he made a great leap. The ninja assassin came out at high speed, hitting up against the chains painfully even as he latched on to them with a grip tighter than death's. There would definitely be bruises the next day, but nothing was broken. Blessing the luck involved with what he had just accomplished, and being glad he had not lost to much distance in his climb, the young man quickly finished the rest of the wind blasted chain and climbed up into the city of secrets by scaling the walls that kept out the wind.

What he saw was nothing like he had imagined on his way up. ”Ugh, this place is a dump. I could just write that on a paper and he wouldn't be able to know any better.” A disgusted look betrayed his normally stone straight face as he looked around at the abandoned city. Footsteps would kick up a light layer of dirt, the place not being well traveled nor having the wind blow the dirt and debris of the city away. There were no people, no bodies, nothing left over that could explain why the city was the way it was. A modern mystery, the floating city, a fortress in the sky with not even a massive lacrima system obviously holding it up. Not that they knew of, not yet. That's what Iayui was here for after all, to gather knowledge on this enigma. Footsteps would echo out as he moved through, the silence even carrying the quiet steps he made across the place. Buildings of various shapes and sizes littered the area, well made streets dividing everything into nice, even, areas that made it look like a group that had taken pleasure in space management. It did not take long for the quiet man to find a building that looked important. It was about the length of three of the standard buildings that he had passed, and was about twice the width as well. It was the same height, but entered it he did to explore.

The inside was almost spotless, had there not been a massive amount of dust covering everything, and it held an eerie silence inside compared to the howling of wind that he had had to deal with on his climb up to this forsaken place. Stepping up to the receiving desk showed the same signs as the rest of the city, no people had been here for a while. The small layer of dust that was on everything had even his this place. A shrug of his shoulders would start his movement as he searched throughout the building for anything of importance, until he felt the presence of magic a small distance away from him. That was very odd, why had he not felt it until now? The man proceeded to walk the halls of the building until he found the room in question. The magical energy was extremely strong, though there was no trace of what was causing it when he entered. Was it some kind of magic used long ago? Maybe something that caused the destruction of the people that had been here? Or maybe some kind of portal had been opened here and something had looted this place down to absolute nothing; save for the buildings themselves. Or maybe this was what kept the entire island afloat, but that didn't make sense. The magical aura here was much weaker than he would expect for something that could possibly keep this place afloat. Unless, of course, the magic was what was keeping the chains as steady and upright as they were. Yes, that one made the most sense.

Taking out some much needed materials for this kind of job, paper and pencils, the man sat down at the entrance to the magic filled room and began drawing a floor plan for what he had traveled so far in the important building. A check of the watch in his pocket would show he had spend a good sixteen hours of his twenty-four hour time limit already, and there was still about a quarter of the administrator's building that that he had to explore. Packing the drawing carefully, to make sure it did not smear or get ruined in any way, the man stood back up and make his exploration for the back quarter of the building. The place proved to be a batch of storerooms that were always empty. Empty until he got to the very last one and tried to open up the door. Much to his surprise the door seemed to be completely sealed, very well for that matter.

Busting the door down with his strength was out of the question, the metal of the door very much making it impossible for him to simply charge into and knock it down, so he had to rely on his magic for this one. A simple creation with magic would work wonders, the man spewing forth a burning acid he normally saved as a last gasp in fights. The acid of the venom god slayer proved more than enough for the metal involved, melting through the door quickly before the liquid quickly fizzled out of existence; the magic not meant to last long on its own. Once the metal had melted enough the ninja assassin stepped in through the custom entrance. What he found astounded him to no end, the man standing there with mouth dropped open as he simply stared at the single item in the center of the room.

It was...a banana? Not just a banana, but what appeared to be a very rotten banana. It would have made him laugh, had he not been in a completely deserted city that seemed to have no population for quite some time. After a while of thinking on the implications of how nasty the banana would be, the man made a few steps towards it before realizing something else off about it. The banana was not, in fact, rotten. It had a black aura shimmering around it, the peel being the very ripe yellow as if it had just been bought and put down to ripen while lying on the floor. ”How the hell is this even possible?” Too confused to worry about any danger there might be in acting, the Darbold Clansman simply picked up the banana. Much to his surprise, would the surprises ever stop with this crazy task, the banana held the same quality of magic to it that one felt when holding a magically charged lacrima. ”Interesting...this banana is magical. But it has an unholy aura around it. Something to take back with me for study, then to let the research division do the same as I oversee it.” A worried look on his face, he put the banana into one of his pouches before pulling out a ready to eat ration and ate it as he made a quick exit from the building. Upon leaving he would sit down and finish his drawing of the floor plans before making his way to the section of wall he had climbed over to enter the city.

There was one last thing he wanted to do before he made the claim down, make an aerial view drawing of the city to help with plans for it for the future. It was in Black Rose territory, and now that they would know it was possible to make it up to they could start work on making it habitable and start using it for whatever they wanted to. Precariously sitting on the edge proved difficult, slowing down his drawing as he wobbled slightly with the high winds, the man finished his task with precision before making the extremely slow climb down.

The climb took less time than it had on the way up, more sure steps being made as the wind became less of an issue. The happiness at touching the earth again was great, but he had only a few hours left to write up his report and leave it at the guild ace's desk for him to be able to read upon finding it. It took less than an hour for him to write everything up, the document written being around five hundred words at best, before he began to make his way towards the office of the one in charge of the mission he had gratefully taken. Upon entering the room, and finding no one in there at the time, the Venom God Slayer simply placed it on the center of the desk gently before making a quiet escape. The paper on Elyx's desk would read as follows;

“Ace of Leaves, the reconnaissance has been finished as instructed.

The walls that surround the city are air tight, the wind being kept out and allowing those inside to move freely without worry. However, the entirety of the city was abandoned. No bodies, no sign of life, not even a simple piece of trash to be found. Whatever made them leave, or destroyed them, left no trace inside of the structures. Each building was in the condition to be expected where no outside forces can get to them, the place being too high to have to worry about the precipitation or wind.

Upon entering one building, which ended up an administration building from the way the rooms were positioned, I found a chamber that seemed to house some unknown style of magic that I could not link to any known type of magic. The room was empty accept for the sensing of this magic, so I continued on to check the storerooms to see if this major building held anything of value that might have been left somehow. The only thing found was a single banana, though with odd qualities for how long the place had been abandoned.

The banana was not rotten, the peel still a perfectly ripe yellow, and held a dark aura around that made it look like it was a black peel until it was picked up. It exuded an extremely powerful aura of magic, the same as that of a lacrima, and I have collected it as an object for personal study to figure out what it is and what it may be involved with. Once I am satisfied with my personal observation of the produce I will involve the research division in helping ascertain the magical side of it and assist me in finding some use for a magic banana.

Underneath this letter is a drawn schematic of the entire city from the streets, as well as a layout of the administration building and the location of the magical energy room and the room where the banana was found before I took it.

Thank you for the mission,

Iayui from Omen.”

A highly detailed drawing of his view of the city would be made, including the view he had as he sat precariously on the wall, as well as the very detailed floor plans from his time inside of the administration building. If all went well Elyx, the guild ace that had given him this exam in the first place, would be highly pleased with his work and start giving him other missions to do as part of Omen. ”Back to the work I love, would that not be great?” That would be his only thought as he headed back to his room, having done nothing but this mission since waking up. Twenty-four hours was not that long to be awake, not for someone trained to stay wary, but he had not worked in a while and could use the sleep.

Reaching into his pouches, to put stuff away so he could keep track of inventory, the man grabbed the banana that held the magical qualities of a lacrima. Where should he put it? If anyone entered his chambers he didn't want them being able to find it and take it; thinking it as some kind of experiment or what it actually looked like. With a shrug he would place it inside of a lock box, the same one where a single gun was placed. While the gun would remain a mystery for some time, a weapon he had been given and told to be careful with as it held unknown magic, the assassin hoped that the banana would have some use that he could use in the future; else it was trash to be destroyed. A mission done, an artifact found. What a great way to start life in a guild.

The letter would be received during the grace period date, where if not reported to him physically, he would expect a letter from the mage the next day since Snail mail was just that slow. And there it was with the explanation. A lot of unknown and untouched magic had been in the city it seemed, and it remained untouched as well, kudos to Iayui for being smart enough to avoid such danger. The banana was an interesting factor, but it was a banana, what more could they have done with it? Elyx can give the mage that as a reward. Overall, he was fairly please with the results of the observations, and would not hesitate to pull out a paper and quill before he would begin writing at his desk.

"Iayui, I have just received your letter in a timely manor, you have completed the time task successfully, and I am very much pleased with that alone.

Not only that however, you went above and beyond by avoiding help just like I have asked, when you thought no eyes were watching you, you still have done what I have asked and did not even dare speak with another being in Black Rose until your job had been done. And just because you might have thought no one was looking over you while this was going on, rest assured, you had plenty of eyes on you. All of them reported to me with positive results.

As if that were not enough already, but you took the extra step in giving me a quick yet detailed summary of what you found in the Chained City. I am most certainly pleased with the explanation, and will have the letter analyzed with some investigating. The room was a nice touch, maybe it could be some supply for us at the Guild.

The banana certainly is odd, but I do not believe it will serve us much purpose. Provided you keep an update with the guild about anything that it does, then it is yours.

Overall, I am very much pleased with the results of the exam. You have done exactly what I have asked when I asked, and for that, with no hesitance, I will promote you to the next rank. This allows you to move forward as a mage and take on jobs that are designed to be a little bit harder, but with the amount of responsibility you have shown, I have no regrets with letting you handle them. Know that our Guild Master will hear only good of you based on the exam, and do not hesitate to ask me of anything if you have any trouble. Again, you have done perfectly, and I will be expecting this sort of work from you from now on.

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Result: Success