Headed by a Snake

The conversation Tycondrius was having with Zenon reminded him of similar back-and-forths with the other Sol Invictus members... notably the Titanblood buffoon Dragan Ashlord and the Void-worshipping Daeva, Tarquin Wroe. However, Centurion Zenon Skyreaper was no fool...

...At least that was something Tycon desperately wished to be true.

Perhaps Tycon had misspoken during the conversation... That was the reason for getting such asinine answers. Yes, that was it...

"Yeah, Optio!" Zenon raised an eyebrow, "House Vanzano! The house of Sanctum Parmularius Maximus-- the greatest gladiator known to Ezyria."

Tycon couldn't help but inwardly applaud the arrangements of Archbishop Natalya Crucis. It was not enough to rely on his honor as an adventurer or his sincerity in completing Queen Rylania's objectives. The quest Natalya engineered was one that Tycon would have a personal desire to succeed to the best of his ability.

The Church of the Eternal Flame knew well how to effectively utilize guilt in their machinations... and the guilt that weighed upon Tycon for allowing Maximus to die was by no means small.

However... the house of Maximus, well apparently that was a "stage name"-- the house belonging to the deceased Gian Vanzano had... fallen? He couldn't fathom how. Gian was a popular Ezyrian Gladiator and went on to serve honorably in one of the militant arms of the Church of the Eternal Flame. His fame was immense and would certainly extend to his family's businesses...

The Vanzano footman in the Adventurer's Plaza was a pale human with slicked-back, bleached-white hair. By the young man's features and lack of facial hair, he was a young adult or barely just. He was nearly as tall as Zenon-- so near a head taller than himself... which Tycon found slightly annoying.

He wore sculpted-muscle leather armor and a white tabard over it, displaying a stylized lightning bolt painted in black. Tycon recalled that Maximus had the same symbol on his own shield and armor, though colored differently.

Most peculiar was that the young man carried no weapon... not even a sword on his side.

⟬ Vanzano Footman, Human, Unknown Rank, Unknown Class ⟭

...The System's analysis of him proved relatively useless. Tycon had experienced the phenomenon once before, so he had his hypotheses... but he couldn't be certain. Still, he knew not to act carelessly around any combatant whose strength he could not approximate.

The footman was conversing with a couple of adventurers. Those two, however, did not look strong at all.

⟬ Bronze-Rank Human Knight; Bronze-Rank Human Rogue. ⟭

"Just one dungeon," The footman insisted. "It'll be easy. In. Out. And we're done."

"Yeah, I'm not really feeling it," The Rogue pursed her lips. "You're really not offering the right amount of coin for that sort of job."

"Flame take you, man." The Knight huffed, "You should be paying *us* for wasting our time."

The footman was a dungeon runner? Interesting.

"Should we go talk to him?" Zenon offered.

"Hmm." Tycon placed his hand on his chin in thought, "Let's wait a moment. I'd like to see how this plays out."

...

Trash.

All I'm surrounded by is filth and trash.

Tanamar of House Vanzano wore the fakest gods-damned smile he could muster, "Well, thank you for your time, Miss."

The Rogue was somewhat-civil. He'd been treated worse-- much worse, even during the span of the two bells he'd spent recruiting.

House Vanzano's reputation was in the dirt, and even the adventurers knew it... No one had ever heard of the Stormbrand adventuring company before, so few unguilded adventurers cared to risk joining.

And then the garbage-looking Knight dared to ask for more coin.

"Oh. Well... Sir Knight..." Tanamar felt his mouth twitch.

Mana surged through his arms and chest as he thought he'd like nothing more than to jam a Holy Lance up the man's arse. And not in the sexy way. Though he figured that his Rogue probably railed him every night with a wooden cock.

She looked like she wore the pants in that relationship.

Tanamar reigned in his mana-- he didn't know why he bothered. The idiot probably couldn't even tell he was so close to bleeding to death via irreparably torn rectum, "What do you think the going rate for your services should be?"

The Knight thought it over, trying his best to not look like he was pulling a random number out of his arse, "Two gold coins would suffice."

It didn't matter what the f*cker said. Tanamar wasn't going to pay him shite.

"Oh, very well," He nodded. "Well. Thank you. For your time."

A vein was throbbing on his forehead and he felt a migraine quickly approaching. Thankfully, the two went on their way before Tanamar could lose his gods-damned composure.

Trash. Absolute and utter trash. He was fine with the Rogue and Knight not coming along. Chances were they'd need to be coddled, anyroad.

He wished he and Athena could complete dungeons with just the two of them. He had a complete and utter disdain for recruiting... but he needed more bodies to throw into the meat grinder.

...This was his life now.

And he supposed he'd sacrifice two of his own gods-damned gold coins, trying to recruit the next meatshield.

...

"He looks professional," Zenon nodded in approval.

Tycon narrowed his eyes, "He looks like he's about to kill everyone in the plaza... Open your senses to see the mana he's trying to hold in."

Zenon took a second look... "Oh. Well." He crossed his arms, "F*ck."

"Aptly stated," Tycon scoffed.

Iron-Rank mana. That solved one of Tycon's questions. Iron-Rank, considering the footman's age, though, was very, very good. Lone was a few years older and hadn't reached that level (though he didn't know it.) Zenon was Iron-Rank, also older, and had the benefit of being cultivated by the Church as a Sanctified Psyker.

Zenon didn't seem to think anything special of it... Either he was used to being surrounded by Iron-Rankers, or he didn't judge people based on the quality of their mana.

In the case of the former-- the concept that the Church had Iron-Rankers hidden behind every column horrified him. In the case of the latter... it proved that Zenon was a more righteous person than he was.

Tycon very much preferred to judge people by their mana output. He liked to know who he could and could not kill at a moment's notice.

With a tacit gesture to Zenon, the two of them began to approach the Vanzano footman.