Chapter 617: An Interesting Trip Home
When Braden first hopped onto the massive black Tartan and flew up into the sky, he had nearly bit his tongue in fright.
He had always considered himself to be quite brave and adventurous, but flying was apparently not his thing.
The flight from Misty City to Rockwell City normally took half-a-day, but knowing he had an inexperienced passenger along for the ride, the Aerial Knight of the Raging River Legion decided to make a couple stops along the way to let the boy recover a bit.
Of course, since this was still technically a military mission to deliver a correspondence from General Balfour to Minister of War Campbell, these breaks were kept short and not made in any major city or town to avoid drawing attention.
Nevertheless, Braden was thankful for these breaks and took full advantage of them to calm his breathing and settle his nerves.
By the time they landed in Rockwell City, the young man was slightly more comfortable with flying than he had been when the day started, but he was still feeling a bit queasy.
Braden knew he still had a long way to go, another day of flying at least, but thankfully, there didn’t seem to be an outgoing Tartan tomorrow, or even the day after, heading for the Northern Province, so he had some time to properly recover.
Offering his thanks to the Captain from the Raging River Legion who had ferried him this far, Braden left the palace and headed out into Rockwell City.
This was his second time visiting the capital, the first time being when the journey to find his missing aunt, uncle, and cousin had begun, but Braden wasn’t really interested in sight-seeing right now.
Checking into a cheap inn, the young man set down his very heavy travel bag, cleaned himself off with a bucket of hot water, already somewhat missing the readily available showers back in Misty City, before passing out on his bed.
The next day, Braden retuned to the palace, presenting the token he had been given by his cousin’s Master, and was able to learn that a messenger would be flying out to the Towering Mountain Legion’s headquarters in 3 days, and that he had been granted special permission to tag along.
Thanking the clerk at the Ministry of War, Braden was finally able to relax, knowing his return home would not take much longer.
He then headed back out into town to grab a bite to eat before strolling around randomly, checking out the markets and other facilities in the capital which, so far, he had not had enough time or leisure to enjoy.
Funnily enough, after a couple days of meandering through Rockwell City’s biggest attractions, Braden actually felt a bit disappointed, thinking that Misty City was actually better in a number of ways.
Sure, the capital was bigger and had a wider variety of shops and amenities, but it was also dirtier and more expensive.
Public order seemed to be worse as well, which Braden honestly found somewhat shocking.
What stood out to him the most, however, was the huge divide between nobles, the very wealthy business owners, and everyone else.
Being a noble son himself, even one from a mere baron-rank household, Braden Firth had never thought much about the difference between the aristocratic class and the throngs of commoners surrounding them.
He didn’t look down on or despise the peasants and labourers of the kingdom, but he also didn’t consider them his equals or pay much attention to the struggles they went through.
As far as he was concerned, nobles and commoners lived in different worlds, and there was nothing wrong with that.
His experiences in Misty City, especially volunteering at his little cousin’s Rising Phoenix Guild, had thus been quite eye-opening.
Braden had never thought much about complex social dynamic issues before his brief stay in Misty City, but after spending some time among both the very top of the kingdom’s social hierarchy, and the very bottom of it, it was impossible for him to not thinking about these kinds of things anymore.
What really separated nobles from commoners in the Rockwell Kingdom?
Was it blood?
Heritage?
Status?
The young lord from the Firth Family was something of a musclehead, so analysing intrinsic socioeconomic and political structures wasn’t his forte, but even Braden was able to draw some simple conclusions after spending a month together with everyone in Disciples House.
"It really is all just about strength, isn’t it?" Braden murmured to himself as he strolled down one of the main streets of the capital.
Braden had always been of the opinion that strength was the most important factor that determined a person’s standing, but until recently, he hadn’t realized just how true that was.
However, rather than just raw physical strength, or combat strength, Braden had gradually come to realize that there were other kinds of strength that were essential as well.
For instance, wealth was a kind of strength.
Influence, as well, was a different type of strength.
All of these forms of strength were related to each other, and one could even be substituted for another in certain circumstances, but only when someone possessed enough of each type of strength could they truly be considered powerful.
So again, what separated nobles from commoners?
In the simplest of terms, strength was what separated them.
If a commoner somehow managed to acquire enough personal, financial, and political strength that he or she could stand on equal footing with a noble, was there really any difference between them?
Braden didn’t know for sure, but he was fairly certain that there wouldn’t be.
Why?
Because he had met an example of such a person.
Lucas was a commoner, a child commoner at that. The boy had no surname and no distinguished family background. Hell, he didn’t even have parents as far as Braden knew, his mother and father apparently having ’died’ during the crisis in the South West Province.
Even being Marquess Celestina Balfour’s First Disciple wasn’t enough to change the fact that Lucas was not a noble.
All that said, Braden very much doubted anyone in Misty City, the Balfour March, or the South East Province as a whole would dare to ignore Lucas when he spoke.
Perhaps in the greater Rockwell Kingdom, where Lucas was still relatively unknown, there would be any number of people who would disdain to listen to the words of a mere 11-year-old boy even knowing who his Master was, but Braden had a feeling that wouldn’t be the case for very long.
Lucas always maintained that he wasn’t trying to stand out or stir up trouble, but in Braden’s opinion, his little cousin’s fiancée-to-be was doing a pretty damn terrible job of that.
Just thinking of all the gifts and trinkets he had packed into his bag, most of which came directly from Lucas or from businesses he ran, Braden couldn’t help laughing and shaking his head.
If this was what Lucas thought of as ’keeping a low-profile’, Braden really wondered what would happen when his interesting new friend tried ’making a scene’.