The venpar man is dressed in fancy colorful flowing robes, his wings are much larger than Prina’s, even folded behind him they take up a lot of space. A few pouches are slung around his shoulders, and he’s struggling while carrying a triangular stringed instrument that’s taller than him.
“Hoy, Celene, come help! You absolute slug of an Eisure!”
Who’s Celene?
As the man gets closer, he stops like he realized his mistake. He takes a few seconds to put the instrument down on the ground before coming closer in a jog.
“Hey, sorry, I thought you were a colleague of mine, didn’t expect to come across another green haired Eisure in this Odon city. Yeah you don’t even look like Celene at all, she’s not half as wide ahahah. I’m Verdi, Venpar bard, at your service.” he’s going for a handshake, alright then.
“I'm Arren, traveling linguist. I didn’t expect to meet a Venpar down here either.”
His handshake is kinda weak.
“A blue mage linguist? And with a body like this? You must have an interesting life story.”
Again with the blue mage thing…
“Oh, probably, I wouldn’t know, I lost my memories recently. I don’t recall much that dates further than two weeks ago. All I know is I can speak many languages, hence the linguist title. If it wasn’t for the guild’s identification stones I wouldn’t even know my own name.” there you go, no more lies to cover holes in my story, now I don’t know anything. “I have no idea what a blue mage even is, to be honest.”
“You’re a blue mage and you don’t even know what it means? Man, that's a first, even for me. Sorry for you I guess, if you want to learn some things I could teach you stuff, I know a lot, and I just happen to need some help of the heavy lifting kind, at the moment.”
Verdi buys some grilled vegetables too, we eat together, talking about random stuff. He and three bard friends of his are here as hired musicians for the Odon festival. He's the lead singer of their little band, Celene he mentioned earlier is a flute player. He ended up having to carry the instruments to the venue by himself, because the others went on a tour of the city as it’s their first time here. They need to set up now to have some time to rehearse.
We agree that I’ll help him carry things around and set up the venue and he'll answer any question I may have for a few hours this evening. I asked why he didn’t ask the Odons for help, apparently he doesn’t want to spoil the show for the clients.
He led me to a shop where I could buy some clothes first. I spend 25 silver coins to buy a ‘premium’ woven Odon fur kilt. A bit strange, but at least I’m not worried about having my manhood showing through the sides on my poncho anymore.
We spend the next hours carrying instruments and various stage props around town. We talk mostly about Odon culture and the peculiar golden city. We pass by Vehi coming home at some point, I tell him I’ll be staying out tonight, he seems disappointed. Tomorrow, I’ll eat your cooking for sure, little guy.
“And we’re done! Thank you for all the heavy lifting my dude. Would’ve taken me all day. Let’s get to the other part of our deal then, what do you say we sit down at the coffee shop over there?”
COFFEE? Did he just say coffee? The holy juice? The nectar of gods? Where? Sign me the fuck in. I haven’t had a cup in yeeeeeeeeears. The shitters at the space station wouldn’t let me take any with me for the trip! Waste of resources my ass!
It’s hard to contain my excitement as the owner, a sweet Odon lady in a golden apron, brings me a big cup of black coffee. Best silver coin ever spent.
We are sitting facing one another at a small stone table in a corner, the place is nice and calm, there aren’t many customers.
“Ah, alright my man, where do we start?”
“First thing would be, how does the calendar work?”
“That basic?!”
“Told you, I didn’t even remember my name.”
“Aight, you poor guy, let me tell you, today’s date is the 68th of the rising tide, year is 6872”
Holy… wasn’t it the 53rd when I was at the guild? Did I spend twelve days on the floor during the lemon incident?!
“A Year is two hundred and fifty days. Days are twenty eight hours long, hours are sixty minutes, minutes sixty seconds. You fine with all that or do I need to explain more?”
Twenty eight hours… two hundred fifty days… Seven thousand hours a year? That’s a bit less than Earth, like twenty percent shorter. So by Earth’s standards I’m 16, Vehi is 11 and Nalu is 21… I’m 16? That’s what a 16 year old Eisure looks like? Damn. I’m still a 48 years old dude though. That’s almost 60 by the year's length here…
“Yes, all clear for now, what about this rising tide thing?”
“Aye you really don’t know all that uh? The year is divided into three seasons. The fading tide that’s a hundred and twenty days long, the rising tide, just as long, and the lunar tide is the ten days following the rising tide. When the lunar tide’s over we change year.”
“I have to explain about the moons too?”
Moons? Plural?
“Please.”
“So, there’s two moons, you must’ve seen 'em already, the big white and the small black. Big moon doesn’t move at all, it’s always right there, same side facing us. Small moon orbits around the large moon. Every year it does an ellipsis around the big moon, spending ten days picking up speed between the big moon and the planet before being sent out far away, and coming back again. Those ten days are the lunar tide. During the lunar tide gravity and magic both become fucky. Every ten years we get a great lunar tide where the black moon comes very close, just like this year, it’s a very dangerous time for everyone. Always stay indoors.”
“Oh, if you wonder why the black moon is black it’s because it’s a volcanic moon, it doesn’t handle well being trapped between the planet and the big moon’s gravity so it erupts violently during the lunar tide. Deadly show every year.”
So the whole planet becomes shit for ten days every year, ok, can’t be worse than the fifties’ nuclear winter.
“I get it, thanks, then what’s that about being a blue mage?”
“Well… That’s a harder topic. Do you know how to cast spells already?”
“Not many but yes. Only what I could figure out in a few days.”
“Good, so you probably already know as much as any random passerby. My mother is a certified Archmage so I know a lot although I’m not much of a mage practitioner. I’ll get to what an Archmage is later. Then next can you sense mana?”
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“I can somewhat but I’ve not completely figured it out.”
“Can you tell the shape of my crystal or its size?”
“No idea about the shape but it should be about as big as mine.”
“Right on, my man, but you’re a blue mage and I’m not, you probably missed it because untrained people usually don’t think about trying to sense their own mana, since they can already tell the general state of their crystal. Just try to sense the mana around your crystal.”
It’s not as if I’ve never tried to sense my own mana, but I guess I didn’t do it again after this one time at the guild… Oh. Ooooooooooh. Ok I think I get it, this is not the same as before. I haven’t really intensely used my mana since the whole implosion thing, or I would have noticed no doubt. Hard not to when the mana around my crystal is like… ten times what it used to be?
“Hey, you should see your face, that’s right, that’s what it means to be a blue mage. Nothing like a regular purple mage uh?”
“Is that very rare? I don’t think I’ve seen many people with that much mana, maybe I’ve just not been looking.” I think Veneron, Eviniel and Prina definitely had a lot more but I couldn’t really use my mana sense back then. Nalu has maybe about the same as me right now, and Big has like a thousand times more… I’m starting to get it I think, if the crystal just kept getting bigger there’s no way Big could have that much mana or his crystal would be larger than him.
“So the crystal can stock more mana and change colors?”
“Almost there, it’s not really that it can stock more or changes color, it’s that the density of manalite increases and the color changes because of that.” he’s taking a sip of his coffee. I already finished mine… I’ll order another one.
“Can the manalite production keep up with that?”
“It can, but the stronger the mage, the more you have to eat. Archmages are basically walking black holes, destroying all food in their wake. I would know. Next, I’ll try to be as clear as possible on the ranks and normal progression paths.”
“First off, everyone is born with a purple crystal the size of a grain of sand, the more you use it the more it grows, it’s exactly like a muscle, don’t train and it’ll regress, train without enthusiasm and you’ll stagnate, train hard and you’ll progress, train too hard and you’ll break. That’s always valid no matter your crystal’s color, but the color can’t turn back.”
“Each time you pass a rank, your crystal goes back to the grain of sand, meaning you need to train it all again, but it’s ten times denser, so you have ten times more manalite at your disposal. The difficulty of growing your crystal triples for every rank you climb. The ranks are : Purple, Blue, Azure, Green, Yellow, Orange and Red. Compared to a Purple mage, progression is three times as difficult for a Blue mage, nine times for an Azure, twenty-seven times for Green and so on.”
“So one day’s progression for a Red mage is 729 days worth for a Purple?”
“Kind of, but don’t forget it’s to scale, a single day of a Red rank’s progression would get him infinitely more manalite than 729 days of a Purple one, just because his crystal would be so dense. But it’s meaningless to talk about that… let me tell you about where most people are, and then I’ll tell you about rank progression.”
“It’s not just ‘crystal too big’ condenses by itself I suppose?”
“Yeah, no dude, if that was it I’d be an archmage too by now.”
Fair enough. I remember that my body was glowing purple when I started imploding, and it turned blue towards the end, that has to be when my crystal condensed. Didn’t change size though?
“Can the crystal not change size when it condenses?”
“No way! That’d be ridiculous, you could just keep skipping all the training. No free meals like this in the world… No wait. I think my mother said something about a crystal not changing size once… Yeah I remember, it was a Blue mage who went into isolation to try to rank up. But the man just disappeared. As if his crystal ate him. All that was found when someone went to check up on him was a fist sized Azure crystal in a pile of clothes.”
Ridiculous then… I thought I was dead when that whole thing happened to me. I can guess what happened to the mage wasn’t any more pleasant even if it wasn’t imploding. I only survived thanks to a literal god’s blessing, and I wouldn’t risk it again even if it meant skipping a millennia of training.
“Most people have Purple crystals, like really almost everyone. It takes a lot of dedication to even grow your crystal to the size I am at, let alone the size of a fist. Someone working hard on their training every day without skipping can get there in maybe five years. For most people, they can passively hit it after about a hundred years of only casually using magic.”
“We consider a trained mage anyone with a Purple crystal the size of a silver coin or above, when you can’t change your affinity anymore unless you purposely regress. That should be anyone above twenty five years old. Before that you’re just a kid essentially.”
“I think I heard about levels of crystal, any clue what that is?” I was a fourth level I think is what the identification stone said?
“We should both be at the fourth, almost fifth level, just not in the same rank. Levels go from one to ten, it’s just a fancier way to tell apart crystal sizes, where one is the grain of sand and ten the fist. Trained mage is level three and above of the Purple rank. Honestly only people that are directly in the magic focused industries talk about levels.”
“Blue rank is impressive already, you might only find one or two in a large town, due to the danger and difficulty of climbing ranks. It’s mostly people who took magic classes for a while and eventually gave up after just a decade or two, priests, or mercenaries and people still in training.”
“Azure rank is where the really talented people start standing out, that’s where old times mercenaries, mayors of towns and most high priests would be, someone at Azure rank is already someone you should treat respectfully, they could easily kill you without you even knowing.”
“Green rank is what we call Archmages. They truly have devastating powers I tell you, don’t mess with them, certified Archmages are those that were recognized in both knowledge and power by the Stonefolk Academia, that’s a prestigious title. This is the level of most of the guild masters, high rank nobles, and city lords, Big, the Odon founder of the golden city is also an Archmage.”
“Yellow rank isn’t something just anyone can reach, they all are really old and powerful people, very secretive, the current Eisure Emperor is the only one I know of.”
“Orange is the stuff of legends, Dragons are orange, that’s it.”
“And Red… Red rank is the theorized realm of gods. The only reason we think there might be a red rank is because of rainbows. Since the crystal color follows the colors of light refraction through a prism, the colors of a rainbow, most people think that there has to be a Red rank. But not even the few friendly Dragons the Academia have communicated with have ever seen a red crystal or a Red rank, or so they say.”
“Are gods real?” I know some are but what’s the consensus on that?
“If you ask a priest they’ll tell you they are for sure. Some people have pretended to be blessed or to have witnessed a godly miracle but how much of that can you truly believe?” Oh so this is the same exact shit it was on Earth, people just don’t know… Giving the lemon as a tribute must have only been a possibility because of the blessing I guess, if people could just see their stuff disappear when they offer it to a god I doubt there would be any non believer left anywhere.
“Ay my head hurts a bit with all this science talk, do you want me to keep going with the ranking up process or are we good?”
“Actually there’s no need, unless I should absolutely know it now? If I can easily find the information in books it will be fine, I’m not getting there in a while anyway.”
“Nice, thanks Arren, you can easily find a book like that at any guild branch’s library, or in any mage school really they’ll just charge you a few coins per hour of reading.”
“No problem, you taught me a lot already Verdi, let’s just relax a bit until you have to go back.”
We talk for a while like this. I'm learning a lot about what’s common sense on this planet, especially geography, gonna need to buy a map or draw one soon. An interesting thing is how while humans called our planet the Earth, the people here call their planet the Manse, meaning home. I went from ‘The Dirt’ to ‘The Home’. Legit.
The Manse is huge if Verdi isn’t exaggerating, like more than several times the Earth’s size. Different races had time to evolve in parallel to each other because of just that, with Dragons being the oldest known intelligent ones still standing today. The region I’m in currently is still in Eisure Empire’s territory, like Krel was, west is the Valtar Empire, east is the ocean. Venpars are from higher up north originally but they don’t really have an organized territory, just small nomadic tribes. Stonefolks and Ceneks both come from the same place down south, past the great chasm.
The only race I know that Verdi can’t place is the Odons. ‘It’s as if they appeared out of nowhere, what with being an underground race and all’ is what he says.
I eventually let Verdi go back to his troupe, I learned a lot today once again, now I know what my next step is.
I’m going to spend all night planning and trying out new things with my freshly upgraded crystal.
Time for a power up.