POV: Sammuel

I had to stay in a hole in the ground last night since I couldn’t find a place to stay. I hope I don’t have to do that again. I could keep myself warm with mana but it was still quite uncomfortable.

My biggest problem right now is my inability to read, followed closely by a lack of money. If I can get money I bet I can find someone to teach me to read. And I need money to eat as well. I’m used to going long periods of time without food so it shouldn’t be too bad, but I still need food to survive.

If I’m going to get anywhere in the world I’ll need funds, that much is true in any world. Right now I should focus on that, and the most logical way to make money is by taking a request. But the problems come when you consider illiteracy. I can’t read, and it’d be pretty difficult to find a proper request without knowing what it entails.

Well, it’s not like I need to read it, I could get someone else to read it. If I do that it should be easy enough to find a proper job.

When I got to the Request Hall everyone was keeping a strange amount of distance from me. Even yesterday it wasn’t this bad. No one seems to want to come anywhere near me. Well that doesn’t really matter so I’ll ignore it.

When I get over to the request board I notice something strange. There are symbols on each of the posters. From the looks of it there are three different symbols, a sword, a staff, and a something I don’t recognize.

The symbols likely represent the type of request, with the sword being a combat situation that can be dealt with without the use of magic, and the staff, a combat situation that needs magic. The third though, is something I don’t recognize. It looks like some sort of machine, perhaps powered by mana.

Regardless, this is likely the type of request a magic architect would take. It most likely isn’t combat related, and probably has something to do with those artifact things that guy at the counter was talking about.

If it’s a problem with the function of a machine, I’m certain I can fix it easily. Knowing this, the obvious choice is to choose the one with the highest numerical value, as that number is likely the reward.

So I take the one that has the biggest number and go to ask someone how to accept it.

When I went to ask about it, the guy at the counter looked pretty puzzled.

“Are you sure you want this one?”

That’s an odd question. Is there something written that I didn’t account for?

“Yes I’m sure, why do you ask?”

“Oh, it’s nothing. Just that I wouldn’t have expected you to choose this kind of request”

What the hell does that mean? Is there really something written that I overlooked?

“Why not?”

“Well typically combat types would choose a combat based request”

Combat type? Where did that come from? Regardless of illogical nonsense, I ought to just get going, I don’t have forever after all.

“Well anyway, if you want to take this request you’ll need the location. For this one you’ll need to go just north of the Shaal Fields. Oh, and since it’s you’re first request, I should tell you how to redeem the request huh. Well essentially, once thou complete the request you’ll have to have the person sign the back of the poster. Then you can take it back here to redeem your reward. And if you try to forge the signature, your heart will stop on the spot. But you don’t need to worry about that unless you try to cheat us”

Damn, crazy. Looking at the paper it seems like it uses one of the two unknown mana types to record who is supposed to sign it. And electric mana to stop the heart of anyone who isn’t them yet tries to sign it anyway.

Ignoring the, admittedly concerning fact that there is still much about mana that I don’t yet understand, I will need to know where to go to get to the location obviously. There’s just one small issue, I have no clue where these ‘Shaal Fields’ are.

“Would you mind pointing it out on a map?”

“Sure, it’ll be about here, while this hall is right here”

The clerk marks two spots on a map and hands it to me. Now I should get going.

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“Alright gotcha”

With that I leave, though I can’t help but feel like I’m forgetting about something. Though the only really strange thing that happened was him thinking I was a combat type. Where would such an idea even come from? I’ve only been here for two days and I’ve only encountered him twice. The people of this world just keep getting stranger.

Regardless, I set off on my way, with only the map to guide me… if I get lost even once I’m screwed.

Luckily, the road names in this world stand out quite a bit so it should be somewhat easy to get a general idea of where I am on the map.

_________________________________

It only took a couple hours to get to the Shaal Fields, and from there it was pretty easy since there are only a few people who live all the way up here.

The guy who placed the request was a fairly old guy, probably in his late 50s to early 60s if I were to guess.

“Did they finally send someone over to fix my fire artifact? It’s been broken for days and I haven’t been able to light my fireplace”

A fire based artifact. Interesting, it might be difficult to fix it when I know nothing of how it works, but it shouldn’t be impossible.

“Yeah sure, just show me what needs done”

The old guy takes me into his house. That’s using the term house pretty loosely, it’s more like a hut in the middle of nowhere.

Regardless, inside of the hut he takes me to his fireplace where he left his fire artifact.

It looks like just a wooden stick, but with my glasses I can see that it actually has a pretty strong attraction to heat, and light mana. Heat far more than light mana, the exact types needed to replicate fire.

Technically light isn’t needed for the effect, but it’s what lets you see the fire so it’s useful for people who can’t see the mana.

The thing is, I don’t see how this is supposed to produce fire, sure it attracts the right mana but that’s it. If that were enough to make fire this world would be a fiery hell scape constantly. Clearly there’s something missing. There needs to be some kind of spark, something yo form the fire, something I’m missing.

“How do you typically use this artifact”

“Well I usually just activate it with my mana, but recently it stopped responding”

What? His mana? What does that mean? Do these people have the innate ability to control mana? That can’t be possible, can it? Well I suppose I’ve seen plenty of ‘impossible’ things here already. But really, these people are born with an ability that took me ten years to achieve, that just isn’t fair. Talk about a major head start.

But back to the matter at hand, if that’s the case then there has to be some intrinsic value in this stick that forms the spell with the mana it attracts. I look back through, this time looking for something that might fit the mana together, and sure enough I found it. It’s not acting the way I assume it should though.

I figure it’s supposed to combine the mana in the proper proportions to form fire, but it isn’t doing that. Instead of mixing it with about twice as much heat mana as light mana, which should be appropriate for a moderately hot fire, it’s just got a couple proper mana formations to make a fire, but that would be barely enough to cause a spark.

There must be a reason for that, but what? The only thing I can think of is that the mana from a person is used by the stick to compensate for the lack of mana it has. But that wouldn’t work if the person had any type of mana that wasn’t needed for the process in them.

The only solution I can come up with is that when a person absorbs mana, it purifies and loses whatever ‘attribute’ it had before. This could explain a lot, though it doesn’t explain why the stick isn’t working.

It’s possible that there simply aren’t enough fire formations in the stick for pure mana to copy. If that’s the case then all I need to do is add some more formations. Of course if I add too many it’ll burst into flames, so I better be careful about it.

I don’t know if this is how it works exactly, so I can’t fix it perfectly, but I know enough that I should be able to replicate the original effect.

All I need to do is attach heat and light mana from my wand has to the fire stick in such a way that it should form fire, but not enough for a fire to actually form. That should set a path for pure, unattributed mana to follow. The only thing left would be for there to be enough pure mana from a person to copy the mana in the stick. Any unknown factors, such as the fire’s form, should be taken care of by the stick, otherwise it never would’ve worked in the first place.

All of this is assuming I know how the mana in a person works, which it’s entirely possible that I don’t. All I can do now is hope that I’m right.

It doesn’t take long for my work to be finished, and I hand the stick back to the old guy.

“Try it now”

“But you didn’t do anything?”

“Just do it, I don’t have time for your foolish skepticism”

still slightly unsure, the old guy points the fire stick at the fireplace, and not a moment later a fairly large bolt of fire is shot out into the brick box. Immediately the wood in the fireplace catches on fire.

That looks like a job well done to me. But for some reason, the old guy has a look of shock on his face.

“By the gods. This is far more powerful than it ever was before. This is easily fit to be a battle wand for non mages”

Is it? I suppose people who aren’t adept at magic would need something to defend themselves against the massive amount of very deadly, magic wielding enemies in this world. But is that really strong enough? Well I suppose that’s just with a small amount of mana put into it, it could probably get several times bigger with more mana put into it. Well that doesn’t matter to me, I only came here for one reason. I pull out the poster and hand it to the old guy.

“Sign it”

He still seems to be in shock. My presence usually has this effect on people, so it’s nothing new, but I wish he’d hurry up with signing it.

“Uh, yeah sure”

He finally signs the paper and I go on my way back to the Request Hall. I don’t get what he’s so worked up about, it’s just a little fire, you could get a better result with a bit of nitroglycerin soaked sawdust wrapped in paper, a fuse, and a small fire.

That small fire is practically nothing. At most it would keep away a robber with nothing more dangerous than a dagger, but there are much better ways to do that.

I really don’t understand the people of this world.