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Notice!
Zerrious has learned a new skill: Mana Sculpting.
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Notice!
Zerrious has learned a new skill: Center Efficiency.
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Notice!
Zerrious has learned a new skill: Soul Sight.
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Mana Sculpting:
Zerrious has learned to see the natural ways a persons Mana desires to move and has learned to incorporate that into his use of Mana.
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Center Efficiency:
Zerrious has learned that letting Mana run rampant in his center is a wasteful storage system and has found a new way to maximize the storage and effectiveness of his Mana in his center.
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Soul Sight:
Zerrious has learned to see the shape of his own soul and has gained a deeper understanding of himself and he now has a much easier time seeing deeper aspects of others from this experience.
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Notice!
Zerrious' center has taken the form of his soul, a unique shape with unique inherent properties that he will need to find on his own. No two people are the same and the benefits could be anything.
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Notice!
New System Message tab unlocked: Center Abilities and Properties.
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Center Abilities and Properties:
Unknown.
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So there was more to the shape of the center than just efficiency. I was right! I sat for a moment longer after reading through the messages, waiting for Zerrious to get through the same messages. I could see him read several of them over and over again with more and more excitement on his face each time. I knew what he was thinking, this was worth a hundred times the pain it took!
"How did you figure this out?" Zerrious asked when he finally dismissed the last notification.
I shrugged. "There wasn't really a process, I just looked at my center, went 'this can't be the best it can be' and started moving things around. I got to grow up in a world where we were taught for years about people who were told something couldn't be done or something was the best it was ever going to be but they went and improved things anyways. I think I remember a quote from back home, I can't remember who said it though, Sun Tzu probably. 'Don't let what's possible get in the way of reaching your potential.'"
"Was Sun Tzu a scholar of your world?"
I stopped to consider. "Kind of. He was a general, and a philosopher I think. He wrote a book called 'The Art of War' some hundreds of years ago and it might be the most quoted book ever, though it was written in some kind of Chinese, so damned if I could read it," I told him. It wasn't strictly true, there were translations, but that sort of stuff just seemed so boring at the time. Those "boring" texts probably would've been extremely helpful in this new world, but I supposed I was doing well enough for myself even without them.
"I understand. Coming from a world with so much wisdom taught to everyone, must be amazing," Zerrious said as he stood up. "Come on, we need to get moving. We've lost a lot of time here."
I had to admit, it was quite amazing. The world I came from, the casual way we bent the world to our whims on a daily basis. It was incredible, something you have to leave behind to see in entirety. You never knew what you had until you lost it, as the saying goes. "It was," I said wistfully as I stood up and finished packing my things. I had mostly gotten everything put away anyways, so it wasn't long until we were back on the road and I was recording my findings in my book that I summoned. I decided to make a sort of pseudo-character sheet for myself, a list of skills, spells, and Names I had earned.
I had to admit, it looked rather wimpy next to Zerrious' monster of a character sheet, almost seven hundred names strong and more to come I was sure. "How many Names do you need? Are you trying to get all of them?" I asked. It occurred to me that I had never actually asked what all these Names were for. A kid so motivated to learn, even skills he didn't like, had to have some goal in mind, especially since he was doing this instead of exceling back home where he could be rich and do whatever he wanted, or even just stay in the city and build some kind of legacy.
"I need a thousand. . . I forget you don't know everything sometimes," Zerrious chuckled as we made our way down the nearly empty dirt road. "Back in the Days of Power there were no Names, and magic was aloud to reign supreme, if you were stronger than someone they were your slave. The magic available then was far stronger than it is now, it wasn't separated into these schools of magic like they are now, and there were no Gods to rule. The world was ravaged by war, mages fighting to prove that they deserved a territory more than another mage, most of the time ruining the lands on both sides in the process, leaving an empty territory. So everyone took more and more and more, never satisfied with what they had, with the power they had, never caring about the blood on their hands. Very few survived those days, only the men and women mages thought worth keeping alive, mostly as. . . toys to carry out their sick fantasies. To say things were bad is an understatement."
"I'd say. No Names? Different rules for magic? That war reminds me of what we've accomplished back home, probably very similar actually, though we needed to work together, we didn't have one person with that kind of terrible power." I shook my head, picturing how it would have felt to be a regular citizen in those times, the hopelessness and terror racing through my mind empathetically.
"With all due respect, I don't think you understand the scale of these battles. I don't think anyone can, what we see is just too small." Zerrious glared at a plant for a moment before walking forward more.
"Did I ever tell you about the world wars back home?" I asked. It was a tragedy, just talking about it made me sad, let alone explaining the horrors to someone who could barely comprehend the scale of true world war.
"World wars?" he restated questioningly.
I took a deep breath. "There were a lot of countries on my world, easily over a hundred, and there was a country that was loosing power when their leader was assassinated. From their they declared war on the country responsible, and that country called on alliances with other countries which lead Austria to call on their own alliances, and soon almost the entire world was involved, sending thousands of men, boys really, to fight and die. Trench warfare came about, people digging trenches and hiding in them while shooting at people hiding in their own trenches. Eventually my home country, the United States of America joined the battle, and only a few years later the war was ended, that was the first world war. The problem was, someone had to loose the war, and Germany was given the short end of the stick. It ruined their economy, it broke them down and set rules for everyone."
"Germany? I thought you said it was Austria or something that started the war?"
"Austria didn't exist after that. Now some years pass and Germany isn't doing too well. A sick young boy, Adolf Hitler, was rejected from a Jewish art school and he decides to pursue politics. Soon he becomes a ruler, kicking everyone else in power out and becoming what's known as a dictator and forming alliances with the USSR. Then he tries to 'purify' Germany by killing everyone not of German descent, mostly Jewish people. He put them in camps, forcing them to work until they died or just pumping poisonous gas into rooms filled with them, even burning them alive. Hitler was expanding Germany at the same time, he was taking territory as his own and no one was stopping him because they were afraid of another world war, until eventually he grew too powerful. He took over much of Europe and was spreading fast, using poisonous gas, fire, disease, and even giving his soldiers drugs that would kill them but make them stronger in the short term. Germany had a loose alliance with a small series of islands called Japan, home to some of the fiercest warriors in the world. Japan decided to fly over to one of the United States naval ports and drop bombs, containers that would explode when they hit the ground, all over the island. The United States hadn't joined the war yet, and this became known as the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the point where we joined the war. We sent men out to fight against Germany and the USSR, but what ended the war was was the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. The United states had created a new type of bomb, a nuclear bomb. Do you remember when I told you how hot the surface of the sun was?"
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"Vaguely, why?"
"Because the power of one nuclear bomb is the same as dropping the surface of the sun, and after the heat and shockwave fades it leaves behind something called radiation, just being near it makes your body fight itself from the inside, a disease called cancer. There is no cure. We dropped two nuclear bombs, one on the island Hiroshima and one on Nagasaki, both populated civilian cities. It was three days before the radiation cleared out enough to be safe to enter again," I explained.
"I see. . . I suppose that is the right scale. . ." Zerrious trailed off, shocked at the barbaric nature of our political struggles back home.
"After that the Geneva Convention got together. They signed treaties and created rules for war that everyone would follow, including weaponizing disease, chemicals, targeting civilians, and giving drugs to soldiers. These were things that would destroy the entire world if used in warfare, so it had to be made. Hitler fell from power, Germany was beat back, and the next biggest threat was the communists in the USSR, though that war didn't involve any battles," I finished. "So yes, I understand the scale of destruction people are capable of."
"You're right, I'm sorry. Where was I?" Zerrious asked, put off by the story I'd told him.
"Sorry, there was a terrible period of war, everyone fighting?" I lead with, slightly sheepish. I never wanted people to assume that with progress came peace, I knew first hand that that simply wasn't true, people would always fight, over nothing if need be.
"Yes, everyone with any semblance of power was fighting for territory. Someone young, a young girl, only six years old did something unthinkable. She called upon a magic that doesn't exist anymore and something called back. No one knows what that magic did, but it gave her the power to kill the mage over the territory she was in, the largest territory in fact. Everyone turned against her, hoping to take advantage of her youth to take over large swaths of territory. Every single one of them was killed so quickly that no one was sure there had even been a battle. For the first time in over a hundred years there was a battle between mages that didn't destroy the landscape. She didn't expand, she just let the mages attack her and die until she controlled everything. She ruled with an iron fist, anyone who couldn't do magic was executed, if you ran you died, if you dared so much as think against the Child Empress you died and everyone forgot about you. There was peace, but it was born of fear and oppression," Zerrious whispered, barely audible before stopping completely. It sounded like some pretty basic fantasy world lore, old forgotten magic, wars taken over by a dark lord, pretty textbook for this kind of thing.
"Is that the end? Is that how things are now? How did the Names start, was that her? And the Gods, you said this was before them, how did they come about?" I asked. Things weren't lining up, the world he described was much closer to mine, even with the addition of magic. I couldn't possibly see how it could become the near utopia it was now. Sure, not everything was great, but people helped each other freely, no one was trying to control everything like they were back home, or even back then. I didn't know what kind of economic system we were running on now, probably a barter system, though even then it was all about improving yourself and others, there was no pushing others down to get on top, because people recognized that people can push you higher than you can climb yourself.
"No, it's just a lot to think about. After nearly fifty years of the world under her rule six of her generals got together and decided her time to rule was over. Together they created a new kind of magic, something that shook reality itself to its core. They worked together, hand in hand, to preform a spell that changed the rules of the world. They separated the magic into the schools that exist today, they created the Names, and they defined what we are, giving us our racial traits. The Child Empress was never seen again. She seemed to disappear into thin air, and with the power of these new Names power was put back into the hands of the people who rose up against the powerful and created kingdoms run for the people by the people. Channeling all this power elevated them, and turned them into the Gods we have today. Later the Gods gave us knowledge, telling us that anyone who earned a thousand Names would have channeled enough of their power to become a God too. No one knows what the process is after that, but legend has it it's been done before. By Ensiar of Bonds actually," Zerrious finished. That didn't make much sense at all, it wasn't a rebellion, but a series of scholars that decided to change physics that us here?
"Interesting, so you want to be a God?" I asked. I figured that the story was riddled with inaccuracies, but anything would be after. . . How long ago had it been? "Wait, how long ago did this supposedly happen?"
"Supposedly? This happened almost seven hundred years ago, it's a fact." Zerrious smirked, thinking he'd gotten the better of me.
"Zerrious, in seven hundred years my people went from completely unware of an entire continent to sending people to walk on the moon. The amount of things that can happen in that time is incredible. The earliest reliable history we have even on my world was only four hundred years in the past, stories and records change too much with time to be any kind of accurate, especially a story like that," I lectured. "Do you remember my lecture on historical context?"
"Sigurd?" Zerrious asked kindly. It seemed off base for where this conversation was going, be here we were.
"Yes?" I responded.
"Stop talking."
"Why?" I whispered, looking around to see if there were bandits or-my newly justified phobia-giant man eating spiders.
"Because you're wrong," Zerrious whispered back like he was talking conspiratorially to a child. It brought the clear image of a parent saying "don't tell mom" after giving candy to the kid they weren't supposed to give sweets to.
I let the tension fall from my shoulders and I glared in his direction as we beat our way further down the dirt road. "Why do you want to be a God?" I asked after a few hours of silence had passed.
"It's. . . I guess I just want to prove I can. Someone from some backwoods village in the middle of nowhere being the first to join the Gods since Ensiar himself? Even after these Names have grown so far above what they were back then? It would prove that anyone can do anything if they try hard enough. . ." Zerrious trailed off. I could sense more story under that motivation, but I didn't push. It wasn't any of my business anyways.
"As good a motivation as any, I suppose," I said after a moment, looking around us at the thickening forest. "Say, where did all of the traders that were entering the city when we got there come from? I haven't seen any for a few days."
"Most would have taken one of the paths that branched off from here to go to neighboring cities, but we need to go farther so we can get some skills this area wont have," Zerrious explained to my shock.
". . . The path branched off? Multiple times? I didn't see it once!" I said, each sentence getting higher and more panicked at my own ignorance of my surroundings.
"It's hard to see, traders are often worried about thieves learning where their families are so they make the paths to their cities purposely difficult to see from the main road. That way they can slip into the woods and get to another city and back home without worrying about his family being robbed in his absence," Zerrious explained. That made sense, and I'm not entirely familiar with ancient trade but it would made sense if that was something subtle people did back home when this kind of trade was still common.
"Clever," I said, pulling out my guitar and strumming aimlessly, good sounds exiting the instrument but no real song forming from the notes.
"Hey, didn't you get a Name for doing your center stuff?" Zerrious asked suddenly.
"I guess I did. . . Oh, I forgot to give you the Name! You know as much as I do, and you've read my notes on the subject," I said, grabbing Zerrious' shoulder. After a few moments there was a light as the new Name was branded onto his skin.
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Notice!
Zerrious has been Named by a master of his craft and been acknowledged as his equal.
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Notice!
Name gained: Mirashda (Sage of Inner Sanctum).
Name: Mirashda is the profession Name for the following skills:
Mana Sculpting
Center Efficiency
Soul Sight
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Notice!
Name: Mirashda is a profession Name and counts as a Name for every skill required to earn it plus one (4 total).
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"There we are!" I said as I dismissed the notices. "One step closer!"
He took a deep breath, a smile stretching across his face. "I am close, I'm so close to my next boon I can taste it." That brought me up short. He could predict when he got boons?
"Next boon?"
"Oh, you don't know. I keep forgetting you didn't grow up with Names. Every hundred Names you get the Gods give you one boon, I've got six, almost seven now," he said nonchalantly, like most of my boons hadn't been obtained through incredible work and near death experiences. I felt partially cheated by that, although I had two boons and much less than a hundred Names, so I supposed I couldn't complain too much.
"Oh, that makes the boons I got kind of rare huh?" I muttered to myself.
"You have a boon?" Zerrious said, eyes going wide and turning slowly around to face me.
"No. . . boons, plural," I said sheepishly, almost a little scared by his response.
"How? How could you have possibly gotten one boon, let alone multiple and you only have, what, twenty Names?" Zerrious asked, almost accusing me.
"Well, I got one when I was transported here, it let me understand the language," I started. This calmed Zerrious down considerably. "And I got one from discovering the center mastery stuff."
"And?" Zerrious asked, waiting.
"And what? That's it, I really have nothing to hide," I said defensively.
Zerrious glared at me for a few moments, almost sizing me up, analyzing. "Alright, I believe you," he said after a long moment of us just staring at each other in the middle of the road that had continued to grow smaller and clearly less used the farther we went as evidenced by the overgrowth forming along the path.
I strummed hesitantly on my guitar after that, slowly picking up the pace to make a cheery tune to abate the oddly confrontational conversation. I had thought we were past that, we'd been friends for years at this point, though I guessed it could be frustrating to have someone know everything about you and then find out something major about them that they thought just wasn't important enough to share.
"I'm not a very good friend," I whispered under my breath, making sure the sound my guitar drowned the words out by making reality vibrate along with the strings a little as I did. "I guess I've still got a long ways to go myself."