Chapter Two: Mysterious Magic
The Pole farming village loved Lacy. After the first three days at the Onslapithuanegi farmstead word got out about a mysterious young woman with no memories who appeared out of nowhere, so obviously everyone and their mothers came by to see her.
That wasn’t an exaggeration, either. Twenty men between the ages of 16 and 30 dropped by—all of the younger ones accompanied by mothers—to see her. They would walk right onto the farm and ask or search for her, at which point the men’s eyes would widen and the mothers would nod appreciatively, but the Onslapithuanegi folks didn’t allow them to do anything but look, not even speak to her. It got so bad and distracting for the Onslapithuanegi farmers that on the fourth day, Miya washed and styled Lacy’s hair, dressed her up with a delicate, glittering robe that had been stored in a locked box, and took her out to the village where all the farm roads met and the non-farm businesses stood. Miya’s sister, but not Max’s mom, ran a small clothing store there that Miya took over for an hour. From there she charged people who wanted to see Lacy the smallest unit of coined currency, called jans. It didn’t escape her that the currency shared a name with the Empire.
It was a little grating when Miya’s plan worked. Not just for the one day, either. Close to a hundred fifty men and some of their mothers—and actually a few gay women—saw her before the stream turned into a trickle at the end of the week. Lacy couldn’t believe that all of them were single and eventually began asking some of them, and in fact, not all of the men were without romantic partners, which was a weird realization. But as weird as it felt, Lacy found the trouble worth it at the end of every day when Miya gave her half the jans. It didn’t seem to be a lot but it was something.
Though, she didn’t have to spend any of her newfound wealth because whenever she walked around the village center she’d be approached by friendly strangers and usually given free food. Alien fruits, vegetable kebabs, sometimes little portions of cooked meat, a slice of pie. Twice she was gifted hair accessories: a ribbon and a hair clip. Several times she was sat down at a public bench by someone much older and asked how much she knew about certain subjects. That’s how she learned about the local myths of spirits—which some people suspected she was—the know-how of farming certain kinds of produce, and the tales of the magical warriors called cultivators, a few of which protected their village. It was weird hearing a farmer saying “cultivators” are mysterious.
When she asked more about the mentions of magic to the old man who brought them up, he laughed, saying he knew that would hold her interest, and then explained that them “regular folk” were purposefully kept in the dark about the specifics but that everyone had pieced together a few things. For one, most of them were powerful warriors who wielded swords, spears, and bows, and they could easily perform feats of great physical strength. The few times that spirit beasts—animals that somehow wielded magical power—threatened some of their farms the warriors assembled and chopped them up.
When Lacy asked where the warriors came from if they weren’t locals the old man admitted two of the three were locals, but they’d been trained in Yellowvine for a few years before being allowed back to guard the farms, apparently with the promise that they wouldn’t give away their magical secrets, even when asked by their significant others. This was a common thing, apparently, and the three warriors who resided in the different farms weren’t the first, just the latest.
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After that conversation Lacy unabashedly asked everyone she could about cultivators for the next week, until Miya pulled her aside very harshly, gripping her tightly by a shoulder.
“Some curiosity is normal,” she said, “but do not get the warriors’ attentions. They’re sworn not to tell a soul about their business, and they have influence.”
Lacy tried not to be upset with Miya, because although the older woman could be harsh sometimes, it seemed her desire in that moment was only to protect her. Instead of complaining, she asked simply what to do if she wanted to become a cultivator like the warriors.
At that, the woman’s eyebrows rose.
“You? A woman?”
……
As Miya explained it, being a warrior who faced spirit beasts was a man’s job. She didn’t outright tell Lacy it was impossible for her to become a cultivator but she did stress that not every young man who went to the city with big dreams succeeded, and they didn’t all even come back. A surprising amount of them died “in training” or on the job after being accepted, they were told, and most were contractually obligated to stay in the city.
Nothing Miya said changed Lacy’s mind. After all, she’d been isekaied here in the hopes of becoming powerful, though for what purpose the Deity couldn’t say. Probably something generic, like an invasion from another world. Even if this world’s magic system only involved swinging a weapon very hard, she had a cheat boon that would supposedly make her time here a lot easier.
Studious Aura
Lacy could make this blue text box appear in her vision, invisible to everyone else. It only said “Studious Aura” and literally nothing else. She didn’t find even a trace of what it could do for her, making her question whether the Deity’s boon worked at all. But her translation boon was working fine, even if it didn’t have its own menu, so she gave the Deity the benefit of the doubt.
Regardless, she supposedly had a boon that would make “cultivating” easier and wasn’t interested in becoming a farmer, so she was a bit more discreet about asking around where people went to be accepted into organizations that trained them in the mystic arts. To Lacy’s surprise, Max knew enough to help her.
The young man was excited to explain how his father had once planned on becoming such a warrior but eventually changed his mind once he saw a hint of the grueling training. Apparently, the main recruiter of young men for their training program was Yellowvine City itself, and every few months they opened their recruitment center for able-bodied people, but he also warned that not many prospective warriors were women and that it might speak to a bad culture.
Max was a sweet young man who clearly had a crush on Lacy, so when he implied that she should stay at the farm for a little while to see how she liked that life, she wasn’t surprised. She also wasn’t opposed to it. Lacy knew it wasn’t what she wanted but she just didn’t know enough about the world to leave the farmstead yet. She also didn’t want to have to leave on her own. Preferably she’d be accompanied by someone who had her best interests in mind and could protect her until she began practicing magic.
She’d been warned of approaching the mysterious cultivators who protected the farms with their superhuman strength, but that was exactly what she thought she might have to do.