Chapter 11: Identification Papers / A Post Office Hands Out Adventuring Licenses?!

It was time for an adventure.

The four friends would be gone for a day and a half to wander around the city and meet the people.

They were also going to check out some surrounding villages and get used to fighting monsters in the forest.

“I can’t wait to do this! This is gonna be awesome!” Exclaimed Haruto, loudly enough to startle the carriage driver.

“Haruto, don’t yell. You’re going to bother other people doing that!” Said Akari, Haruto's main babysitter.

“Oi, narrator what’s with that, huh?” Said the babysitter.

“Aight, that’s it, get over here, Imma punch you like I did that damn god!” Shouted Akari as she woke up, startling everyone in the carriage.

“Are you okay Akari?” Asked Haruto.

“Oh. Uh, yes… I’m fine. I just had a weird dream where our lives were being narrated by something. It made me feel as though I wasn’t real, that I didn’t truly exist.” Responded Akari, still trying to shake off the feeling from that dream.

“Oh, hey, look! There’s a bunch of places with tasty looking sweets!” Said Yui.

“YES! Let’s go try them all out during our stay in this kingdom!” Shouted Sora with extremely unusual enthusiasm.

He had his face pressed right up to the glass looking out at all the shops.

Something that Sora is known quite well for among his friends, surprisingly, almost as much as his intellect, would be his love for sweets. Lucky for him, that’s where he’s going to meet up with his girlfriend later! Not that he knows that yet. Alice still hasn’t told him where to meet. She’s been rewriting her invitation letter for at least 6 straight hours.

Love is scary….

“What’s that thing?” Asked Haruto, pointing at the sky.

“The sun.” Answered Akari.

“Nono, not that, the thing next to it. It’s like when you have an egg with two yolks!” Said Haruto.

“Wait, are there two suns? How the heck!?!” Exclaimed Sora, very confused.

“Apparently it’s caused by some weird form of natural gravity magic,” said the carriage driver, who had been listening to the conversation.

“That feels like a weird and cheap excuse.” Said Sora.

This world had gone against most of the science he knew. Things were the same, yet different.

The reason for fire being able to light up was different from how it worked on earth. It can be fueled like it is on earth, but it can also be maintained in an environment unsuitable for fire if supplied with a continuous injection of mana. You could say that there were two types of fire. The fire that occurs in nature, and the fire whose origin is mana.

The library had many different books on the theories about magic and about how this world worked.

Sora felt a passion in his heart. He loved to figure out stuff like this, and he had a nearly insatiable hunger for knowledge.

“Sora, stop mumbling science stuff again, we're arriving at the registration building.” Said Akari.

“Oh right, we still need to register as citizens….” Said Sora.

“So, we don’t live here yet? How long are we here for?” Asked Haruto.

Yui flinched at the question.

“That…. it’s hard to say. I’m not sure whether we will be staying here for the rest of our life or if the god will allow us back home, and he doesn’t seem to want to answer that. He always avoids answering when I ask him.” Sighed Sora.

“You talked to him?” Asked Akari.

“I didn’t mention that to you guys? I said we were friends, didn’t I? We hang out occasionally. Play chess or stuff like that.” Said Sora.

“I’m confused, how did you guys meet?” Asked Akari.

“He hangs out at the Suzuki family home, and I became friends with him before I learned he was a god. Even after I learned that, I didn’t think too much about it. We still liked to discuss theories and play games. It happened when I stayed over when we were younger.” Said Sora.

“So... you're saying that a god lives at the Suzuki house, and just sits around playing games and making friends?” Asked Akari, somewhat taken aback.

“Haruto, you remember the kid we used to play old maid, chess, and smash bros with, right? The kid with long brown hair?” Asked Sora.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

“Yeah, I remember him, he was cool.” Said Haruto.

“That was god,” said Sora.

“Wait, you mean Evan?” Asked Akari.

“Yeah,” said Sora.

They pulled up in front of the registration building.

“We’re here,” said the carriage driver.

It was a large building, and it somewhat resembled a post office. It didn’t seem very special in any way, though.

“So we need to get identification papers and stuff, right?” Asked Akari.

“They will walk us through the entire process,” said Sora, as they followed the carriage driver inside of the building.

The carriage driver walked to the front desk, talked to the lady for a second, and showed her a paper. She seemed a little startled but motioned for someone to take over her post for a minute.

“Hello, it’s nice to meet you all. I’ll be walking you through the necessary steps to register today! Welcome to our kingdom, heroes! We are glad to know we have you here to help protect us.” The woman beamed.

“Yui, you good?” Asked Haruto, noticing her silence.

“Yeah, why?” Asked Yui.

“You are usually quiet, but you’ve said nearly nothing for a while,” said Haruto.

“I’m fine. I’m just wondering if it would be a bad thing to live here the rest of our lives or not.” Said Yui, somewhat conflicted.

She didn't want to leave her friends and her brother, but she was to be the next head of their family. She had serious responsibilities that she couldn't abandon, nor did she want to. She took great pride in her family.

No one could really answer.

“For now, I think we should look ahead. Let’s go get the identification papers.” Said Sora, frowning.

“Then right this way, you just have to go through a screening and answer a few questions,” said the woman.

The process was very boring, like most paperwork is, until the last step.

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“This is an adventure license, you can use it to keep track of various things like ranking, and get work through the adventurers guild. Normally, it would cost extra, but they already prepaid for everything. Just put a drop of blood on it and it will record all the necessary information.” Said the woman.

“Wait, you get an adventurers license at a post office?” Asked Haruto, slightly confused.

“This isn’t a post office. This is where you obtain identity and verification papers, so it makes sense you can get it here.” Said Sora.

They all registered their adventurer's card.

When it stopped glowing, a game window like screen popped up, showing all of the information that they would see by opening the game window.

They noticed that this page, however, seemed to be visible to others. It also kept track of stats that weren’t on their game screen. It had stuff such as criminal offenses, occupation, and karma. And it seemed to show some kind of leveling system, which Haruto was immediately enamored by.

“Hey, is this the same karma that’s on my status screen?" Asked Haruto.

“No this seems different, and you can’t use these in the shop. I think it shows your reputation in the guild if I’m not mistaken.” Said Sora, analyzing the card and the screen.

He seemed very interested in the card itself, rather than the adventuring or level functions.

“This card seems to be made out of solid metal, yet it’s as light as plastic. What is this? It’s not a material I’m familiar with.” asked Sora.

“That’s mana iron. Since it's a beginners card, it's made pretty cheaply. It's much cheaper due to the alchemical process for this specific type of mana iron. Other than this one, there are higher qualities of mana iron, there’s also mana steel and various other materials like magical adamantine. That gets pretty expensive though. These materials are used quite often in enchanting.” She explained.

“Enchanting?” Asked Akari.

Her full attention turned to the woman.

“Yes, magic materials conduct mana excellently, so they can hold more intense enchantments without breaking, and they can hold more than one enchantment if you learn how to mold it with mana alone. I think they call it magic forging. There’s also a little bit used in magic wands because it can increase the power output of a wizard's spells. People make rings that are made of mana materials and a mana stone to store magic and conduct mana without needing a magic staff.” Said the woman.

“A ring? Lemme try something real quick.” Said Akari, an idea forming in her head.

Akari pulled out her wand and tried to mold its shape into a ring with her mana.

It worked.

She looked at the ring for a moment and thought of something. She molded the ring a little differently, making an indentation that you could insert a gemstone in, like the diamonds on a diamond ring.

“You mentioned mana stones, what are those exactly?” Asked Akari.

“Ah, there’s pure mana stones and mana crystals. The stones can store large amounts of excess mana, and the crystals have many different uses. Something like a mana diamond can store specific spells, which activate when you put a sufficient amount of mana into it. Gems, such as a magic emerald, can increase the power of elemental spells attributed to the gems element. A magic sapphire can cause water spells to become much more efficient, lowering the cost of casting them, or it can increase the power of the casted spell by a certain amount depending on the type. Some people argue that the ones increasing effectiveness and the ones increasing power are two different gems entirely. Well, they argue that one of them is a magic stone and not a gem, or something like that. Not sure why, but they think it can make some kind of new breakthrough in our current understanding of magic. There's a massive debate going on in the enchanting, magical, and alchemical communities about it. There's been a ton of new information people have uncovered from some sort of ancient civilization recently. I’ve even heard of some that can increase the power or efficiency of more than one element being uncovered. Or maybe they just found ancient documents about something like that... I'm not the best person to ask about that stuff, sorry. You guys have access to come and go to the castle, I'm guessing some of the scholars there can tell you more...” Said the woman.

“How do you make them?” Asked Akari, eyes glowing with curiosity.

“You take a stone, and you enchant it with specific enchantments. You can do it with even a pebble on the road if you have enough skill, apparently. Some of the old stories talk about mages who had the ability to do that. I’d say that you would have had to train multiple lifetimes or have a certain skill to be able to do that, though. You can also break them and release a large burst of mana, now that I think about it. So make sure you don’t crush them, it’s incredibly difficult to properly channel the sheer amount of mana it releases. In all, mana materials are probably one of the most valuable resources available.” Said the woman.

“A skill? You mean a crafting skill could help you make it?” Asked Sora.

“Well, it depends on the type of skill, but yeah.” Replied the woman.

“Well, that’s exactly what I needed to know!” Said Sora, an idea forming in his head.

“We finished, right?” Asked Haruto, bored out of his mind.

“Yeah, we're leaving now. Our next stop is a magical appraiser!” Said Sora.

“Yeah! I have a lot of things I want to ask them.” Said Akari.

Yui and Haruto slumped over with exhaustion.

The Suzuki siblings hated paperwork. They were just glad it was over.

They headed towards the appraisal shop that the nice carriage driver had recommended, and found that it was a plain-looking shop, just about a block from the registration building.