Kuzari stretched his limbs, sore from several days stuck inside the cage. He felt weak and hungry, hoping that his induction into servitude would mean they'd finally start feeding him real food. Adara finally stood up and was giving him a strange glare.

"What? Never seen an unaffiliated Contractor before?" Kuzari asked, weakly joking.

"No. I haven't as a matter of fact." She said warily. "Follow me, I'll show you your room."

Apparently, food wasn't on the table yet. Kuzari grabbed the satchel of books now belonging to him and followed after Adara, ducking into one of the side paths. It was a winding path that led past many doors before twisting upwards using a different set of stairs. He estimated about four flights of stairs before Adara led him down a straight hallway filled with rooms with symbols atop the doorway. It reminded Kuzari of college dorm rooms. He was aware the symbols represented numbers, but the exact meanings of them eluded his grasp. Considering his gift of books, obtaining literacy was high on his list of priorities. He had a few ideas on how to force the issue based on how he had previously absorbed information.

Adara stopped in front of a room and stared at it lost in thought for a moment.

"So uhh my room I presume?" Kuzari asked.

Adara broke away from her thoughts and turned to him, with a sigh she said, "Yes this is your room now. One of the few vacancies we have in the Initiate quarters. That's your rank now by the way. Aside from the servants and non-mage workers Initiate is the lowest rank. Glorified mana batteries to fuel our lord's vast demands. Prove yourself and then you can become a real apprentice like me. That's when you can start learning real magic. I doubt you'll be able to make it that far though."

Kuzari had no intention of waiting for something as silly as a promotion. He did feel insulted that she thought he wouldn't be able to make the cut. He had a sinking feeling it had something to do with being 'unaffiliated' and asked as such.

"Study and find out. I'm not responsible for teaching you, Contractor. I suggest you rest up, mana exercises for the initiates begin in the morning and you do not want to be tired for those." Adara responded with an acid tone. Something had set her on edge and Kuzari could not narrow down exactly what the reason was.

She began to turn away before he stopped her.

"Wait! I've barely been given any food or water. Where can I get some food around here?" He asked.

She rolled her eyes, not empathizing with his plight.

"Lunch is already over and Magni doesn't believe in dinner. Don't ask why."

He really wanted to ask why.

She pulled a small metal disk from a pocket hidden in her robes. It had a silver star emblazoned on the front. Kuzari recognized it as the same star the carriers marked their clothes with. She tapped it and a fresh loaf of bread appeared in her hand.

Kuzari really wanted one of these devices for his own. A sort of dimensional pocket storage was incredibly useful.

"Eat this to tide you over till breakfast." She tossed the bread over to Kuzari who fumbled with the catch almost dropping the precious food.

Adara didn't stick around long enough to answer any more questions, leaving Kuzari to his own devices for the first time in days. He briefly considered fleeing right then and there but figured he probably wouldn't get very far. Magni didn't seem the type to give third chances.

He entered the room while eating the loaf of bread. The room seemed largely barren but oddly nostalgic. It was larger than he expected at an estimated twenty-foot by sixteen-foot space. A simple bed sat in the far corner and opposed to it was a decent sized desk that lacked any drawers. A small window looked out over the city on the far wall. There didn't seem to be anywhere to store possessions but he supposed with people carrying around those star things there wasn't a huge need. It did make him wonder why his host didn't have one, it would have been a lot easier to sneak out a bunch of books with one of those things.

He dropped the satchel at the end of the bed and sat down to think. He was in service to a ridiculously powerful inhuman mage, to act as some sort of battery via tribute that didn't sound pleasant at all. He lacked information about the area and he wasn't the only Contractor in town. Thetos told him to expect an allied one to contact him but failed to instruct him how to tell the difference between friend and foe. Until proven otherwise he had to assume the other Contractors wanted him dead and were likely far more experienced. On top of everything Magni and Adara implied he had a handicap to deal with. Ultimately, what he needed was to get more powerful and he highly doubted that simply taking the 'normal' route other magic users took in this route would work, not in the long term at least. He needed to leverage what he did best. He needed to analyze the systems at play here and exploit them for all they were worth.

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He needed to cheat.

Several hours later and Kuzari found himself sitting in the center of the room surrounded by open books and writing materials. The desk lacked the space he needed and was shoved on its side in the corner along with the bed propped on its headboard, all to maximize the floor space to evenly distribute his materials. He was rapidly skimming through a book in his hand, mentally taking in all the symbols he could take. He hadn't broken through Ralin's memories to access literacy yet, but the migraine he felt told him he was close. The largest breakthroughs he had in integrating the memories came when he was under stress, so the plan was simple: induce stress by forcing himself to memorize as much of the foreign alphabet as possible. With the writing materials at hand, he was making copies of random passages, particularly anytime he found a section that had uncommon patterns of symbols. The common stuff he was more likely to pick up from repetition and using writing to build up muscle memory of the weird stuff reinforced his learning.

He was almost finished skimming his current book when a spike of pain almost blinded his vision. He dropped the book in his hands and grabbed his head. The pain began to recede and he knew.

Kuzari started to chuckle to himself. It worked! It freaking work! No telling how long if he had simply waited for it to come to him naturally. He glanced around at the books he was surrounded by with a newfound appreciation for their meaning. Of course, there was no way he would retroactively be able to remember all their contents just because he could read the language now, doing so even if the books had been written in his native language would have been an extreme feat for a few hours of study.

The books were exactly what he needed, however. They were primers on magic. Everything from The Principals of Affinity to Introduction to Structured Mana Manipulation. Fascinatingly enough some of the books seemed entirely dedicated to a single spell such as Minor Telekinetic Pull. A sense of giddiness rose up from within, washing away any feeling fatigue and tiredness from the past few days. It was a familiar and exciting rush of so much information on a new exciting topic laid out in front of him. Reminded him of the first time he started to learn how to code or find an exploit.

He reached for the book on affinities first and started to pour over it. Magni's comment on lacking Ralin's affinities and being unaffiliated concerned him. He needed to understand what sort of handicap he was supposedly dealing with.

It was a fascinating read, and once he figured out what the hubbub was about he felt stupid for wondering why his mana reserves were empty, indeed he felt stupid about a lot of his questions. Mana didn't simply come from nowhere and expecting his reserves to simply fill up over time was like expecting your car to spontaneously start producing gas. The process of refilling his core of mana was a distillation and refinement process by gathering it from his surroundings. What surroundings you gathered from mattered too and that is where affinities came into play. Mana simply didn't exist naturally in a neutral state, it existed in various aligned forms. Fire, water, air, earth, light, sound, darkness, space, time, and countless other forms. The world brimmed with an assortment of different types of mana. A mages ability to collect this ambient mana depended on their affinity for particular elemental types. An affinity built up over time of repeated absorption. Mages who selectively drew in power from fire and heat would correspondingly build up their affinity for fire and heat and allow them to draw in more. As the body and core of an individual adapted towards a particular type it became harder and harder to draw in other types. A system that rewarded specialization.

Kuzari considered the implications this meant for him. It took years to build up any affinities at all, most mages focusing on only one or two elements. He lacked any of the affinities that Ralin had spent a decade developing. It was no exaggeration to say he was indeed starting from scratch. Worst still was being unaffiliated.

In the natural course of someone's life people built up at least a smidgen of affinity regardless if they had a core or not, and some were even born with affinities inherited from their family. It was no wonder that someone like Magni, a creature born of elemental fire had near perfect fire affinity and it augmented everything he could do. But Kuzari's soul wasn't from this world and Ralin's body wasn't anything special. Trying to draw in mana of any type would be like trying to drink sand through a thin straw. It would be a hundred times more difficult for him to even begin practicing than any of his peers.

It did afford him one vital advantage that he would have to make a serious decision about. No affinities and being unaffiliated meant a totally clean slate. Unlike most people who would have to choose their affinities based on what their highest levels were the time of awakening to magic, he could outright choose his specialty from the very beginning. He was limited only by the availability of his chosen types and his own persistence.

He began fantasizing about freezing time and teleporting around the world but further reading splashed cold water on those ideas. Despite time technically being always available, the amount of time-aligned mana in any given area was appallingly minuscule. It would take literal lifetimes to build enough affinity to even pull the equivalent of the fireball stunt he pulled earlier. And that was if you were a born genius warned the book. As for spatial mana, it was definitely feasible, but it was a very fickle field, often requiring elaborate and complex spell structures to anchor their effects. The small pocket storage devices Kuzari recognized earlier was such an example. It was potentially powerful but lacked the speed necessary to do anything useful in the middle of a fight. He would consider it, but he needed something he could actually fight with.

Fire was the obvious choice here in the desert. The place was practically saturated with the stuff and it was no wonder Magni made his base of operations in the middle of one. It was powerful, direct, and had clear combat implications. Still, he knew he wouldn't be able to choose it. He had no intention of serving out his eighty years and that meant he would inevitably come into conflict with Magni's faction which no doubt would include a large number of fire mages. No way was he going to beat them out when they had more expertise and the home field advantage. No, he needed something that would give him an unexpected edge. He needed to learn all they could teach here but also needed something that they wouldn't be able to teach him at all.

Kuzari continued his reading, absorbed in the detail descriptions about the properties of various affinities and their notable usages. He needed to learn more about magic as a whole before deciding what direction he was going to take. He did have time to choose, as any efforts to gather affinity was going to be painstakingly slow regardless of what picked he could draw out a mixture of mana to practice the basics of magic until he decided which affinity to focus on.

His studies carried him well past the switch to night. He huddled up under the window and used the moonlight to read until he physically could not stay awake any longer, his dirty and battered body not having the stamina to stay awake and focused for so many hours straight.

When morning came and he was woken for the day's mana exercises he quickly learned that he should have taken Adara's warning about getting rest seriously.