Chapter Thirty-Two: If You Plant Ice, You’re Gonna Harvest Wind
Fourth Tower Year 4772, 7.2.5
The Republic of Mevitra,
Clearwater
The warm, dry summer was finally coming to an end and Clearwater was preparing for the more festive autumn.
Marc found it interesting that despite most of the agriculture taking place in the underground fields, supported by magic and operating year-round, certain traditions continued unabated. Autumn harvests were still deeply ingrained in the cultures of the Northern nations of the continent of Tehric, including the Mevitra Republic.
Like most of the continent, the holiday season was concentrated into the free week at the end of the calendar year, while other traditions were observed that reflected the local identity and traditions of the people.
In Clearwater that meant foods and products associated with the pre-winter harvest. Gourd vegetables flooded the markets as did baked sweets, spiced meats, and the return of Potkas, a favorite of Marc’s.
After many attempts, Marc had finally mastered the art of eating the soup-filled bread without ruining his shirts. He was determined that this year he would learn the secret to their creation.
Marc was wandering the lower market in Clearwater City, the best place for good bargains on both locally produced and imported goods. He wanted to find some special ingredients for the celebration dinner tonight. Safan had finally had his awakening, and the family would be having a special dinner.
Kira was zipping around the market on a mission, hopping up to examine the various food products, from watermelons and squash, to grilled salamander thighs and preserved orc ham. Most of the stall owners had gotten used to seeing his familiar jumping from stall to stall by now, but some were obviously still uncomfortable with the idea of tamed beast running through the market freely, and flinched whenever she came near to their goods.
Kira had the manners and sense to give those shops a wide berth. For every shop like that, however, there were a dozen more that welcomed her visits warmly. The reason for that was obvious. Wherever Kira went, bands of children were bound to follow, as were their parents.
Kira had become a local celebrity after Marc had gone through the procedures to get approval for her to move through the city freely. She was recognized instantly wherever they went, much to Marc’s chagrin. After all, despite years of living in the city, he was only recognized by a few residents, and that was due to his short stature compared to typical full Guild members.
Kira sped through the market, pulling her usual train of admirers behind her. She received plenty of samples and treats from stall owners and fans as she ran. Of course, Kira didn’t actually eat. She had mastered an application of Marc’s storage magic, however, that allowed her to store a small object while appearing to stuff it in her mouth. Such minor uses of magic were possible with the avatar, and her high level of control could use it without the light effects that typically accompanied magic use.
As she marked the items she wanted on Marc’s map, he would follow behind, picking up the items she wanted along with his own shopping. This made their trips both efficient and more of a fun, social outing.
Together they managed to get everything on the extensive shopping list for today. Due to his efficiency, he was now even doing the shopping for Keri. She finally trusted him to negotiate with the stall owners in the markets. He also had a few requests from Rynan and Lehdze.
Rynan’s requests had taken Marc by surprise. When he first arrived, her lifestyle could be described as spartan at best. She ate simple meals, and spent her days quietly, relaxing, meditating, and taking care of only the most basic needs. Of course with her abilities, she was nearly as indestructible as Marc and much hardier. Cold, disease, hunger, she was either immune to them or could endure hardships that would break him fully, for months at a time.
Despite her protestations, however, Rynan has quickly taken advantage of his improvements to the cabin. The cellar was now stocked with many more ingredients, now that the new walls and floor kept the pests out. He had even added a concrete ice box that she could keep more perishable items in, instead of using her personal storage. It also hadn’t taken long before the request came to get her a mattress like the one in the storage room.
Marc knew that she was just humoring him, partially to support him and encourage him as his teacher, but he was also aware that she was watching and evaluating him. Waiting to see how far he would push things. How he was justifying his improvements.
Now that he was spending some time with her almost every day again, he was gaining a greater understandIng of her belief. A major boost to his understanding had been his new teacher. The scholar Lehdze Purina, the exiled librarian of the Tower from Sobric.
Lehdze had been equal parts life-changing and soul-killing. He was a brilliant man, an encyclopedia of the history of this world that Marc had wished for countless times. He could answer the most obscure questions with detailed explanations full of historical context and useful observations and opinions.
But that was also the problem. Every explanation, every lesson, was a labyrinth of philosophical wandering that would inevitably crisscross and retread over previous topics and discussions. For Marc, who had an eidetic memory, it was like being trapped in an endless class with his most boring and repetitive teachers. For every nugget of gold, Marc had to mine a ton of coal.
Another thing that drove Marc crazy was his senior disciples’ demands regarding access to his pocket dimension.
Marc had increased his control since his interface had leveled up, and he could now freely control the environment inside the space, as well as allow others to enter, and even fabricate material from memory, although he could not remove anything he had imagined into existence from the space.
This ability had allowed him to recreate a forge that behaved just like a real one. That level of detail required Kira’s full attention, however. While maintaining that space, she was not able to maintain control of her avatar, or provide him with any more than basic support. He also needed to stay either inside the dimensional space, or outside the open portal. If he tried to move more than a few meters away from the portal, it would destabilize and eventually close. He wasn’t sure what would happen to anyone inside at that time, but wasn’t willing to find out.
Another limitation was that he could not affect the flow of time in the pocket dimension. This didn’t make sense to Marc. After all, his inventory, arguably an extension of the same power, would freeze time for any object placed into it. His personal space however maintained an instinctual connection to the outside world. Gravity was always present and breathable air was always there, without his having to consciously create them. He had even experimented with changing those rules, but to no effect. It was as though the space was unwilling to defy what Marc considered to be the laws of nature.
Rynan had requested Marc demonstrate his dimensional magic to Lehdze, and when the scholar had learned that Marc could freely create any environment he could visualize, the man had immediately demanded a scholar’s workspace. He wanted a place to work where he could try to recreate the works he had lost. The best he could do however was a classroom from the university back in Silver City.
Lehdze had looked around the large, amphitheater-style classroom with several large whiteboards, a large desk and podium, and rows of student tables and nodded his approval. From that moment forward, Marc was in charge of providing and maintaining the librarian with this workspace.
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They would spend hours every day in the room, alternating between lectures for Marc about the history of the world and the records left by the Travelers of various ages, and the old man working furiously at the desk, trying to reproduce as much of his work as possible. The fact that Marc had to stay tethered to the space had become quickly a tedious task that was driving Marc and Kira to madness.
He had tried to create an attached forge space to the classroom, but the interface simply wouldn’t let him keep them separate, so the noise and smoke would inevitably invade the librarians workspace. This was quickly deemed unacceptable. Marc experimented with other things. Sometimes cooking, sometimes handcrafts that he was trying to master. These experiments met with varying levels of success, but inevitably left Marc feeling unsatisfied. He was eager to get the information the man held within his shiny hairless skull, but at this rate, Marc was going to be tied to the man for years.
《Found it!》
Marc checked his map. Kira had run ahead to locate the last item on the shopping list. Some seeds that Lehdze had asked them to keep an eye out for.
Marc quickly caught up to the kobold, standing beside a large bag, full of what looked more like small chestnuts than seeds. He picked one up and looked at it.
【JAI SEED】
Marc looked at the vendor, a new face that he hadn’t seen in the market before. He must have been a new arrival.
“Jai?” He asked.
“Yesh. Jai, Jai!” The man spoke in heavily accented Tashtalik.
Marc looked closely at the man. He was a human and had the pale pallor of a southern nation, maybe even from another continent.
“Sobric tel dormu kintra bashtu?,” he asked in Sett’natru, the predominant language used on the continent of Sobric.
The man’s eyes shot open in recognition. He eagerly started to speak animatedly in the Southern language.
“Oh! yes. Well, my family immigrated to the Empire when I was still young. But we are originally from the icelands,” a large grin appearing on the man’s face.
“Ahh, So you come from Ranobe. You have indeed come a long way,” Marc relied on his translation ability to keep up the conversation. Lehdze had taught him a bit of the southern language, but not nearly enough to converse. That said, there was still an accent to the shopkeeper’s words indicating that Sett’natru was likely also not his native language.
At the mention of the Ranobe Empire, Marc was immediately on guard. He had heard nothing good about the aggressive Holy Empire. That they were the only place on the continent that recognized the Tower as the foundation of a state religion only cemented Marc’s distrust of the isolationist nation.
Still, this was a rare find, and the last thing on Marc’s shopping list, so he asked for the price of the seeds.
“100 grams for 1,000 Rel.”
Marc was shocked. That was an insane cost for seeds. The majority of things that Lehdze had asked Marc for were rare enough, mostly seasonings and ingredients from the Southern regions, but this was on an entirely different level.
Realizing Marc was deterred by the price, the vendor quickly tried to salvage the sale.
“For a comrade, I offer you the best discount! 120 grams for 1,000!”
Marc looked at Kira dubiously. Lehdze had asked for a whole kilogram of the stuff.
“150! 150 grams. I make no profit at all. But you and your pet are my first customers. Good luck for my business!”
Marc picked up one of the seeds and looked at it dubiously. On closer inspection, it was more like a dried fruit than a nut. He scrutinized it more with his interface.
【JAI SEED】
DRIED SEED FROM THE JAI VINE. INDIGENOUS PLANT FROM SETT, CURRENTLY EXTINCT IN THE WILD, THOUGH CULTIVATED IN SOME COMMUNITIES IN SOBRIC. WITH A RED SHELL AND A WHITE CAP, THE NAME, JAI, MEANS “EYE” IN SETT’NATRU DUE TO ITS APPEARANCE WHILE ON THE VINE.
ONCE DRIED, THE SHELL TURNS A DARK BROWN COLOR AND THE CAP A LIGHT BROWN. GROUND INTO POWDER OR BREWD INTO A TEA.
THOUGHT TO REDUCE FATIGUE, INCREASE BLOOD CIRCULATION AND REDUCE DROWSINESS. TOXIC IN HIGH DOSES.
“Kira? Is this what I think it is?” Marc silently communicated with his companion while her avatar scrutinized the bag full of seeds.
“Hmmm, it’s not coffee. But it’s similar.”
“Is it caffeine?” Marc asked as though praying.
“Yes, I would guess it’s several times more potent than coffee beans though,” she confirmed.
“Alright! 180. 180! That’s my last offer.”
“Done!” Marc shouted, drawing the attention of some of the other shoppers around them. Marc turned around with an embarrassed grin.
“180. Fine. I’ll take it,” he confirmed his order.
“How much would you like?”
Marc looked down at the bag. The bag had at least ten kilograms of seeds in it, and there were three more full bags next to the open one.
“All of it.”
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“Marc!” Safan was already running toward Marc as they approached the apartments. As usual, Safan had been waiting outside for Marc to get back from the market.
He met Marc on the path with a giant hug. Marc was tempted to use some defensive enhancements to protect his ribs from cracking.
At 13, Safan looked like he could have been Marc’s age, but the difference in their build was significant. While Marc looked like the kid in the high school computer club, Safan could have been the star defensive lineman from the State championship team.
It all had to do with Mana. Marc had gained more insight from his sessions with Lehdze. Indeed, the Tower had thousands of years of research regarding the effect of Mana on the body.
Humans, Marc had learned, absorbed Mana faster than any sentient race on the planet. This had both positive and negative effects.
Awakening, the maturation of the Mana Crystal that formed in most living organisms, happened much earlier for humans. Usually somewhere between 12 and 15 years old. This would coincide with the end of the adolescent stage of maturation. In Marc’s world, on average, puberty would start around 10 to 11 years and children would reach full adult growth between 17 and 19 years old.
Here things moved much faster. As soon as the Mana crystal started to form, typically around age 3–4, children started to age rapidly. They could reach full adulthood as early as 10 years old and this would coincide with the evolution of the Mana crystal in the chest to a full Mana core. Once the Mana core was fully formed, growth speed would stabilize, and the increase in strength and vitality could keep people healthy for a century.
Elves, Dwarves, and Juujin, the other sentient species on the planet, all shared much slower developmental cycles, though at differing rates. Awakenings could take place much later, but those races typically live many times longer than humans.
The Mana cores in a person’s body seemed to do several things. First, it would regulate and store Mana collected from the environment. It would act like a new organ, one that could be trained to allow the host to control and direct Mana into internal and external effects. In other words, magic.
It also shared power constantly with the host body. This protected the body against many ailments Marc was familiar with in his old world. Colds, infections, even cancerous tumors were all but unheard of.
On the other hand, after a while, the Mana core would start to degrade. This complete degradation would reverse all the benefits the host had gained. Sometime after the first hundred years, Humans would become weaker and lose the protection from small injuries and infections. This would usually result in the death of the host within a few years of the loss of vitality.
Of course, the other races, having a slower developmental cycle also encountered this stage far later than humans. They also seemed to have an ability that protected them from mental degradation. A problem found in many humans who had used magic-based life extension techniques.
When Marc had left for Threshis, Safan had just started to develop his Mana, but now he had a fully formed Mana core. Unfortunately, this was marked by a period of several days of crippling pain and the Mana crystal evolved inside the body. Seeing Safan go through it made every growing pain Marc remembered from his childhood, seem like nothing. Still, this was a rite of passage all children in this world went through. It was not considered dangerous, but it was still a traumatic experience, and once the pain subsided, families would treat the child to a celebration, much closer to the birthday parties from Marc’s world than the annual gatherings of obligation that were the norm here.
As Marc, Safan, and Kira approached the family apartment, Marc could already hear Keri and the girls talking and laughing. This was a joyous event and Marc was grateful he had made it back in time to join. This was one of the key reasons he was determined to come back to Clearwater so soon after leaving Threshis.
It was time for Marc to start to repay the debts he had incurred in the years he had been in this world. He had been given a home, family, and friends, with nothing expected in return. From his first day in this world, he had been sheltered and protected. He had teachers and mentors to help guide him. He even had access to tremendous powers that were far beyond the abilities of the natives here, a land where magic was as common as the wind.
Marc would often fear the future, wondering if someday the bill would come. What would he have to do in exchange for this idyllic life he now lived?
He wanted to somehow lessen that bill. Pay a bit towards his karmic debt. After consulting Rynan and getting permission from Keri, Marc was going to take his first step.
Grenn had taught Marc how to unlock his first bit of magic. Marc wanted to repay that debt to his adopted father. He was going to help Safan unlock his newly awakened magic.
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End of Book Two, Part Two