Chapter 56

Ubo was having a very, very good day. After weeks of pulling his hair out, he suddenly found that all of the pieces in his life aligned exactly how he wanted them to.

Well, except for one. Vella was afraid of him now. She hadn’t said anything, and it wasn’t so bad that he needed to pass her off onto another mage. But she had seen a side of him which she’d never imagined had existed when he tortured the conspirator, and it frightened her.

He hadn’t enjoyed casting the torture spell. It had made him sick inside, doing that to a person. Even one who deserved it for attempting to poison an young old girl. Had the assassin been a little less ruthless and come only at Ubo, he probably wouldn’t have gone so far. But he had been livid at the time. Livid and determined.

And then he’d gone further and used the opportunity for his own goals. He’d known that the accusations he’d made the assassin repeat would never hold up. Or at least, that none of the mages he’d implicated would end up on the gallows. Some of them were facing repercussions, mostly in the form of the lengths that they were forced to go to in order to prove their innocence or dispel the rumors that he’d created.

Ubo didn’t regret that one bit.

He only regretted that he’d taken Vella with him out into the plaza. He’d needed her at the time in order to identify the assassin, but she’d seen his actions. And she was afraid fo him now. She saw him differently, and through her eyes, he saw himself differently.

Had he gone to far?

The crown didn’t think so. He was to receive a medal for his meritorious service to the crown in his quick response to the assassinations. By sending out mages to the Adventurer’s guild and several other destinations, he had arguably saved the lives of a number of important and influential people. The only reason that the other conspirators weren’t on the receiving end of the torture spell was that the Urban family wouldn’t teach it to anyone whose surname wasn’t Urban.

Legally and officially in the eyes of the state, Ubo was a hero.

In the eyes of his apprentice, however, he was frightening.

Ubo sighed, and he tried again to think of all the things that were going right in his life. The Urban School for Magic was on course to open within a month. The Mages he’d contracted to teach it were all falling into line for him, removing their absurd requests and idiotic demands and replacing them with ones much more reasonable.

Vella wasn’t the only one who was afraid of Ubo Urban now, and Ubo actually enjoyed the fear that his performance invoked from his colleagues.

If only he hadn’t frightened a child at the same time.

He sighed and put the matter aside. Vella was fine. She knew that what he’d done was due to a very serious situation and that he’d never hurt her, personally. She still wanted to be his student. She’d just never been exposed to violence of this sort before, and she was also still overcoming the shock that someone had tried to poison her.

She would recover in time. For now, he had her practicing a few cantrips and exercising her mind. She was still level one, although she didn’t have to be anymore. She was more than capable of clearing out the first floor of one of Tom’s dungeons on her own, by Ubo’s estimation. If not on her own, then with a party protecting her at least.

With her training, she was likely closer to a level ten mage than a level one. Her youth meant that her mana pool wasn’t as deep, but her skill and efficiency were higher. Training those further was the primary reason he’d been glad to receive her at level one, and the reason he would keep her there for at least four years if he had his way. The effort she put forth now would pay off exponentially in a decade or two.

Just as they had for him, when he’d been her age.

He smiled, recalling his own apprenticeship with his grandmother. He’d been less than a stellar student, and it was only her constant vigilance that had kept him from running off to a dungeon and ruining the Urban Method. There was a reason his family was known to be significantly more powerful than the average mage, and it was all down to the way that they raised their children.

Unlocking the mage class by age ten. Training until age fifteen. Then, finally, explosive leveling, before more training to learn advanced spells. It was deceptively simple, but extremely effective.

It wasn’t even a secret, necessarily. One of Ubo’s ancestors had written a treatise on it. Anyone could follow the method; it simply wasn’t as effective if the Mage awakened their class later in life.

He grinned. And now that there was some possibility of predicting which children might awaken as Mages using factors aside from their bloodline, perhaps the Urban Method would see wider use in the training of mages.

A knock at the door, and Emil Stefanson entered. Ubo greeted the Ritualist and gestured for him to have a seat.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“I understand congratulations are in order,” Emil said. “You’re receiving some sort of award?”

Ubo brushed the praise away. “If I received an award for every time I’ve risen to a unique occasion and saved some innocents, I’d have a desk drawer full of the things.”

He pulled open a drawer filled with medals. “Oh look at that.”

Emil laughed politely. “Still, you helped save Tom’s life. Considering that I owe my current life to him, I’m pretty grateful for that.”

“That’s not why I asked to speak with you today, Emil.”

“I didn’t think it was,” Emil admitted. “I am rather curious to know what the reason is.”

“It’s very simple. I was planning on attempting to convince you to teach a class or two,” Ubo explained.

Emil was surprised. “I’m an engineer, not a Mage, Master Urban. Even what magic I do know I picked up as almost a hobby. I--”

“You know more about ritual magics than seven eighths of the teachers at this school, despite having only studied the matter for a few months,” Ubo said, interrupting him. “And of the remainder, I suggest that you form a close collaboration with them to extract whatever secrets they’re keeping before you surpass them utterly. You have a way of thinking that is uniquely suited towards your class, Emil. While the majority of Mages consider Ritual Magic to be a curiosity, the fact is that many spells require some degree of ritual in order to perform. The most powerful of spells, and also the most delicate, have a ritual component to them.”

“I do know that,” Emil admitted. “It’s why most mages carry a focus. Inscribed inside them are tiny rituals which they use for their spellcasting.”

“Yes,” Ubo agreed, “But there’s more to it than that. When you add knowledge and experience of rituals to a mage’s arsenal, it opens up a wide variety of new options. The capture spell I cast the other day was only possible because of one of the many rituals I’ve included within the foundations of the school itself.”

“I suspected as much,” Emil said. “It felt rather similar to the shield ritual that I’m familiar with.”

“Because it was indeed a more complicated version of that exact spell,” Ubo explained. “It’s also, admittedly, the reason I wasn’t able to let everyone go right away once the culprit was found; the controls for that ritual are in this office. I had to delay their release until I found an excuse to return here and turn the shield off.”

Emil chuckled. Then he turned serious. “Does it bother you, what you did to that man?”

“It bothers me that Vella saw it,” Ubo admitted. “But otherwise? Not particularly.”

“I see.” He was quiet for a moment. “It didn’t really bother me, killing monsters. But I think it would to kill a person. Have you, you know, killed anyone? Or is that not something--”

“Thirteen,” Ubo said. He sighed. “I was an adventurer for many years before reaching my current level, Emil. I’ve dealt with bandits and tracked down murderers. I understand that Earth is a very different place from Welsius, and I won’t criticize your values. I understand if my nonchalance towards violence against my fellow man bothers you, and if it prevents us from working together I apologize for the inconvenience.”

“It’s not that,” Emil said. He glanced out the window for a moment to gather his thoughts. “I’m not certain how I would have handled the situation in your place, Ubo. You deserve that medal, I think. This world isn’t the one I grew up in, and I’m something of a fish out of water. Iceland is one of the safest places on Earth to live, and that’s where I grew up. But I’m in Welsius because I took a vacation and got myself murdered in another statistically safe nation. I’m not going to let that happen again.”

“I understand perfectly. You want to gain more levels, become more powerful. You want the control that such things provide over your own destiny,” Ubo said.

“I’m not certain I would have phrased it like that,” Emil said, “But yes, I think you’re right. So while I do plan on settling down and teaching at some point – engineering and magic both – I’m not certain that it’s in my immediate future. Perhaps once I reach level fifty.”

“I see,” Ubo said. “Well, I suppose that it is in both of our interests to increase the rate at which that happens, then.”

He stood and pulled a tome off of his bookshelf. He tossed it to Emil, who caught it and read the title.

“Meditations on Experience?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.

“The title is somewhat literal,” Ubo explained. “The study of Experience is somewhat complicated, what with the mess involved in creating it in large quantities. It is a fact, however, that certain magics increase the rate at which the body absorbs Experience. Certain ritual magics, in fact. In addition, there are mental exercises which are believed to increase the effectivity of Experience’s effect on the body and mind.”

“Why have I never heard of that?” Emil asked, flipping through the first few pages of the book. “Is this a secret, like the methods of unlocking a combat class?”

“The book is still in print. It’s not some secret or restricted tome; you can get a copy through almost any bookseller. Unfortunately just writing about a topic doesn’t necessarily mean that the information gets distributed to the masses.”

“Ah, yes, I see the problem,” Emil said as he scanned the text. “It’s, um, very … verbose?”

“The author loves to ramble endlessly. He says in thirty words what could be said in five. And he assumes the vocabulary of a scholar, in addition to beating around the bush and endlessly qualifying the reported effectiveness of the methods that he records. I’ve experimented with many of the methods myself, and I’ve found the highlighted methods to be at least somewhat effective.”

“These notes, those are your personal experiences?” Emil asked.

“Indeed,” Ubo agreed. “That book is probably responsible for ten to fifteen percent of my experience gain. It’s not very effective prior to level thirty simply because the amount of experience that those monsters provide aren’t worth the effort of employing these methods, but the methods become more effective and their effects more noticeable after that benchmark.”

“I see,” Emil said. “May I borrow this?”

“I have six copies. You may have it.”

“Thank you,” Emil said. “Is there anything else you wanted to discuss while I’m here?”

Ubo shrugged. “I suppose I wanted to thank you for your efforts in constructing my school. Your help has been instrumental. I especially enjoy the plumbing you’ve helped install.”

“Yes, you’re welcome,” Emil said. “Well, if that’s all, I’m going to go study this for a while.”

“It’s a boring read. But I really can’t argue with the results.”