19693 The 3rd Spring
I wouldn’t say life in Fort Karon was boring, although it wasn’t the time of my life either. The daily schedule remained largely unchanged for three whole years. Wake up in the morning, have a light breakfast, stamina and strength training shortly after, lunch, theory, practice, and dinner at last. That’s it. Mostly locked inside the large but still restricted area that is Fort Karon, with minimal contact with the outside world and venturing past the gates about once a week.
From time to time the whole afternoon training took place on the outskirts of the nearby forest so we could learn to maneuver on uneven terrain or something like that and grow more accustomed to raw nature. On rare occasions, we went to the abandoned parts of the slums to run around in an urban area without bothering the people going about their daily business. It was very different from a natural environment; anything could collapse at any time and the overabundance of footing often made pathfinding less effective.
Our outings into the forest with Martha never stopped either and after a few months I managed to reach level 36, the milestone for the next class up. Thankfully I trained my Skills diligently, even the ones I got along the way; two of them to be exact, and one I dismissed.
Arcane Armor and Mana Burst. The Arcane Ray did sound cool but the effects were disappointing.
Arcane Armor: Defend yourself with mana, wrapped onto your skin. Call on the arcane to protect its devout wielder, shape your armor to your liking, and march into battle in glorious pomp. Mana shaped to the heart's desires stands strong to protect your body.
Mana Burst: Gather the ambient mana into one point and release it in a chaotic outburst anywhere within your range of control.
Yeah, that one is ridiculously simple, yet quite effective. A burst of flames into a wolf’s face out of nowhere can cause some nasty damage. The armor is much more useful when constructed properly.
One would think that a stone or wind armor would be the best… or even metal. Nope, all of these hinder movement one way or the other. The stone and metal are both straight up too heavy and the wind pushes and pulls you around in its cocoon like a stray cat in a hurricane. At first, I thought this Skill was a total waste of space after trying it with every element I could wield. Dark was quite useful, helping me sneak around in the shadows and fire could keep me warm during the winter just like water, or rather ice, helps in the summer. The greatest version of it however came from the basic arcane element. It has no weight yet can still become solid, malleable, and somewhat resilient. I’m not saying it's the greatest defense but it's something, and every single bit counts for a mage.
From then on my fighting style got a lot more unpredictable. I could tank a shot or two and could release tiny explosions of any element in my area of control. The only problem I faced was the amount of mana I could work with. My stats had grown alongside me of course, but so did my consumption.
Name: Elyssia
Age: 10
Mana: 1500/1500
+150/hour
Racial Trait:
Celestial Elf
Stats:
Free Points: 0
Might: 10
Mana: 130
Speed: 35
Willpower: 150
Endurance: 10
Intelligence: 100
Dexterity: 11
Focus: 150(+16)
General Skills:
Savant lvl 36
Identify lvl 36
Running lvl 23
Dodging lvl 26
Pain Tolerance lvl 11
Premonition lvl 23
Stamina lvl 27
Persuasive Speech lvl 8
Survival lvl 5
I. Class: Wielder of the Arcane - Arcane lvl 36
Arcane Affinity lvl 36
Elemental Influence lvl 36
Arcane Arsenal lvl 36
Arcane Focus lvl 36
Mana Vision lvl 25
Arcane Armor lvl 24
Mana Burst lvl 17
II. Class: *Locked*
III. Class: *Locked*
Yeah, my Status looked pretty fine after the work I'd put into it. My speed of progress was nothing phenomenal as leveling up below 100 is child's play really and the only reason it took me so long was due to the life-and-death combat. I also wanted to maximize my potential for the class up yet still got a bit hasty when the others all blew right past me.
Talking about class up… that one wasn’t anything mindblowing. It still took place in the mess hall, and the options were still presented on plates, only this time I had fewer options and only a few of them were cyan blue. Most likely because I didn’t do anything crazy unique and dangerous that year, just basic leveling stuff. I’m not saying the options were bad, oh no, it's just that one can always wish for more.
My final choice was by far the strongest contender, so much so that I didn’t even have to think about it for more than a minute. Color bordering on cyan, or maybe even a darker shade of it I'm no expert on colors, and just the Skillset I needed. [Hungry for Mana - Arcane]. It’s what I am, always in need of more mana.
[Hungry for Mana - Arcane]
The world is filled with the presence of the arcane, yet you can never have enough of it, wielding absorbing and shaping mana ceaselessly. No matter how much you get you’re never satiated. Never truly full, always hungry for more. Search for a way to soothe your constant need for mana, or use the hunger to strive for greater heights.
[+2 Free Points, +2 Speed, +1 Endurance, +8 Mana, +8 Willpower, +6 Intelligence, +6 Focus level]
A nice upgrade. Not the most combat-focused, nor does it give me an ungodly amount of stat points, but the Skills…
[Your class skills [Arcane Arsenal lvl 36] and [Arcane Armor 24] have merged into the skill [Armory of the Arcane lvl 30].]
It's basically the same thing as the Arsenal, just not limited to weapons anymore.
[Congratulations, you’ve acquired the class skill [Manaconduit lvl 1].]
Manaconduit: Your body soaks up mana faster, the vessel accepts any and all kinds of mana, as Arcane is the basis of the elements. Mana regen (+0.1% per level)
This, this was the real prize.
It also gave me the skill Feed the Core which basically made the mana content of whatever food I consumed be absorbed into my mana pool. I found it amazing but Martha said it’s a scam as I usually won’t have free time on hand to stuff my face when in desperate need of mana.
Manaconduit was weak as fuck back then; the effect barely amounted to anything. It was always a long-term investment to help with the general mage dilemma, mana.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
***
The progress never stopped, my levels kept on rising albeit a bit slower since Martha was reluctant to take us any further into the forest, scared we’d do something stupid.
Such a baseless concern.
After we'd all hit our tenth birthdays, instructors allowed us to explore the city a little once a week, mainly after dinner, which in itself isn’t a lot of time until curfew so we broke the rules quite often and hid in the alleys to adventure some more. This resulted in withheld breakfasts which taught us a quick lesson, although one we forgot the next time we came across something fun and interesting out on the streets.
Granhall’s nightlife was just as lively and colorful as I imagined and the parks with street performers were our favorite locations; always full of music and colors. We also liked to discover the many streets and alleyways, often occupied by vomiting men, women wearing barely any clothes, or sometimes even shady-looking figures, but all of us knew that we better avoid people like that.
I’m pretty sure despite the amount of freedom we were allowed and no escorts at all, the Fist didn’t leave us unsupervised for even one second. Just a hunch based on how they usually treat us and the whole fuss around being Blessed.
The fact that the Fist didn’t provide us with any funds for the city explorations hurt us quite badly. All the street food, cool gadgets, sweets… Back when I lived in Meliorport mom and dad often took me to the marketplace to have all kinds of fun... We didn’t need a lot of money, or bootlicker treatment, just the bare minimum and each other.
Then there was the time we visited the Mage Tower in Granhall, or rather the library part of it, instead of listening to Martha for hours. The place was huge, much bigger than what one would expect looking at the building from the outside. Cold blueish stone was maybe the only material on hand when the builders constructed the tower as besides the door, shelves and other furniture, everything was made with the same material. There were only a few windows, barely any carpets and everything just looked… artificial. Even the lighting provided by the sparkle stones lacked any kind of warmth, truly a place of cold logic.
The mages looked hella pissed at our presence, saying things like noisy brats ‘disturbing important work’ and ‘people oblivious to the beauty of mana sully this place’.
If only he knew…
Not all of them were so rude of course. Our young guide passionately answered even our stupidest questions, showed us around, and let us spend some time in the library. It was divided into five floors, depending on the complexity and importance of the knowledge. We were only allowed to visit the first but even that was more than enough. The hexagonal base of the tower made it obvious to divide the library floor into six aisles all starting from the center of the hall, one of them leading to the stairway both up and down which almost made me snoop around.
The place wasn’t crowded, there were just some stray mages and researchers walking around or even flying around, looking for knowledge or hurrying somewhere. People weren’t the only things flying around in the library, books flapped their… pages, and inserted themselves into the empty spots on the shelves. A cool and weird use of magic.
I did find some books that piqued my interest; one was about Spirits, the high Elemental Lords and many other sentinels of the arcane, living in a secluded realm. Another told me about mythical creatures like titans, leviathans, wyrms, phoenixes, and dragons to name a few and scary would be a childish word to describe those beings. I'd rather say ‘God defying’.
No offense Gods, but anything able to reshape the landscape when going all out sounds kinda godly to me.
There were also some books about thousands of years of history that I really liked, sadly our time in the Tower came to an end before I could even read its first page.
Visiting that place was somewhat of a privilege. Renowned and influential people can easily get access to the mage guild’s tower and the rest can pay a hefty sum for a visit so it's not a building for the common people. People like us.
Besides the interesting stuff, there were the theoretical lessons which turned out to be a little more than propaganda about the beauty of mercenary life. We studied things like basic mathematics, writing, literature, some monetary and military laws, history and geography, and a ton of other boring things. Martha said this is considered basic education in Valeria, something only about a fifth of the population has access to. Around half the population can’t even read, which sounds ridiculous as it's such a useful skill. Although a Farmer doesn’t really need to know any letters or punctuation to plow the fields… I still wouldn’t consider the ability to read useless.
Other than knowledge, they also made us learn how to hold ourselves with pride, how to march, how to care for our equipment, and how to eat with proper manners. These were both the easiest and most difficult lessons.
Easy because the tasks themselves were infinitely simple; marching is just stepping rhythmically, proper posture means you need to walk and sit like you’re filled with air and have sore muscles, the table manners, on the other hand, are just ‘memorize the right order of silverware and munch’. None of them are difficult per se, just tedious and hard to get used to.
Persuasive Speech did have its benefits in getting on with some of the kids in my new home, and still, conflict and brawls remained a common occurrence in the kids' corner during any meal. New members of our little cadet study group arrived every other day with no other Blessed among them surprisingly. Either really few of us were born or the rest were already snatched up by someone else.
Anyone from the nobles, the prince, a random street gang, or a guild of assassins to a merchant company could find a use of a specific Blessing to achieve their goals. I grew to understand that people often view each other as tools and we the Blessed are just special ones among the millions.
Speaking of Blessed, I got a lot closer to Victor and Kayla during those three years and even managed to understand August a little. Just a little. Victor is mischievous and extremely cunning, although it often feels like the person I know is just a mask with the real Victor buried deep beneath the goofy facade. Kayla is… weird. She’s really friendly with everyone and everything while having absolutely no deep or long-term interests, and still being fairly competent at every little task. She’s inattentive, simple and from time to time likes to intimidate people in a weird overly friendly way. I like her. Especially so when she’s quiet.
August… deep down he is a kind and caring person, scarred by trauma and… yeah, no way in hell. He is a jerk, a douchebag, and the biggest pain in the ass Aelion ever carried on its back, rivaling even Bennett. His personality is cold, straightforward and rational which would be fine if only he didn’t intentionally sprinkle sarcasm, and nasty comments into every sentence. If he weren’t a competent fighter I would’ve already crippled him to free his spot on the team.
Where were the simple and good friend material types; like the gang back in Meliorport? Friendly, kind… fun… orderly? Am I just drawn to the problematic sort of people or something?
***
Later, when we reached the age of eleven, camping in the forest became a standard test of our abilities at least once every month. Surviving off nature, fighting the beasts, and orienting ourselves in the forest were the real obstacles. Doing all this as a team, especially with Kayla, made the whole thing a lot more easy and enjoyable than before I arrived here with that idiot Bennett. We improved our teamwork, somewhat. No longer acting without prior discussion, complementing each other's abilities, actual planning… the basics.
Martha had grown into something like a grandmother figure for me during those years, she’d always been there for me, whether to just guide me, console me, or save my ass if I did anything stupid. She even taught me one of her favorite general skills, Maintained Magic. She told me this is a rather uncommon Skill as every user tries to keep it a secret, just to have an edge over the competition. She advised me to abandon my hard-earned Running for it as ‘You’ll find another skill to supplement your movement and you can always use magic for that later.’ So yeah, out with Running, in with Maintained Magic.
Maintained Magic: Mana likes to flee as soon as one’s concentration isn’t forcing it into a form. Command the arcane to continue to follow your will even after you pay it no more heed. Make it obedient and lasting.
Getting the Skill was no easy task. It took me weeks to acquire it as I had to keep a spell running for hours while eating, running, or even falling asleep, constantly feeding it and concentrating less and less while keeping it stable.
Years of hard work got me to where I am now.
Name: Elyssia
Age: 12
Mana: 3380/3380
+358/hour (+8)
Racial Trait:
Celestial Elf
Stats:
Free Points: 1
Might: 20
Mana: 338
Speed: 87
Willpower: 358
Endurance: 36
Intelligence: 276
Dexterity: 20
Focus: 318(+55)
General Skills:
Savant lvl 58
Identify lvl 62
Dodging lvl 44
Pain Tolerance lvl 14
Premonition lvl 39
Stamina lvl 37
Persuasive Speech lvl 19
Survival lvl 17
Maintained Magic lvl 21
I. Class: Hungry for Mana - Arcane lvl 62
Arcane Affinity lvl 57
Elemental Influence lvl 55
Armory of the Arcane lvl 49
Arcane Focus lvl 48
Mana Vision lvl 41
Mana Burst lvl 31
Manaconduit lvl 22
II. Class: *Locked*
III. Class: *Locked*
I racked up so many levels in Identify by using the skill on every Fist member I'd come across that ever since level 18, the Skill had kept immediately capping so I just instructed my Guide to only inform me if and when that changes.
I threw a few points into my physical stats, to help me carry equipment and save me from wearing my lungs out during morning training. The numerical increase to the rest of my stats was relatively slow, so I hadn't experienced any significant jumps in power, and still when looking back to how I was five years ago… I would wipe the floor with the bastards who broke into our house. It’s not much compared to the other mercenaries and only less than a tenth of Martha or Bennett’s level but I’m getting there.
It’s nice and all, yet means nothing right now, progress be damned, my mind keeps on spinning, focusing on something else as I make my way to a restaurant with Martha, just the two of us.
It's been four years, and finally, the time has passed. It was quite bearable, I made friends and learned a lot of things I wouldn’t have been able to otherwise. Logically was it worth it? Absolutely. If I had an actual choice back then would it be the same? No, not a chance.
The door to one of the private rooms of the grill house opens and tears immediately begin to well in my eyes. I would never want to leave them like this, ever again.
19695 The 2nd Spring