Jasper slowly made his way down towards Marcusburg. He approached it from the side, allowing him to get a good look over the walls.
The walls were actual stone walls, and judging by the compression of the stone, the bricks had clearly been carved from some kind of deep rock type. An educated guess told Jasper that it was probably from the mine.
Now that he was closer, he could see how poor the town was. He circled to the gate and found that, while it was more fortified from the last time he saw it, he wasn't stopped by any guards. The guards in the sentry towers had bored looks on their faces and barely looked over the people passing through.
The next thing that struck Jasper was the mix of people. There were a lot of different races in the population of Marcusburg.
While there were obviously humans, Jasper also saw elves, gnomes and dwarves. He even spotted a couple of goblins, though they seemed to keep themselves in the shadows.
While looking for his wife would probably take some time, Jasper really didn't know where to start. As such, he decided she was the one with the Journeying domain, so if she would have to find him.
The god of magics instead poured Energy into his power "A Word Far Off".
A word far off [https://i.postimg.cc/gjtM4zzZ/A-word-far-off.png]
Instantly, he felt knowledge pour into his brain and was suddenly aware of the town's three major problems.
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"You don't understand. I need to talk with the Mayor," Jasper said, standing in front of a receptionist who didn't give two shakes about who he was.
"The Mayor is available during town hall meetings. Please save any questions for the five minutes allocated to questions from the audience." The receptionist said, all while paying more attention to his nails than Jasper.
The god rubbed the bridge of his nose, in turn meeting the glasses that he was wearing in the game, which surprised him, as he hadn't noticed them sitting on his nose before now.
"You know what? Fine. We will be doing this the hard way then." He stormed past the receptionist, who didn't even try to stop Jasper.
Reaching the Mayor's office door behind the receptionist, Jasper decided to kick it open. While he was weaker than most, he still had the body of a god.
As he lifted his foot to kick it in, Jasper saw the sigils appear around him and the door. It poured off the walls of the building. The door had been magically reinforced, and several contingency spells were starting to activate.
Jasper was far too fascinated by the ingenuity to actually be afraid. One of his former students must have layered the enchantments really well for this to work.
The spells were woven into the building itself, which was no easy feat, as it required a full and complete view of the structural integrity and function of the entire architecture.
Then the spells unleashed, and Jasper just barely managed to activate Greater Pavis of Rule, ensuring that he was immune to the spells that bombarded him.
Greater pavis of rule [https://i.postimg.cc/DyMv41T2/Greater-pavis-of-rule.png]
Thick cones of fire were followed by small tornados and ice crystals. All while the floor tried to swallow up Jasper's feet.
The god of magic concluded that the original architect of these sigils must have been an Elementalist, which made sense. It was one of the few paths he had taught this village.
Idly, Jasper checked his health and Energy while waiting for the spells to settle down.
Health 28/28 Energy 5/6
Stepping over the broken down door, Jasper posed quite the imposing figure. With the dust having been kicked up and the ice crystals having been superheated into steam, a thick fog followed Jasper inside as he stepped closer.
The sound of a scream quickly followed as the Mayor called out for his guards.
"Whose you? WHAT YA WANT?" The questions from the blubbery-looking man quickly followed.
The man was bigger than anyone else that Jasper had seen in town, and he was even more revolting with a poorly placed combover. He had a face for radio, and it wasn't helped by the look of fear that seemed to have been chiselled on those features.
From one of the side doors, a hulking mountain of a man stepped out, clearly the muscle the man had screamed for.
"What's wrong, boss?" The goon said with seemingly no awareness of the man that had kicked down the door.
With the addition of a new person in the room, things quickly escalated into something much more chaotic.
The Mayor seemed to realize that he was no longer alone and put on a brave face. He looked at his lackey, who would have given an ork a run for its money based purely on size.
"Tony, get's this guy otta my orfice" The Mayor quickly commanded, and it was only now that Jasper realized the thick accent the guy had.
He sounded like he was some New York gangster in disguise. Jasper cursed under his breath, having assumed that he had fixed the problems with the silly accents.
"Want me to take care of him, boss?" The goon asked while looking at Jasper as if he hadn't just kicked the door in and taken an elemental barrage to the face without being touched.
"Dats what I told ya, you chowderhead. Gets to work already!" Without hesitation, the massive man moved in, a pair of metal knuckle irons on his fists as he swung for Jasper's head.
Activating Unbreakable, Jasper simply took the hit to his head.
Unbreakable [https://i.postimg.cc/vTwPNqfQ/Unbreakable.png]
Health 28/28 Energy 4/6
The hand met his face, and not even the god's glasses moved from the bridge of his nose. However, the force of the hit sent fog from the door spiralling around the room.
"Tony, why don't you take a seat while I talk to the mayor," Jasper asked, pretending to adjust his robes.
He was trying to look casual and cool but felt quite giddy from the display.
Tony hadn't followed up with another hit, though his hand was still firmly placed against Jasper's face.
"He wants to talk, boss." The lackey said, looking back at the Mayor, who was starting to grow ashen.
"Well, if da chumb wants ta talk, den let's talk!" He said while putting on a winning smile.
Jasper slid to the side and walked past Tony, who still hadn't put his arm down, seemingly not doing anything without getting explicit orders.
This allowed Jasper to get a proper look at the Mayoer's office. Most of the floor had been covered in wood scraps from the door Jasper had kicked in. Underneath the scraps, the stone tiles were from a local source, which Jasper could tell by the various deposits mixed in with the stone.
He blamed his Omniscient Scholar power for giving him slightly useless information. Still, he couldn't bring himself to turn it off.
Omniscient Scholar [https://i.postimg.cc/BvctFtpM/Omniscient-Scholar.png]
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Likewise, it also told him that the oak used for the panels along the walls was from a local source, but the heavy desk that the Mayor was sitting behind wasn't something that could be found in the local environment.
Instead, Jasper would guess that it was elven-made, which only confirmed that he was taking the right approach to all this.
He sat down on a heavily padded and well-made chair, Tony following him after the Mayor gave his goon a wave, and the mountain of a man stood behind Jasper, trying to put pressure on the god.
"Good, now, let us get to talking," Jasper said, leaning back in the chair. "You have been playing some very dangerous games, Mr Mayor. You have been blocking trade with the elven kingdoms and the human Empire, and yet you are rather rich compared to the folks around your town. I can't help but wonder why that is." Jasper said, looking at the Mayor, he didn't need his new power to figure out what had been going on.
The Mayor seemed to sweat a river as he looked for a way out of the conversation. "I don't know what yus mean. I ain't hiding nuthing." He said in that thick accent that made Jasper die a little inside every time he heard it.
The accent honestly dealt more damage to Jasper than Tony's punch.
The god shook his head. "We both know that is not true. See, I know for a fact that you have been dealing with a new threat in this world. A thieves guild. Specialized in smuggling things in and out. I suspect that they have been living well in an independent nation such as A'kastin." Jasper said, not looking away from the blubbering coward. "So tell me, who has been your dealer in this town and where can I find them."
At the prospect of ratting out someone else and getting off the hook, the Mayor suddenly seemed much more cooperative.
"I ain't know anything about no thieves guild, but a friend of mine he got dis other friend that he says ain't up to no good, if you catch my drift. If ya want to know about da shady side of Marcusburg, head down to da pub and talk with Peter Longknife. If somethings going oan in dis here town, he knows about it." The Mayor said, and Jasper nodded slowly, willing to take things at face value.
He couldn't detect lies, but he knew that he had made enough of an impression that the Mayor would be foolish to try and bamboozle Jasper in any way.
Standing up, he gave a nod to Tony before turning back to the Mayor.
"Sounds good, I hope I don't have to come back and talk some more," Jasper said, walking out the door and past the well-armoured guards that had been gathering in the reception.
There wasn't an attempt to stop him, since everyone was seemingly unharmed, and the Mayor wasn't shouting.
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Jasper stepped into the Black Cauldron, though the place looked almost identical to when he had left it nearly a hundred years ago. He blamed his wife for maintaining everything in the city, ensuring that nothing needed to be repaired.
Jasper didn't see Paul the Innkeeper behind the counter, and the new innkeeper seemed more interested in serving people drinks than conversing with a new customer.
It would have been strange if Paul the Innkeeper had still been around. He was probably long gone at this point.
Pouring another Energy into performing a minor luck miracle to bump into Peter Longknife, he was overwhelmed. He didn't even really dedicate the Energy before the system flooded him.
The instant Jasper accessed his Luck Domain, things seemed to change in his mind. He suddenly saw things that he hadn't before. His Knowledge Domain and the high intelligence score he had helped him process the information.
He understood Luck. There was no such thing as Luck. With enough knowledge and the endurance to perform the calculations, Luck was simply probabilities.
Jasper could probably write an entire book about how Domains helped shape the god they were associated with, but much more interesting was that the Domain was shaped by the god.
As Jasper asserted his will onto it, he had left his fingerprint. The fingerprint of an analytical god, of a god that believed in logic and reason.
Luck obeyed this command, and to him, it was no longer whimsical and chaotic. It was still random, for sure, but it was much more like rolling a dice than it was to be in the right place at the right time. The two events seemed equally simple to Jasper, and as the divine bringer of probability and chance, he could manipulate things in his favour.
He spotted a shadowy figure in a dark cloak sitting at a table, spinning a long knife, but as Jasper calculated the odds of him meeting Longknife, he saw his chances were higher by sitting in another seat. A seat further back. The seat opposite someone looking like a farme.
Trusting this new power, Jasper rolled the dice, knowing the cosmic dice were weighted to have a higher probability for the desired outcome.
Jasper sat down at a table and looked at the man already sitting there.
"Longknife, I presume?" The god asked with a smile.
The man's eyes went wide as if he had been caught with his hand down the pocket of a nobleman.
"I- I am not." He tried to say, but Jasper knew he was right. After all, he had chance on his side.
"I have a couple of things that I would like to discuss," Jasper said casually, reaching out to grab what he assumed to be a tankard of ale about to fall from the waitress's tray.
The god could feel the probability of it falling over increasing as the waitress became increasingly distracted by a rowdy customer. As predicted, it fell, but Jasper's hand was there to catch it.
Some would have called it luck, others would have called it calculated.