Ok, first a very big thank you to all you readers out there. My friend just pointed out to me that i made the top 20 in weekly view and right now honestly, i still can't believe my eyes. Thank you guys so so much with your comments and helping me improve my story.
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Kiefer felt lost, staring at the thousands upon thousands of books in front of him. How was he going to find the information he needed, and where was he going to start from? Just as he was wishing for a search engine, Ryul walked forward and grabbed a thick black book and passed it to Kiefer.
“This is the master book.”Ryul said proudly, while holding his chest up. “Inside it contains the directions of this library. Every single book and piece of parchment has been catalogued into a total of 1050 books. This master book contains the position of each of those 1050 secondary master books and will show you where to find what you need. It may take some time, but I assure you, it will get easier.”
The master book was a book that held the contents page showing the locations of the other 1050 secondary master books, each also being a contents book showing the locations of another thousand books themselves. Flipping through the master book immediately, Kiefer starting looking for things that might be related to history and magic. After about 30 minutes of tracing, Kiefer finally obtained the location of the shelf that he was looking for.
There were several large categories, including history, nature, magic, architecture, races, cultures etc. Following the magic section, Kiefer flipped to page 54, where magic was further sub divided into sections involving mana, incantations, runes, mana related diseases, classes of magic, different affinities, and many other sub divisions. Kiefer decided to start with runes, seeing as it is most widespread in this city. The master book directed him to secondary master book #405, located on shelf 405 – 5th shelf in 4th aisle. Heading over, Kiefer retrived the secondary master book, which then proceeded to list the names of all the books that fell under this subdivision along with their locations.
Picking a single book on the 3rd level, Kiefer returned to the ground and head back to the desk near the entrance and started to bury his head in the book. The first book he took was titled “Runes – how they work and how they alter natural phenomenon.”
Kiefer spent the next week holed up inside the library, only coming out to shower and relieve himself once a day. He had ordered that no one is to disturb him while inside the library, giving him the space and alone time he needed to concentrate. Only Isana would ever go in to bring his meals to him, sometimes just leaving it next to him, or when she was lucky and both his hands were occupied with books, feed him directly. Aside from that, Kiefer had zero interactions with anyone.
Sher had taken this chance to wander around the city. It had been sometime since she last had the chance to stretch out in her full form. The citizens however, were not afraid, and merely praised and revered her. The high elves, were direct servants of the sister elder titan dragons and felt gratitude for Shearwood keeping the humans away from the west beyond the border mountains.
Meanwhile, the King had kept the royal elven mage corps’ leading mages await for Kiefer to show himself. The 7 mages were the top mages within the city, and they more than eager to teach a young individual with so much thirst for knowledge that he would shut himself in the library for a week.
Having obtained almost all that he needed for the moment, Kiefer finally decided to take a break, and spent the night in the room he was allocated. As he left the library, one could see that Kiefer was considerably drained, with deep black bags under his eye, and yet, he was smiling and seemed to be shining. Isana was elated, finally being able to sleep with Kiefer after arriving in the elven city. She had been sulking that Kiefer was locked away inside the library, making it pointless to have fought to be in the same room as him.
After a good night’s sleep and a hearty breakfast, Kiefer arranged to meet with the 7 royal mages. They were the top fire, water, wind, earth, light, darkness and runes experts. Kiefer started by reiterating his understanding on mana and its workings, as well as the language of runes, finally ending off with how incantations change mana into physical phenomenon. The 7 mages had confirmed this, also teaching him the difference between the conversion of mana energy into the different elements.
By Kiefer’s estimate, through their exchanges, the high elves had a crude understanding of chemistry and physics, and yet due to over reliance on magi, their science never did take a step forward. They understood that matter was made of tiny particles, but still insisted that all matter was made up of a mixture of the 6 elemental particles. They could somehow understand that Cadrin, was 2/3 the weight of the same number of Hidran particles.
Kiefer understood from them that carved runes were like instructions that manipulated mana particle around them in a fixed pattern, achieving a desired effect. Incantations on the other hand, were like runes carved within our minds and bodies, controlling our own innate mana instead. While humans required chanting to effectively cast spells, high elves that had created and understood the runes could create the rune without chanting; just by understanding what they wanted their mana to do.
As time went on, Kiefer eventually decided that the high elves’ race would benefit the most from advancing science, and through science better understand magic. He could finally start doing what the balancer had sent him here to do. With that, Kiefer arranged a meeting with King Ryul.
“King Ryul, why have you kept yourself and this city hidden away from the rest of Aioa for so long, despite being magically superior beings?” (Kiefer)
“That’s because of the humans, great Kiefer. Not only do they greatly outnumber us, they are more intelligent and craftier than us. We high elves had to spend centuries to develop magic, which the humans only took decades to learn.” (Ryul)
“What would you say, if I offered you knowledge not of this world, to help you improve this country? A knowledge not related to magic, but vastly similar and with the potential of advancing magic in itself. Knowledge that you would have monopoly on, giving you an edge on the rest of the world, giving you power that might even rival the titans. Knowledge that could let you venture into the stars, and seek what you will. What would you do with such knowledge?” Kiefer asked, waiting to see King Ryul’s answer, and depending on his answer, decide the next step.
“I would of course record such knowledge and share it with my country, improve our lives. For so many centuries, my people have yearned to come out of hiding, yet continue to do so out of fear. It is only right to put an end to their wait, grant them their wishes and make this country prosper.” (Ryul)
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“Very well. I would like to see where my knowledge of Science takes you and your people. Whether or not it will lead to destruction, falls in your hands, but I would love to live in a world of technology once again. I must warn you though, you will have to forsake many things that you have come to know as the truth, and accept new premises and theories without any bias in your heart. Only then will you be able to make full use of what I can teach. I also expect a form of payment of some kind.” (Kiefer)
“Of course Great Kiefer. What would you like? If there is anything that intrigues you, please do tell me, I will fetch it for you.” (Ryul)
“I would love to study the mana conductive metal – orihalcom. It’ll be great if you could bring me some high quality orihalcom ingots.” Kiefer said wryly, almost rubbing his hands in greed.
Kiefer had read in a book in the library about orihalcom. It was a mana conductive metal similar to mithril, but was far rarer and more expensive. It was as hard as adamantium but could freely change its shape with the application of some runes. Kiefer had read that orihalcom was often used to make anti-magic weapons due to its ability to absorb and convert mana like mithril, however, at a much lower rate than mithril. Orihalcom was similar to mithril in the fact that once it is crafted using a person’s mana, it will only react and change its shaped when in contact with the same mana, destroying any mana from other sources.
Reading about the metal, and experiencing the metal were 2 completely things. Kiefer had wanted to try his hand again at crafting the metal. With the orihalcom ingots presented, Kiefer began by picking it up with his mana threads while in front of Ryul. He figured that since he was going to teach this contry and watch it prosper, there would be no point in hiding his abilities from them.
Watching Kiefer take out his mithril shield from his PD, and watching him manipulate mana according to his will, the King was stunned. “He could very well be the 10th titan that the prophecy spoke of.” King Ryul thought silently. “We could finally have a means of defeating the evil titan Drigor and at long last come out of hiding.”
Feeding 6 orihalcom ingots with his mana simultaneously, the ingots guzzled Kiefer’s mana like a dry cracked dirt path in the desert soaking up water. As usual, when the ingots were saturated with his mana, Kiefer saw the characteristic silver particles seeping out of the ingots and disappearing. The ingots turned a shade of crimson red colour and all melded into one large red orihalcom ball. Setting the ball down and stopping his mana supply, the red orihalcom ball hardened and stood where Kiefer left it.
Satisfied, Kiefer took out all his equipment from his PD and lay them on the ground in a line. Picking up the red orihalcom ball again, Kiefer fed mana into it, causing it to turn into a putty texture. The orihalcon ball moved and changed its shaped according to Kiefer’s will, as if it was his mana itself. There was no need t manipulate it with his mana threads anymore.
He crafted pauldrons and waist guard in the same design as the steel versions he acquired from the Balazaar family. Adding a few changes, he changed his pauldrons from platemail to scale mail design to allow more freedom of movement, sewing each scale on with thin orihalcon threads that he pulled. He then proceeded to add red details using orihalcom on his mithril armour at the joints and edges of each piece to strengthen the physical durability of each mithril armour, as well as improving the aesthetics several folds.
Finally, he molded an additional 2 ingots along with the remainder of the red orihalcom ball to coat the back and edges of his rhombus shield, causing its weight to increase tenfold. The red bordered and backed silver diamond shield now weighed in at over 15kg, but was still manageable to wield in Kiefer’s enhanced state.
Fully equipping his armour, Kiefer raised his shield arm and waved it a couple of times, making sure it was comfortable. Finally, to conclude his crafting session, he showed the king what he had been planning all along. Raising his shield, Kiefer willed his mana to transform the orihalcom. Immediately, a large red tower shield appeared, with 3 jagged spikes at the bottom appeared. The shield was 2.5m tall and 1.5m wide. In the middle of the tower shield, was a horizontal silver diamond that was Kiefer’s mithril shield. Kiefer could jam the spikes into the ground and elongate the spikes if need be to hold his ground and endure a frontal magical attack.
Happy with his work, Kiefer threw everything back into his PD after refilling his mana using his armour, leaving only the breastplates and the boots. He thanked the King for the resources and proceeded to arrange a daily meeting with the royal mages, to teach them everything he knew, and to correct them on everything they thought to be true. This was going to mark the start of a month long exchange of information and ideas between the Kiefer and the inhabitants of this world.
Kiefer started by telling them that what they called elements were in actual fact just energy, a natural phenomenon, or in the case of water, a molecule. He taught them elementary level chemistry, starting from atoms, proton, neutrons and electrons, and proceeding to inform them of the periodic table and its 118 elements, not 6.
Still stuck in disbelief, the mages, King Ryul and even Isana were astounded by Kiefer’s knowledge, not willing to accept that their studies were all wrong since the beginning of time. Nevertheless, Kiefer kept going, using the mages’ example of carbon and water to prove the validity of chemistry.
There was only one problem with teaching them though, and that is the mages did not understand written English. Because their written language is automatically changed to English for Kiefer thanks to the Balancer, Kiefer could read and understand their books and text. The same however could not be said for the high elves. This limited Kiefer to drawings and symbols to explain scientific facts to the 7 mages.
As Kiefer returned to bed that night, exhausted from answering all the questions from the high elves and Isana, he started drafting up a lesson plan for the future in his head. He was so pre-occupied he had not even noticed Isana sneaking into his bed as he drifted off to sleep.
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Just a heads up, I would like to inform all of you in advance that there may not be a chapter release on October 27 and 28. There may be if I have time but that is highly unlikely as I will be duct taped to my sofa with my face stuck to the TV.
Next chapter : The acceptance and the change