The next day was tense. If there was one thing to be thankful for, it was the fact that Blake’s party members were, for once, actually cooperating.
This meant that Rowan could send them off into the wastes with his [Knights] and some soldiers for accompaniment with minimal worry.
Granted, he still worried a little.
A part of him expected the princess to kick up a fuss and do something stupid in an attempt to establish herself more firmly, but he couldn’t dedicate his existence to babysitting a bunch of grown-ass adults who should know better.
There were more important things to do. One of which needed Camilla’s approval. And so, Rowan found himself in the baroness’s study. It was a rare occasion that Olivia didn’t accompany him there, but his favorite alchemist was missing from the occasion.
Even with all the explosions that still accompanied Olivia’s alchemical tinkering, Rowan still felt that he was in a worse off position than she was.
“You want to do what?” The baroness’s voice wasn’t cold. It was glacial. It was Fimbulwinter sweeping across the world to announce the beginning of Ragnarok, and epic tier or not, Rowan almost quailed under her mighty gaze.
Almost.
“I would like to approach your least favorite epic tier mage and try to recruit her as one of my [Knights] in anticipation of our campaign to track down and then eliminate legendary tier demons,” Rowan said.
His train of thought was simple: if he laid out all the facts, then maybe the baroness would approach the discussion with the calm rationale of civilized discourse.
“You will not be taking that snake into your service, or so help me every god and goddess out there I’ll stab you in the back myself. At least that way you’ll know it’s coming and I’m sure your card and my daughter can patch you up!”
Rowan winced. Maybe that was hoping for just a little too much the hero winced internally, taking a deep breath and gearing himself up to try again.
“I know it’s a bad idea.” Rowan saw the baroness open her mouth, and quickly jumped to continue before she could say something scathing. “But! Just hear me out, okay? I swear it’s not nearly as bad or as stupid as it sounds.”
“Oh. Sure. Go ahead. I’m certain that your idea of giving that woman access to an additional epic tier card, especially one that seems to naturally draw in ambient mana, is completely logical and won’t come back to haunt us.” the baroness snapped, leaning back in her chair.
Rowan took a deep breath. “I told you, my party, and the mercenary king how my new class works. However, Tamara chose to skip that meeting. I might not have said a thing if she did attend, but she didn’t. And none of the aforementioned individuals is likely to share info with her, right?”
The baroness eyes him for a long moment, before finally and reluctantly nodding. “Right.”
“Well, then, she doesn’t know. Obviously, the stat benefits and experience sharing are something I’ll tell her about. With what we now know about those, she won’t have a reason to object, anyway. So, do you think she’s likely to accept if she doesn’t know I’ll be able to feel her emotions?”
The baroness processed that, nibbling on her lower lip in a way that was eerily reminiscent of her daughter. At long last, however, a slow smile swept over her features. “Yes, I do think she might say yes. Especially if she believes it’ll make you more inclined to trust her.”
“Exactly. And if I have direct insight into what she’s feeling and keep her relatively close, we’ll at least have some warning before she inevitably betrays us. Besides, I need those stats. If I have more mana and the ability to better use it, I genuinely think I’ll be much better off.”
There were a few things Rowan wasn’t saying, of course. For example, he wasn’t entirely convinced Tamara would betray them. She seemed selfish and opportunistic. But if ‘Rowan’s side’ was winning, he really saw no reason why she might turn on them.
Clearly, though, the way he’d couched his argument was enough to please the baroness. Camilla’s smile grew further as she asked her final question. “And you can cancel your [Knight] designation at any point, correct?”
“Correct.”
“Excellent. Then, let’s discuss the details of this arrangement.”
Rowan sighed and let his shoulders slump just a smidgen. The hardest part was done. Now, he just needed to actually deal with Tamara herself.
—
Rowan had, upon his arrival in Rest’s Remorse, attended a gathering meant for its most influential mercenaries and local figures. It was held in a venue in one of the town’s nicer neighborhoods, and it was also the first and last time he’d rubbed shoulders with the local elite.
Since then, he was much more interested in his soldiers and regular citizens than whatever the rich elites were doing. Especially since they were remarkably unhelpful by every possible metric.
They hadn’t deigned assist the town when it needed to defend against the monster horde that ruined entire sections of it. They didn’t offer up funds to repair said sections of town. And when Rowan took over? Their streak of neglect continued.
In fact, some of them even chose to flee when the suspicions of a new monster wave lead by an epic demon spread through town. After all, the baroness could only stop the less affluent commoners from running.
The merchants with particularly heavy purses and whatever ‘nobility’ the town had? There was little she could do when they had plenty of illegal ways to circumvent any notices or even laws she enacted.
This meant that Rowan’s journey through the wealthier part of his city was an odd juxtaposition of well-appointed homes that were either the peak of maintenance or that looked like they were on the verge of falling into total disrepair.
Sections of neighborhoods that were still clearly lived in stood directly across from neighborhoods and homes that had obviously been abandoned in a hurry.
Some enterprising individuals from less wealthy parts of town had clearly learned about the situation too. Many of the abandoned homes had pieces of furniture, decorations, and more strewn across lawns where the looters chose to discard them. Whether it be out of anger or due to their minuscule value, Rowan couldn’t tell. The windows and doors hung on for dear life, but the buildings’ insides had been gutted like fish and left for all to see.
And deep within this depressing city district stood a building that was doing its level best to pretend it was a mage tower.
The building was oddly blocky, and reminded Rowan of something vaguely like an apartment building. It was definitely taller than all of its neighbors, yet didn’t stretch as high as the hero had been assured true mage towers did.
Apparently, there were laws about that sort of thing.
No building other than those owned by or registered under the mage association could surpass a certain height. Magic was, according to Olivia, a substance that had a tendency to swirl up towards the sky. The higher you got, the more turbulent and more abundant mana got.
You could, of course, also go in the opposite direction and dig deep where subterranean deposits of mana slept, but most of those were crystallized or difficult to rouse and put into motion.
Humanity and most mortal species were therefore stuck in the awkward middle of the sandwich: the part where mana existed but didn’t tend to pool or gather naturally.
Mage towers were the first answer to this conundrum. They were a way for mages to reach towards the heavens and claim what they saw as rightfully theirs. In turn, everyone else was banned under the height limit, and the days of upwards expansion in cities were halted.
Tamara’s home was doing its best to push these limits to their breaking point.
Rowan was pretty sure you’d need ridiculously precise tools, or perhaps a spell, to prove that she hadn’t crossed the line and was, in fact, at the very edge of it.
Likewise, the tower was much better appointed than its neighbors. There were reliefs carved in its faces, twisting statues of various monsters and even luxurious tapestries depicting battles and various fantastical forms of magecraft. It was like time and weather were irrelevant in the face of the magical might Tamara was trying to claim as her own. And at the epic tier, she might even be actually capable of fielding some of the force she had been so badly trying to project.
Unfortunately for Rowan, he hadn’t been allowed to venture out to the tower on his own. Both the baroness and his fiancée had put a quick veto on that idea. Instead, he was accompanied by an entirely excessive number of fifty soldiers, each of them dressed in the finest gear they could field.
Neither the baroness nor her daughter were there to accompany him either, though that was something he insisted on.
Camilla was still sparse on the details of just why she hated Tamara, but the feeling was clearly mutual. Olivia, meanwhile, was tainted by association. If there was even the slightest chance to make things easier by leaving them behind, Rowan was willing to try.
So when Rowan finally stood before the doors of the pseudo-tower, he motioned for his lead escort to knock on them.
Dale stepped forward and lifted the massive door knocker attached to the wings of doors pretending to be gates. He briefly grunted under the strain of lifting the thing, and when he let go, it produced a boom that echoed loudly and hollowly throughout the structure.
A few seconds later, the doors to swing open outwards, forcing the scout to scramble back and revealing a lush carpet that stretched all the way to a set of spiraling stairs and a ceiling that was much too much for what Rowan expected.
“Welcome, welcome, please come in, Lord Clairfont,” Tamara greeted, sweeping towards in a dress that was even less practical than her usual fare.
Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.
Clearly the woman was going all out that day because the abomination of silk and fur was trying to smother her in its softness. No normal human could possibly manage walking in something that tight.
Rowan was suddenly extra glad he’d insisted Olivia stay behind because he was pretty sure his fiancée would take particular exception to him going anywhere near a woman dressed that way.
“Thank you for your hospitality, and for greeting us so quickly on such short notice.” Rowan gave a shallow bow, one for which he’d been excessively coached. The exact angle, the position of his arms, legs and even the way he moved his head, were drilled into him over the course of several hours.
He was convinced that because of his stats and cards, he’d mastered the move within the first fifteen minutes. But Camilla and Olivia had insisted he keep practicing for another hour afterwards. Even now, he couldn’t feel the slightest difference between that first moment the movement clicked and the last bow the mother-daughter duo made him give before deeming him ready. He was pretty sure they were just having fun tormenting him for leaving them behind.
Be that as it were, Tamara looked delighted to receive his greeting.
“Think nothing of it, my lord. It is my honor to swiftly present myself at your leisure.” The words were, as it so often happened with the woman, laced by a dangerous and suggestive undertone Rowan ignored.
It was all pageantry and nonsense anyway.
He sent his notice that he intended to visit the woman the day before, right after discussing the matter with the baroness. Likewise, if it turned out that she hadn’t been tracking his progress through the city using either magic or mundane scouts, Rowan was willing to cut off both of his hands.
Several times, even.
As plastic as the whole affair was, Rowan still couldn’t deny that the show Tamara was putting on was impressive.
Her students were strewn about the massive space that shouldn’t have fit within the tower, acting industrious while they handled all sorts of tools and scrolls.
Everything had the soft, ethereal glow of mana — even the most unassuming items.
Plenty of different scholarly implements and scrolls were floating, some even zipping around the room when one student or another summoned them with a mere beckon of their hands.
It was here that deep envy gripped Rowan once again.
Magic. The very essence of what dreams are made of, and something he had spent an inordinate amount of time daydreaming about as a kid.
If he could just master such a mystical force, then perhaps the experience of being stolen from his home and forced into a battle that wasn’t originally his would have been worth it.
Instead, Rowan was stuck wielding a long, pointy stick.
Tamara must have noticed his hungry expression because she sent him a sly grin. Mercifully, she stayed silent as they left his soldiers by the doors and took the spiral staircase that hugged the wall all the way to the top.
There, the staircase ended in a doorway, and beyond that yet another set of stairs. At the top of those, however, was yet another floor.
This one may have looked much comfier and more lived in, but it was equally fantastical nonetheless.
Floating couches, tables, and more dotted the vast open space. It was at least as tall as the previous floor was. Another spiral staircase swept up the walls, but this time, said walls were covered in various doors rather than bookshelves.
Rowan spotted one of the students emerging from one of the doors, offering a glimpse of a sizable, comfortable room that looked like their personal quarters.
“I hope you don’t mind a bit more walking, my lord,” Tamara demurred, and Rowan elected to simply nod, not trusting himself not to say something stupid as he admired the interior of the mage’s tower.
Once more up the stairs they went, all the way up to the top.
This time, though, the stairs led straight up to a trap door rather than dipping into a wall, giving Rowan a close-up view of the opaque, glittering material of the ceiling. There was something odd about it, but he only realized what it was when Tamara pushed the trapdoor open and they stepped into the space beyond.
The floor was made entirely out of one-way glass.
Beneath them stretched the space dedicated to rest, mingling, and relaxation of Tamara’s students. She had the perfect view to observe them at her leisure.
Rowan instantly wondered how many of them knew just how much of their privacy was in the hands of the mage. More importantly, if she felt so comfortable making such a blatant show of force and influence, did freedom even exist within her tower?
It wasn’t exactly a stretch of the imagination that she had more than one scrying spell or ward installed within the building, letting her glimpse into whatever aspect of her students’ lives she pleased. Rowan had to fight down a shudder.
It wouldn’t do to show blatant disgust with his host’s personality even before pitching his proposal to her.
“So, what can I do for the illustrious new noble of the kingdom?” Tamara purred, making her way daintily towards a massive desk that was almost buried under a pile of papers and arcane implements Rowan could make neither heads nor tails of, and taking a seat.
In fact, that was the general theme of the space. Controlled chaos composed of things Rowan couldn’t understand.
In one corner, there was a potion setup that reminded the hero of Olivia’s own bubbled away. In another, books fluttered through the air, snapping at each other like hungry birds. To the side were jewelry tools and magnifying lenses of every size, shape and thickness.
The things went on and on, and the various doors that dotted the walls of the room only added to its mystique. After all, if that’s what Tamara left out in the open, what did the mage see fit to hide?
Rowan tore his attention from everything that surrounded him with some effort and took a seat of his own in front of her desk before finally focusing on the woman.
“I have a suggestion I’d like to make. Tell me, how much do you know about my epic tier class? Did you happen to hear anything about it at all?” Rowan asked.
The question was as much a test as it was an opening for their discussion, and Tamara did very little to offer up actionable intel.
“Not much, I’m afraid. Really, I must admit that your soldiers and servants are surprisingly loyal. All of my attempts to dig deeper into what class you earned when I helped you hunt down that epic were met with failure,” Tamara said.
An admission of weakness, a hint at her influence and a reminder of the favor she did for him all rolled into one. She was good, Rowan would readily admit, but that didn’t mean he had to play her game at all.
“[Spear of Unity]. The class I got is called [Spear of Unity], and it’s a little odd. Honestly, it’s not the ideal scenario I was hoping for. I wanted something more versatile with high damage potential, but I wasn’t offered a class that worked unless they also came with serious strings attached.”
Was he giving away too much information too quickly? Perhaps, but that would hopefully set her at ease and butter her up a little before he got to the core of what he was offering.
“Oho? Why, I am terribly flattered that you would be sharing details of your class so readily with me. Is there a problem with your class that I might be able to assist you with, then?” She leaned forward eagerly, running her tongue over her lips as she did so.
Rowan leaned back in his ridiculously comfy seat and fought off the urge to curse. Of course mages got all the most premium furniture on top of all their cosmic powers. The damn thing was probably enchanted to be extra comfortable and it did its job perfectly.
He was feeling more relaxed than ever, in spite of his attempts to keep his mind sharp. Everything in that room seemed design to distract and draw the eye.
“You could say that. You see, my class gives me eight slots for [Knights] I can pick. It gives me access to some of their experience and stats. I’ve already tested it out. I don’t ‘steal’ either from people. I just get a percentage based on what they earn and the stats they have. Guess the system just creates it all into existence, I don’t know.”
Tamara looked intrigued, but not overly engaged just yet. “And I suppose you would like me to take up one of those [Knight] slots? I can understand why. The stats of an epic tier such as myself would be a significant boon no matter the percentage you’d get.”
Rowan ignored the implied question of just how large of a fraction he’d get. He was there to negotiate and prove his sincerity, but if he was that open with all of his personal information he was sure to draw suspicion instead.
“Exactly. I’m not happy to admit it, but I couldn’t invest nearly as much into my mana pool as I’d like while leveling up. That’s left me with a very nice foundation for my boosted stats, of course, but I’d love to shore up some of my weaknesses. It’s not like there’s nothing in it for the [Knights] I choose.”
“I would love to hear more about that, of course,” Tamara led on, leaning even further forward. At that point, her chest was pressed against her desk suggestively, and the twinkle in her eye said she knew it.
Like every self-respecting engaged man would, Rowan kept his eyes firmly on the woman’s face.
“Any [Knight] I choose gets direct access to my card deck, and they can pick out one card from it. They then get a copy of that card that doesn’t count against their own deck limit. I haven’t tested yet what happens if I remove or upgrade any of my cards, but I really don’t think the system would make my [Knights] dependent on my whim. There are probably safeguards in place.”
“Hmmm, you would be surprised. There are plenty of classes that are rather ruthless to any subordinates the class designates through them.” Tamara drew back a little, like the suggestion of potential issues was enough to give her pause. In spite of that, there was little the woman could do to conceal the glint of greed that was now shining in her eyes.
She was a disgraced former noble cast out by both her family and the Mage Association. She didn’t have the kind of support most mages got to enjoy, and she definitely didn’t have a pool of inherited cards to draw on.
That meant that each and every card in her deck was something she’d earned. And for an independent class? Even one as well-established as her? Epic cards were the epitome or power and luxury. Rowan was willing to bet she didn’t have more than two.
And that was counting her newly minted class card.
“Well, I suppose we’ll find out. Really, though, this isn’t a monarch class, or anything in that vein. For the most part, the class description and its effects all point towards a more equal relationship between peers, rather than between a master and subordinate.”
“So, with one of your cards on the line, you would like to offer me a position as one of your [Knights]?” It was a question, and Tamara didn’t pretend like it wasn’t.
Instead, her eyes bore into his, searching for lies, traps and anything else that might hint as to his true intentions. “Correct,” Rowan said slowly. “I need to fill those slots badly before I’m forced to march against legends. I can’t spend months carefully vetting all the potential candidates. Besides, I’d like to think I can trust you.”
That, finally, earned him a beaming smile and got the woman to lean forward in interest again, but she didn’t give him an answer immediately. “You know, I really thought I’d be having a different conversation with you when you finally visited my tower.”
“How so?”
“Well, you see, [Spearman] isn’t typically a very prestigious and impressive class. Plenty of people would resent it. And while such choices are typically set in stone… well, for a skilled mage, few things are truly impossible.”
Rowan’s breath hitched in his throat, and he hated the way Tamara’s eyes smugly fixed on his own. “You mean…?”
“It is possible, with the right rituals, to change your class. Not much could be done about your heart card, of course. Still, a mage is an incredibly versatile class. You could have made it work. Of course, I acknowledge now that sacrificing your current path would be far too much of a waste to consider that.”
Rowan fought down the turmoil and the traces of desire. He wanted his magic but he tried to focus on what was important. On what the woman across from him was implying.
“You mean you would like to take me up on my offer, then?” Rowan managed to keep his voice from breaking or trembling, which was a massive win in his books.
“Correct. I’d love to take advantage of such a unique opportunity. I dare say I suspect what a couple of your cards are, and if I’m right, then I definitely won’t regret my decision.”
“Very well, then. If you truly feel that way, I’d be more than happy to accept you as one of my [Knights].” With that, Rowan sent the invitation and watched as the woman’s eyes lit up in delight.
Out of everyone he’d chosen as one of his [Knights], she was the one who made her selection the fastest.
The second she did, a rush of power thundered into Rowan’s veins.
Slowly at first, then all at once, a fundamental shift came over his mana. It became purer, more potent, like a whole new dimension was added to his intelligence and wisdom stats.
That’s when it finally hit him.
What he was getting was a percentage of a person’s stats, of course. However, that also covered stats that were improved, boosted by their class choice and honed to a razor’s edge.
A force of mana unlike anything he’d felt before build up within him in seconds, and his composure was sorely tested as he fought the urge to grin like a lunatic and test his mana pool then and there.
He still couldn’t fight down a smile, of course, but he’d take whatever wins he could get.
“This was, as I’d suspected, definitely worth it,” Tamara admitted happily, taking the hero aback by the sincerity of her words. “Now, if my hunch is correct, you’re not here solely to discuss your class and this wonderful exchange of ours?”
Rowan grinned fully now. The happiness over his improved stats, as well as the surety of the emotions he could feel drifting in from the mage, mingling into a sense of newfound confidence.
“You’re right. As I mentioned, we’ll need to tackle the legendary demons soon, and on that front, we could definitely use your help.”
Tamara matched his grin. “Let’s hear what you have to say.”