The Dwarven-Jura State

Hiroshime Masayuki here, again, with my party this time. We’re currently waiting in line for entry into the dwarven kingdom. The kingdom, situated inside of the mountain, had huge main gates of about three miles in height, with an also large but smaller gate, of half the size of the larger, built in. The smaller gate had a booth found on it’s right side, where travelers had their equipment and belongings skimmed thoroughly.

The booth had the same design as highway tollbooths found in my old world, but replaced the car blocks with an empty door frame. I was genuinely surprised to find a similar structure in this world, since I hadn’t seen a single modern invention in the village. As we neared the booth, I noticed the person sitting inside was a witch. Intrigued, I scanned the entrance carefully to find ‘morning dust’ embedded into the door’s wood frames. Morning dust was an especially hard item to find in the world, which had the power to erect an invisible barrier to block undead creatures when used right. When used wrongly, it had the power to strengthen undead beings.

The doorframe itself seemed to bear many rune symbols and a few extra spells for preventing certain creatures from crossing. The group of four lizardmen in front of us paid the entrance fee, and after a quick chant by the witch, a few runes disappeared—allowing the lizardmen to pass. After they crossed the door, the runes reappeared as we moved to the booth.

“Ooh great…humans.” She said in a bored tone with a hint of displeasure.

“What’s with the attitude?” Aoyama asked sharply, to which she answered, “Don’t give me any of that crap.”

Of my party, only Petra had an unfazed expression on her face.

“Sigh, you must be new to the Dwarven-Jura State. I’m the Rune locker, the gate keeper around here. Simply put, I allow entrance to outsiders after those dwarves over there…” she pointed to the left side of the door frame, “Check and verify that your belongings aren’t dangerous. And of course, the entrance fee is paid.”

“What was up with the ‘ooh humans’ thing?” I asked.

“You are…no, they are all half human and since humans are the only acknowledged beings with no repelling items in the world, you cannot be kept out of our nation or trapped if you commit a crime. That is why I dislike their species.”

“…”, I was speechless. I knew she had to be good at her job but identifying my friends’ mixed blood was impressive. According to Six, with the exception of Petra, their non-human genes were too weak to be identified by most of the living beings in the world.

“Why did you say ‘they’? Masayuki is also a Halfling.”

The witch turned to Petra with a sarcastic smile and tone, “Of course, you are definitely right. I, the Witch of the Runes, who has been here for almost three hundred years, identifying all manner of races, has nothing compared to the knowledge possessed by you, an obviously too young child.”

“Didn’t answer my question.”

“…Oh, I like you. Anyway, ‘that’…” She said as she pointed at me, “is not a halfling. It’s very strange. It emi—”

“I would prefer you not refer to my friend as ‘it’ or ‘that’.”

“…Yeah, I like you. He emits a demonic aura but there’s something else.”

“Hmm…”

“Interesting…”

“Could you guys stop looking at me? Sigh, how much for entry?”

“For the party, twenty four copper coins.”

“You are charging us double because of our human genes, right?”

“So it—so he is smart.”

Call me ‘it’ one more time…

After paying the fee, we waited a few seconds for the dwarf guards to peruse our equipment but they never did. The witch gave a quick answer, not really though. She said it was because we were adventurers, any damage we caused could easily be traced to us because of the badges we wore. We entered the door into the dwarf nation soon after. Inside we noticed another door to our left, the door frame and booth behind us had disappeared though. The same witch could be seen inside the other booth, granting exit to demi humans and dwarves that wished to leave.

“This place has great magic enhancements.”

“Yes, I agree, we could learn a lot here.” Petra added, obviously captivated by the ruins on the gate.

We walked toward the directions stand ahead of us and located a few cheap inns. The dwarf kingdom was as large as an average human nation, maybe even larger than the Kingdom of Lanburel—which was considered the largest human nation to date. It seemed to stretch out forever and had the designs of a modern metropolis in Japan. It was far more advance than Sodorra village and according to the magic sign under the statue of the dwarf king located in the center of the capital, it hosted no less than four billion inhabitants.

We had to go straight past the center of the capital, a few miles (approximately four hundred) before the king’s castle, to reach the residential district. The main one covered the whole east of the nation but the one’s mainly set up for adventurers and travelers was north west of the statue. We reached the cheapest inn available after six or so hours, even though we had used a few teleportation stands to move.

I had only nine gold pieces in my personal space after we checked in to an inn run by a lesser lightning spirit, “Cray Zee’s Inn” it was called. At the sight of the sign at the top, Aoyama asked, “What’s up with inns and their crappy names?”

“It could be that they aren’t aware of it, or…maybe cheap inns are stuck with the terrible names.” I answered.

“Why don’t we stay in a good inn with a proper name?”

“You can spend your money staying in a ‘proper’ inn then.” I scoffed.

“Why didn’t you save more money then? You wanted us on your journey, so you should have saved enough for us to live well.”

“Okay first of all, I never asked any of you to come, except maybe Petra because of the whole slave thing. She can’t kill or cause me harm so I was safe but I couldn’t trust her with you two while I was away. You and Hana are the ones who asked to tag along. Second, I’ve never liked wasting money on relaxing beds and such, it dulls the instincts. I prefer sleeping in common beds and common rooms to keep my instincts sharp. Third,—up, up, up, let me finish,” I quickly shot down his attempt at interrupting me. “I put together extra funds when you guys persisted on joining me and that is even going to your weapon and armor upgrades. Finally, I do not, want to hear this bull from a person who’s never fought a monster.”

The last point was because of his skill but I still let him have it. Aoyama had the skill {Valor of Luck}, which did everything for him. It kind of made him the luckiest adventurer I knew as he could accidentally trip in a cave and set off traps that killed his opponents, or reflect sunlight into a minotaur’s eyes which made the beast step back over the cliff we were fighting on to its death just by raising his sword.

After going off at Aoyama’s remarks, I left to my room for the rest of the evening. After toying with a few ideas I had, I took a bath in my bathroom—that’s right, my bathroom…no sharing the public one with other residents like I did in Sodorra, this one was in my room and was all mine.—then went to bed after an hour of mana focusing.

Also something I did when I was alone, mana focusing was what I did with all my left over mana at the end of the day. I manifested half of the leftover mana into different shapes and tested out different cases with ordinary items—for example, I could manifest a sword with my mana and compare it to an average steel sword or wood sword, depending on the situation. Testing for weaknesses in all my equipment and items was a fun pass time for me, but one I only did in private.

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The remaining leftover mana was used to strengthen my equipment or boost my items on hand. It was a well-known fact that a health potion could progress to a higher level if enough mana was added. I tried a few times to no avail but that didn’t stop me, on the contrary, it pushed my curiosity to greater heights. I constantly failed in Sodorra but since this was a newer city(Capn Ta’ir, the capital of the Dwarven-Jura State), I gained newer motivation to pursue my research.

After failing that night as well, I fell asleep with a smile on my face. The whole ‘New city, new results’ idea I had was funny to me when I failed as usual.

The following morning, I woke up as early as I usually did, but since we had just arrived in the dwarf kingdom—and I couldn’t enter and leave at will—I decided to roam the special items part of the shopping district. As I roamed, I noticed that the kingdom stretched out far past the normal size of the mountain and after inquiring about it from one shop owner, I received an abridged explanation. Apparently, one of the gods used a god level spell to create a new dimension which had a size of one fourteen thousandth of the planet.

Normally that wouldn’t really be impressive, but for the fact that this new world was twenty one times the size of our old world and continuously expanded as the levels of mana and aura grew. Six explained early on that it was to prevent any two original beings from destroying the world when their power became great enough.

Most of the shops sold rare items from greater health potions and greater mana potions to legendary items like complete health potions and complete mana potions. A few of them had rare weapons, burner runes—single use runes that can be equipped on weapons, armor or any non-living things—and many other battle equipment. I couldn’t decide what to do with the time we spent in the dwarf kingdom but after wandering for a few hours, I hit upon my answer.

A dwarven crafter I asked a few questions, gave me my answer. “Any weapon can have runes embedded into it, depending on the material it was made from of course.” He said.

What he explained went something like this: steel cannot take any runes, mana imbued steel(also known as ma-steel) could take a single rune—but it couldn’t be high level, only mid and low—mythril could handle two mid-level runes—or one high level, or three low level runes—gold could handle the same as mythril, orichalcum took two high level runes and so on. Surprisingly, silver could handle up to eight high runes while iron could take up to three. The highest rune capacity was held by adamantryx, which could take twelve high runes or four god level runes.

As soon as I gained the new information, I bought a few runes of different variety to run experiments with later. When my curiosity rose, I rushed to the nearest health potions store to inquire about them. As it turned out, pouring just mana into the potion did nothing. The dwarf woman told me that the plant used in making the potion should be dissolved into the potion before any mana was added. She gave me tips helpfully, perhaps too helpfully…

“Why are you helping me out anyway?”

“Well I assume you just want to know for knowing sake, no fool would actually try to enhance a health potion.” She answered. “It costs way too much mana to upgrade even a low health potion to a simple health potion.”

She went on to explain some common knowledge she knew after I convinced her that I was of a hidden human village with no great educational background. “Our nation and that Holy Kingdom to the south west have been siphoning the mana flowing into the Forest of the Fox for years. That’s how we create and export health potions so easily…” She explained, “unfortunately, I don’t know too much about it. You’d have to ask the high ranking members of the nation for more, but I don’t think that’s a good idea. If I were you, I’d stick to buying and using the potions as they are.”

From there, I asked a little about the plants needed and the mana requirements for upgrading a potion’s level. When she realized that I wasn’t going to leave, she asked for payment before giving me any more information. I handed her a few silver pieces, which got her going in no time.

“Well, about the plants needed, I have no idea. It depends on the potion you bought since there are four different plants used to make those. You should look around for appraisal spells, gets things done quicker and I see you’ve got more than enough money to buy one.”

“Of course…I should have thought of that sooner. It would also save me money instead of relying on appraisal shops.”

“Hm, yes, but as for the mana, that’ll be tricky.”

“How so?”

“Word is, the Great Fox Spirit gives the mana out freely to both nations. Supposedly, he wishes for no one to touch the forest at all so he keeps the mana flowing to the nearest nations to prevent anyone from searching the forest for healing plants and such. I just think that’s an excuse to kill any beings that enter the forest without gathering negative—”

“The mana?!”

“Huh? Oh erh…as I was saying, you should let your friends give you their mana when you try to upgrade a potion. You need around five hundred mana points for a low potion, and a thousand for a normal one. That’s about as much as I know.”

To me at the time, that was far lower than my lowest reserve of leftover mana. It was so infinitesimal that I could never imagine the woman’s mana level. I wasted an average of around four thousand mana points everyday just hovering over my bed with my flight spell or toying with some of dad’s spells on insects and rodents.

“Very well, thank you.”

“Hehe, thank you for your business.”

With that, I was done searching for clues for my experiments. I went back around a corner to a spell store and luckily enough, they had a mid-level appraisal spell. After purchasing the spell and a nice dagger I found, I headed home. On the way home, I assimilated the spell into the dagger then checked my balance. It was definitely afternoon, meaning it took me less than a day to use up five of the nine gold coins I had in my personal space. After paying two copper pieces at each of the three teleportation stands, I arrived at the inn with even less funds.

“Heyy, Hiro, you missed breakfast and lunch. What happened today?” Petra met and asked me at the inn’s entrance.

Lucky for me, I paid for the food as well. Else this would be troublesome. I just need to ignore Petra’s questions and act casual. I don’t need Aoyama’s crap right now.

“I’ve just been out, learning and stuff. Have you guys been here the whole day?”

“Well yeah, you have all the gold that we were planning on spending on equipment upgrades.”

Dammit, think fast…come on…oh! Got it!

For some reason I felt nervous around her. I had never really felt any anxiety or nervousness around anyone other than dad.

“Where are the others? I was checking out a few weapon stores for you guys, like a good leader.”

“That’s great, they’re upstairs in their rooms. I’ll go get them now so we can—”

“NO! Umm, I mean no, not now anyways, the best ones are closed now…”

“Now? Before evening?”

“Yes! Exactly!”

“Did you forget that I’m also half demon? I know you’re lying, what happened?”

“Ugh, fine. I spent a little on some items and information and now I don’t think there’ll be enough for sufficient upgrade to your gear.”

“You couldn’t have used that much, could you?”

“Five gold pieces.”

“Fi—?! What?! How the hell did you manage to spend…whoo…” she exhaled, “never mind that, it’s your money anyway, but five gold pieces? I thought you were the conservative one.”

“Haah…” I sighed deeply, “how do I make enough money quickly, I don’t want to hear Aoyama bee-ing about this.”

“Hm? Ah, yes, the ungrateful guy. How you coped with him for these years I’ll never understand…” By then we were sitting at a table to the far west of the inn and I was watching Petra sip the lemonade she had ordered, before continuing “but lucky for you, I have the answer.”

She stood up, ran up the stairs to her room and returned a few minutes later with a flier.

“Hope you didn’t sip my ade, take a look at this.”

It was a dwarven flier I noticed near the entrance of the mountain. At the time, I paid no attention to it but now that it was presented to me, it looked really intriguing.

“The Jura Ditch Games? The latest run of the dwarven sport run held once a year is currently in the Dwarven-Jura State for a limited time. Come, compete, survive and a few gold pieces(ten) are yours, win and you will receive fifty gold pieces as a reward. All races of the mid regions are invited to this extreme event.” I read. “Huh? It doesn’t give too much information about the real events though, do you expect the party to join this possibly dangerous game?”

“Huh? Nooo, of course not…” She paused to take a long sip from her lemonade before continuing, “I expect you to join the possibly dangerous game.”

“What?!”

“Calm down, would you? You are the one who doesn’t want to hear Aoyama bitc…eaking? Beaking, beaking around because of your spending spree, so you should join the games alone.”

“Sigh, that’s actually better. If the whole party joined, Aoyama and Hana would probably claim most of the gold…”

“…Even though they do the least work?”

“Exactly, haha.”

“Haha...”

We joked around a bit before we resumed with our discussion. After forming a plan for the next day, we went around the city, the capital city(Capn Ta’ir) to be exact, asking questions about the previous games. The news wasn’t good.

Since the beginning of the games over half a century ago, there had only been one winner to date—to make matters worse, that wasn’t really a winner so much as a survivor. –She turned to stone about a week after she escaped leading a few to believe that was a monster’s doing. Since then, many people bought cyclops eyes whenever the games came around, to gain petrification immunity.

After stocking up on a few supplies with the remaining gold we had, and securing a cyclops eye, we walked back to the inn for dinner. On the way there, we started talking about other gold making ideas, but the only quick route was the ditch games so we had to push forward.

After having dinner with the whole party, I went to Petra’s room to form a few plans with her, in case of emergencies and other situations. When I was sure I had covered all my bases, I left the room as quietly as possible—assuming the others were asleep—only to run into Hana in the corridor.

“Masayuki? What are you doing up here?”

My room was on the second floor, Aoyama’s room the third and the girls on the fourth, I couldn’t make any good excuses—or bad ones like: I got confused or lost. Since I praised myself for being a quick thinker, I found a solution easily.

“Oh, Hana, um…I was just…{Mindscape}.”

I put her to sleep smoothly, then carried her to her bed. After tucking her in, I left to my room for the night.