2317 AMU, 7th week of Joy, Monday:

Central continent, The Tower of Magnus, Bed Chambers:

I seem to be having the craziest dream.

“Magnus!”

A frog with the craziest beard is shouting my name repeatedly.

“Magnus!”

Quite bizarre indeed.

“Magnus your breakfast is ready!”

Ah, I think I understand what’s happening here.

I promptly cast a spell of awakening only to find a rather grumpy looking old man.

He stands firm in an upright posture. Despite his old age his body still retains its sturdy

figure from his ex-explorer days.

He looks disapprovingly at me while holding a tray supporting a rather “Healthy” looking breakfast.

“Good morning George.”

“Sir I thought we agreed for you to stop casting self-induced sleeping magic on yourself, it’s rather troublesome.”

I can’t imagine myself agreeing to something so disadvantageous!

“Are you sure I agreed to something like that?”

He finishes setting up the breakfast table and cutlery then proceeds to open the windows and prepares my robe.

“Yesterday I offered a deal where I cooked for you steak with sizzling lizard tongue, on the condition that you agreed to discontinue with using sleep magic on yourself. Your response was ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah.’”

Damn I vaguely remember something like that being said…

“Come on George. It’s not like I have anything to do today.”

Georges left eyebrow has started to twitch and a dangerous aura begins to permeate from him.

“Are you sure?”

Am I sure? Hmmm, the magical theory submission date is today, but I’m pretty sure I finished that and handed it in yesterday.

“Yep I’m sure.”

I nod to myself approvingly.

“What about your theory submission?”

He looks at me with a somewhat doubting impression. How unreliable does he think I am?

“I completed it yesterday evening and handed it to administrative staff accordingly.”

I look at my breakfast despairingly; the eerily blue soup emits a somewhat toxic aroma. Do I really have to eat this?

“Umm why is the soup blue?”

I stab at my food with some amount of concern.

“To prevent the prickle onions from reacting with the grusslebumps I mixed in a little Wormstool.”

Wormstool! This old geezer’s sense of taste must be defective!

“I’m sorry but I’m highly allergic to Wormstool.”

Hah! I activate my trap card!

It seems super effective, as anticipated he proceeds to remove the bowl and heads towards the trash bin.

“Is that so? That’s truly tragic. It appears that all we have left in stock is grimsdirt and some wildmorts. I guess if I use some frogjuice and ticklekurt I could get the two to stabilize into a semi liquefied pudding.”

*Gulp*

Just before he throws the soup into the trash I jump out of my bed and grab the bowl out of his hands. I proceed to wolf down the soup as fast as I could.

“Did you say Wormstool? Ah I thought you said worm gruel. I’m not allergic to Wormstool at all.”

I give out a forced dry laugh in an attempt to shift away all suspicion from my earlier comments about allergies.

“Oh that’s strange I thought for sure I saw you eating worm gruel at the last festival of the worms.”

The last time I went to the festival of the worms was 2 years ago. To think he would remember something from all that time ago.

“Are you sure you’re not mistaking it for slug trail. They can seem quite similar at first glance.”

He starts to think carefully about the nights events. Can he really remember it in that much detail?

“I suppose it might be possible for slug trail to look like Worm gruel with the right stock.”

Phew. Fortunately I managed to save the situation from getting dangerous.

“Well anyway I think I will head outside for a spot of fresh air.”

George helps me get changed into my robe then accompanies me down the spiral staircase to the bottom of my tower.

After George opens the front entrance, I attempt to walk out of the tower, I instead find myself walking quite painfully into an invisible wall. Being caught off-guard I find myself landing quite firmly on my lower half.

“Owww, Wait what?”

It was quite unexpected.

“Sir it appears someone has erected some strange formations around the tower concealed by some sort of mysterious magic.”

Normally a magical barrier would be quite simple to undo. However with the concealment spell it becomes a bit more troublesome.

Is there a reason why I’m being targeted specifically? Something tells me I’m forgetting something.

“George you haven’t poisoned some magistrate while I was sleeping have you?”

Although I trust George, I can’t help but feel that if he was in an experimental mood with his cooking he could unintentionally cause uproar.

“No sir.”

I see. If it not George who has antagonised someone then that defaults to me. However As a magic theorist I’m notorious for keeping myself holed up inside my tower. It’s been two years since my last thesis and that wasn’t even noteworthy.

I’ve never heard of the council going to such measures, let alone hours before the actual due time. If I hadn’t successfully handed in my thesis then the formalities alone would postpone my forced resignation by at least a month.

As I was deep in thought I hear maniacal laughter a little distance away from the tower. The voice is not recognisable.

“I had never considered that Magnus the failure was actually such a genius. If it wasn’t for my curiosity I wouldn’t even have bothered to steal your thesis.”

What my thesis? Stolen?

“What are you on about? It’s impossible for anyone to access my thesis it was sorted and placed in the forbidden vaults of the archive.”

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

The archives should be under lock and key, with the key only being held by the grand magistrate himself. With the meticulously encoded syntax made through the collaboration of the ten great wizards, it should be impossible to break within at least the next ten thousand centuries.

“I never entered the archives…”

What? Perhaps he’s made a mistake?

“Well there must be some mix up, I handed my thesis in last evening, so it’s impossible for you to have it now. Besides how would you even go about stealing it?”

I hear more laughter from this ominous nameless voice.

“I’m afraid it is you who is mistaken. You haven’t left the tower once in the last seventy days. I’ve had every tower under close watch, even yours. I tried sending men in to investigate in the dead of the night many of times, but all attempts on your secrets were in vain.”

What? Not left tower? Sending men to spy on me? Ok now I’m sure he’s got the wrong person.

“If it wasn’t for the invisibility formulae I stole I probably never would've managed to get your masterpiece of a thesis.”

“I’m afraid you must’ve got the wrong tower. I went last night at 11 pm to the Magic society processing quarters and had the thesis verified and filed away by a rather peculiar bearded frog.”

…

…

Ah shit.

“HaHaHa! What a fool you are! However that hasn’t changed the facts. After reading through your research I decided that you could pose quite the threat to my plans.”

Threat? Me? I’m the most indecisive, uncaring, unambitious wizard to ever stumble out of magical academy with a diploma. If he decided to destroy the world, as long as he left me alone I wouldn’t give a donkey’s uncle!

“I feel like you have misinterpreted my interests somewhat.”

I hear more maniacal laughter. What’s up with all the evil laughs? I mean how has no one noticed him being evil, if he laughs like this all the time?

“Unfortunately your ploy will not work on me! Fear not though, as I have spared no expense in making your death as fitting as possible, you and your tower are to be disassembled by your own magic formula! Your mana will be used to fuel my ambitions!”

…

What? Is he suicidal? Oh shit! did I forget to write the conversion ratio!?

“Wait you don’t understand! The convers-“

I was cut off…

“There’s no use trying to fool me now foolish wizard!”

I’m not sure what magical storage device he has the formula hooked up to. But whatever it is, it won’t be able to hold such an insane influx of mana.

“Stop! You’re making a big mistake!”

He seems undeterred by my pleas.

“With this magic formula, I, Thomas Brimstone will rule the world!”

With the small sound of a magic array being triggered I tightly close my eyes and hope that if

I get reincarnated I get an easy life.

…

It seems kind of quiet.

…

Perhaps I’m already dead

…

I wonder where I went wrong.

…

I’m too scared to open my eyes.

“Sir why are you keeping your eyes closed for such a long time?”

I open my eyes.

“Huh we’re not dead?”

George looks to me with a curious expression.

“You mean this was not expected?”

Expected? I expected us to become the catalyst of some unimaginable explosion.

“Not at all expected.”

George looks towards me dissatisfied.

“It looks like whatever you theorised was incorrect.”

He seems to care more about my theory being incomplete than us nearly being killed by that mad man.

I look outside the tower entrance only to find us in the middle of some remote desert.

“It looks like rather than turning matter into mana it merely gets transported somewhere.”

George looks at me wide eyed in disbelief.

“What do you mean matter into mana?”

I enjoy the fact that George is so surprised by my brilliance. But isn’t he a little too surprised? I mean what did he think I was doing in all this time?

“It’s exactly as I said. It is a formula that converts matter within it directly into mana.”

The idea of a magical formula being able to produce mana is often thought of as a myth or legend, the pursuit of mad men and doomed souls. But I was successful!

“Oh ok.”

What?

Don’t just accept it so matter of factly!

Where did the surprise and awe go from a moment ago!

Don’t just go and wonder off into the desert as if what I did wasn’t incredible!

I even had to discover and invent an entire new way to formulate magic arrays!

*Sigh*

I think next time I will just sleep more and submit less tiresome thesis’s if this is all it amounts to.

It looks like he’s started climbing up the side of one of the huge sand dunes. Is he not at least curious how I did it?

“Where are you wondering off to?”

After reaching the top he turns around and calls me.

“Hurry up and come up here! We will need to find food, our grimsdirt and wildmorts will only last us a few days. After that we will need to find a way to stay starvation in order to survive.”

Shivers run down my spine.

George has a rather unique idea of survival. I’m not sure I would be able to survive stomaching that food for even a day!

“Wait up, I’m right behind you!”

Running with all my might I try to catch up to George at the top of the sand dune.

*huff* *huff* *Breath*

How did he make this look so easy to climb?

After quite a while I finally make it up to the top before collapsing of exhaustion.