Keith looked around, and the scene that greeted his eyes was very peaceful. There was another barricade, but it was located quite far from the gate. There were lots of trees around them, with a lot of bushes. It felt like they had arrived inside a forest. There were multiple roads here as well, 2 were going towards the gates, but they both headed towards an opposite direction. There were a lot less people than at the gate of Renewa, and only two people stood nearby the gate.
“Would the 2 of you please report your names?” One of the two spoke up. He sounded very bored, as if he had been repeating that question for quite some time. He looked to be around 40 years old. He was wearing a long, blue robe, and even though he had sounded bored, he was smiling amiably.
“We’re Dillim and Keith from Lirix,” Dillim answered. Keith was surprised by Dillim’s answer. He had heard multiple times that he should hide his identity for now. Dillim had said that maybe the 7th prince would send an assassin for him. When Keith asked Dillim if he was afraid, he only snorted and said it would be a bother to dirty himself.
The man who asked for their identities suddenly stood straight. A shine had appeared in his eyes and he sighed with relief. “Ah, it’s actually Lirix’s 13th Prince. I have been waiting for the two of you for a whole day already, but I actually only expected the two of you to arrive tomorrow. Welcome to Nizlon!”
“I figured they wouldn’t risk letting us go to the academy on our own,” Dillim said towards the man who had just spoken up. “How long will it take to reach the academy?” If Keith and he were to suddenly disappear within Erelath, it might give Lirix a justified reason for the initiation of a war, Dillim thought. Other countries might even aid Lirix if they heard Erelath made a prince disappear.
“Ah,” the man exclaimed. He then seemed to calculate a little in his head, and spoke up: “If we use regular walking speed… it should be around 10 days.” He chuckled when he said that after thinking for a while. He must have used some methods to travel faster than normal, resulting in him having to calculate the time for a regular speed, Keith thought.
“Come, I shall lead the way,” the man said, waving his hand towards Keith while he started moving towards the road. They took a few steps and the man suddenly laughed and spoke up again: “Ah, how rude of me!” He said, while turning around. “Please allow me to introduce myself first, I am called Rinza Litmar.” He lightly introduced himself with a slight smile. “I am a mana master of the National Magic Academy, and coincidently, also the one who takes care of all the internal affairs of the academy.” He used grand words right after each other, and it seemed like he thought it must’ve sounded great. But when he saw the indifferent look on Dillim’s face, and a hint of confusion in Keith’s eyes, he just sighed and continued walking. While he was walking, Keith thought he could hear something that sounded like a monologue: ‘Hmph,’ he heard the man snort. ‘I even came all the way here myself and handed all those tasks to my subordinates.’
“Dillim, what rank is a mana master?” Keith asked Dillim after hearing Rinza call himself as one.
“Oh,” Dillim said, turning towards Keith. “It’s one rank below a grand spell caster, which is on the same rank as a grand sword master. That means a mana master is on the same rank as a sword master.” That was the explanation Dillim provided Keith. “There’s an average of around 15 grand spell casters or grand sword masters per country. But regularly, in a country with around 100 million people, there are a few hundred mana masters or sword masters.”
Keith turned silent again, and together with Dillim, they followed the self-proclaimed mana master, Rinza. If one were to look carefully, they would be able to spot a hint of determination within Keith’s eyes. ‘I’ll definitely, definitely reach the grand spell caster-level!’ His eyes seemed to say. But alongside that deep rooted determination, a bit of inexplicable anger had manifested itself too, it was just hidden completely.
They continued walking alongside the road, and passed the road stop with relative ease after the guards saw Rinza. They kept traveling, and somehow the scenery got even nicer. The trees that were located around the teleport gate of Nizlon were all smaller than the enormous trees that had started to appear here. Keith had never seen anything like it, so he was constantly immersed in his surroundings. The road had started to get a little rougher too; making it harder for Keith to keep up. They had been walking for around three hours, until Keith kept falling behind.
Rinza decided to take a small break, so they stopped walking. He then briefly looked around, and after seeing something in particular, he looked content. Then he said to Keith: “Alright kid, pay close attention. This is what a wind focused mana master can do!”
He made Dillim and Keith stand to the side, and then he raised his hand. The next moment, it felt like Rinza channeled some internal energy, which suddenly appeared at his hand. The surroundings around his hand lit up, and a powerful white energy was forming. It wasn’t the same as the white magic the gate mage, or the man who had healed Keith, had used. That type of elemental energy had been a very thick and dense, bright, white light. But the scene in front of Keith differed from that. The elemental energy around Rinza’s hand consisted out of a vortex of short gusts of thin, white energy. If the other energy could be compared to a peaceful lake of water, then this was a violent storm of wind.
A split second later, the gusts of white energy –which had been flowing around Rinza’s hand, suddenly condensed together in front of him. The next moment, a huge blade of what looked to be wind shot out towards a huge tree. The wind connected to the tree, and seemingly without any effort, passed right through. Keith couldn’t believe his eyes. It had only been a split second from when the man had raised his hand, but an instant later, he saw an extremely big amount of energy pass right through the tree. For a short while everything was silent, except for the noises of the wind blade cutting through everything in its path. The wind blade disappeared from sight, along with the huge amount of noise it had produced. Keith was even more surprised by now, because he thought nothing had actually happened after the wind blade was shot –it had simply moved through everything. But then, every object the wind blade had met, slowly started moving. Everything that was located under wind blade didn’t move, but everything above was already falling down. A lot of branches and wood had snapped, the upper side of the trees were falling while the lower parts remained standing. A scene of huge destruction filled Keith’s eyes. Thundering sounds of trees falling could be heard. He didn’t want to think about what would happen if it had hit a human.
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“There we go,” Rinza said while moving his hand a second time.
Some more elemental energy, what seemed to be wind energy, manifested itself around his hand again. It had all disappeared after he shot the wind blade, but now it appeared again. This time, there weren’t as many gusts of energy swirling around his hand. The space wasn’t distorted as much as the previous time as well. Rinza waved his hand, and the elemental energy disappeared from his hand, reappearing at one of the trees he had cut down. He moved his hand and a part of a tree started to slowly float, then it suddenly started to drift towards them. Rinza dropped the trunk in front of them with a loud ‘bang’ sound. He then simply sat down on the trunk with a self-content smile.
“Look!” He exclaimed. “Now we have a place to sit at least, that’ll make resting a lot more comfortable!” Dillim just shook his head. He had seemingly seen through Rinza’s act to show off. He could’ve achieved the same thing without all that effort, so clearly the only reason to use a spell like that was to show off.
Keith also sat down, but he was still looking at the path the wind blade had traversed. Everything in its path had been cut down, so only a bunch of half-left trees remained standing in that direction.
Then they waited for a while, and let Keith recover his breath. During this time, Keith’s complexion improved a little bit again, but he still seemed a little silent. Rinza was a little awkward, and after showing off he simply remained quiet too. That, alongside Dillim being Dillim, resulted in a quiet, awkward atmosphere. After sometime, Keith broke the silence, without having sensed the awkward mood that had lingered before. “I just remembered, but Dillim, you said something about gate mages being foolish, right?” Keith thought back to all the times he had encountered magic after being shocked by the wind blade’s might. He had then recalled what Dillim said, but he had never actually received an answer.
Rinza’s eyes shined for a split second when he heard Keith say this, but he remained quiet nonetheless. He too, shifted his attention towards Dillim and awaited his answer together with Keith.
“Ah yes,” Dillim began. “I first have to talk a little about the teleport gate’s usage to fully explain it though. It seems every teleport gate has its own element. If a mage infuses the teleport gate with a certain element, then the gate will teleport everyone to a gate with the corresponding element,” Dillim explained. He then checked if Keith had any signs of confusion, but it seemed like Keith understood. He nodded, and continued: “Good. That means that if you want to be able to use the gate efficiently, you need someone who can infuse the gate with different elements right?” He asked Keith. But without waiting for an answer he continued. “Otherwise you would have to use one mage, for every possible location, because every gate has a different element. But here’s the thing, every gate mage can use all the elements the gate can use. But somehow, when mages are able to use multiple elements, they won’t be able to fully use them. The more elements a mage can use, the less power he can exhibit. So even if someone is able to control 5 elements, he’ll only be able to use one fifth of his full power for every element. You’ll generally see some people who use 2 elements, but more than that, and they won’t be able to ever master advanced spells, because they won’t have enough of elemental powers for that element.” Finishing his long explanation, he turned to look at Rinza. He probably hoped to have Rinza explain it in more detail.
Rinza saw how Dillim’s fierce gaze was directed at him, and he couldn’t help but to slightly swallow. He then quickly chuckled and started to talk, “A– Ah, Yes. You know quite a lot for a warrior, I must say. Is any of you familiar with what a mana core looks like? You can compare it to a balloon. People aren’t able to absorb raw mana, so they have to first convert raw mana to a specific elemental energy of their choice, and then they can fill their mana core with that energy.” He looked at Dillim and Keith, and seeing how they remained quiet, continued his explanation. “People are only able to use the mana they have accumulated inside their mana core, but the mana core’s volume is limited. So, if one fills their mana core with only fire elemental energy, then they will be able to use the full contents of the mana core. This results in people being able to use advanced spells, because of the high amount of elemental mana they have accumulated,” Rinza explained. “The mana core will even slowly change its color to the type of elemental energy gathered.” He saw a strange look upon Dillim’s and Keith’s face, and he realized he had wandered quite far from the original subject. “Ahum,” he awkwardly coughed and continued: “If people were to fill their mana core with all kinds of different elements, then the mana core would be completely filled with a variety of elemental energies. But the amount of elemental energy of every individual element would be very low, because every element is occupying its own space. That is why those mages will only be able to use extremely low amounts of power. It’s simply because the amount of elemental mana they have accumulated for every element is too low.”
Keith’s eyes flickered with understanding, and Dillim simply nodded. Rinza happily chuckled after seeing this; he had gotten an opportunity to show off his wisdom.
“Alright, we’ve rested long enough,” Dillim said, standing up. He then looked at Rinza, “Which direction are we going in now?”
“Ah, we can take the main road, but it’ll be slightly longer. I propose we take a shortcut through the forest,” Rinza answered. “Even though there are quite a lot of magical beasts, they generally avoid people.” He then threw a look at Dillim, and seeing his bulging muscles, he couldn’t help but to add: “And if we come across a few beasts, they should pose no threat to us.”
“Magical beasts? Do they absorb mana?” Keith asked, to no one in particular.
“Haha,” Rinza laughed, “That’s quite an intriguing concept actually. You know about mana’s destructive power, right? If it enters the human body, without entering the mana core, it will simply destroy everything,” he explained. “The same counts for magical beasts, if mana were to enter their bodies, they would explode. That’s why they also absorb World energy instead of mana. They don’t have things like a mana core, so they couldn’t even store it if they wanted to.” He then thought of something, and spoke up again. “There are actually some magical beasts that use mana. But they are extremely rare, and they’re also extremely powerful.”
“What kind of magical beasts?”
Dillim started to grimace; he knew what kind of answer Rinza would provide Keith with. It also had him remember some rather unpleasant memories.
Like dragons, or hydras.” Rinza said. It was as if he could taste the destructive power they could bring forth, just by saying those words.