Tristan

The camp of the Fianna seemed to change even more rapidly than the Unterberg did, and that was considering how comparatively mundane it was.

“Mundane” in the sense that the place itself lacked inherent magic, not in the sense that it was ordinary, which it decidedly wasn’t.

It was just that the Untersberg was flooded with magical energy and supernatural effects, with the illumination that came from nowhere lighting every nook and yet vanishing mysteriously whenever you wanted to sleep just being part of it. What really defined it in my mind though was the mountain spirits that constantly reshaped and/or expanded it, creating what would hopefully, in due time, become the ultimate fortress.

This place, on the other hand, had been reshaped purely by human hands … granted, oftentimes, those hands were wielding spells or advanced power tools that might as well be magic if you compared them to baseline human capabilities, but still, human hands.

I’d actually managed to find a picture of what the camp had looked like on day one online, it had been a simple, well, camp. Wood palisade and cloth tents and all. Serviceable, but a few centuries out of date.

What I’d teleported to after leaving behind Merlin and Arthur could not be further from that.

A combination of trees grown into unnatural yet flowing shapes, acting as columns and supports for the concrete walls that seemed to have poured themselves into their final shape without ever having required any kind of mold.

The end result was a three-storey construct that was half “fantasy elf architecture,” half 20th-century brutalism. It was … a statement, that much was certain, though not an intentional one, I suspected.

“Impressive, isn’t it?” a barely accented but familiar voice rang out from behind me.

I turned around, coming face to face with Fionn’s son, Ossian. We’d met for like two seconds while setting up for the third Challenge and never talked again. And had this been a few weeks ago, I definitely wouldn’t have remembered his name, but [Objective Recordkeeping] was useful in basically everything I did.

“Very,” I nodded. “How did you build it?”

“Magic,” Ossian told me with a mischievous grin, then relented after a couple of seconds, without requiring further prompting. “I have plant growth Skills to shape trees, and earth-shaping abilities can hold liquid concrete in the shape of walls while water and heat spells dry it.”

Okay, that was a really cool trick. I nodded, impressed.

“How long did that take?”

“A week,” Ossian said.

Apparently, the Mandln in the Untersberg were still faster, but they were supernatural beings who worked without rest or pause, and they couldn’t be used anywhere else.

“How about amenities?” I asked. “Do you have spells for that?”

Ossian chuckled. “We don’t live there; we moved into a hotel a while ago. That’s going to be our new magic school.”

Oh … now the “brutalism” design aspect made more sense. So did the complete and utter lack of windows. If the whole affair wasn’t reinforced to the nines, the first time someone miscast a spell, there’d be considerable collateral damage.

“Speaking of school, do you have students?” I wondered.

“Just a few,” Ossian admitted. “Magical potential is rare, and weak, in this day. Yours and your sister’s might have been granted by a Skill, but it was potent even before you started boosting it. But it seems like Classes that grant it are hard to get.”

Hmm… I guess that meant that legions of warmages were out of the question. But there had to be tricks we could still pull. And I’d had some other ideas.

“What would you think about creating specialists, then?” I asked. “We could go through my list of spells, and pick specific combinations I can pass along to the students to form the basis for what they’re going to do later.”

“We should go through mine and Father’s spell lists as well,” Ossian added. “And if there’s something you need to teach, we can delay the lessons so you can use your [Knowledge Trade] to acquire the spells.”

“That should work nicely.”

I hadn’t even thought of that but yeah, we could craft custom sets of spells within the bounds of what I could transfer in a single use of [Knowledge Trade].

As we talked, we eventually migrated to the “lobby” of the school building, which was basically just the reception room of any doctor’s office I’d ever been in, just, you know, with the same bizarre “elven wood shaping and brutalism” aesthetic as the outside, with the former being mostly confined to the furniture.

What the two of us came up with wasn’t anything world-shaking, or even particularly creative, but having it written down was a step in the right direction.

The basic idea had been to find the maximum combination of spells I could transfer at once, and then create packets of information that took advantage of as much of that space as possible.

It was simple, and wouldn’t do much right now, but if it shaped the recipients’ future Classes, it could be the start of something great.

The first packet was also pretty easy to come up with, it was just the spells that had been needed to create the building we were currently in. Throwing one of these up in a matter of days would be a crucial skill in the coming months, and the needed spells would do just as well repairing buildings as they would putting them up.

There was one small issue, though … I didn’t have any of those spells. I’d learn, next time I used [Knowledge Trade], which would happen once Fionn showed up from wherever he was currently. That way, I could gain one set of spells from him, and another from his son.

The only question was which spells I’d be getting from him. Simple spells I could easily pass along would be better, obviously, but to be honest, I really wanted that big storm summoner he liked to use. Change the weather, hurl lightning, ground flying attackers, and gain the ability to fly myself.

Powerful, but simple. I liked abilities I could get tricky with, and if I was honest with myself, I loved the idea of “soft power,” the ability to, eventually, change the world without even having to raise my voice … but actual strength was great too, far more widely applicable, and something I was currently sorely lacking.

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Granted, throwing a few more Skill Boosts into [Arcane Core] would likely be needed before I could cast that spell, but unless the gains from Levels changed drastically in the near future, I’d be getting those Boosts.

As for the other spell-sets, there were three. The first one was based around enhancing combat in general, using [Lesser Telekinetic Push], [Lesser Telekinetic Pull], [Lesser Telekinetic Shield] and [Light]. The second was another utility spread, meant to promote information security and/or general showing off, also having [Light] but also both illusion spells, meant to fuck with people outside the spells’ area of effect trying to look in.

And the final set was, simply put, combat. [Ember] should lead to the ability to throw fireballs, [Spark] was a baby lightning bolt, and the telekinetic push and pull abilities were something one could do all sorts of stuff with.

Now we just needed Fionn to show up.

“So, is this what it’s always like?” I finally asked.

“What’s like?” Ossian replied, sounding sleepy. I couldn’t blame him, though, it was getting pretty late by now.

“You know …” I shrugged. “Everything. Magic and adventures. Is this what it’s always going to be like?”

He mirrored my shrug.

“Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t. When it’s peaceful, it’s grand, but magic makes war worse than it already is.”

Then, he sighed.

“But I’ve seen some of your weapons. Your wars are at least as bad.”

“Probably worse,” I said. “Has anyone ever told you about the Geneva Convention?”

“Is that some kind of compact for summoning demons?” Ossian raised an eyebrow, and I had to smother a laugh. His eyes narrowed as he noticed, I grimaced. Obviously, I didn’t find the idea of war crimes funny, nor was I laughing at him, exactly, just … the question had been so far from what I’d expected him to say that the sheer incredulity was threatening to crack me up.

“Sorry, you caught me off guard,” I finally said, after using [Innate Etiquette] to put up my best approximation of the “stiff upper lip.” Of course, now that the “pressure” was gone, the Skill separating my emotions from what showed on my face, I did start laughing despite myself, entirely on the inside. Inappropriate, but at least he didn’t know.

“The Geneva Convention is an international treaty that gives rules for war. It bans horrific weapons, people mistreating civilians and innocents, all the ugly stuff that never makes it into the stories. But if you read between the lines, it can also be taken as a list of all the worst things you could do.”

“Do they?”

“Some people joke about it being the ‘Geneva Checklist,’ but people usually don’t do evil shit just for the sake of it, they do it because it gets them something.”

“Like what?”

“Expediency. There once was a man named Fritz Haber, who suggested the use of chlorine gas to viciously murder the French and British soldiers because it was cheaper. Bullets were too expensive for how many it took to actually kill an enemy, when you count misses, but poison gas, that gave enough “value” to be nice and useful in his eyes.”

“Dying from chlorine is … unpleasant, I assume?” Ossian asked.

I nodded grimly. “It burns the inside of the lungs, and fluid starts to build up inside until the victim drowns on dry land.”

Not quite the full, scientific, description of the consequences of chlorine exposure, but it was the long and short of it.

We sat there in silence for a long moment.

“Can I ask you about something else?” Ossian asked, and I suppressed the urge to respond with a “you just did.” It might be a reasonably common joke, I’d certainly read it quite a few times, but both [Innate Etiquette] and general common sense told me it wouldn’t be received well in the here and now, so I just nodded.

“What exactly is a ‘Hogwarts’? A lot of people want to call the school that.”

“It’s from a popular series about young witches and wizards going to a magical school with that name,” I said. “I mean, it is popular, but it’s also full of immense logical gaffes and plotholes that you could drive a truck through. Plenty of ideas thrown in for the sake of ‘quirkiness’ that utterly break the world if you think about them for more than five seconds and so on. Let’s name it after literally anything else.”

“Is it really that bad?” Ossian raised an eyebrow.

I sighed.

“I loved it as a kid, but it’s one of those series where you really need to turn your brain off to enjoy it. Nowadays, there are better alternatives. And people hate the author now, even if the series held up, you’d be making a political statement you really don’t want to make. What about something that represents the Fianna?”

“Oaken Glade Academy?” Ossian suggested after a long moment.

Oak after the acorns that the Salmon of Wisdom had eaten and, in turn, become the source for Fionn’s magic, glade because, well, the general aesthetic, and academy because that was what this place was going to become.

I nodded. “Good idea.”

And Ossian just waved his hand in the general direction of the door. I heard some soft grinding noises, like wood rubbing over concrete, and I just knew that newly grown vines or branches spelled out the new name.

I wound up staying in the entrance hall, reading, while Ossian headed off to do something else until eventually, he came back, following Fionn.

“So, Mr. Vogt, I’ve heard you had an interesting idea about teaching spells in packets. But you need to learn these spells yourself?”

“Yeah, Ossian and I came up with some good stuff,” I said. “I can learn the spells I need from him, but I was wondering if you could teach me your storm spell, since I can trade knowledge with two people at once …”

Ah, what the hell, I could learn something else in six hours anyway. So I used the spell.

[Spell gained: Terrakinesis]

[Spell gained: Directed Growth]

[Spell gained: Warmth]

[Spell gained: Century Storm]

Aaaaannd there’s the headache. Welcome back, old friend. It wasn’t quite to the point of fainting, but it was unpleasant. Ow. Fuck!

But I’d just learned everything I needed, including the utility spell I’d been too proud to prioritize. [Warmth] could stave off the cold bite of the Irish weather, dry clothing affected by the same and more besides … yet I’d grabbed it for its potential for quick-drying concrete.

As I massaged my temples, Ossian asked “I wonder what would happen to our abilities if the System went away. Or if we were to leave the space affected by it.”

“Oh, that would be bad,” Fionn said. “Anything improved by the System would be ripped away in an instant.”

“Can that be survived?” Ossian asked, sounding like he very much regretted asking.

I could already imagine what Fionn was about to say. It depended on what the System did. Anyone kept alive by it, via, say, a magical pacemaker and the like would drop dead instantly, while others would simply be crippled. However it would be a huge issue no matter how it played out. Suddenly having to adapt to a massive loss in abilities.

“Not by anyone with physical improvements, I believe,” Fionn admitted.

Yeah … that wasn’t terrifying at all. Dietrich would definitely die, Mia would probably die while I’d be fine with what I currently had but I’d likely get something that qualified … no one knew why the System was here and where it had come from, it might go away as suddenly and unexpectedly as it had come. What would happen then, well, I’d just learned what would happen. Nothing good.

But the whole thing also solidly fell under the umbrella of “might happen, might not happen, either way, there ain’t a damn thing I can do about it,” so I decided to try and shove it into the drawer already containing my knowledge of underground supervolcanoes, apocalyptic meteors and the fact that humanity had enough nuclear weaponry parked to blow up the earth several times over.

It wasn’t a particularly good solution, but it was the only one I had. Either way, I doubted I’d be sleeping particularly well tonight. Even if, contrary to expectations, someone had prepared a nice bed for me.

***

The next morning, I stayed in the entrance room, waiting.

As the students filtered in, I started using my [Piercing Gaze] on them. Not for its truth-telling ability, but because it could tell where someone’s loyalty lay. Now, I wasn’t entirely sure what I could see that was “disqualifying,” but I felt this was an “I’ll know it when I see it” kind of situation. If there was someone’s main goal in life was to, I don’t know, “become an infamous mass murderer,” that’d obviously be an issue, but there had to be lesser things that would still be troublesome.

Obviously, Fionn had done a background check too, and he had far more capabilities than I did on that front, but my job right now was literally “sit and wait and don’t give a terrible first impression,” so why not do one of the few useful things I could do right now? Having my head buried in a book like I’d have liked to would certainly have qualified as “not a good look” and I was trying to make a good first impression.