A/N: If you start reading this and think it's awfully familiar, it is. I decided to write a less dry beginning so you will need to go back to the first thread if you want a new part to the story. This pushed all the rest of my threads down by one, but I haven’t made any changes to the meat of the story.
Also, the poll indicated to me that not many people liked my indenting or justifying of paragraphs. That will no longer be added in future chapters and at some point I will probably go back and edit them out of the older ones.
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Prelude 4: Paper, Pen, and Headache
“Wrong?” squeaked Magnus.
“Oh, it won’t be all bad. You will get your class. There will just be some consequences from not learning your skills in the right order,” Chided Madeline as she crossed her arms. “Now put your status card away and get on with it.”
Confused, Magnus asked, “If I learned the wrong skill, couldn’t you just teach me the one I needed to learn before you gave me the status card?”
Blinking, Madeline replied, “I could have but thought that this would be more interesting. And now it’s too late to change your mind. If you attempt to learn the skill before using the one you already learned, you will have issues. Now stop stalling and get on with it.”
Left with no choice, Magnus sighed and began his now familiar ritual only to be interrupted by a clearing of the throat. She nodded her head at the tablet, “You forgot something.” His status card remained lodged in the desk.
Hastily he plucked it from the slot, and had no idea what to do. Wide eyed and a questioning look on his face, he turned to Madeline for help. Exasperated she directed, “Just move the card to your soul. It has already been personalized by your blood so you shouldn’t have any trouble. Just put it a little above your stomach and pull it in.” She finished by making a slurping sound.
Still confused but following directions, Magnus pulled the card in toward his stomach. No longer did the card gleam pure silver, now it had interlacing rings of red all over it. Once it pressed against the bottom of his sternum, he thought, No way this works, as he pulled with not just his muscles but with his mind. And it worked. The card disintegrated into light and flew into his body.
Somewhat discomforted by the feeling, he wanted to ask Madeline why he felt like he had just eaten till he was sick. But when he looked up and saw the old lady with her arms crossed, he decided to get straight to earning the skill.
Rapidly he put out his hand and pushed the mana down his arm. In his haste he slopped more than his practice normally produced and the tingling spread over half his arm. Quickly he formed the mana ball and started to fill it. Severing the connection to his mana pool he resisted fumbling the ball as the stream impacted his palm. Causing the center of the mana to start expanding, he pulled back his hand. Again, haste caused sloppiness and he bumbled over this last step. Wincing as the thread of mana snapped painfully against his palm, he placed his hand under the opposite armpit as he waited for the skill to activate.
It had only taken him two and a half minutes to do finish this time, but while watching he could see that the glow barely existed this time. Luckily it passed whatever system check was needed as after the glows faded he heard a sound.
DING! DING! DING!
Three windows popped up before his eyes.
A new skill has been created!
Spell PointGradeBasicCost10 manaLevelBasic 1Experience0/10Rank4,375,128,905Initiation150 secActivation10 secondsEffect30 secCooldown30 sec
Manual creation of a point of bound mana that can be shaped into a spell. Most basic of spell forms and the foundation on which all spell casting rests. A maximum of 10 mana can be used.
A new skill has been created!
As Within, So WithoutGradeBasicCost20 manaLevelBasic 1Experience0/10Rank1,875,123,603
Mana calls to mana. By condensing personal mana within your body you draw ambient mana to you. The amount that condenses works on a 4 to 1 ratio of personal mana to ambient mana.
A new class has been created!
Stumbling MageGradeBasicMain StatManaRank267,338,148,275
The mage is one of the three most basic classes. Earning this proves and perpetuates an affinity with mana.
+20% skill experience when using mana based skills
+All skills beginner and below are unlocked and can be leveled to Beginner 9
+Basic mana skills can be leveled to Intermediate 1
ModifierStumbling
In trying to move too quickly you have begun tripping over your own feet. Learn how to walk before you try to run.
+20 skill experience to basic skills
-95% skill experience to all other Grade skills
Looking through the windows that popped up, Magnus felt pleased with himself until he got to the class window. As it faded out of existence he could only blink dazedly at what had happened. His research had shown that modifiers could greatly affect how well any given class or skill did, and the incredible effort getting rid of them took.
Impatiently tapping a finger on her arm, Madeline inquired, “Well, what did you get.”
Coming out of his daze he replied, “Spell point, as within so without, and stumbling mage.” Looking more intently now as he had hope Madeline’s response would bring him hope.
Madeline let out a long stream of air from pursed lips as she stared at him with kind eyes. “It’s better than I had feared. Gerald didn’t ruin your future at least.” Magnus restlessly tapped his foot upon the ground as he waited for what else she would say.
After an agonizing wait as she moved paper around her desk, she continued. “You’re lucky that the modifier is so kind. Not only does it more or less tell you exactly what to do, it will help you do it. Far too often a modifier will be permanent or increase the difficulty of obtaining what is needed to repeal it.” Shuffling around in her center desk drawer she pulled out a dark grey rock, cubic in shape and only just able to fit in the palm of her hand.
“This is handwavium,” she explained as she dropped to rock in front of Magnus with a thunk. “If Gerald hadn’t been such a dingbat about teaching you, he would have just given you a bit of this to practice moving your mana. You would have been done so much faster. Hum… You should probably tell me what it is you did to learn these skills. It’s not something that is easy to learn.”
A bit miffed at being ordered around again, Magnus complied as he hoped she would help him. “After supper, Gerald took me out to his backyard and showed me how to do the spell point by putting his hand on top of my head and directing the mana down to my hand. After succeeding in creating it on the first try he went to bed and I practiced until I could get it to work consistently.
“I couldn’t do much until I followed the tingle on my head inward and explored a bit. I found a divot that had liquid in it and from that was able to move the mana down my arm. After some trial and error I got the spell point to work. I think it took about six or seven hours in total. I’m not sure since time seemed to pass by easily”
Madeline looked at him with pitying eyes. “When you say you moved the mana down your arm, were you following the mana or the tingling?”
Magnus had to think back, when he had been moving it which did he center on? “I think it was both, but more the tingle. I could feel something flexing under my skin but thought it was more my muscles than anything else. When the arm-falling-asleep feel spread out, I clearly focused on trying to contain it.”
Compassion in her voice, Madeline bluntly told him the problem. “The tingling you were feeling wasn’t mana, it was mana evaporating from your body as you tried to use more than you could control. Pointedly, your Willpower is too low to work with as much mana as you were pushing around. That was causing you to grey and feel the tingling sensation.”
At his blank look, she looked down and muttered more to herself than him, “Right, you’re a complete child on a lot of things.” Lifting her head and holding eye contact, she continued. “You were killing yourself. When a person, animal, beast, or monster dies the mana that had been locked in their body comes loose and evaporates. When the ambient mana is in a chaotic state, for example if there is a battle going on, the mana can’t evaporate out of the body until it settles. But when it can, the mana leaves and destroys the body as it does so.
“After enough of the mana leaves, the entire body will collapse into a grey dusty ash that quickly spreads and is devoured by the ambient mana. That is where the term greying or dusting comes from.
“When you felt the tingle along your skin, that was mana that you couldn’t completely control spilling from your grasp and evaporating. As it evaporated it was causing you damage. If you weren’t such a low level and you had more mana than health it would have been possible to kill yourself doing that.” She had started working herself into a louder voice.
“And entering your mental space, not just without any knowledge of what you were doing but without any guidance. Yeash, if you had managed to spill any mana from your pool you would have had evaporating mana in your head. While greying your arm is bad, greying your head would be fatal. The screaming agonizing, ‘oh gods oh gods kill me now’ kind of fatal. Although in your case you might have survived since there doesn’t seem to be anything in your head!”
Nearly shouting now, eyes glowing red again, and veins popping on her forehead, Magnus wisely decided not to comment on how he had not found anything in his head. He didn’t have any desire to have Madeline directly angry at him instead of just generally angry at what he had foolishly done.
Half standing and almost bellowing Madeline finished, “I don’t know if I’m angrier at Gerald for teaching you in such an idiotic way or at myself for thinking he would do something the easy way!” Slamming her fist on the desk, everything on it jumped into the air before falling back down. Having finally run out of steam, she fell back and covered her eyes with both hands.
A moment passed, then another. Still emulating the mighty rabbit, Magnus made no effort to interrupt Madeline’s attempt to regain her composure. At last, she breathed out a long, slow breath from the deepest depths of her lungs, “Ok. Go ahead and pick up the handwavium, I’ll make sure you can at least start in the right direction.”
Grateful for the distraction, Magnus grabbed the rock and started examining it. Not perfectly cubic as he first thought, lumps and dips covered the surface of the stone. It felt heavier than a baseball but not nearly as heavy as a normal rock of the same size. Stroking the bumps and divots with his thumb, the rock gave off a well polished quality. When moving over the straight planes of the rock, it felt closer to that of glass.
As Magnus rested the rock in his hand the strangest feeling began where the rock touched him. Something was being pulled from him, but it did not have the same sensation as when he made the spell point. Not sure what to do, he stopped resisting and let the rock pull from him. And it began to glow.
Softly at first, almost invisible in the daylight, it grew and grew. It went from being a dark grey to brightly gleaming. Looking directly at the stone he could tell that it emitted light, but the hand holding it reflected none of the light. That’s not how light works, Magnus thought to himself. Now thoroughly confused, he had no choice but to look to Madeline and hope for a calmer person.
Fortunately, she only had a hand covering her mouth while her eyes were grinning. “That handwavium stone is keyed to light, just like your spell was, and is a training tool for manipulating basic light mana. While it’s pulling from your personal mana it’ll glow. But it’s still your mana. If you concentrate you should be able to tell what is going on and be able to replicate it without needing the stone.”
“But why is it glowing, I haven’t done anything and the light is all wrong?” Magnus pleaded for understanding.
Frowning as Magnus had ignored her directions, she still answered, “It’s glowing because handwavium pulls personal mana out and uses it as it’s structure dictates. That's the whole reason it’s called handwavium. If you wave your hand over it, it will pull out your mana and give you an effect. It won’t last for long after you put it down, at that point it’s no longer connected to you and your personal mana. Then the mana is used up and it goes inert again.
“As for why the light is weird, handwavium is selfish. It wants mana and it doesn’t like giving it out. When something is lit up by light mana, particles of light mana expand out from where it is activated. As the light mana hits other mana, most often pure mana, it causes the effect of light to continue on. The light that is created is normal light, not light mana. But again, handwavium is selfish. When the light mana is created it starts to expand outward, but after it bounces around and hits near the outer edge the stone reabsorbs it. Since it’s reabsorbed there is no interaction with the outside to have an effect on and only the light mana within the stone glows until the mana is completely consumed.
“Now start concentrating on what you’re doing and figure it out!” Her eagerness at teaching a subject she loved could not withstand the testiness she felt at his stalling.
Guiltily he went back to studying the rock. It still pulled something from him, he assumed that it was his personal mana from the explanation he had just gotten. He could sense the trickle that flowed from his hand into the stone but he had difficulty following it back. Not having any other idea, he fell back on what he had done before: looking in his mental space. Closing his eyes he took a single step into his mental space. But getting hit upside the head with a stick stopped that idea. Where did she get the stick?
“Did you not hear what I said just five minutes ago about the dangers of messing with your mental space. Are you trying to kill yourself? This is not that hard child, just concentrate on what is happening in the handwavium and try it yourself.” The glare in her eyes would brook no disobedience in this and the lump on his head ensured his compliance.
Eyes wide open, he studied both the rock and his mana. First his mana. By focusing he could sense the mana just a tiny bit, and could tell how much nicer it followed directions than the mana he had used in his spell point. It was the difference between the friends dog that would sit in your lap to be petted and the dog that ignored you unless you had doggie treats.
Experimenting a bit, he lifted the rock up off his palm with his fingertips. No longer could he feel it moving out of his palm, now it flowed from his fingertips. Able at last to feel it in his body, he concentrated on following the gentle flow. It flowed not just under his skin as he had first thought, but weaved within and throughout his bones.
Wondering, he twisted his hand and set the handwavium down on the desk. Immediately, the flow cut off and he flinched in anticipation of impact. Pleasantly surprised to go without the recoil, he had no appreciation of the snort from across the desk. Ignoring Madeline, Magnus marveled at how easily the mana could be influenced. By pushing just a little bit at where he thought his mana pool would be, all the mana along the path to his hand echoed his push and moved. Exerting a little more effort, he focused this to his fingertip and could perceive a ball of liquid mana resting on the tip. Slurping it back in with a small effort, a grin lit his face at his newfound painless ability.
Leaning his face close to the handwavium he placed just his index finger against the stone. Immediately, the dimly glowing stone began brightening until it reached the same intensity of glow as before. Staring with unblinking eyes gave no insights, so Magnus relaxed his focus. Now concentrating on his mana, he could sense it even within the stone. The stone acted more as an extension of his hand than as a separate object.
Pinpointing his focus on where his mana began to vanish he could at last sense it changing. As his mana flowed toward the center nothing happened to it, but once it reached the core he lost his connection to it much like when his spell point would activate and disappear. Exerting his will to move the mana around a bit before the core absorbed it he could perceive the change. As it passed through his own mana, it streaked outward both expanding and radiating.
Lifting his finger, Magnus considered what he had been doing with the mana mist in his spell point. He pushed it so that it would work instead of just sit there inert. Unnoticed, the handwavium dimmed until only a grey stone remained. With Magnus’ focus now on his index finger, he puddled a small bit of his mana onto his finger. It couldn’t be that easy, he thought. But decided to give it a try.
Taking just a bit of the pooled mana, he gave it a slight push outward. Without delay, the tip of his finger began to glow. Not a lot in the sunlight, but far more than his bungled spell point had glowed. Expelling more mana in greater amounts with quicker speed, the tip of his finger rapidly began to light up the entire room. As he pushed evermore mana out he started to become dizzy but ignored it.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
DING!
“No! Stop! Wait! Slow down!” Madeline bellowed. But it was too late.
Glow extinguished from his hand, Magnus collapsed backward onto the cool stone floor. Fingers clutching at his head in anguish, he could do nothing more than groan with his eyes squeezed tightly shut. The pounding in his head made every sound magnified a hundredfold, especially the scraping sound of a chair being pushed back against stone flooring. Even Madeline’s footsteps reverberated in his head loudly, and clearly moved away from him.
“Ak, stay right there dingbat. I’ll go get something for your head.” This she called over her shoulder as she moved deeper into the backroom. After clanking and rattling some pots, a small eternity passed before she shuffled back his way. “Sit up and drink this, it’ll help.”
Left with no choice and willing to try anything to get rid of his headache he began laboriously shifting until he could at last sit up. Still not opening his eyes, he held out his hand. Instantly Madeline placed in his hand the cup handle, and he moved it to his mouth. Sipping the slightly warm mint tea, he could feel a slight deadening to the pain. Not gone, but not the axe to the head it had been.
“Just stay sitting there until your headache goes away. Then we’ll talk about what just happened and why you’re an idjit.” Her voice moving as she meandered around the desk before falling into her chair.
Left hand resting against his forehead as he leaned hunched over, Magnus despaired over what had been happening to him lately. Never had he had so much difficulty at what he attempted before. Maybe I should just quit. No no, I just got this game and if I stopped playing it after Dad spent so much on it he would skin me alive. Besides, he still hoped to find a way to give out quests. He decided he just needed to be more careful for the time being.
After a short time had passed, about seven minutes, his headache vanished. Magnus sat up straight in surprise. Instantly, the constant pound of his headache had disappeared and that’s not how headaches work! Popping his eyes open, he immediately saw a new window.
A new skill has been created!
GlowGradeBasicCost10 manaLevelBasic 1Experience0/10Rank85,423,875,140Initiation1 secActivation0 secondsEffect1 secCooldown10 sec
The most basic use of light mana, the area light mana covers will glow. When a continuous stream of mana is supplied to the skill the light will glow brighter. Area of effect is 1 cm^2. Cooldown will go into effect after mana is no longer being supplied.
Waving the window away and clambering up from the floor, he set the cup on the desk and gave Madeline his best one eyebrow lift. “It’s good that you’re feeling better,” she replied calmly as she put away a bit of paperwork. Leaning forward she placed her elbows on the desk and clasped one hand in the other. Looking Magnus straight in the eyes she said, “But you really need to look before you leap. It would help keep you from running head first into walls.”
Mildly depressed by her words he responds, “I think I realized that already. Now what was the wall I just ran into?”
Madeline answered in a calm even tone, “Mana exhaustion. It’s what happens when you run your mana down so much and it has greater effect the faster the depletion. You probably had about half your mana left and burned through it all in just a couple of seconds. In the first stage you get light headed. In the second you begin to lose your balance. Once you hit zero you get a debilitating headache that won’t go away until you entirely restore your mana.”
Magnus could only nod his head. He had clearly acted like a child with a new bag of candy and stuffed them all into his mouth at once. And then got the resulting pain to go with it. If he had instead gone slowly, he would have noticed something was wrong when he got light headed and have asked about it. I’ll have to be smarter in the future.
Seeing Magnus’ understanding, Madeline let it go. “Moving on, you got your skill. Correct?”
“Yes, the name it displayed was Glow.”
“Oh good, I was afraid for a moment you would get another weird skill but that’s the normal one.” Now rustling through her drawer, she started pulling out rocks before thumping them down on the table. Not long after she had eleven more rocks lined up in front of her.
“Okay, which element do you want to to try next?” A mischievous grin now lit her face as she had a student to train and he had nowhere to run.
The grin on her face looked incredibly similar to the one Magnus had seen on Gerald. By thinking of him, he realized that he might have a get out of jail free card. Pulling out the letter Gerald had given him, he tremblingly interrupted, “I actually have something else I should do. Gerald told me to visit Vanessa to earn some money doing scribe work.”
Paper snatched from his hands, Madeline glanced over it in disappointment. “That is actually a good idea. Damn, thought I would get to teach you uninterrupted. Oh well, come back after sundown and I’ll treat you to some supper. I’ll keep the doors open so don’t be too long.” As she started putting the rocks away, Magnus escaped through the doors.
Too quiet to hear through the doors, even if he hadn’t been putting in the earplugs, Madeline murmured, “To bad my brother didn’t tell you not ask for Vanessa.” Turning her attention inwards, she grinned maniacally as she plotted what she would do to Magnus on his return.
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Standing in front of the scribing store, Magnus delayed as he worried over what might happen next. So far, every time he did what Gerald had suggested it either ended up with him in pain or scared for his life. Hopefully this time it would be different since Madeline had also told him that it would work out. Gathering his courage, he went in.
His first step in he immediately noticed a difference. The sun had risen high into the sky but Magnus hadn’t realized it in the Mage’s guild because of the lighting and his own glow. After putting his earplugs into his pack, he found that he couldn’t see anything. The windows at the front of the store should have given more light into the room but had some film laying over the top of them drastically reducing the ambient light.
“I’ll be with you in a second, or a minute, or whenever,” a gravely voice called out of the darkness. Eyes starting to adjust, Magnus could at last look around. The door he walked in sat in the middle of the storefront, to his immediate right and left were the windows covered in shelves filled with paper. Moving over to look at them, he could see the writing on them that indicated they were order forms or requests for information. The sheets on the west window contained requests that had yet to be fulfilled, the sheets on the right held finished requests. While the west wall shelving overflowed with requests, the east wall held very few and so let in a little light.
Between the window of the west wall and the door squatted more shelving filled with paper. It had very poor quality paper that sold for three coppers. Magnus now knew how much the paper he had written on was worth. The other side of the door contained a shelf full of quills. And now he understood why his report had actually worked out. The quills cost three coppers and had the label of ‘chicken feathers magicked to hold one page worth of ink’.
Behind Magnus a voice cleared before speaking in a monotone voice, “You’re a new face. Too late in the month to be a bard student but no one else would wear such bad clothing if they didn’t have to. You seem to be the new guy Victoria was talking about though, so you can tell me your name or I can just call you new guy.” His offer not idle, he would willing to rename him new guy to save on the effort.
Turning, Magnus approached the counter that the man stood at and examined him. Shorter than himself by half a foot and… pudgy was the kindest word. This man clearly enjoyed eating, and eating well. A black beret adorned his head of thinning black hair, the hat to cover his growing bald spot. A black shirt with rolled up sleeves worn under an unbuttoned black leather vest. Loose black cloth pants were tucked into heavy black boots. He dripped apathy with his sweat and you just hopped to not get any on you.
“I’m new, but my name is Magnus.” Trying out a new tactic, he held out a hand to shake. Which only got a disinterested stare before he lowered it. Instead he grabbed the letter out of his bag, armoring himself before continuing. “I’m supposed to give this to Vanessa. Gerald told me it might get me a job doing scribe work.” And stopped, as the previously lethargic man was now glaring with squinted eyes at him.
“I’m VAN,” emphasis clear even without raising his voice, “and don’t forget it.” Snatching the letter from his hand with movement quicker than Magnus thought he could exert, Van opened it and started reading. Irritation already fading, he held up a piece of paper, “You wrote this?” Folded within the letter had been his report for Gerald. At Magnus’ nod, Van went back to reading.
A few seconds later he had finished. “Passable,” he directed to Magnus with barely disguised contempt. “You’ll have to do better if you want any of the more important jobs. Till then you can pull the easy jobs off the west window and I’ll register it. When you finish you can bring it to me and I’ll pay you if its good enough. This is your take for this one.” Handing him two copper coins that varied in shape and size, Van clearly didn’t want to talk to him anymore.
Walking to the shelf, his thumb rubbing the coins he considered the differences from the coins he knew . They were significantly heavier from the small coins he had in his pack. One had a 5 and one had a 10 stamped into them. The five was about the size of a quarter but nearly twice the thickness of the smaller coin. It also had a hole that the smallest copper coin could fit through in the middle. The ten, half again as wide as the five but as thin as the one, had been shaped into a square. Weighing them in his hands, Magnus could tell that the coins were valued by weight, the five and ten respectively that much more than the one. Not wanting to hold onto the coins, he placed them in a inner pocket of his pack.
Now free to look over the requests, he flipped through them trying to find something that would interest him enough to do research on. Almost three-fourths of them seemed to be ‘copy the musical score from such-and-such’ or ‘find information about the Bard whatshisface who died three hundred years ago’. Ignoring these as boring, he eventually made his selections.
Pulling two he liked, he stepped over to Van. After Van cleared his throat again, “You need to buy at least the most basic piece of paper and a quill or you’ll have a hard time completing it. Or not any harder, if you fail it anyway.” Van had gone back to being morose after his brief irritation over his name.
His dreams of flowing riches now crushed, he picked up two sheets and quills sighing as almost everything he had earned from his previous work vanished. Now trudging his way back, he stopped to look at some of the other things on display. A quill and inkwell, labeled as good for fifty pages, would cost a silver. Higher quality paper, the kind suitable for books, cost twenty-five coppers a sheet. And then Magnus had to pause, he had not expected to see that here. Flabbergasted he considered the label:
Magical PenRarityBasicQualityFineCost1 GoldDurability50
Created by a master and enchanted by his apprentice, this pen will never run out of ink. Instead, it will consume mana to produce ink in the tip of the pen at a rate of 10 mana per minute.
Heavy footsteps from behind indicating Vans approach before he stopped next to Magnus. “Yeah, that is a good pen. Steel tipped point and having been gone over by an excellent craftsman-mage with darkness and earth attributes. It will drip ink forever, as long as you have the mana to provide it. It’s even at an incredibly low price. Too bad it will ever break it if they can’t repair it. And I can’t sell it for less without taking an even heavier loss.” He pauses to sigh again. “We~ll, lets get you registered,” and ambles back to the counter.
A last longing look at the pen, pens were so much easier to write with, he dragged himself away and over to Van. Van had pulled a large ringed binder and a stamp out, and waited patiently for Magnus to reach him. After he took the orders he spoke without inflection, “Two basic writing tasks will earn you thirty-two coppers. It has to be finished within three days, by the end of the week, to be completed successfully. If your work is not good enough, which it probably won’t be, I won’t take it and you’ll have to try again. A five copper per task collateral is required up front. If you haven’t completed your task by the end of the week they won’t be returned. Do you acknowledge and accept these terms.”
Eerk, that would be almost every bit of money Magnus had on him. Three coppers left would be unlikely to get him a meal, but Madeline had said she would feed him supper. If he worked quickly he could make the money back, but something seemed off. “Thirty-two coppers? I thought it was fifteen coppers a task.”
“Yes, except you took two tasks and that gives you more money per task because of the added difficulty. At most you can earn twenty coppers a task when you take five or more tasks but failing to turn one in fails all the tasks. Thats why most of my scribes will take one area of specialty and master it. Then they don’t have to go hunting for more books and waste their time. Do you want to disappoint me on these two or not?”
“Okay, what do I need to do?” Magnus replied as he didn’t really have other options.
“Just hand me your status card and your money and I’ll take care of it. It’ll be twenty-two copper for everything.” As Van looked on expectantly, Magnus slung his pack in front of him and pulled the coins out. Just three left, I’m so poor. The status card took him a minute before he remembered how he placed it the first time. Reversing direction, he put his hand on the bottom of his sternum and mentally pushed out. Luckily, it worked and he didn’t feel the fool.
Placing it all on Van’s counter he watched as the coins disappeared into puffs of light as Van grabbed them. He then put Magnus’ card into the top of the stamp. Order sheets now bound within his book, ‘Thump Thump’ and it was done. Passing the card back to Magnus he shoved it back into his stomach feeling discomfort as he did. A second later a window popped up.
A new task has been accepted!
[tr][td4]Basic Scribework (2)
Difficulty1Cost (Refundable)10 copperReward32 copperTime3 days
Two writing tasks have been accepted.
Copy pertinent information from ‘Why dwarfs are short’.
Record the names of all characters in ‘The troll who ate’.
His ear plugs now set, he left thinking to himself, This shouldn’t be too hard.
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Magnus’ Journal: The World part one
Spoiler :
Aedrath (base starting world for humans, dwarves, and elves) has the same gravity as earth. It is however much bigger with an outer radius of 41500 km making Aedrath 6.5 greater in radius than earth. With a circumference of 260000 km and a surface area of 21.6 billion square km, Aedrath’s size is 43 times that of earth.
The difference in size is of course because of mana. Aedrath is shell of rock 400 km thick around an incredibly massive pulsating core of mana. If one were to try to reach the center, after traveling downward about 175 km, you run into the first obstacle. A 50 km section of incredibly dense, and valuable, rocks and minerals. This section was approximately 1800 km thick at one point, but the opposing forces of gravity and mana have condensed and distilled it into only the strongest of materials. In this layer where mana pushes out and gravity pushes down, few things can survive the pressure.
Should you succeed in passing through the Middle Fifty, with it’s twists and turns and sideways gravity, and reach the reverse side a new problem emerges. No longer do you climb and dig down, now you must climb up. The further you go, the more force the mana will exert upon you. If you should manage to reach the underside of the shell, you will have found the world of the elementals. Briefly.
Now unprotected by the rocks, the undiluted power of Aedrath’s mana core will impact upon you. The smallest flares of power are strong enough to atomize a level 800 warrior. The largest, a ponderous mass that approaches slowly but expands into and all encompassing area so wide it becomes unavoidable. Will then crush you into the thinnest of flat-cakes.