Jude was about to leave as well when he noticed that Kohan left his axe stuck in the ground.  Curious, Jude walked up to the axe.  He picked up the massive weapon, not surprised by its immense weight.  To his surprise, he found that it was ownerless.  This could only happen if Kohan had given up the weapon.  Jude wasn’t sure why Kohan would do this, but he wouldn’t say no to free loot.  Besides, Krinn would love this axe.

He stored the axe into his inventory.  After this fight, no one would be bullying him so he no longer feared that people would try to rob him of a non-existent spatial device.

Jude and Ellie walked back to the inn together amidst the crowd of people who had watched the fight.  There was much cheering and congratulations, but in a mixed group like this, there were also people with scowls on their faces.  Regardless, Jude’s fame would now be extending beyond Longdale.

While Jude’s accomplishments were significant during his time in Longdale, they were inevitably the acts that could only gain fame in such a small place.  And when the had been defeated, the message broadcast was not of Jude’s name, but the accomplishment of the entire town.  After all, it took many people to defeat the army of the , and many of them had died.  Even though it was Jude that slew the , the system had not announced his name.

To Jude, this was a good thing.  Ever since the Sand Storm began after the fall of the , the people of Longdale looked to him as the Lord of the Land.  Even the other nobles and lords in the area sought Jude for guidance.  At the time, Jude handed most of these responsibilities to Krinn and others, but in the hearts and minds of all, it was still Jude’s leadership.

This had put Jude in a fickle position.  Technically, he wasn’t a Lord or even a noble, but he essentially took over the leadership of an entire Duchy.  He knew that such things could get him into a lot of trouble and considering the level of this society, execution could be a punishment if he didn’t play his cards carefully.  He imagined that whatever Duke was the actual ruler of the area might not take kindly to his actions, even if he and those under him elevated the area up rather than succumbing to the crisis.

So when anyone asked where he hailed from, Jude just answered that he came from the Riwa Countryside.  He was intentionally vague about his origins.  Lucky for him, most people weren’t that concerned with his origins and were more than happy to hear that he was from their kingdom.

When the returned to the inn, Jude found that the innkeeper had already tidied up the place once again.  Jude took out a gold coin and tossed it to him.

“Sorry about the trouble,” Jude told him, “I hope this will cover my damages.”

“For someone like you, this is more than enough!” The innkeeper replied with a big smile on his face.  Even if Jude hadn’t given him gold, he wouldn’t have asked for money.

It wasn’t long before the inn’s atmosphere returned to its original boisterous form and their food was served.   

He declined to ask about the as he was now everyone’s attention.  He didn’t want to look ignorant.  Instead, he listened to Ellie recount his fight from her perspective and listened to her advice on what he could do better.

“The real problem is that Shaman.  If she came, then it might mean there will be more that will show up at the competition.  You will need to watch out for them.” Ellie warned Jude.

“What do you mean? What can a Shaman do?” Jude asked.

Ellie tapped her chin and thought for a moment, “I don’t know much about Shamans other than hearsay and legends.  But I do know that they originate from the Healer class.  Their damage output should be a little lower, but more importantly, they can both heal and buff themselves.”

Jude had also heard her say that she was a skinwalker and wondered what that meant here in this universe.  He decided to not ask Ellie about it since she knew very little about Shamans.  He wanted to limit the speculation about this class as much as possible as speculation didn’t really help out in the end.

“So I wonder how they are organizing this tournament and what my likelihood of running into those two are there,” Jude pondered out loud.

A nearby patron heard him and joined in the conversation, “You’re pretty young, so you might not know. But I’ve been to see the Elitist Competition before.  First, they separate out the melee classes and magical classes into two groups.  Then the top four of each of those groups face off in the finals.  Of course, this year will be a little different.  There are so many people gathering I suspect that they might do something different this year.”

After one person joined in, so did another and then another.  Everyone wanted to make Jude’s acquaintance, but it was impossible for Jude to do so. Eventually, he excused himself, and both he and Ellie retired to their room.

The inn was large by the standards of this culture, three stories tall.  The first floor contained the eating area, bar, kitchen and other staff required rooms.  The second and third floor was where the rooms for rent were.  Jude and Ellie had come in late and were already lucky to get a private room.  But he was still surprised when he found out how small this room ended up being.

The room was so small that the single twin bed took up half of the space.  The little window at the end was so tiny that only a cat could climb out of it.  The only other piece of furniture was the night stand and an unlit oil lamp with no oil.  Jude swallowed down his surprise so to not look even weirder in front of Ellie.

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He said, “I will take the floor.  You can have the bed.”

“This room is so cosh’ing small!” Ellie exclaimed as she squeezed in behind Jude.  “And you are so strange just to accept it!”

Jude sighed, there never seemed to be a way to win.  “Of course I think this room is small, I was just trying not to make a big deal about it.”

Ellie smirked, “Sure, that’s a likely excuse.”

“I’m telling you the truth!” Jude insisted.

Ellie sighed, “If you keep this up, you’ll never fit in you know.”

He really couldn’t win.

The next day they left early to avoid anyone following them.  After they were well outside of town, Jude summoned Anthea and gave Kohan’s axe to her to give to Krinn.  Dismissing her would return her to the last place she was.

***

Jude and Ellie continued to travel to Geonar.  Along the way there were a few more fights, but nothing as spectacular as with Kohan.  After a week they finally made it to their destination.

To call Geonar a city would be the same as calling Longdale a village.  The right word for this place was a metropolis.  There were a varied array of walls and gates that lead from the exterior of the city to its center.  Jude had never been to a city this big before and was stunned at the thick crowd of people.  The buildings were packed in as tightly as they could and slowly grew taller the farther they went in.

The city was primarily made out of a beautiful white stone, and the architecture reminded Jude of Roman and Greek styles.  Thick and decorated columns stood everywhere holding up buildings and grand arches crossed overhead carrying not only water but passageways for people with fast moving mounts.

This was also the first time Jude had seen such fantastical beasts first hand.  People were riding horses with wild colors like red and purple, blue and yellow.  Others had large cats that they rode on and others still had giant wolves.  Some of these animals were true to their nature, but others were attuned to an element.   But these kinds of mounts were still relatively rare, the most common beast of burden was the horse.

But Jude and Ellie continued to stay on the ground as they didn't have a mount that would be able to travel above.  Still, the roads below were nice, made from cobblestones.  It wasn't as beautiful as the streets in Arkess City but still was good enough to represent the capital city.

It took a whole day, but they finally found a room at an inn.  The prices were sky high, but Jude had more than enough gold since the time he took over Longdale.  The room wasn’t much bigger than the first one they had since they started this journey, but by now they were both used to this arrangement.  At least this room had a small chair and desk.

Over the next three weeks, Jude and Ellie started making preparations.  Ellie started with engraving Jude’s staff with glyphs, the finest she had ever created.  Once engraved, Jude would take over and begin writing circuitry.  Ellie found a blacksmith shop that let her used their facilities and started making delicate metal inlays that would later be inserted into the glyphs that she carved.  This would double the effectiveness of the glyphs, but was also incredibly hard to manufacture.

Once Jude had the staff back after the initial engravings he began to work laying the foundation of his masterpiece project.   Since the beginning when he started first to see and understand his Modicuit he had wanted something that was all encompassing.  The circuit like nature of the base magic and skill system screamed to him the one thing that seemed to be missing.  A processor.

The only problem with creating a processor like existence with spell circuitry was that it had many different qualities than what a standard CPU didn't.  There was earth, wind, fire, water, life, death, light, dark and the list just continues.  When mana enters the Modicuit, it gets converted to the type of energy of that skill or magic.  This was also why Jude’s attempts to write circuitry in his Modicuit had failed to produce powerful magic because it lacked that initial conversion to the correct element.  At the same time, this was also why the item skills were so powerful.  The glyphs would convert the mana into the element that they were tied to.

Creating a processor that could handle multiple types of magic would be incredibly hard to make, and one that could handle all kinds should be considered almost impossible.  Typically it would require compatible elements, ones that would naturally work together.  But even then, connecting them together would be a feat in and of itself.

But Jude had learned a new method in the Arkess Aquafers.  Right before they reached the node, he had learned in the dark valley how the dark element that was not compatible had brute forced itself into the earth elements of the ground.  Perhaps brute force wasn’t the right terminology.  It created a pressure differential that allowed it to merge into the ground.  Regardless, Jude knew the method and could make something extremely complicated, incredibly more simple.  All it took was the right approach.

He was going to build this processor in layers.  There was no way he would be able to complete this work in its entirety before the completion.  Most likely he would need years of work to finish it.  But his design didn’t need it to be absolutely complete.  To call it a processor was using the term somewhat loosely.  It was nothing like any processor design Jude had seen back on Earth.  But it’s very essence would still be able to process different spells and allow them to be cast in an entirely different way than the currently did.  The first layer would be the five primary elements.

The first layer would limit Jude’s processor to fire, water, wind, earth, and metal.  Casting any of these by themselves would be relatively easy without the processor.  But he used the processor; he could create spells that combined the different elements together.  Earth magic was relatively slow but heavy hitting while wind was quick but light.  Combine the two, and you get a fast and heavy hitting spell.  Throw fire into the mix, and the damage only skyrockets from there.  Supposedly, combining the elements was only something the Archmage class could do.  But Jude was planning on doing it as well.  And hopefully, his would be even better.

Jude had Ellie carve the five element glyphs in a circle around a very unique center glyph.  This glyph was the Divine version of the starburst glyph.  This glyph was necessary to Jude for two reasons.  The first was that the starburst glyph would allow him to copy the whole processor into his Modicuit one day.  And the other reason was that the Divine version was the only glyph that satisfied what he needed as the center glyph.  It was elementless.  This allowed pure mana to enter the system then be distributed accordingly.  Along with the glyphs already high ability to transfer energy and information made it a perfect fit.

Three weeks went by in a flash as Jude was just barely able to complete his project before the time limit.  Jude had been so absorbed in his work that he barely felt the time pass.  The last couple of days he had spent writing scripts of runes in memory nodes to act as his quick release spells.  Another benefit of the processor, he could now activate scripts and even some script formations with it.

Nothing was tested just yet, so he was anxious to get to the competition.

He was also very nervous.  There was a lot of pressure to make sure that this staff actually worked.