The last time Lando tried to access the black ring, he ran out of mana. But now, as he had formed his elemental core and advanced to the stage of a mage, his mana was denser and more powerful. He tried again, this time with a much larger amount of mana.
He slowly continued, and his mana reserves were already beginning to run low when he finally accessed the artifact. Images were sent directly into Lando's mind, and he slowly figured out how everything worked as the item automatically sent an instruction manual into his mind, registering him as the new user of this spatial ring.
He quickly skimmed over the instruction guide, wanting to find out why this artifact was so mana-intensive to use. Just before he exhausted all his mana, he found what he was looking for. There was a special space in the ring that would slow down time to keep its contents safe from rotting or corrosion. The ring itself could absorb mana from the surroundings, but it seemed to be insufficient to power the time-slowing enchantments. Thus, the ring required the user to channel time mana into it in order for the enchantment to work. As a safety measure, new users could only access the ring if all enchantments were working, including the time-slow enchantment.
Luckily for Lando, he could now turn it off as he already had access to a few operating options. He quickly turned it off and fell back into his bed, his mana nearly depleted in just under 30 seconds.
Now, with his mana no longer constantly draining, he could inspect the ring in more detail.
Essentially, it was a spatial ring with a few extra options like the time-slowing function. The ring had three different storage options, the first being a huge storage space of approximately 5000 cubic meters, as stated in the instruction manual. This was about a thousand times larger than the one his parents had gifted him. He could basically store a small house in there if he wanted. "Well, that's very useful and all, but let's see what's inside," he thought, and expanded the list of stored items in his mind. The ring even had a function to categorize and name items. As he read further in the instruction manual, he came to understand that this little artifact had an identification function that compared the stored items with an internal library. This way, the ring could manage all items in an orderly fashion, identifying many items automatically.
Instantly, he wanted to try out this function and pulled out a cold coin from his other spatial ring, storing it in his new one. The coin appeared in his new spatial ring under the category "recently stored" and was named "gold coin." It even had an extended information tab that displayed "imprinted with the crest of the Underwood Empire, situated on the Astra continent." It then asked Lando a question: "Add to currency account?"
Curious, he selected "Yes" and soon after, the ring displayed his overall currency balance: "Current Balance: 38.465 gold coins; 4.722 silver coins; 63 Bronze coins." Lando sat there with a blank mind for a while, amazed by the amount of wealth he now possessed. Eventually, he remembered that this ring was owned by an archmage. "Ho-ly-shit! These archmages really are rich. At least I won't have money problems for a while."
In reality, most council mages did not require much money, as they received resources for their magical advancement directly from the council itself. Archmages, however, were typically even wealthier than Lando's current balance. But as a new mage, he had no point of comparison.
"Let's see what else is there," Lando thought eagerly, feeling like a child opening one present after another. In the larger section of the spatial ring, he found weapons of all kinds, both enchanted and normal, as well as the remains of beasts and humans, and many other things.
He was confident that he would find at least some useful weapons and armor in there, and he didn't have to search for long. The artifacts were displayed in an orderly fashion, one by one. Unfortunately, the ring had no internal library for enchantments, so it couldn't provide information on the specific enchantments of the artefacts. The items were displayed with names like "leg guards - enchanted" and so on.
Lando assumed that the previous owner of the ring had been storing everything he had killed, as most of those items would be rather useless to an archmage. He also recognized that he wouldn't have a use for most of the items, as he couldn't wear them all at once and most of them were only useful for lower level magicians. However, he was sure that he would find some use for them and planned to test them out individually at a later date to see their functions firsthand.
But for now, he continued to the next section of the ring, excited and greedy for even more wealth. The next section was the time-slowing section. However, as he opened the menu in his mind, his excitement faded away, replaced with disappointment. All the items in that section seemed to be rotten away as the enchantment was not working without a magician empowering it.
Hoping for a better surprise, he moved on to the last section of the ring. It was marked as personal, and Lando had high expectations for it. He slowly inspected the inventory list and came across a few items that seemed interesting. There were not just a few clothes and other personal belongings, but what interested him the most were a variety of books. The archmage, named Walter Jordan according to a few notes he found, had basically a whole library of time magic. It covered different applications, possibilities, and limits for different stages, as well as enchantments. Basically, everything Lando needed for his journey to becoming an Archmage of time. There were also a few books for space magic, but not as many as for time magic.
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Lando was more than pleased with his discoveries. One of his biggest concerns so far was the lack of teaching material for his elemental powers. He was determined to fill the gaps in teaching materials for space magic himself.
Unfortunately, there were no elemental cores for space or time magic in the spatial ring. He didn't know if the archmage simply didn't have any cores left or if archmages needed an entirely different resource for their advancement. While he was a little disappointed by this fact, he had already gained so much that he could easily cope with it.
He searched a bit more and found a few letters addressed to Walter Jordan from his time in the council, but they didn't provide much information. Most of the reports were about Walter's daily business, which mainly involved enchanting various things. He seemed to be a great enchanter who specialized in traps and imprisonment enchantments. According to some requests he received, he was venturing into uncharted territory with his inventions, such as "The Multilayer Chrono Bind" and "Temporal Fatigue Vortex." Lando had no idea what these enchantments could accomplish, other than making guesses based on their names, since their functions were not described in the letters.
He hoped that in the future, he would learn more about them from the many books related to time magic. However, that was a matter for the future, as he couldn't even perform simple enchantments at the moment.
The last section of the ring contained only two items: a map and a disc described as [unknown] by the ring. He summoned the disc but found nothing particularly interesting about it. It was simply a metal disc. He attempted to channel mana into it, but it showed no reaction, so he stored it away again and focused on the map, which was the last intriguing item remaining in the ring.
He summoned the map and laid it out on the desk in his humble room. The map displayed a collection of islands in varying sizes. After quickly scanning the entire map, Lando slowly came to a realization. "Wait... this island here is named Artis. Is it just a coincidence?" He examined the island named Artis more closely and his suspicions were confirmed when he saw the familiar mountain ranges that divided the continent into four parts. "This is indeed the Artis continent that I live on. I don't even know much about my own continent, but it seems that the world is much larger, considering that Artis is one of the smaller continents on this map."
Fascinated by the vastness of the world he inhabited, Lando noticed some markings on the map, one of which was within his own continent. It was labeled "The Chronodomain Citadel" and represented by a symbol depicting several houses surrounding what appeared to be a fortress.
Upon closer inspection, he realized that the map only displayed 12 similar locations in total, scattered across the entire map. Each location had a name associated with either the space or time element.
"Are these the headquarters of the Space-Time Council? Or are they just places with a high density of one of the two elements? Is that why they kidnapped my mother? Do they want to keep these places secret? Damn, why isn't there a legend on this map?" Lando's questions continued, and his mood turned sour. "Did they take my mother there? It seems to be the only place of its kind on the continent, so the probability is high."
The location on the map was situated in the northwestern part of the continent, practically on the opposite side. "Ah, I need more information!" Lando exclaimed in frustration.
He considered his chances of going there to save his mother, and his frustrations grew even further. "How do I even get there? I've never even heard stories about this part of the continent. Apart from getting there, do I even stand a chance of rescuing my mother? There would likely be a large number of council members there. I'm not even sure if I can fight one of them head-on at my current stage. They are better trained, have abundant resources for their advancement, and that's not even the worst part. They share the same elements as I do. Even if I have both elements at once, they still have a numerical advantage. Hell, in the worst-case scenario, a powerful Archmage could teleport there and kill me with a flick of his finger."
Lando's forehead wrinkled in frustration as the more he thought about it, the more impossible it seemed to successfully rescue his mother.
"How powerful do I have to be to rescue her? An Archmage or even higher? Has my mom even survived this long? What happens afterwards? Will they send even more powerful magicians after us?" As Lando saw no viable way to rescue his mother within a reasonable time frame, his thoughts took a different direction. "What if I just give them what they want? Do they want just the map or the ring itself? It is certainly a remarkable artifact, but at its core, it's just a spatial ring. Would they go to such lengths just for a spatial ring? No, I don't believe it. It must have something to do with the map and its marked locations. That's the only thing I can think of. What if I give them the map? No, they would surely kill me since I've already accessed the ring and seen all the locations. Do they want something else in the ring? I haven't seen anything worth the trouble."
Lando's thoughts raced, and he slumped back in his chair near the desk. He sat there, staring at the ceiling, unsure of what to do, as everything he could think of would end in his premature death, take too long, or be a combination of both.
After half an hour, still without a solution in mind, Lando tried to steer his thoughts in a different direction. "What are the things I can do for now? I definitely need more information. I have to know what they want. If I have that information, maybe I can strike a deal with them. That would be the best-case scenario. To do that, I need to question a member of the council. The recruiter back in the academy was at least a mage. Can I take one of them on if it comes to a fight? I'm not certain, but it seems to me that I wouldn't have the best chances. So, it's back to getting stronger."
Stressed out by the whole situation, Lando realized that he hadn't eaten anything for nearly two days. The weight of not finding a solution weighed heavily on his empty stomach. Lando made his way down to the breakfast area, unaware that he would encounter some old acquaintances there.