When Mason woke up in the morning it was to the smell of sizzling bacon and eggs. He jerked around for a bit at the unfamiliar room he was in before remembering. He had been brought to another world after his death. He had joined this group of adventurers and then learned how to do magic and wield a blade. He had glossed over the fact that he could wield magic as if it was nothing yesterday, but really that alone should have been enough to shock him. As he got up from the couch, he saw Rowan talking with the couple who owned this house.
“Oh yeah you guys did us a real favor by coming out here. A lot of the higher ranked adventurers would consider this too small to do. We didn’t really have a lot to offer the guild. However that fox killed 6 of our chickens, which is a significant loss for a farm as small as ours.”
“Oh, no problem at all, whatever we can do to help. And I feel you have already made it up to us by letting us sleep here overnight and giving us breakfast.”
Mason got up and joined the conversation. They continued to chat until the girls came out of their room. Once they had finished eating, they set out for the city. On the way mason asked the group some questions. “So are you two able to use magic?” He asked Rowan and Anne.
“No, Very few people can. Only about 1 in a 30 can grasp the flow. I am very lucky to be able to and you are able to because you are an otherworlder.”
“Oh. And you mentioned specializations in magic. What are those exactly?”
“Well each spell is split up into three parts. Intent, Form, and Substance. At level 10 your class either upgrades or consolidates some of your lower leveled classes.That is when you pick a general specialization. If you pick form you go down the route of a Shaper. If you pick Substance you go down the route of an Elemantilist. If you pick intent you go down the path of the Vowed. Your strength as a mage is determined by the size of your Pool and how much of the Flow you can grasp at once. We will test you later for that. However specializing is very important because once you pick a specialization you no longer need to fix that part in each spell, saving you time and mana. To be clear you can only specialize in one thing. You cannot change that later. I didn’t get to the level where I would get a specialization before I consolidated it into my beast tamer class for the beast summoner class, but I was planning on going light mage.”
“Also what is the point of [Spell]s when i could just cast it myself? I got one when I got the [Mage] class. [Flaming Daggers] from the [Mage] class and [Basic Knowledge - Blades] from warrior.”
“The main benefit is you don’t have to think about each aspect each time. You can just activate the skill and it is instantly with a small cooldown rather than spending upwards of 20 seconds on a simple spell.”
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“Huh. [Flaming Daggers]” He raised his hand, and once he finished speaking two flaming daggers shot out, burning the road ahead of them.
“Oh I’d rather you didn’t do that. If you aren’t in combat or training then combat magic is illegal.”
“No problem, I just didn’t know. Speaking of, are there any magics that are illegal? Like necromancy for example”
“Necromancy is allowed, Just not resurrection of Sentients. It’s not particularly loved mind you, A lot of weirdos tend to pursue it, so it has a bad name. However there is one type of magic that is flat out banned, punishable by death for knowing a single spell or having a level in the class and that is plague magic.”
“Really? That serious? Did something happen to cause all this?”
“Yes. Very much so. The civilization you see before you today is fairly new. Only about 400 years old. There are still many parts of the continent we haven’t explored. About three thousand years ago now this entire continent was murdered by a single plague mage. She eventually turned herself in for execution and at that point she was the highest level individual ever known, at Level 89. However the damage was already done. This continent was abandoned for two and a half thousand years in fear there was some remnant of that disease. We are only here now because there were a couple of human cities outside of Puecan, Which by the way is the name of the continent. People eventually came back as they were chased out of their homelands. Anyway in short, plague magic has ever since been completely banned.”
“How did the other continents not get affected?”
“They shot down any ships coming from Puecan once they heard the news. It was harsh but we survived so… A quick warning, Somewhat unrelated. Never dig too deep into your mana pool. When you do your brain starts to slow, your blood feels thicker and your heart beats less often to the point where if you lose all of your mana you flat out die. Never go below 10% mana Ok? I know a mage who went too deep and could no longer use his legs and his brain never recovered.”
A silence followed her words. A single mage able to wipe out an entire continent by themselves. He understood why plague magic was banned then. They continued to walk towards the city, and on the way they stopped for Rowan to go into a farmhouse to their side. It was fairly distant but Mason thought he could hear yelling. Rowan came out a minute later and said “Sorry I just wanted to let my parents know why I wasn’t there last night. Let’s keep going”
Mason decided not to ask about the yelling if Rowan didn’t bring it up.
There was one more interesting conversation before they got to the city. It started when Mason saw a small green cloud passing only about ten feet over one of the nearby fields, moving in neat rows. When mason pointed it out, Dally explained that it was a magic cloud powered by a local mage. Apparently he specialized in clouds, and Dally made a point of the fact that it was as a form rather than a substance. He sold his abilities to local farmers. If there was a drought he would water their fields for them and if nor he would do what he was doing now, which was apparently a cloud of growth. “Magic has many uses, far beyond just combat”