Chapter 15
I didn’t see Pelle until the next morning. She was getting ready for her day and accidentally ran into one of the many piles of potions strewn about our room. The breaking glass and sloshing sounds of spilling liquid woke me up like a heart attack.
“Wha-wha-what?” I said, and bolted from my bed.
The bedding entangled me and I fell face first to the floor, unable to bring up an arm to brace my fall. The room shook under my impact and all the potions shook in a brief clatter of glass.
“Uehhhhhh,” I said, all fight and flight knocked from my senses.
“Tosin! I’m so sorry! Hahaha! Tosin are you ok?”
I was not ok. I was tangled and my struggle to free myself was fruitless. Pelle doubled over in laughter and I spoke incomprehensibly.
“Hold on!” she said, “hold on!”
My twisting and turning undid all her efforts to help me from the clutches of my bedding. Her laughter rendered her immobile after sometime and I was left a dejected bleary eyed victim, begging her to help me.
Eventually she gathered herself together and helped me out. She’d said she was up early because she was excited about today.
“Rumor is that we’ll be leveling up some things today,” she’d said.
We ate a simple breakfast together and discussed our deaths in the past dungeon. Being the first to die had compromised the rest of her party, and they had soon followed.
“I was certain we were experienced enough to handle it,” she said.
“In hindsight,” I said, “I don’t know what I was thinking, but it’s in the past now. I’m looking forward to some different dungeons. I’m tired of the cold and the tundra. We’ve been fighting maggots and Disciples of Bekbah.”
“If you go down the valley there’s a bunch of different dungeons. Swamps, graveyards, meadows, caverns, jungles—a ton of options.”
“Yea, I’m gonna feel it out in the next party I join—see what everyone else thinks.”
We enjoyed a lovely leisurely walk around the guild, embracing the beauty of manicured gardens, on our way to the healers training building. We shared an unspoken thrill when coming up to the architecture of thick wooden beams, with pillars of gold light that eternally ascended.
Garmar greeted us as well as other incoming healers as we made our way in. Pelle and I sat together and a bit closer to the front this time. Impatient joy lit her eyes with a passion.
“Excited?” I said.
“VERY!”
“Alright,” Garmar said, pacing his stage, eager for today’s lessons. He rubbed his hands together with vigor. “What happens when we level up an item? It’s durability increases! But what about sharpness? Or material? Or weight? Or capacity? Hmm?”
“Can’t you choose?” A soft spoken healer said.
“Yes!” Garmar said, pointing and having his finger do a nodding motion at the boy.
“Leveling an item without runes is called blind leveling. It’s great for durability, but if you want to level other aspects of the item, then you must use runes to specify how something is leveled! Today we are going to level the capacity of a potion bottle!”
Pelle rose to her feet and held a potion bottle to the ceiling in an outstretched hand. I didn’t know if she was expecting divine lights to column around her, or for a chorus of divine legends to sing in canon. Either way, we all paused.
“Anyways,” Garmar continued, “each of you will receive two mana crystals to compensate for today’s lesson, as well as an empty potion bottle.”
Those items were passed around and the chamber filled with dozens of expanded mana rings. The varied hues of blue drowned out all other colors. I concentrated while cultivating, counting the mana points from the first crystal: 3; the second crystal: 3.
My mana was now at 32. Still a long way to go from where I wanted to be. I was thinking: the thousands, maybe. Now that! ...would be a mana pool to have.
Garmar patiently waited until all of us had claimed the mana. One by one, the sounds of crystals imploded to oblivion, shattering around me. The crystals now consumed, we were left with our empty potion bottles.
Then our trainer cast his mana into a growing ring. Satisfied with its size, he withdrew a runic stylo and began transferring points of his mana bar into gold script that bobbed, suspended in mid-air. He bordered the script with a circle of gold.
“This is a capacity rune,” he said. “Go ahead and copy it with your stylos.”
Again the chamber was filled with wobbling circles of blue mana bars. Then streaks of gold began to combat the intense lighting.
I brought the tip of my stylo to the top of my mana bar. Mana leapt to the tip of the stylo as though magnetic. A single point pulled away from the bar the way that gossamer fabric would drag underwater.
In a few strokes, I crudely copied the capacity rune. I’d been one of the last to do it, and Pelle watched on with enthusiasm and an encouraging smile.
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“Excellent,” Garmar said and clapped. “Now place the empty potion bottle beneath the rune: like so. It will float there in the center of your mana ring. Drag down the rune with your stylo and let it fall onto the bottle.”
As the rune descended, it wobbled and wavered until shrinking a bit to land on the side of the potion bottle. The runic enchantment burned molten gold when it touched the glass. Then it cooled to a bronze etching permanently branding the bottle.
I was careful to be sure the glass bottle didn’t fall, grabbing it from its hover.
My second enchanted item. Losing another mana point did make me nervous, but thankfully, the crystals more than made up for it. We wouldn’t always be receiving free crystals like this.
“Congratulations healers! That potion bottle is now a level 2 item. It has 1 basic level of durability, and 1 enhanced level of capacity! The two together contribute to its total level.”
If I understood correctly, then my flagstaff would have 1 level of durability, 2 levels of Fist of Wind, 1 level from Five of Gryf, and 1 level from the Life-steal enchantment, bringing its total level to 5.
“Question!” I said.
Garmar nodded for me to continue. He clasped his hands behind his back and waited patiently. I presented my hypothesis of all the things that made my flagstaff a level 5 item, and Garmar said, “Precisely!”
“So then,” I continued, “Let’s say I remove the Five of Gryf. Does that mean my flagstaff drops a level?”
“Yes, young man. However, if you level up your Five of Gryf, then your flagstaff will reflect that. But let us get back to our fragile bottle here.”
He let his enchanted potion bottle roll out of his hand and plummet to the ground. It shattered into twinkling oblivion as glass shards burst like dying stars.
“Careful now! You sacrificed mana to enchant this item. It will break.”
“What’s its capacity?” a girl said.
“It’s capacity is: times 5. How you use this is entirely up to you! The only thing I would suggest is: don’t break it!”
On that note, one of our fellow healers gasped in a panic and a bottle shattered on the floor. Garmar massaged his head as though a headache were coming on. He gave a great sigh, then a deep breath.
“For the next dungeon, you’ll have a new healing tool to work with. Scrolls! Erm—where’s my bag?”
A girl up front pointed off to the side of the stage. With a sharp exclamation, Garmar retrieved his messenger bag. From its depths he brought out scroll after scroll after scroll.
“These are mine,” he said, “and you will need to go to the Scroll House to pick up yours. You’ll be given 5 level 1 healing scrolls. They will be random. After those 5, the Scroll House will charge you for more.”
He went on to explain that, for now, the seal is unimportant. Each scroll will begin with it’s name, it’s mana cost, a description, a rune, and the author's signature.
“The author's signature is also known as: the Arcane Imprint. Each individual with mana has a unique Arcane Imprint. This imprint evolves overtime as you create more complex scrolls. If you have questions on the origin of a scroll—let’s say you want to commission specific scrolls from a specific author—then almost all Scroll Houses will help you identify the author so that you are better prepared to find them.”
“Evolve?” Someone asked.
“For example, when I wrote my first scroll, my Arcane Imprint was a pair of bird feet. As I made scrolls of higher levels, that Arcane Imprint evolved to what is now a dove clutching the stem of a dried bull thistle.”
“I wanna know what mine is so bad,” Pelle whispered.
“So let’s pick a scroll shall we?” Garmar said, and set all but one scroll back in his messenger bag. He returned to center stage, broke the seal, and unrolled it. It was perhaps the size of a large parchment. Half a meter long; quarter meter wide.
“Title: Healing Blink. Mana cost: 5 points. Description: Single use scroll. Influenced by the legendary healer Bithumb, a ball of silver divine light will drop and burst. A single ripple of silver light will expand out from its point of origin. Party members touched by this light will each receive 5 points of healing.”
Garmar manifested his mana ring and flowed a 5 point ribbon of ethereal mana into the rune on the scroll. The parchment crinkled at its edges as though blasted by a bomb, tearing and breaking, and slowly shredded inwards. An instant later, the whole thing imploded into a silver ball of sharp light. From where I sat, I could sense the immense weight of it as it descended, affecting gravity, breaking silently, and throwing a rippling ring omnidirectionally. It passed through all of us, and as it soared through me, I felt light, as though my feet traversed the top of a cloud. The feeling left us all with gleeful smiles.
“As simple as that!” Garmar said, pleased with his demonstration, pleased with our reaction.
Some stayed to ask questions, keeping our trainer quite busy. Everyone else made their exit with excited voices. It was best to find the Scroll House now, before the day was over and it was too late. Pelle and I meandered around the guild grounds, unable to locate the Scroll House for some time.
It was hard to find because we’d passed it several times. We’d passed it several times because we’d been expecting a massive building. It was a small building, barely the size of our room. Though the building roof performed an odd slope all the way to the ground.
“Stairs heading underground?” Pelle said.
“Let’s take a look,” I said.
The door opened with a stuttering rattle. The small building was filled with windows where sunlight did its best to squeeze through shelves and stacks of scrolls. A single old wooden table occupied the floor; behind it a chair, upon that: a fellow cloaked in robes; in his hand a runic stylo; beneath the runic stylo the finishing of a scroll.
“Hullo,” he said, removing a hand from the scroll that pinned it down. The scroll sprinted in on itself and bounced, then rolled together as though shy and secretive. “Just a moment please. Let me--” The fellow scooped a spoon of melted wax from a little cauldron behind him on the shelf, and with a rod, sealed the scroll. “--finish the seal. Ah! Perfect. Voila! Ok. Let’s see here.”
At last he lifted his head. His face was youthful and his smile was wholesome and homey. He tucked back his wide sleeves but they only crept down to his wrists once again.
“Even more healers! You’re here for this week's scrolls hmm?
“Yes, please.”
The robed fellow turned and tilted his head back to search the tops of the shelves. He spoke through the strained tilt of his neck as he searched with his hands more than his eyes.
“Yes, yes, I’ve got scrolls for you, scrolls for you, I’ve been hard at work, working, working, they’re here somewhere, yes, here they are!”
With the base of his fist he banged on the shelves. All the scrolls in those columns of shelves, rattled and shook. The ones at the top loosened and began falling out one by one.
“There!”
Bang!
“We!”
Bang!
“Are!”
Pelle doubled over in laughter as dozens of scrolls tumbled to the floor. The robed fellow, “Call me Mr. Derum, if you’d like,” hunched over and waded through the scrolls. He plucked them up with haste, as though gathering stubborn crawfish and counted out five to each of us while throwing them over.
“Well then!” he said, standing with a dramatic flourish. “Come see me if you need anything else!”
Before we could get another word out, he crossed the room, pulled back a swinging shelf, and descended down hidden stairs. With nothing to cushion the swinging shelves, they slammed into another few columns of stacked scrolls, and all promptly rained to the floor.
We were left amused, bewildered, and each of us with 5 random scrolls of healing