Isa and Torval did not try to hide their awe as the three were escorted through the city by a pair of city watchmen. They gaped as their heads turned this way and that, taking in all the buildings and crowds. People gave them a wide berth, in part due to the watchmen, in part due to Rai, and in part due to the kobolds, but they didn’t even seem to notice. Rai wore an amused smile as he watched his companions.

Fairholm isn’t even a particularly striking city, he thought. It’s big, but it’s relatively plain-looking. Wait until they see one of the cool cities, like Glaspire or Winchim.

When they reached Lord Henrik’s estate, Torval actually gasped.

“Welcome to Lord Henrik’s home,” Rai said. “Remember what I told you about nobility, and treat the lord with proper respect.”

“Yes!” Torval said enthusiastically.

The watchmen passed on the job of escorting to Henrik’s house guards and the three were led inside to the sitting room. Rai kept his sword this time because he had hidden it in the dimensional pouch. When they reached the sitting room, all three were surprised to find not just Henrik, but also the healer Camilla.

The elf burst into tears.

“You’re really alive!” she exclaimed. “Oh, thank the gods!”

“Welcome back, Rai,” Henrik said, holding up his teacup in salute. “Before anything else, I want to apologize for my poor choice in mercenaries. I never expected that they would turn on you like that.”

“Apology accepted,” Rai said with a nod. “I can’t blame you too much anyway; my own hire turned on me, too.”

“Still, it doesn’t excuse what happened. They were meant to make your job easier, and instead they made it harder. I hope this hasn’t completely soured you to the idea of taking along others on future expeditions.”’

“Of course not, Lord Henrik. We’ll just need to be more discerning about who we take with us.”

“Ah, yes. The kobolds. Please, take a cup of tea and sit. Camilla has given me the general idea of what happened from her perspective, so I know about the red one – Isa Bloodscale, correct? – but the green one is new to me. What is your name, little one?”

All three settled onto chairs with teacups held in fingers or claws. Isa took a sip, made an appreciative noise, and then downed the whole cup. Torval sipped and grimaced. He hopped off the chair and put the teacup back down on the glass table before returning to his seat.

“I’m Torval Seeker, Lord. I’m an apprentice knowledge-keeper. Oh, just like it sounds, a knowledge-keeper memorizes all the knowledge of the tribe. Well, most of the knowledge of the tribe. Some stuff gets passed down from craftsmen to their apprentices. I guess the closest human equivalent would be a scholar?”

“Oh? A kobold scholar? How fascinating! Based on what you said, I assume that your tribe doesn’t have literacy skills?”

“Right. That’s part of why I came here; to learn to read and write, so I can record the tribe’s knowledge. The other part is for the Library, after I can read. I want to learn as much as I can! The world is such a fascinating place!”

“Indeed it is! Full of wonders. I think you and I will get alone quite well, Torval, even if you don’t like tea.” Henrik smiled.

“S-sorry…”

“Don’t apologize! Not everyone likes all the same things; life would be less varied if they did.”

“If you don’t mind me asking, how did Camilla come to be here?” Rai said.

“Oh, Camilla is actually in my employ, more or less. She’s technically a priestess, but she works directly under me rather than at a temple. She told me that after she healed the spirit mage”— Isa let out a displeased hiss at that –“he allowed her to follow him back to civilization, upon which time she headed back here to Fairholm and he went off who knows where. When I heard you were back, I summoned her to be present for your arrival.”

“I see. So, I presume you want to hear the story of what happened from my perspective?”

“That does seem like a good place to start.”

When Rai finished his tale, he took out the dimensional pouch. “This has everything in it. I haven’t had a chance to study most of it yet.”

“Well then, it would seem there are two orders of business: studying your findings, and seeing if we can’t get someone else out to study the ruin.”

“The main problem with the latter is that Brak might be a member of the same organization that attacked me, in which case sending anyone to the ruin may be sending them into danger.”

“Agreed. That is a problem. However… I would like you to let me handle that. All you need to do is write up your initial findings and the story of discovery in such a way as to capture the hearts of any scholars willing to take the risk. I will send the report out with my seal to lend credence to your words. It may take some time before anyone comes, but it will happen. There are numerous institutions that would take interest in an alleged ancient ruin, after all. I suspect the Magic Tower at the Isle of Heaven’s Reach will be very interested.”

“My father actually works there as a professor, which should help.”

“Oh? How fortunate! So… may I see what you’ve recovered? I understand you won’t be able to explain it all to me until you’ve had a chance to study it, but I’d still like to see it.”

“Of course, Lord Henrik.”

-x-

Lord Henrik provided Rai, Isa, and Torval with a place to stay in his mansion, as well as providing a tutor for Torval to teach him to read and write, training partners for Isa, and a research lab for Rai. Additionally, whenever one of them wished to go out into the city, he had one of his elite guards (of which he had three in his employ, including his bodyguard) accompany them for protection; this allowed the kobolds to explore the city without worrying about being attacked.

One of the first things that Isa and Rai did was take the qi medicine, which they swallowed whole. Immediately, a raging burst of roiling qi erupted within, and they had to meditate to bring it under control and integrate it into their own qi cores. Within a few days of this, both managed to complete the processes of bringing their cores to the third tier, not only raising the amount of qi they had available for arts (and the number of arts they could etch into their qi core), but also fortifying their bodies, increasing their strength, agility, dexterity, and toughness.

After that, they both worked on building their third mana circle whenever they weren’t training, studying, or exploring the city; Rai mostly studying while Isa mostly trained and explored. Rai reached third circle more quickly than Isa, but within a month both had achieved the goal, increasing their available mana for spellcasting (and the number of spells they could etch into their soul or body and fortifying their spirits, boosting intellectual capacity, sensory awareness, and affinity with magic.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“So, Rai, explain to me how learning new magic spells works,” Torval said, sitting on top of a lab table and facing the human scholar as Rai picked up the gold ring with amethysts that had been discovered in the ruin. “There are different kinds of mages, whose power comes from different sources; do they learn spells differently?”

“Yes, actually,” Rai said, setting the ring back down on the table next to the kobold. “There are five types of mage: soul mages, blood mages, spirit mages, divine mages, and scholastic mages. As you said, the difference is in the source of their powers: the soul, the blood, contracted spirits, divine entities, or scientific study of the arcane. Well, I guess there’s actually a sixth type: music mages. Music mages are kind of a cross between soul mages and scholastic mages, in that the power is tied to their soul, but instead of just channeling mana in spell paths, they have to learn and study how to use music to unleash it. But anyway.

“I’m a soul mage and Isa’s a blood mage. Each time a new mana circle is formed, all types of mages (except scholastic mages) expand the number of spells they can know; learning new spells doesn’t happen instantly at that time. Scholastic mages have the most difficult path of magic, but in return they can know a limitless number of spells; they just can’t cast anything at a higher circle than they have in the mana heart. But for the rest of us, we have a set limit. The limit actually varies a bit from mage to mage, much like the limit on combat arts varies a bit from combat artist to combat artist, but the variance is pretty small. Anyway, once our available spell paths have increased, it’s time to learn new spells.

“For a soul mage like me, it comes in the form of something I’ll call ‘directed intuition.’ We have a very limited amount of control over what spells we learn; some we just straight up can’t learn even if another soul mage can, while others come to us easily without us even trying and we can’t deny them even if we wanted to. But some of our spell count is made up of spells we choose, which we obtain though meditation on the subject matter we want the spell for. Regardless, the process is fairly intense – sometimes it’s painful, other times we have to experience visions or dreams.

“For a blood mage like Isa, it comes in the form of ‘willful unlocking.’ That is to say, it’s all based on what potential lies in the blood. There can be multiple different paths of potential, and the personality and desire of the blood mage determines which ones get unlocked, making the spells available. Meditation also helps with that.

“For a spirit mage, it’s all in the contracts. New contracts must be made with more spirits to grant new spells. For divine mages, the divine entity determines what new spells to grant, subject to the acceptance of the mage. For scholastic mages, they just study how to create the spell. For music mages, they learn new pieces of music.”

Rai shrugged. “And there you have it.”

“You’re a third circle mage now; what new spells have you learned?”

“Well, just last night during meditation, I learned a new first circle spell called Discern Flow.” Rai’s eyes began to glow with the light of Mage Sight, except flickering electricity danced within them as well. “It’s an upgraded form of Mage Sight. As a first circle spell, I can’t maintain it indefinitely like Mage Sight, and it use one of my first circle spell uses for the day, but it is more powerful in one regard: it greatly increases the ease with which I can analyze the flow of magical energy in magical objects, assisting in identifying magic item properties and how they work.”

“Wait, how did you do that? I though you could only cast zeroth circle spells without saying the words or making gestures.”

“Ah, that was the case, but not anymore. Both Isa and I have trained ourselves to do mental magic – that is, magic without gestures or words – but can only do so with spells of a circle two or more lower than the number of circles in our mana hearts. When we had two-circle hearts, that meant only zeroth circle spells; now, it also includes first circle spells.”

Rai picked up the ring again. “Identifying everything has been slow going, but with this spell, things should speed up greatly. Hm…”

Torval watched him as he scrutinized the mana flow only he could see for the next minute or so.

“…Holy shit. I definitely need to know who the owner of this ring was. Judging from its size, I’d say they were whatever evolution comes after saurian, because it’s too big for a human finger, but luckily…”

Rai put the ring on and it immediately resized to fit his finger. “As I suspected. Nobody would be stupid enough to make a non-resizing wearable magic item of this power level.” He grinned. “Torval, this is an amazing artifact and I want it for myself. You remember how I told you that the higher the number of circles a mage has, the more powerful a given spell is?”

“Yes?”

“This ring boosts the power of all spells cast by the wearer as though they had one more mana circle. Do you have any idea how powerful that is? This is an amazing treasure! There is no way I’m parting with it.” Rai grinned as he spread his fingers, examining the ring on his hand. “Okay, next item while I’m still under the effects of this spell.”

It took Rai casting the spell five times to identify all the other items save for the tetrahedrons, which even under the effects of Discern Flow he was still unable to successful figure out how to activate – though he did work out that they were indeed information storage devices. As a soul mage, Rai labored under the restriction that he was incapable of casting the same spell twice in a row (trying caused intense pain and magical backlash), so he had to intersperse Discern Flow with other spells. In the process, he demonstrated two new second circle spells he had learned since becoming a third circle mage: Dancing Sparks and Invisibility.

“So, Dancing Sparks is a new lightning-themed spell I learned. It’s meant for combat, but I can demonstrate it without hurting you. I’ll just go to this corner here… all right. I think you’re far enough away. I’m going to cast this centered on myself. Dancing Sparks. Gah!”

A bright lightning flash enveloped him, leaving him temporarily blinded. Dancing sparks of violet static electricity moved around on his body, though they didn’t harm him.

“As you can see – I cannot, thanks to that flash. I’m pretty sure it’s possible to resist, but it’s not easy. The sparks all over me stay there for the duration of the blindness, even if the blindness is resisted, which is over half a minute… actually, with the ring, it should be close to a minute. This serves to highlight the locations of any creatures caught in the flash.”

“Why would you need that?” Torval asked.

“Well, in case they were invisible. That’s the other new second circle spell I have: I can turn people – including myself – invisible. Useful spell when sneaking up on enemies, especially if I want to line up a vital strike. It only lasts a few minutes, or until I perform any offensive action.”

“You can turn invisible! That’s so cool!”

“I’ll show you after I identify a few more items.”

-x-

The most important – if not the most valuable – magic item for Rai’s research ended up being the transparent headband-like slip of cloth with a slit in the middle. Rather than being a headband, as he had first thought, it was intended to be worn around the bottom part of the face, with the slit over one’s mouth. As soon as he learned what it did – allowed the wearer to understand, read, and speak any language – he immediately put it on and activated it by sticking his tongue through the slit, which caused it to disappear into his skin. To remove it, he would need to utter a command word, but he had no intention of doing so anytime soon.

With what he was calling “the Strap of Tongues” providing him with the ability to read the runes the books were written in without having to translate and decode them, he quickly threw himself into his studies. First, he separated them out into groups based on their natures. The three trap-protected tomes were a personal journal, a ledger, and a book of magic spell “scroll pages.” The library books included a bestiary, an alchemy manual, an illustrated novel, an instruction book of combat arts, and a technique book teaching a method for accelerated formation of mana circles within the mana heart. The rest were research journals.

The books of most immediate interest were the personal journal, the book of magic spells, the combat arts instruction book, and the mana circle formation method technique book. Rai took Isa away from her training and exploration so that he could read aloud to her, immediately seeing how both of them could benefit from these books. He also grabbed Torval for the reading of the journal.

He patted the journal.

“Isa, you’ll never guess what this journal is!”’

“Then you’d better tell me.”

“This is the personal journal of the Chief Administrator, right hand to the Mage-King who ruled from the magic tower we were in! Apparently, she was a Berserker-Mage like you in addition to being in charge of managing a bunch of things! You’ve gotta hear this!”

“Oh?” Isa was intrigued. “Does it say what race she was?”

“It took me a while before I found her referencing it. We were right about the place being run by kobold-kin. The bulk of the population were saurians, with a large minority being kobolds, but there’s another, higher-evolution race that formed the ruling class. According to this, they’re called draconids. She was a draconid. I’ve never heard of draconids before, so I’ll have to do some research at the library to see if I can learn more.

“Anyway, this journal details a bunch of stuff, but it seems that they were entering a period of war while she was writing it. It ends pretty abruptly and before the last page, so I think she must have died during the war. Based on your tribe’s legends, I suspect that this war was the one that led to the destruction of the ancient city, which would mean this is from the end of the Tower Era. Let’s start at the first entry…”