During their conversion with Gob, both Mark and Sam had asked about the Inscriptions that covered the walls. He explained that right now there were only a few different types that humans had managed to work out. Apparently, it was another method of casting magic. How it worked was beyond Gob, but he knew it was Mana intensive and kind of like a super complex language, different Inscriptions did different things. If they wanted to learn more though, then either going to Crafters Cove or joining in on a lesson at the Institute were their best options.
Sam was also interested in learning how that worked, however, a battle was fought over where to head next.
They were sitting in a small cafe, that had been spared the disaster of battle, or at least cleaned up really well after the fall. Mark was just tucking into a hotdog, served with caramelized onions and topped with ketchup, mustard, and relish. When Jonathan tried once more.
“It’s a Thunder Dome, why the heck wouldn’t you want to go there first?”
Sam shot back just as fast.
“I never said I don’t want to go, but like, the Institute is right there. We pop in and have a look around”
Jonathan rolled his eyes.
“That's never a quick visit for you. Plus, you’ve seen one campus, you’ve seen them all.”
“Not this one! They are working with magic and stuff. They even have classes for Aura and Prana, come on, it's clearly the best option.”
Mark just kept munching his food. Chloe and Daphne had already weighed in, and had washed their hands of this particular war.
Chloe was for the school and Daphne wanted to see the fighting. Cara said she didn't mind either way, as long as they all went somewhere fun together.
And so they had their current dilemma, which, to be honest, Mark was kind of enjoying. When had he last gotten the chance to argue with friends about something so trivial, as to where to spend the day?
The thing was, realistically, they only had time to check out one more place, they would be needed back at the penthouse in a couple of hours.
Mark had weighed up his options and honestly, he wanted to go to both places. The Thunder Dome sounded awesome and a great way to see new fighting styles, hell, they might even be able to compete. On the other hand, the university campus sounded great too. Other people who had different ideas on how the system worked was alluring.
Mark weighed up his options and picked NAS University, his thinking was that the campus had multiple different courses and could be universally helpful to all of them, while the Arena would only help their combat skills.
He had already made his thoughts clear but that hadn’t stopped Jonathan from trying.
Still, one thing did seem to make Jonathan more interested in the campus. Mark had remembered that Gob had said that not only Inscription could be learned there. They also offered other crafting classes, he had not specified what kinds of classes but it had given Jonathan pause.
In the end, they would get to both either way, but it was finally agreed that the campus was the better choice for today.
After everyone was stuffed, they headed towards the campus district. Leo had left them after dropping them off at the restaurant, but armed with a copy of Gob’s map they had no trouble finding it.
As they landed next to a large open field, at the beginning of the school grounds, they saw lots of people moving around the space.
Across the lawn, sat a large archaic building. It was evident it had suffered greatly during the initial days, but nothing large amounts of Mana could not fix. Cracks in the stonework had been filled in with various colored earths, which lifted the gray stonework with streaks of reds, oranges, and even greens. Entirely new structures had been added to the building without rhyme or reason. Spires built of earth, metal, and even glass reached into the sky, refracting the light.
An impressive-looking building had a roof made entirely out of bismuth crystal, which glimmered in the sun as a rainbow of colors.
Flyers were much more prevalent here as well, dashing from spire to spire. They moved through the air on rainclouds stirred by magic or flames produced from their hands and feet, creating propulsion.
The scene looked as if someone had hacked a castle out of the pages of a fairytale and brought it to their world.
All around them, Mana throbbed and slithered through the air. Hundreds of different people’s Mana, overlapping with one another. It wasn’t unpleasant, just a stark difference from the ambient Mana that flowed everywhere else. It felt similar to an approaching storm front, in this case, they were the ones walking towards it.
As they crossed the field, they saw an entire array of people, all dressed differently. Some looked like they had just gotten off work, while others dressed in their best formal wear.
There was no shortage of demonstrations either.
They passed a woman who had her own localized stormcloud, complete with rumbling arcs of discharge, as lighting moved through it. She sat meditating in the grass next to a young boy whose image seemed to warp as if he were behind a funhouse mirror. Blinking in and out of sight, going invisible just temporarily before warping back into being.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
Further up, two guys faced one another with their hands outstretched as if caught in a contest of strength, though neither moved nor touched one other. In between them was a ball of water, moving rapidly back and forth as if in a game of tug of war.
Beyond that, a man and woman were doing some sort of slow set of movements in unison. Perhaps similar to a kata. Matching their Aura’s, as if trying to merge them, but not quite succeeding.
Countless little events like this were scattered along their path as they made their way to what looked like the front entrance.
Someone had placed a large noticeboard made from quartz, just outside the entrance way, it protruded from the grass as if grown from the topsoil.
The board was littered with notices and schedules advertising classes and their going rates. Everything from the basics, to advanced was here. Courses with names like Elemental testing, First Manipulations, Meditation, Flight, Conceptualization, Crafting: potions, Multithreading 101, Passion-casting, War-time Battle theory, Crafting: Armoursmithing, Summoning, Healing 101, Aura-to-Authority, and so many more.
They took a moment to take it all in because frankly, there were more classes here than they could manage at once. It quickly became apparent that this was not the traditional type of enrollment procedure.
Understandably, it had not been long since the world went to shit, and teaching structures like this took time to develop. So the the problem was outsourced. There were teachers and courses, but each one was a volunteer, who had grasped some aspect of magic and now they would teach it to others for a fee. They got no support from the school as of yet, but they also made most of the Sp for teaching people.
Each course had its own sign-up sheet with its requirements for entry, their cost, assigned classroom, and times.
Then it came down to who signed up for what. Mark could see there were fifty-six different people teaching flight magic and it came down to what magic’s one used, and how good the teachers were.
Picking a cheaper teacher was not always a bad idea, but it was a toss-up if they could help you understand something if you got stuck somewhere along the way.
Of course, there were popular teachers who had lots of students and their sign-up page was full, without space to add more names. While others didn’t even have one name.
Teaching styles were different too, some only did a set amount of lessons, while others worked with you until you got the material.
Altogether it was a marketplace of ideas and classes, Mark could just about see the stars in Sam’s eyes, as she greedily scoured the list of available classes.
The sheer number of choices was great, but one was not always sure that the class they signed up for would be useful. And you hoped it was, because the prices for each course were ridiculous. Even the less well-known teachers were asking close to a thousand Sp for each course.
Sp was not a huge problem for them, but even they had their limit. They were yet to start a faction fund, most of their expenses were coming out of their personal Sp right now.
Part of Jonathan's job when they got back was as the treasurer. Factions functioned very much like businesses and the flow of Sp needed to be monitored, he was the perfect guy for the job. Initially, funds would be invested into the faction coffers by the leaders. From there those funds would be used to cover the faction's expenses while they got on their feet. Soon enough they would make the points back from day-to-day operations and productions. Again it was like any business, but the twist was that all the profits would go back into improving their people. In a world where your comrade's survival was linked to yours, it was paramount that you put everything into the people around you. Of course, there were probably factions that took advantage of this, but they wouldn’t last long. If people's survival was linked to some greedy bastard well… let's just say they had gotten warnings of people literally being ripped to pieces in the streets, by angry faction members. Another facet of the world they now resided in. Don't fuck with system-enhanced individuals, especially, when they outnumbered you a hundred-to-one.
Maybe when they were more stable there would be available funding to send their people here, but as of right now, the cost would fall on them personally.
Mark had just found a course called, Crafting: Inscription/ Rune development when there was a large impact behind them.
Mark's construct expanded to wrap around his group, as they turned to face the sound.
Bits of soil and grass pattered against the barrier. The soil cleared to reveal a lithe man, climbing up out of the crater.
It only took Mark a moment to realize the man had come up from below ground rather than falling from the sky like he first thought.
No dirt or dust stuck to his jeans and hoodie. When he saw them he made an apologetic gesture.
“Whoopsies for the startle, I’m just late for my class. If you are interested in conceptualization, hit me up. My name’s Sunny Rayfield, I’m on the board…”
The man hadn’t even finished the sentence before turning to run in the direction of the main building.
Mark couldn’t help the grin tugging at the corners of his mouth, was the guy advertising himself to everyone he met? That was one way to get his name out there.
Mark turned back to the board and after a bit of searching, he did indeed find the guy's name.
Sunny Rayfield - Conceptualization.
Magic is more than just a physical phenomenon we experience and can compute. Through the mix of energies and concepts, one can alter the desired outcome from their magic. Imbuing it with different ideals.
This is a key component to progress and one we can strive for together, to deepen your control over your chosen magics.
Requirements:
* Have the [Meditation] skill
* The desire to learn big words.
* One magic type or at least know what magics you are compatible with.
Cost: 1400 Sp for 5 lessons. Refund upon early mastery.
Place and time: lecture hall 1203 @ 2:00-4:00 everyday
Sunny’s sheet was more than two-thirds full and seemed to be one of the only two Conceptualization courses. Mark was leaning toward it being a hard class, because of the material. Easy requirements aside, that probably wasn't a class that one could master in five lessons. Conceptualization was important, and from what Mark understood there was more to it than meets the eye. For example, when Mark had fought Lieutenant Nole, his shadows had mass to them. As far as darkness was concerned, it was just an absence of light, right?
Well, somehow, the weight behind it, would beg to differ.
Mark looked at the other person's sign-up sheet and they were slightly cheaper, but only had half the number of students as Sunny. Sam had seen him looking at the sheet and was also interested, so both of them signed up for the class. There were so many different options for classes that it was hard to pick one just to start. Inscription was running at 7900 Sp for two lessons, so right now Mark could not justify spending that much before he even knew what it was. After a long time of hemming and hawing. They all decided to sign up for one class now and come back later when they had more time. Chloe signed up for multithreading and Jonathan went for Crafting: Weapon smithing. Finally, Cara signed up for a course called Spatial Perception and Anchoring, while Daphne chose Aura-to-Authority.