As the days passed into weeks, then the months to nearly a year, the training of my vassals continued without pause. And during that time, my lessons with Mr. Brooks had grown increasingly shorter.
After my bender in the library and my visits thereafter, I was no longer dependent on him to give me studying material. As such, his planned lectures usually wound up consisting of him asking me what I'd read, and me explaining in vivid detail everything I knew about the topic at hand and more.
As much as he seemed delighted about my intellect, however, he also became visibly flustered every time I answered him in such a way. Made evident by him muttering to himself while he shuffled through his bag of slightly arranged documents to presumably decide upon the next course of study. At which time I'd begin the question and answer sessions.
With nearly the whole of the library being cataloged in my Eternal Eye, such acts played out again and again until I was receiving lessons from my tutor only once a fortnight. Leaving me with an abundance of time that I spent transcribing textbooks and manuals for my vassals.
It was a few weeks before my sixth birthday when it happened. Like any other day, I dipped through the shadows sometime in the morning and emerged in the formal area of the house to step into the private office that'd been designated as my classroom. Only to find my father excitedly talking up a storm to a somewhat deflated Mr. Brooks sitting across from him.
"Ah, Amun! You're here!" Father turned to me after I'd entered, cheesing like a kid.
"I am." I nodded slowly in confusion. "What's the issue?"
"No issues." Father shook his head while showing me his palms as a gesture of nonaggression. "Wilmont here was simply telling me of your genius."
I turned my inquisitive eyes from my father towards Mr. Brooks, who simply smiled at me.
"It's true." He nodded as if in defeat. "You've proven your genius to me time and time again, Your Grace. I planned on teaching you until you were at least ten years old. And yet." He ruefully chuckled. "You've learned everything I aimed to teach you within the span of a year. All on your own, at that. An incredible accomplishment, truly."
"Thank you for your kind words." I bowed before returning my gaze to him. "So, I assume this means our lessons are over?"
"It does, I'm afraid." He sighed. "I have nothing left to teach Your Grace and as such, your basic education is complete. It was an honor."
"The honor was mine." I shook my head in response to his bow. "Your books were particularly helpful to me. Without them, it would've taken me longer to get to this point."
He let out a rueful chuckle at the words and sheepishly looked away while scratching the back of his head.
'I guess that's not a compliment.' I laughed inside before speaking again. "That said, there's still something I'm I have questions about."
"Oh?" He turned with raised brows. "Such as?"
"About the world." I stepped closer. "The Mortal Plane."
"You have the look of disbelief in you, Amun." My father commented from his seat. "A rarity if, I do say so myself."
"Quite frankly, I don't believe it," I huffed. "How do we know so much about it? How can something so large exist without it crumbling apart? How has it been measured? And how do we know of the different realms? These are my most pertinent questions."
He seemed taken aback a little from my sudden enthusiasm. And after taking a deep breath and putting on a content smile, he casually rose from his seat and approached the enchanted fireplace before gesturing to the chalkboard. "May I?" He smiled warmly.
"Please." I nodded, taking his seat. "Tell me everything."
With a bow, he turned to the slate board and began drawing a large disk, much like a CD; only with a large sphere in the middle that I was certain represented the sun, Tiatus. "Humanities recorded history dates back 1,481 years." He began. "Before that time, humanity had no knowledge of the many races that exist on the Mortal Plane. We knew only of the dwarves and gnomes living among us humans; of the vast underground labyrinths that stretched beneath the continents and surrounding seas; and of the uncrossable, impossibly vast oceans that surround our realm- Maru." He punctuated himself by stabbing his chalk at a seemingly indiscriminate point on his drawing. Creating a small dot in the mid-region of the disk.
"While many have tried." He continued. "None have made it through; or if they did, no word was ever sent back to us in Maru. We were trapped in our world, vast as it may be. Unknowing of anything outside of us until a series of magical gates appeared in the Ulaian continent. Marking the beginning of recorded history. Commonly." He paused to turn and flick his chalk at me before continuing his drawing. "This is known as the catalyst for an invasion from otherworldly creatures that would last for over a millennium."
I nodded along during his pause, as everything he'd said so far stood true to everything that I'd read.
"What's rarely written about, however." My father suddenly interjected, allowing Mr. Brooks to continue etching out his masterpiece without distractions. "Is the fact that the invasion was double-sided. While these inhuman creatures did indeed invade and wage war on Maru for over a thousand years; so to did countless mages, adventurers, guilds, militaries, and even entire empires. They all invaded the lands beyond the portals in droves. And after the majority of them came running back to Maru." My father dryly chuckled. "They documented what lies beyond the gates.
"That isn't to say Maru was untouched, though." My father added with a somber sigh. "The Ulaian continent was considered a Dead Zone within a century of the gates appearing. The continent of Phaegrath was engulfed in war just a decade after that, and by the year 125, the front lines had made it all the way to the Epethian Continent. Persuading many of the guilds of the time to band together and form the Marulean Guild Association. It then took over three centuries of constant fighting for humanity to force the line back and secure the portals."
"The most famous guild to deny the banner of the Guild Association was none other than the New Dawn." Mr. Brooks chimed in, turning from his near-complete board. "As they single-handedly controlled the gate leading to Nonus. At the time, they were led by a light mage who went by the name of Lucius Morningstar. And he." Mr. Brooks grinned with a point of his chalk. "Is responsible for measuring the Mortal Plane."
"I see." I nodded. 'It makes sense. This… Lucius essentially used his magic and himself as a lidar to not only measure the plane but to possibly map it as well. And judging by its size, it must've taken a few hours for all the light to come streaming back to him.
"So then… the linear distance from the inner rim of the Mortal Plane to the outer edge is approximately 1,340,380,800 kilometers and wraps around Tiatus like a disk. That. is what he measured?" I asked, still in obvious disbelief. It was Nine astronomical Units, after all. Equivalent to a solid plate that started at the orbit of Mercury and ended around the orbit of fucking Saturn.
"Yes." Mr. Brooks nodded as if it weren't the craziest thing in existence. "After the fortifications of the portals in the early sixth century, the New Dawn Guild began sending groups to colonize the lands beyond the portals. Over the course of seven hundred years, they erected entire empires. Some fell, others; like Polaris, survived.
"Due to the budding Polaris Empire taking root atop the gate linking Nonus to Maru, they had a hold on migration to the new world. Soon after, Polaris and every other empire that sprouted from New Dawn turned their backs on Maru, denying entry to Nonus to anyone unaffiliated with them. With the inception of the Arcane Academy and the construction of their own transit method, we were once again allowed entry to Nonus, though under strict conditions. And so, the masses continued pouring through the portals leading to the other realms.
"That continued up until the thirteenth century. When a new portal appeared, here." He gestured around us. "In what would later become the Odissian Empire."
"And through it, came the elves," I concluded. "So that means after Ulai was sealed behind the barrier, the humans who went through the portals to colonize the other realms were cut off from Maru forever."
"Precisely." My father nodded. "With the elves came an abundance of knowledge; and other things." He smirked as he gazed somewhere beyond the walls from the side of his eye. "Notably, how to awaken the ability to use higher magic; affinity cores, but also of the many realms and creatures that lie beyond. Greatly expanding what we thought we knew."
"Indeed." Mr. Brooks concurred with a nod. "You see, the Mortal Plane has been the largest center of focus for a vast number of creatures since time immemorial. And among us all, we have come to recognize four distinct realms within the Mortal Plane. And each of those are subdivided into zones or worlds that are dominated by a different tree of life.
"First is the Inner Reaches, closest to Tiatus, our sun." Mr. Brooks pointed to the inner rim of his hand-drawn disk. "Here exists a wall, thousands of kilometers in height. Though we are unaware of its function, we have confirmed its existence and refer to it as, Gray Terminus. Just beyond that Terminus, is a landmass covered in eternal shade that we call The Black Plane. And it is here that we've confirmed the existence of an unbreakable material that serves as the Planes very foundation. Just beyond that are the Close Reaches, a sun-roasted, airless region made of the same, unbreakable material as the core of the plane. And after that lies the Far Reaches, an area where the very rock and magma that sits atop the core of the Mortal Plane gets vaporized and blasted back outwards from Tiatus' radiance."
'That's fuckin' metal.' I grinned inside.
"Naturally." Mr. Brooks continued by pointing to the first section of shaded landmass found on the Plane. "Hell is the realm just north of the Inner Reaches. And the first zone of Hell is named, Mercultis. Its southernmost border is where the rocky or metallic bedrock becomes vaporized to later be blasted over the half-molten lands in a tempest and later rain down in the next region, Exol. A volcanic, lava-rich zone that's most notably recognized by the showers of molten rock and metal that pour down on the lands to form vast, flowing oceans, lakes, and rivers of molten material that all churn north to later settle and solidify in Vagua. The blistering land of rock and metallic hail, filled with demons that live in the blistering heat of the day and vampires that live in the slightly cooler nights. The last zone of Hell is Conum." He pointed to a land pocked with filled-in holes of varying sizes and shapes. "The northernmost border of Conum is near the waterline. Allowing simmering seas and lakes to form in chains that stretch for tens of thousands of kilometers, filling the air with dense steam.
"These boiling lakes form a natural border to Paradise, the third realm." He pointed to what appeared to be a vast archipelago from this scale. Chains of land broken apart by coin-sized 'lakes' and vast seas that broke apart the map in a few isolated regions. "Within Paradise sits three distinct landmasses that are separated by oceans of immense proportions. The smallest of them is Maru."
I squinted to see the small dot of landmasses at the end of his pointer. It was in the same area he pointed to earlier. A series of dots that were supposed to represent the vast continents I'd already been familiar with. Only separated from any other landmasses by an ocean of interplanetary proportions.
"The others." Mr. Brooks pointed to the far side of the disk to a massive patch of land that stretched from the waterline up to the border of ice much further north. "Consist of Youtera, home of the elves. A land where few humans have ever stepped foot. And Betrarth." He pointed to a similar landmass of about half the width, but much closer to Maru. Towards the west; if the west was counter-clockwise on the disk, and separated by a still stupidly vast ocean "The land dominated by orc and goblin-kin. The rest of the land in Paradise is what we call, Nonus." He explained as he drew circles around the rest of the land-dotted seas. "And this is where the vast majority of guilds, adventurers, and militaries find themselves operating.
"Beyond the White Line lies the White Worlds." He pointed to the massive region of ice that seemed to encompass over half of the disk. "What's known as the White Line and all that's frozen at its base is formerly called, Cyamis. At its core, it's a sheer cliff of ice that stretches upwards for at least a few ten-thousand kilometers. Starting from the summit and extending for 50,000 kilometers beyond is Taton. A gelid region nearly devoid of air, but full of life. Beyond that, lies the land of frost creatures and ice giants, Niflheim. A region plagued by ice volcanoes that thicken the air to above normal levels, creating a band of eternal thunderstorms around the entire region that rages indefinitely.
"And lastly, there is the literal end of the world that few have seen and none dared approach. Egedil." He sighed, somewhat with relief.
"Jesus Christ," I commented to myself, still in disbelief.
"Who?" They both shook their heads at once.
"No one." I waved it aside. "So then, there are still people living in each of these realms?"
"In Nonus, definitely." My father nodded. "While the otherworldly creatures and the portals themselves were trapped behind the barrier, that wasn't to say humans were stuck on Maru. As Mr. Brooks pointed out, The Academy constructed a light bridge between their territory and Maru. Due to the dangers present on the other side, however, only the strongest of us Maruleans are able to make the transit."
"The screening." I nodded in understanding. 'It's all coming together.'
"Precisely." Father nodded. "If you pass, you will attend the magic academy and be granted entry to not only Nonus but to the rest of the Mortal Plane as well.
"But, Amun." Father continued in a more warnful tone. "The finer details of history aren't found in the books for a reason, do you understand?"
"I do." I quickly nodded as I went to form theories based on what I'd just learned. 'Despite there being pockets of humanity scattered everywhere; possibly. This… New Dawn, is running what could potentially be the largest group of organized humans on the Mortal Plane. But under what purpose or goal? If anything, I can only assume they want to explore and conquer as much as this vast realm as they can.' An effort that I assumed would take tens, if not hundreds of millions of years to accomplish.
In addition to that, I was certain it was a sugar-coated version of history that I'd just heard as well. Which meant that I had no other choice but to find out the truth for myself.
And I was born with the perfect way to do it.
"Thank you for your lecture, Mr. Brooks." I bowed to him. "You've answered all of my questions in full. I hope you find nothing but success and safety during your future endeavors. And I hope to see you again in the future."
"As do I, Your Grace." He smiled as he bowed. "I know you'll become a great magus."
With that, he said some departing words to my father before gathering his things and leaving with nothing more than a nod my way.
And once he was gone, I turned to my father with a newfound sense of vigor. "Dad," I firmly said. "Now that my education is complete, I would like to turn my energy towards learning the things that I want to learn."
"Oh?" He perked up at my words and turned to me. "Like what?"
"You've already said you'd allow it, but I have yet to actually go hunting or fishing with Gerolt," I explained. "My vassals and I need to learn how to hunt, butcher, and cook for ourselves. And hunting will also give us an opportunity to further develop our magic and fighting skills. Furthermore, my vassals and I need to begin proper weapons training and be granted access to an area where we can freely use our magic. A place that can challenge us, and where property damage won't be an issue."
"Those are all fine points," Father muttered as he stroked his chin. "Very well, I'll speak to Gerolt about taking you hunting. Again. If he's unwilling, I'll allow you to go out yourselves, but only after your next birthday, Amun. Surely you can wait until you're seven to go out on your own?"
'Again? Unwilling?' I squinted before internally shaking my head. "That's no problem." I beamed at my father. "There were some things I wanted to teach my vassals, and that'll give me just the time to do so."
"Then, it's agreed." Father smiled, extending his hand. "Gerolt can take you hunting, you can venture outside the external yards with your vassals. And after your next birthday, you'll be allowed to venture wherever you want within our territory on the island. Please. Just… be careful."
I looked in confusion at his hand for a second. Six years in this place and it was the first time I'd ever seen someone extend such a gesture to another.
'Perhaps it's only for deals or agreements?' I wondered. 'No matter.' I grinned wide and shook my father's hand. And after a short goodbye, I stepped into my shadow and sped through the fell to the service wing.
As always, Jonet was not far behind me, nearly sprinting through physical space from outside the classroom to Jaimess and Toril's quarters to see me stepping back into reality as she rounded the corner.
After a few knocks, Toril opened the door with a bow before stepping aside to grant us entry. "Your Grace."
No matter how much I saw it, I couldn't help but internally groan every time I laid eyes on their living arrangements. It wasn't a bad barracks; or dorm, depending on how one looked at it. It was even quite spacious, with two desks that sat in the middle of the room, opposing each other with a high partition set in between. Their beds sat in opposing corners of the room. Toril's to the left the of the door and Jaimess' in the far right corner, and each of them was paired with large trunks at their feet and furnishing that functioned as both a wardrobe and a nightstand sitting next to the bed.
Better than how they were living at my grandfather's school, I assumed. They even had their own bathroom. But the thought of having my vassals share a room was enough to irk my nerves entirely. If they were to serve me for life, then I felt that they deserved only the best of whatever was given them, whether it was food, shelter, clothing, or knowledge.
If I was to become a living god in this world, then they would have to become gods as well.
"I'm glad to see you taking your studies seriously." I grinned at Jaimess, laying across the bed like he was talking with a girlfriend; complete with his legs kicked up in the air.
He removed his eyes from my book on tactics for the first time and looked at me with wide eyes before leaping from the bed. "Lord Amun!" He gasped on approach. "These survival techniques, methods of attack, they're… they're unlike anything I've ever heard! Most of them don't even require magic!" He chuckled in awed despair. "Where did you learn them?"
"That's unimportant." I shook my head. "It's only important that you all understand the material. Thoroughly."
"Yes, My Lord." He quickly bowed.
'Perhaps one day I'll tell you all.' I chuckled inside. 'Though, I doubt you'd even believe me. So, maybe not.'
"That's for another time, however." I quickly said, turning on my heels for the door. "It's time to train."
Toril eagerly turned to situate his bed and belongings before trotting back to my side and await an equally eager Jaimess to situate his things and join us.
I stayed silent on the way to the training grounds as I tried to figure out how to best explain these concepts to them. A brainstorm that took longer than intended, as it still continued long after we'd arrived.
"Lord Amun?" Jaimess hesitantly asked while pointing to my shadow. "Are we not conducting our drills."
"Ah, yes. Of course." I snapped back to reality and quickly squatted down to scoop up three balls of darkness from my shadow and distribute one to each of my waiting vassals. "Let's begin."