It was well past midnight, and the sun had long vanished, leaving the streets of Arlcliff City shrouded in darkness. High clouds cloaked the stars and the moon, casting a dim, subdued glow over the city. At that hour, a solitary carriage navigated the winding roads, its path illuminated only by the scattered street lamps and a lantern swaying to the left of the coachman.
The carriage wound its way to a quiet, secluded part of the Lower City district. This area was devoid of any houses and was much quieter than the rest of the city, mainly because it was a perpetual construction zone. Half-finished warehouses and skeletal frames of buildings littered the landscape, all seemingly abandoned before completion.
Eventually, the carriage came to a stop beside one of the few fully constructed warehouses in the area, built right next to the river that ran through Arlcliff City.
As the carriage door swung open, two figures stepped out onto the stone pavement. At a glance, one of them could be recognized as Zeth. He was acting differently than normal, respectfully moving to the side for the second person who stepped out of the carriage.
It was a man, towering nearly six and a half feet tall, who exuded a presence that couldn't be ignored. Every muscle was defined, accentuated by his attire—an immaculate white shirt under a red waistcoat and dark trousers, all made of luxurious materials. His clothing hinted that he might be a member of the aristocracy, though that impression was cut short.
The sight of dark gloves and the scars crisscrossing his arms replaced any sense of nobility with an unmistakable air of danger.
"Is this where we're moving the ingredients?" A deep, gruff voice echoed from the tall man as he scanned the warehouse and its surroundings.
"No need to worry, boss. Although it looks empty, we have our men tucked away in every nook and cranny crevice around here. If anyone troublesome comes poking their head where it doesn't belong, they'll be dealt with before they see anything," Zeth replied with a sly tone, leading the way.
From the outside, the warehouse looked nearly deserted. The windows were boarded up and draped with tattered cloths, and most of the doors were secured with chains. However, as Zeth and his boss neared one of the few doors without chains, the sounds of locks clicking open could be heard. Moments later, the door swung open, releasing a blast of light from numerous lamps out into the dark street.
As they entered, the brief chatter and bustle of dozens of people moving around inside the warehouse was audible to the world outside before the door was shut and locked once again. Inside, towering shelves lined with various supplies reached up to the ceiling.
The warehouse was fairly spacious, and inside there were nearly fifty people. Some were moving around crates and barrels, while others were shouting out instructions. Still, one thing that was common between them all was that they were all wearing uniforms that indicated that they worked directly for Zeth.
An older man who had been instructing two men who were carrying a crate quickly spotted Zeth and his boss, and the moment he did, he dropped what he was doing and rushed over to them.
"Boss!" He bowed his head in greeting to Zeth, stealing a quick glance at the formidable figure beside him.
That must be him... I never thought I'd meet him in person. Zeth told us to let him handle talking to the Head and to just speak to him directly while they're both here.
Feeling the older man's eyes on him, the Head turned and met his gaze. The older man's blood chilled, and he quickly averted his eyes, bowing his head lower.
"Have there been any issues so far?" Zeth inquired, ignoring the cold sweat forming on the back of the older man's neck, who took a moment to respond.
"Well, sort of. We found a supplier who can provide all the ingredients we need in large quantities. The problem is getting them into the city. We've bribed a few of the inspectors, but many are on the Trade Ambassador's payroll." Hearing that, Zeth let out an annoyed sigh. He knew this would be an issue sooner or later. Corruption in Arlcliff City stemmed from a lot of places, but the main source, besides criminal organizations like theirs, usually sprang from the city's very own council.
It was to be expected, given their immense power over the largest city in the entire region. As long as a majority of the City Council played along, any member of the City Council could act with impunity, and the Royal Court probably wouldn't even notice or care.
So we have someone who can meet our supply, but we're being bottlenecked. If we try to bring in more, then we'll definitely get exposed. It doesn't matter if they catch some of our guys who handle our more public operations, but if they find one of our warehouses, that will be bad.
Zeth pondered the dilemma briefly before deciding to set it aside for the moment. He motioned to the older man, signaling for him to have some crates brought over and opened. Obediently, the older man directed his men to fetch two crates, which were promptly brought to Zeth and his boss. They pried them open with metal bars, revealing their contents.
One crate was packed with odd, purplish herbs that looked like irises, alongside bulky, velvety green leaves and various other plants. The other contained vials of a deep purple liquid, thick as honey but translucent.
The Head's expression shifted as he reached for a vial; his interest clearly piqued.
"This is the stuff you were talking about?" he asked Zeth, peering closely at the liquid inside the vial.
"That's right, boss. One vial of that stuff can turn your average man into a supersoldier capable of wrestling a bear," Zeth explained, his voice a mix of excitement and caution. The Head put the vial back and shifted his attention to the herbs in the next crate.
With just a whiff of the smell coming from the various plants, he could tell some of these were poisonous, prompting him to ask, "What about the side effects?"
Zeth didn't have to take long to come up with an answer. He had done his own personal testing with the tonic. He knew exactly how it was made and what positive and negative effects it had.
"Well, changes—like sudden muscle growth—are involuntary; there is not much we can do about it. Most guys also end up losing their hair after one dose. Still, it doesn't have any major effects on a person's intelligence, as long as they stick to just one vial. If they take two doses, that's when they start losing control. Any more than that, and, well... things'll get ugly."
Zeth had wondered about the possibilities of using the tonic on a knight or a mage. But knights were too precious a research to them, and capturing a mage was almost entirely out of the question. Still, the thought caused Magnus's face to flash through his mind, quickly vanishing as his boss spoke again.
"Hmm, impressive work, Zeth. You have my permission to present this tonic of yours at our next executive meeting. When the time comes, the Titan Soldiers will be under your direct control. I don't trust the others to handle them properly."
With a nod, Zeth responded, "Thank you, boss."
His face held respect and gratitude, but beneath his polite mask, there was an undeniable trace of another emotion, one that couldn't be summed up in a single word.
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Magnus strolled across the empty academy grounds, guided by Lazitha. Since most students were still in class, it felt as if they had the entire place to themselves. Luden, as always, was there as well, but unexpectedly, Nithra was with them too. Lazitha had mentioned her intentions to "work on" Nithra, whatever that entailed, and it looked like she had succeeded.
Originally, despite being the only other student of the Mage Division in their class, Nithra tended to sleep through Eredim's lessons and did her best to completely neglect her secondary classes with Lazitha.
However, this all changed seemingly overnight. Magnus wasn't sure how or what happened, but suddenly, Nithra started to stay awake during lectures. A few days later, she began showing up for their second classes and even participated in the Mana Sphere Spell practices.
Having someone else around was an adjustment for Magnus, who was accustomed to it being just him and Luden. But in time, it started to feel normal. It was during that period that he also realized that Nithra wasn't lazy out of a lack of ambition; she was simply so talented that she didn't feel the need to try hard. Her ability to grasp complex ideas quickly was nothing short of remarkable.
While she didn't master the Mana Sphere Spell as quickly as Luden, she understood the underlying concepts in half the time. It was a typical case of a gifted person not seeing the need to exert themselves. Magnus still found it hard to wrap his head around that mindset, but at the same time, his opinion didn't really matter.
"We're not heading to the 4th Floor as usual?" Luden asked Lazitha.
"No, not this time. All of you have really improved in controlling your mana and using the Mana Sphere Spell. So, now you'll get the chance to expand your horizons more freely," Lazitha explained as everyone realized they were heading towards the library.
"Oh, great..." Magnus muttered under his breath.
"Hmm? Is something wrong, Magnus?" Lazitha asked, catching his lack of enthusiasm as she looked back at him.
"Huh? Oh, it's nothing. I just had a bad experience in the library," he replied. Hearing this, Lazitha gave him an understanding smile.
"Ah, I see. You've gotten lost in the library too," she said, to which Magnus gave a hesitant nod in response. She was mistaking the true source of his discomfort—it wasn't the library itself but rather Eveline, who made him uneasy.
"Well, there's no need to worry. Plenty of new students get lost in there, and even some teachers. But if it's any consolation, where we're going today should help you with that in the future," she reassured him. Magnus raised an eyebrow, curious about what Lazitha meant, as they all entered the library.
"I'm assuming you three are already familiar with how the library's spatial doors work, correct?" She asked. Upon hearing the question, Magnus was about to speak up. After all, Eveline had already explained a bit about how the doors worked to him. However, he stopped himself when he noticed Luden getting ready to chime in.
He had learned a while back that he could learn a lot more by listening to others instead of always being the one to talk.
"The doors read your mind with mental magic, pulling out your thirst for knowledge to set the destination," Luden explained, to which Lazitha nodded, confirming his explanation.
"Indeed, however, it is possible to trick the doors, albeit only temporarily. Simply thinking about where you want to go won't be enough to fool the mental magic placed on the doors. However, if you instead focus on enhancing your actual desires for certain things, you're able to dictate where you end up," she said as they approached a spatial door.
"When you want to leave the library," she continued, "and that becomes the desire and main thing on your mind, no matter how strong that desire is, the mental magic won't latch on to it. To outsmart the doors, you've got to enhance a simpler, older desire, something related to knowledge only available in the outside world." It was obviously a pretty convoluted method, one that only existed because Eveline refused to change how the spatial doors worked.
But at the same time, from what Magnus could gather, Eveline was one of the key figures within Takerth Academy, meaning besides the Headmistress, she didn't have to listen to anyone. Still, Lazitha had clearly mastered the trick, as she swiftly opened the spatial door right before their eyes.
Magnus watched intently from behind her as the door swung wide, unveiling a scene unlike anything he had witnessed before. Gone were the dimly lit spaces and the endlessly towering bookshelves. Instead, Magnus was momentarily blinded by a burst of light streaming in through the arched windows that spanned from the floor to the vaulted ceilings above, causing him to blink rapidly to adjust his vision.
Upon closer inspection of the windows, he realized they overlooked nothing but an empty white void, devoid of any visible light source. In stark contrast, the walls without windows were lined with towering bookshelves, brimming with leather-bound books and scrolls across four expansive floors.
As the group crossed the threshold, Magnus couldn't help but notice there were quite a number of people there, despite this being a time when classes were normally in session. Many of them appeared to be students from the Mage Division, quietly absorbed in their studies at rectangular stone desks built into the first floor. Some were even accompanied by teachers, much like Magnus and his group.
"What is this place?" Magnus asked, his eyes continuing to roam the meticulously designed space with its artistically crafted roof and mirror-smooth stone floors.
"What is this place?" Magnus inquired, his gaze continuing to explore the surroundings. The artistically designed roof and the mirror-like, smooth stone floors hinted at the meticulous effort put into constructing this place.
"This," Lazitha began, a hint of pride in her voice, "is the Mage's Apprentice Compendium. Simply put, it's where we store all the Apprentice Class Spells accessible to academy students, including both categorized and uncategorized spells." Her answer not only widened Magnus's eyes a bit but also drew a look of astonishment from Luden.
Even Nithra, who had seemed disinterested until then, now looked intrigued as her eyes sparkled at the sight of the books and scrolls that adorned the surrounding shelves.
"Students only come here once they've reached a certain level of mana control. You're free to learn any spells you want, but remember, you can't take any books or scrolls outside, and you mustn't damage them—for obvious reasons," Lazitha said, prompting a question from Luden.
"You mentioned this is the Mage's Apprentice Compendium. Is there a Mage's Adept Compendium too?" Lazitha nodded as she answered.
"Yes, there's one for the Adept level and another for the Master level. However, you won't get access to them until it's decided that you've officially reached those levels." Magnus had learned in his classes that, just as knights trained their aura to rise in rank, mages needed to strengthen key areas: their mana reserves, magical knowledge, and mana control.
The first, linked directly to one's mana core, was something Gerald had briefly explained, but now Magnus understood it better.
Mana cores, though metaphysical and lacking physical form, were constantly pulling in mana, absorbing and storing it. Decades of testing by mages across the continent confirmed that these cores had no limits on how much mana they could absorb—they were like bottomless pits. Not only that, but thanks to mana's uniquely adaptive nature, the more mana these cores absorbed, the better they got at it.
In fact, it was by using this absorption rate as a metric that mages could detect what level another mage was at. The second key area, magical knowledge, was more straightforward.
The more spells a mage knew and the broader their knowledge of the fundamentals, the better mage they would be. Whether it be learning new magic, countering spells, or dealing with magical phenomena, all of them contributed and improved thanks to this area. In one class, Eredim had gone so far as to say that an Adept-level mage with Master-level magical knowledge could easily defeat another Adept who had Master-level mana reserves or control.
As for the last key area, mana control was about more than accuracy; it focused on complexity. When Magnus first saw the Mana Sphere Spell, he wondered why it used thin strands of mana woven together instead of thicker ones; wouldn't it be faster and more efficient that way?
Well, the answer to that question involved the suppression effect of spirits. Any mage with large enough mana reserves could create a giant mana sphere, capable of causing a lot of destruction. But such a simple and obvious phenomenon would quickly be normalized by the spirits of the world.
However, if that giant sphere were made of various, thin, and intricately intertwined strands of mana, although it would be detected, the normalizing process would take much longer.
This is why, for mages, the most impressive form of magic was not the type of magic that affected things on a large yet brief scale, but instead, magic that could withstand the test of time. Focusing on quality over quantity, it was these complex spells and categories of magic that mages strived to master.
When he first understood this, Magnus compared it to the evolution of computers, which started large and bulky but grew more compact over time, even though their processing power was also increasing.
Although this doesn't really apply to me since I have the Command Console, it does open up some interesting possibilities.
The fact that he could mimic magical spells using the Command Console was already an incredibly powerful skill. If he wanted, he could simply go through his entire life relying entirely on magic, and just by observing other people cast spells, he would be able to surpass almost everyone. Of course, he had no intention of doing that, since it would be limiting compared to the full potential of the Command Console, but it did make him wonder.
If he was able to accumulate enough magical knowledge, could he possibly gain the ability to tweak the spells he's copied? For example, altering their power and functions without having to actually see them in real life?
He had pondered the possibility before, and it seemed doable, but to really try it, he would need to understand the practical workings of magic, not just the theories discussed in class. And now, with access to all the resources around him, it felt like the perfect chance had arrived.
Just as the thought flashed through his mind, Lazitha clapped her hands together, getting everyone's attention, and addressed the group.
"Alright, if there are no more questions, I'll teach each of you the specific focus needed to return here in the future. After that, you're free to roam and look for any spells you wish to study for the remainder of our class."