After a nice dinner of mushrooms, fish, and so giant spider, my family finished our dinner. We ended our al with a few apples from the surface settlent as a dessert, before we made our way back ho. My parents and siblings seed eager to go to bed, so I dematerialized my Lake-Gazer’s dress right after we walked through the door. My mother helped swap out my clothes for pajamas, before my mother helped take a bath and then my sister took one afterwards. Then, we all went to bed.
As I lay next to my mother and thought about the day, I started thinking more about what I had heard throughout the day. First of all, I now knew that there were two major kinds of magic-user in this world: Witches/Wizards and Shapers. I suspected that Witches specialized in one of the two kinds of essence, and shapers probably specialized in the other kind.
Apart from that, I had a better grasp of this world’s history now. I didn’t know very many specifics yet, but I had a general overview of what I needed to look out for in the future. Orukthyri and Outsiders plagued the surface of the world, and apparently there was a black sun in the center of our… probably donut-shaped planet.
I was still having a hard ti wrapping my head around the last bit.
Finally, I had a few short term and long term goals. Exploring the surface seed like a decent long-term plan for farming Achievent, finding cool items and bits of history, and maybe advancing our social status in this world. If Sallia and Felix were also interested in joining when I went to explore the surface, I figured we could probably get a good amount of Influence Achievent from exploring the surface and finding lost magical knowledge, if we got a little lucky. I rembered from Sel’thub’s description that Influence Achievent was the kind of Achievent which was influenced by world Tier, and this seed like a potentially good way to take advantage of this world’s high tier without getting slaughtered by incredibly powerful enemies as long as we picked our fights well. Of course, I would need to make sure that Sallia and Felix didn’t have other plans first, but I felt that Sallia would love the idea of good fights with the Orukthyri, and ancient craftsmanship and spellcasting would probably interest Felix.
Of course, before I could talk about future plans, I needed to et up Sallia and Felix again. I sighed.
It would probably take a while before I could make that happen. They were far enough away from our house that my parents wouldn’t just let wander towards them, since I was basically a toddler right now. I might need to wait until I turned ten or eleven before my parents even considered letting out of their sight; and depending on this world’s culture and how protective my parents were, I might be stuck in this area until I turned twenty. Which was incredibly weird to think about. On the islands, twenty was old enough to get married, and maybe already have a few children. Here, twenty years old might not even be the right age to wander too far away from my parents.
I sighed. This… might be an exercise in patience.
As I thought about ages, I started wondering if this world had any formal education system, or way of testing for magical talent. If it did, odds were pretty good that I could et Sallia and Felix either in school or as fellow magical apprentices, at least if my suspicions about how essence stats interacted with my body was correct. I hadn’t confird anything yet, of course, but I really hoped that eting Sallia and Felix again would happen as soon as possible. Being alone for years sounded awful.
I hesitated for a mont. I knew my mother might already be asleep, but if she wasn’t I hoped she could answer a few final questions.
“Mama?” I whispered, to see if my mother was still awake.
“Yes, sweetie?” My mother sounded drowsy, but she didn’t sound like she had been asleep yet.
“Is there school or sothing near here? Is there a place I can make friends?” I asked.
“School doesn’t start until you’re older, sweetie. Then they’ll test you for magical potential, and you can make friends there. If you’re lucky, and you have magical potential, a Witch or a Wizard will take you as an apprentice. All children with a certain level of magical potential get an apprenticeship as part of the city’s education system, and if not, everyone at least gets to learn how to read and write and do basic math, along with so basic history lessons. But you’ll have to wait until you turn 12 to find out. Children younger than 12 who learn magic might blow themselves up with a spell gone wrong, so nobody teaches them anything before then. And nobody even tests children before that point.”
My curiosity was satisfied, and I nodded. In that case, I had eight years to work on my runes and bring my swordsmanship back up to par before I had a chance to interact with this world’s magic systems. I didn’t want to spend eight whole years away from Felix and Sallia, but at least I would probably see them again after the eight years were up. I sighed, before closing my eyes.
Even if being alone for eight years sounded awful, I would make the best of them. On the Islands, I had died well before I had finished maximizing my potential, because circumstances had pushed to take risks before I was ready. This ti, I hoped that I would have enough ti to maximize my potential, so that I wouldn’t die so easily in this world.
* * *
The next eight years passed slowly. I didn’t have Felix or Sallia to talk to, so the entire ti I felt empty and lonely. During my ti on the islands, I had often thought about how grateful I was that Sallia and Felix were present with . To have them missing for so long felt… maddening, and I didn’t like it one bit. My parents and family weren’t particularly eager to let out of their sight during that ti, since I was incredibly young by the standards of our species, so I spent most of each day with my mother as she sewed dresses and ordinary clothes and got to know my mother’s friends. They weren’t bad people, but they weren’t Sallia and Felix.
Apart from that, I got to know a lot more about this world’s color culture. Apparently, most children didn’t get to know other children their age until school, and spent most of their early years close to their family. Children who wore pink clothes often spent their entire days with one of their parents, until they got old enough to change to wearing other colors.
Children above the age of ten were expected to wear so kind of color related to the profession they hoped to join in the future; however, one needed to mix their color with strips of gray color near the edges of their clothes, to show they weren’t actually part of that profession.
After learning this fact, I quickly started inquiring what blue and black clothes ant, where I learned that shade of blue mattered a lot. Light blue ant that one was a Witch or Wizard, and black ant that one had a profession close to death; so soldiers, adventurers, and graveyard keepers usually wore black. Dark blue usually ant one had a profession closely related to water; for example, the farrs who kept the mushroom caverns producing food wore a mixture of dark blue and brown. However, wearing light blue was frowned upon until one had their magical talent assessed.
As a side note, there was one other color one needed to keep an eye out for in the city. That was the color white, which was the symbol of prestige and nobility. The more renowned their status, and the more powerful they or their family, the more white one wore. The overseer of the city wore pure white robes, and most of the Grand Witches had a great deal of white added to their clothing, based on their power and how much they had contributed to the city.
Naturally, once I turned 10, I pretended to be interested in learning how to wield a sword and adventure around, as a ‘ans to protect myself.’ My parents weren’ thrilled that I was taking after Jonathan, who had gone off to apprentice under a Swordmaster, but my father grudgingly convinced my mother that children experinting was normal. Thus, I had a proper excuse to wear my Lake-Gazer’s Dress everywhere, as long as I added in an appropriate amount of gray thread to my clothing.
I also learned a bit about why everyone was so obsessed with colors in this world.
Unlike my previous world, where we had worshiped the ocean mother, the gods of this world were dragons.
Very real, very well docunted dragons that also lived underground, near our cities, and occasionally woke up and demanded tribute. Most dragons took naps that lasted centuries, and the dragon our city worshiped had been asleep for over a hundred years, but nobody knew when it would wake up next. The dragons of this world were rather intelligent, and didn’t usually lay waste to human cities so long as they paid tribute on ti. Surprisingly, living near a dragon also had benefits; they seed to hate Outsiders just as much as Outsiders hated the native inhabitants of this world, so living next to a dragon kept us safe in exchange for needing to pay a massive tribute of gold every couple centuries.
We also visited a church once a month, to pray to the local white-scaled dragon for blessings, which was why in our city white was associated with nobility and good luck. Every dragon had different colors for its scales, which shaped a big part of each city’s color culture. This ant that every city in the underdark had a very different idea what color was associated with nobility. rchants that traveled the underground passages between cities to trade often had to carry around multiple sets of clothing, so that they could match the correct colors of whatever city they were visiting. However, apart from the ‘noble color,’ of each city, many of the other colors were at least sowhat constant in what they ant, even if smaller details often varied a bit.
Even though I felt lonely without Felix and Sallia to talk to, I didn’t let the eight years of ti I had go to waste. I worked on retraining as much of my skills from the Islands as I could. Since I couldn’t engage with this world’s magic systems until I turned twelve, I made sure to use every single mont of ti I had to prepare for all of the adventures Sallia, Felix and I would have together once we beca adults.
Skill: Gain [Basic] Mastery of a one-handed swordsmanship technique.
Achievent 20
Due to your {Basic One-Handed Swordsmanship} Ability, reaching Basic Grade in one-handed swordsmanship gives extra rewards
Strength 5, Agility 5, Fortitude 5
Skill: Gain [Interdiate] Mastery of a one-handed swordsmanship technique.
Achievent 130
Once I reached Interdiate grade swordsmanship at around the age of seven, I started to notice the sa gradual reduction in growth speed I had noticed during my previous life. However, my {Two Purpose Training Sword} and my previous experience training on the islands helped reach my previous level of skill quickly. I wasn’t anywhere close to {Advanced} grade swordsmanship yet, as far as I could tell, but I felt that I could probably get there within a few decades, if I lived that long. A distant goal, but one I wanted to reach if I could.
Since I was claiming to be interested in swordsmanship and adventuring, my mother and father, grudgingly, let practice in front of the house sotis, although they never seed entirely happy with it.
Apart from swordsmanship, I worked on my runes. Trying to rebuild my runes was… difficult in this world, given the lack of naturally occurring absorption essence. Without my body simply producing absorption essence every second, I had to explicitly be touching my dress or taking a bath to generatore more absorption essence.
The biggest problem with creating new runes, apart from the period of adaptation being much longer than before, was the construction process of each rune.
Anyti a rune was started but wasn’t completed, it would slowly lose progress towards completion, every single second. In my previous world, this hadn’t been much of a problem. One didn’t lose a substantial amount of progress per day, and one could basically just power through it and keep making steady progress until the rune was complete.
However, in this world, my body didn’t produce absorption essence naturally, and I produced far less absorption essence per day to use on rune construction. This ant that the little amount of progress I lost actually beca a huge annoyance, since my progress was already slow.
I also discovered that, if I failed to pay the upkeep cost for one of my runes, the runes would start to cannibalize other runes in order to keep functioning, starting from the most recent rune I had ford. In other words, I needed to make sure I kept contact with water for at least a couple minutes every day, if I didn’t want my runes to start destroying themselves.
Luckily, this was pretty easy to manage. The amount of ‘decay’ experienced by my most recently ford rune was quite minor, and if I was wearing my dress, I still generated a good amount of absorption essence per second. However, all of these factors combined ant that my ‘maximum’ number of runes would be much lower on this world than it would have been on the Islands, even though my Absorption Essence Grade was pretty good this ti.
Power: Construct your first Absorption-Essence rune
(note: this world does not have any support for runes or absorption essence in existence. Thus, rewards for rune-related magic systems and Absorption Essence-related Magic Systems are lowered)
Achievent 40
Power: Construct your second Absorption-Essence rune
(note: this world does not have any support for runes or absorption essence in existence. Thus, rewards for rune-related magic systems and Absorption Essence-related Magic Systems are lowered)
Achievent 80
Power: Construct your third Absorption-Essence rune
(note: this world does not have any support for runes or absorption essence in existence. Thus, rewards for rune-related magic systems and Absorption Essence-related Magic Systems are lowered)
Achievent 120
With the 390 Achievent I earned from forming my runes and practicing my swordsmanship, I gone from 218.89 Achievent to 608.89. It wasn’t an overwhelming amount of Achievent, but it was steady progress, at least. I couldn’t help but wish that the ‘increased achievent’ rewards from higher tier worlds worked for all kinds of achievent, instead of rely for influence. However, at the very least, I was still making a decent amount of Achievent right now, which would make it easier to purchase better Stats when we returned to the Market. And I was also getting stronger, which would be critical if I actually wanted to gain so Influence Achievent and take advantage of the heightened rewards of a Tier 4 world.
Despite my problems with rune formation, I still managed to form three runes during the eight years of training ti. It would take a lot longer before I could form my fourth rune, but I was confident I could at least form a fourth rune and keep it stable. I strongly suspected I could get a fifth rune built as well, although six or more runes sounded a little dubious to unless I managed to get so of my keywords consistently activated.
I also had to be very cautious about where I placed my runes this ti, since nobody had any knowledge of the rune-based magic system in this world. On the Islands, people who saw strolling around with so glowing runes on my arms knew exactly what they ant, and would respect more if I flaunted my runes.
In this world, however, they would just see funny glowing tattoos. Tattoos weren’t a problem, per se, and sotis people wore tattoos for decorative purposes.
However, tattoos were subject to the sa rules about color culture that clothes were. My runes would appear to be a kind of white color until I ford my fourth rune, which would probably change the color to white-blue if I copied my old ‘image’ of the life-giving ocean for my rune abilities… which would an that I would be declaring that I was a noble or person of prestige. This, obviously, would go over poorly with the rest of the city.
Therefore, after so thinking, I had placed all of my runes at the bottom of my feet, and only started forming runes after my family didn’t have any points in ti where they did things like help get dressed. Socks and shoes were both pretty common in this world, so my runes were fairly well hidden there. I couldn’t help but wonder if there was so sort of ability or item that would help disguise the runes more thoroughly in future worlds, in case I ran into similar problems in the future. I resolved to look into it whenever we returned to the Market.
However, once I turned twelve, I started practically humming with excitent. Because it was finally ti to go to this city’s school, and also get tested for magical talent.
And most importantly, it was ti to see Sallia and Felix again.
I couldn’t wait.
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