Stina could finally see the familiar fields. Although yet out of sight, their surroundings were unmistakable. There were small twined fences to keep deer and other herbivores away – and spiked clusters of poles to make time for escape, would disaster arrive.
It was all nothing compared to the living quarters. The whole village rested atop a hill, surrounding it was an airtight palisade, deeply rooted to the ground. No animal had jumped it, nor dug past it, not in a hundred years. She didn’t care for how high, or stony other walls might be; this was the only place where she’d sleep well at night.
They had shaved the mage’s hair before arriving. Most villagers wouldn’t have any problems with an elfling or two, but one could never be too safe.
It was a small community, and minor changes were considered big here. “It’s easier to get forgiveness than permission,” was her Dad’s motto. Stina had learned of it as a kid asking for mead. It''s meaning was so profound that she still made new discoveries on.
It was not yet evening. The sun shone from its almost settled place, one that it’d keep until way past midnight. The summer was past its peak, but fall was still far off.
Goran had the gate duty, he often did. With only one hand and about as much of a brain, he didn’t fit well for other chores. Stina still couldn’t believe that Raz took responsibility for the idiot’s dismemberment.
“Mom, Dad we’re back,” Raziel chirped. It was time to show off the trips payoff. - Both of them. Stina''s business model had flipped both her and Raz'' prospects immensely, just in two weeks to boot. She hoped for many more weeks of Becknettle cutting. Sure, the lifember was precious, but mixing her salves with weak poisons was priceless!
Wow, kid you really hit it big this time!” Uffe, Raz dad, burst out, his face frozen in disbelief. They’d pass her father later, but he couldn’t handle money, not since mom died. "Fucking Becknettles!". She cringed. “Must not think about that.” Important was to not let her father buy another barrel. His addiction was bad as it was. No, she’d save his share, keep it for the winter when he’d drink up all his food anyways.
“Kids, Sven and his hunters fell an Ironbristle yesterday; they just got it back. What do you say about us buying half a leg, doing some celebration?”
“Sounds great! Make it a full one! I’ve only had oats for days, and so has our guest.”
“Guest? Son, who’s coming over?”
Raziel made a rhetorical pause, mischievously meeting his dad''s gaze.
.
.
“The new village mage.”
His dad froze again, his eyes wandering from left to right.
“You’re serious, aren’t you, you little rascal?”
Raziel nodded.
“Forget legs; we’re buying the boar. WE’RE BUYING THE WHOLE DAMN THING!" Uffe shouted, standing on his toes.
“Now where’s this mage you’re talking about?”
“Sebastian, come in!”
***
Raziel''s voice rang. Time to enter and meet the LARPers LARPing as parents. LARPing… the word fell short in strength. It wasn’t enough to describe what these people were doing. It was so much next level that it was entirely inseparable being genuine.
The last days had been as if in another world. Maybe this was what this all was about; getting the kick of completely escaping into fantasy. Somehow though, that didn’t feel right either. There was just too much sincerity in the others actions. They couldn’t be acting. Were they born into this world? Somehow, that wasn’t even weird anymore. It somehow fitted.
Whatever organization that could afford large towns, high-tech items, mutated beasts, revolutionary medicine, all just to play around with, could as well afford a large scale abduction of people. Was that why Sebastian had been brought here in the first place? There was clearly a high turnover of human lives. If Coplay Illuminati killed people for fun, they’d need to replenish the population pool somehow.
Anyhow, it was time to enter the house. Seb wanted to make a good impression. He dreaded the opposite. He was not going back to the forest again. He’d need a well-executed plan to get back to his dorm, friends, and life, and such a plan wasn’t anywhere near conception.
He needed a safe place to stay at, and he wouldn''t gamble for a better one. Besides, he wanted to get more “magic” glyphs for inspection. If there was anything good that had happened after the abduction, then it was the discovery of glyphs. Holy cow, those were next level. If Seb would ever find one of them in his grandma''s garden, he’d borrow it permanently, 10/10.
He opened the wooden door. Its craftsmanship was coarse but artistic. Someone had spent a lot of time hand carving it. The inside smelled of tar. Despite the impressive glyph technology, the home was lit with fire. It was sensical; light from glyphs would flicker with people''s movement, not to mention how a fire was less taxing to keep going.
“Welcome to our humble home, magus! “ a man in his fifties greeted, even bowing slightly. He didn’t sit down until Seb did. Not bad, not bad. Getting the role as Official Village Mage? didn’t seem bad at all, not as long as you were a skinhead and not blonde. Seb had never had a haircut this short before, but getting used to it wasn’t any big deal. Getting someone to shave his head would be a bother though.
The others were obsessing about the newly established "business." Apparently, the murderous couple had pulled off quite the heist. Insane! So there was even medicine crazier than the one he’d seen Raziel use yesterday night. How wasn’t he even surprised anymore? He wouldn’t even be surprised if a giant octopus attacked the village to be slain by a guy with a sword aflame.
“So, Sebastian, what would your thoughts be on staying here for a while, working as village mage.”
The offer was too good to be rejected. Or rather, there weren''t any alternatives. Seb tried to low-key ask for other jobs, easy ones where he could fit. He didn''t want to reveal himself as a foreigner, or worse - an “elfling.”
Village Mage was the only vacant title though. Well, a bad economy can strike when least expected, even at medieval villages. Seb agreed to the job, but not before asking what it was about.
“The regular; no fancy big town magic needed. Runar spoiled us, I''m sorry, our last mage spoiled us. Blessed be his soul, but that was long ago now. We haven’t had a mage for soon two years, and I don’t think we’ll be able to make it for much longer. As far as compensation goes, I''ll call a village meeting on it, but you can expect at least five lifembers a month.”
Seb couldn’t get deeper on details without raising suspicion, so he agreed to the proposal. Five lifembers was that much or little? Stina and Raziel had made fifty of them in just three days, but judging from Uffe''s face, 50 lifember was far from little. Oh well, Seb would get to work with "magic" and "magic" was awesome. Seb couldn’t wait to get to it.
“Kids, I have to go get that boar before Sven butchers it to pieces. I want that thing clean whole when I turn it on the pole... Raziel, you go get some of your friends, we’ll need a good six men to carry that thing. Stina, go tell the village that we’re feasting tonight. Beer’s on us, don''t fight it, you are rich, you have the money. Prepare the bonfire too; I want a good smokeless one when we’ve prepared the boar. No time to spare! Getting that thing done will take until late evening the least. Oh, Mage Sebastian, don’t bother your hands. You''ll get some mead to seep on while waiting. Have a look at our village if you want. Honey get over here!”
***
Sebastian had the worst hangover ever, or maybe not; it was the second worst, at least if counting the day of the abduction. Luckily, he wasn’t a heavy drinker; he felt like a pile of shit, but the day was still remembered. He lied in a barn. The smell of animals made him sick, or maybe that was just the lingering alcohol. At least his own scent wasn’t sickening anymore. The bath from yesterday was great, as was his new clothes. No more linen sack bullshit. His new job sure included perks. His clothes were from coarse wool, but their stitching was finer than anything sold at cheaper stores.
Employment perks, he turned to his side, puking on the hay at his side. He had really done it this time. “Village Mage,” how could he be so stupid to agree to a job offer without reading the Terms of Service? Well, it wasn’t like he had formally accepted anything, but that wouldn''t matter; after Uffe had announced Seb''s arrival to the entire village, Seb had been at the center of attention. The expectations on him were inhuman.
Village Mages – those who supply the entire village with glyphs. Hearing it made him even sicker. After the news dawning on him, he''d spent all his time trying to grasp for information. How was he, an engineering student not even graduated, supposed to make glyphs? And so many of them?
How many had cheered on him yesterday, awaiting miracles? Two hundred? How a single boar could feed them had been a mystery for him, at least before it arrived. The mystery afterward was how so few could eat it clean in just one sitting. Grilling it had taken until midnight, and by then even the flute players were drunk.
The beer wasn’t bad - Cellars did a good job cooling things. Everyone enjoyed it, so did Seb, but cautiously. He gathered intel between his careful sips. How the heck had the last mage managed to do his job?
It wasn’t too hard to get information flowing; there was never a lack of people interested in him, and drunk people loved to tell their tale. Many asked Seb about his previous life, but with drunkenness as the excuse, he got away cheaply.
According to those asked, glyphs weren’t mysterious stones with runes as decoration; they were mysterious runes on decorative stones. The better the stone, and the better the maker, the more potent a glyph would be.
Stolen novel; please report.
Seb''s headache was unbearable, he focused on his breathing, escaping to his meditative state. He instantly felt better. The digital pond engulfed him in its tranquility. Analyzing yesterday was way better made without a crippling hangover.
“Ah, much better!”
The "rune first, material second" model had huge implications. Everyone he had met yesterday stood firm in their beliefs; you could make a rune on any medium; in tales, even snow would do. Runes on mediums other than stones just wouldn''t be as good. If this were true, Sebastian would need to rethink everything.
What everyone hinted on was beyond defying physics – it was magic! How comes Seb wasn’t even surprised? After his abduction, it was as if the rules of reality didn’t apply anymore. It was easier to see The Cosplay Illuminati World as a new world, entirely separate from anything he had ever known. Maybe it even was another world, Seb wasn’t certain of anything anymore; the paradoxes were too many to make sense of.
The sheer scale of the new world was just too big not to be noticed by any satellites. If weaponized autism could find terrorists in the middle of nowhere, then how could the Google Earth dwellers miss medieval COUNTRIES? Seb needed to look deeper into this, and a conclusive result on the “magic” glyphs felt significant.
Anyhow, his new job wasn’t entirely undoable without magic. A mage’s duty was very similar to that of an engineer’s; they both made stuff to improve the overall efficiency of things.
Glyphs were the most common solution for most of the demanding tasks, but that wasn’t without downsides. Despite the abundance of futuristic solutions, glyphs left many areas ignored. The non-magic technology was medieval at best, often at pre-pyramids level.
At least there was wheels and horses, but not in this village; after a few drinks, the conversations shifted topic- away from Sebastian and entirely engulfed around "the raid." The hatred for Becknettles thickened the air. Seb felt safer than ever amidst the outward faced hostility. Seb didn''t want to see a Becknettle ever again.
A raid from two years ago still left the community struggling to recover. A few burnt down houses remained, their owners refusing to hide the ashen symbols of injustice.
The local farm-based economy desperately needed an upswing. Most important was filling the granaries. – Without a food buffer, a single failed harvest would wipe the entire community. Second most important were hoarding wealth; accumulating enough lifember to hit long-term safety. If years of famine struck, no granary would be big nor full enough; the village needed the option to buy food.
Farming was what farmers did best, not money making. Before the raid, Softstone had been a prospering community; rich and with plenty of accumulated items. But the riches and treasures were long gone.
Lifember was a peculiar currency; its uses were plentiful. A month’s worth of cheap food was worth about two lifembers. They were roughly equivalent in difficulty to harvest, although Seb didn''t understand how lifember could be gathered from animals.
In a world where food was obviously a problem, how comes lifember was valued so highly, what guaranteed others willingness to buy it? The answer was intrinsic value. Lifember had usages, ridiculously sounding ones, but Seb no longer doubted in miracles.
Lifembers could strengthen peoples'' bodies; each and everyone Seb had met acclaimed their fitness to lifembers, not CrossFit. All but the poorest parents would hoard large amounts of lifembers before having kids, eagerly giving them away. And that was despite the second usage of lifembers – life extension.
There was no telling on how life extension worked. There were rumors of farmers living to a hundred and fifty years. Extending one’s life even further was a non-issue though; In the history of Softstone, there wasn''t a single case of death by old age; the world kept finding other ways to reap lives.
Lifembers, Raziel had pointed out four of them in one of Seb’s looted pouches. Seb hadn’t given them much thought before yesterday evening, but he''d been busy back then, busy pretending to drink more than he did.
“Lifembers, this will be interesting!”
Seb’s consciousness returned to the real world. He had forgotten how badly his headache had been, but reality was kind enough to remind him.
“Hmm, let''s give you a real'' close look?” he said, opening a leather pouch. The last time Seb had inspected a lifember, Raziel had snapped, telling Seb not to pull it out if wasn''t going to "use it."
In Seb''s hand was finally a lifember. If he wasn’t told otherwise, he’d think that lifembers were mere blobs of fluorescent gel, formed into a ball-shape and stuffed with a masked LED. That''s how any tech geek would''ve described it. A faint cloud surrounded it, slowly releasing thin sinking smoke.
Touching the smoke made Sebastian all jittery. It was surprisingly pleasant, calming evenly. Just by holding it, his hangover felt negligible, but that was not all. A hungry feeling spread throughout his body, unlike anything he had ever felt before. It was like his limbs had kept their breath for ages and finally got close to the water surface.There was something more to the lifember, Sebastian was sure of it!
He tried infusing it with “mana,” and just like with glyphs, things began to happen.
The shiny smoke streaming from the lifember increased in both density and speed. The raincloud turned to a waterfall.
The gelatinous blob began shrinking. The fog''s increased intensity, even to the point where the gelatinous core began shrinking, but despite this, Seb didn''t feel a difference; his body felt just as starving as before. All that extra smoke dispersed for no reason at all. Half a month’s worth of food was dissipating in front of Seb’s very eyes. - After a week''s captivity, wasted food triggered Sebastian, he couldn''t stand the though.
“No, don’t disperse!”
He aborted the mana infusion, but it was too late, the smoky waterfall kept going, draining at the gelatinous core. He’d never seen wastefulness as painfully embodied. Seeing a treasure literally vaporize in his hands induced a surreal feeling, a feeling of immense loss. His body suffocated, but he was powerless to help.
Desperately, he moved the thing toward his mouth, trying to absorb more of it. He even tried to swallow it, but the heavy flow repelled him; He could barely grasp it with both his hands. He tried to breathe in the vapors, anything to minimize the waste. As he desperately breathed the fumes, he unconsciously did what he’d so often done lately; he activated [Mana Channeling], then tried [Mana Streaming], not outwards, not directed at anything, nothing like he ever had before. He made it greedy, directed toward him, independent on his [Mana Channeling]. Instantly the scene changed.
The dense fumes began flowing toward Sebastian. Not just into his mouth, but his skin, clothes, everything. There was still a painful amount vanishing, but Seb no longer minded it. A surge of energy entered him. Forget breathing in the “soul realm;” this was amazing! Each cell in his body cried in euphoria. He struggled to contain himself; nothing could go to waste!
<table>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>Congratulations! New Skill: Energy Absorption!</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<table>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>Energy Absorption 1/7</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Absorbs unbound neutral energy from the surroundings</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
Seb ignored the message; he was too focused on the massive stream of energy. He let no thoughts disturb him, not as long as there were lifember fumes in the air.
“Woah, that was intense!” Seb exhaled. Sweat ran down his face, burning his eyes.He raised his hand to wipe it away.
“Huh? That’s?” He examined his hand. It was full of sebum. It was as if the lifember had drained every blackhead from his face, leaving it littered with their excavated remains.
Sebastian stood up. He felt great, full of energy! The lifember had worked wonders on his hangover. Holy shit, he wondered how much one of these could fetch on Amazon. Back in the normal world, this was indubitably worth more than a few weeks’ food. He felt refreshed, strong, and invigorated!
An urge to pee hit him. He left the barn to do his needs.
“Holy shit it’s back!”
Emptying the bladder would never be the same again. Seb held his breath in disgust. It felt like ages until the thick black liquid turned relievingly watery.
“That..was.. disgusting!” Was the black goo caused by absorbing the lifember, or had it been inside Sebastian all the time? Disturbingly enough, the latter felt more right. “Screw kelp shakes and acai berries; this is some real ass cleansing 10/10! Seb wanted another lifember. His body needed it so badly he could feel it.
He ran back into the barn for discretion. His strides were firmer than ever.
“Three left. I should absolutely pop another one!”
Eager, but not rushing, he stopped for a moment’s reflection. Magic! He couldn’t find another explanation for what had just happened. Magic had to exist! Euphoria hit him as the past days of doubt finally swept away. Magic existed!
The world wasn’t discovered at all; it was full of mysteries, and he wanted to uncover them all!
Magic, breathing…Meditation! How were they connected? The blue boxes, were they magical too? The bad feeling of waste still lingered in the back of his head. He wanted to do everything he could to consume the next lifember losslessly. He sat down, meditating over the past hour.Soon enough, he opened his eyes. He was ready for round two!