Mana Mirror: Chapter Twenty Five (Patreon)

Authors Note: This chapter is coming out a day early because work tomorrow is going to be... Hectic. I COULD schedule it now, but I decided... Why not just go ahead and release it?

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The two-faced ring was the easiest to eliminate. Life and death mana each already held a decent amount of combat potential, after all. If I wanted to focus more on combat, then I’d need to get more spells like Pinpoint Boneshard and Fungal Lock, but I was already working on getting more standing with the library, so it’s not like it was outside of the goals I was already working towards.

While having access to a third gate combat spell was great, it was also dangerous. If I messed up while flying with a broom, I’d end up hurting myself, or maybe crashing into someone.

If I messed up and misused a third gate heatwave attack spell, it was likely to kill someone, or even lots of people. Third gate magic was the same realm as a lot of famous spells, like Fireball, Lightning Bolt, or Lesser Haste. Those were serious power, and the furthest that most people would ever even think about seeing.

But outside of the fact that I wasn’t sure I was ready to control that much power, the two-faced ring just represented less utility and ability than the others.

The second thing that I dismissed was the broom. While it was nicer than my own, I felt a weird sense of pride about having bought my current broom myself. And while the extra eight hundred or so silver I managed to recover would be nice, it wasn’t an amount so high that I’d never be able to save up for it again.

After that, it got harder.

The storage ring, Fundament Pill, and Emperor’s Tree sapling were all exceptionally good, and no mater which of them I wound up picking, I wasn’t going to regret it.

The storage ring… That was about on par with a third gate spell, if I understood correctly. I wasn’t an enchanter, but I wasn’t sure I needed to be an enchanter in order to make extraspatial pockets attached to a physical object.

That may be a while off, but it wasn’t like it was infinitely far away. According to Orykson, I’d be third gate within a year – and less than that now. Almost an entire month had already gone by.

But I also could buy them at a shop. Maybe I couldn’t afford one the size of a trunk, but it could be worth getting a smaller one. Even one just the size of a satchel would be useful. I didn’t know how expensive they were, though.

That left the Fundament Pill and the Emperor’s Tree.

If I took the Fundament Pill tonight, I could get another reward right away. Of course, that’d be an improper use of the pill. I was closing in on mastery of Fungal Lock, so I should spend a day or two focusing on that, and then take it.

It’d represent a serious jump forward in my power, probably more than anything else I could do in the short term. I couldn’t even begin to guess how expensive it was, too. Thousands of silver, at the very minimum.

The Emperor’s Tree wouldn’t be a huge jump in power like that. In some ways, it was the total opposite of the pill. The pill was an instant boost in power, but the tree was a long-term investment. Today it would do little more than provide a bit of extra life and temporal mana when I drained it for mana.

In the long term, however, it would offer a potent healing effect. It might only be for me, but I was rather invested in making sure that I didn’t die or get injured, and the burn scars on my hand from the acidbubble-toad were a reminder of that.

And once I made it to Arcanist, which Orykson seemed to believe that I could manage, if I worked hard enough, it’d extend my lifespan by quite a bit.

That… was a hard power to turn down. I wasn’t sure if I’d want to be an immortal, even if I got the chance, but getting the opportunity to live a long and healthy life wasn’t the kind of thing I could easily blow off.

With the tree, temporal magic, and life magic all working in tandem, how long could I live? Two centuries? Three?

I abruptly realized I was being stupid: I had a knowledge elemental right in front of me.

“How long could I live with the Emperor’s Tree, and the magic of an Arcanist level life and time mage?”

The elemental flashed and pulsed a few times.

“Variable,” it said.

Of course it was. I rolled my eyes at it.

“Ballpark it.”

“The nearest park is one point four three miles away,” Aerde responded. Its tone was completely neutral, but…

“Are you being deliberately obtuse?” I asked.

“A gentleman should not roll his eyes at the people assisting him,” Aerde said.

“You’re right, I’m sorry,” I said. Mentally, however, I added an addendum that I was hardly a gentleman.

“Estimating it based on the files for your future growth that Orykson has assembled, it is still highly variable. On the low end, two centuries is not unreasonable. On the high end, six centuries is possible.”

“Six hundred years…” I said quietly. That was hard to envision.

Life six hundred years ago had been pretty bad. I hadn’t exactly been the best history student, since the teacher had been the kind to stand in front of the class and drone on for an hour without any interaction.

But I knew that the world had basically been run by warlords who scrabbled for whatever power they could gather. Infant mortality was insanely high. Most of the modern enchantments that I took for granted, like stovetop heating, water pumping, and lighting spells were either nonexistent, or otherwise so expensive that only the richest could afford them.

It wasn’t that the magic of the era was weaker – it was just as strong as modern magic. Many of the most powerful spells from that era, particularly battle spells, were still renowned today.

But without the power of the library system that was so universal today, knowledge was hard to come by. Even though the library kept a firm grip on what was considered a public danger, they’d done a massive amount of work for the world. Farming spells, cooking spells, light spells… Even the ungated spells for these purposes represented a massive improvement in quality of life.

Would the people in six hundred years look back at what life was like today and think we were just as savage and primitive?

Probably.

I reached into the portal that held the sapling and pulled it out. Instantly, the other portals snapped shut and swirled back into Aerde’s body.

“Excellent choice, Mr. Baker,” Aerde said. I closed my eyes and reached deep inside me.

“Spatial and Temporal,” I said aloud.

I felt something deep inside me shift. My mana swirled, and abruptly, I could feel the crystalline potential dissolve and form into a new pair of gates. If my life mana was a green, and my death mana was purple, then my new spatial gate was a pale blue, and temporal was a pale yellow.

I opened my eyes to see that I was standing alone on the porch, Aerde presumably having departed already.

I frowned at that. I wasn’t sure what exactly I’d expected: Orykson to appear, maybe? At the very least, I’d expected that I’d be given more spells out of the volume that Orykson kept for my future growth. Hadn’t he said something about teaching me an anchor spell?

I waited for a moment, in case he was about to teleport back, but when nothing happened, I headed out back, using the old gardening tools to dig out a space for the tree. I removed the sapling from its soil gently, then slipped it into the earth.

I was tempted to try my Harvest Plant Life spell, since Aerde had said that I was able to use it at first gate, but I wanted to make sure it was developed enough to handle having a drain on it. I’d check with Meadow on that later.

Instead, I emptied some of my life mana into it, though I held off some, since I hadn’t opened the temporal mana and didn’t want to unbalance the mana and kill the tree.

I headed inside, took a seat on the couch, and lifted my pastry to take a bite when the doorbell rang again.

I let out a curse and put my pastry aside, then went to the door. I opened it to find Orykson standing on my doorstep, a portal hanging open behind him in the air.

“Congratulations, Malachi,” Orykson said, the smallest hint of a smile tugging at the corner of his lips. “I think it’s time we redid your schedule.”

He stepped backwards into the portal, and I could see the same richly appointed sitting room that I’d once been offered to enter when he’d first approached me.

Unlike the first time, I willingly followed him into the portal. He was my mentor, and at this point, if he wanted to hurt me, there wasn’t anything I could do to stop him. To be honest, I wasn’t sure there was anyone within a hundred miles who’d even stand a chance. Liz’s grandfather was an Arcanist, but he was well past his prime, and even then, I wasn’t sure he could actually stop Orykson.

Orykson’s sitting room was very nice, but it wasn’t ostentatious. Or if it was, it was the kind of incredibly subtle ostentatiousness that only the truly wealthy are able to pull off.

The floor was made of a hardwood that was a deep ebony color, and the chairs were leather and well maintained. Given the fact that there was no wood stacked near the fire, and the fire shed no sparks, it was clearly an enchantment of some sort. The shelves were lined with books, many of which were in a language I didn’t recognize, though the Mono spell helped me grasp their meaning through the language gap. I thought they were probably the language they used in Daocheng or maybe one of its surrounding nations, but I wasn’t going to pretend to be an expert – for all I knew, it could be from somewhere entirely different.

“Please, take a seat,” Orykson said, gesturing to the chair opposite his.

“So, what’s this about?” I asked as I sat down. “You were too busy to drop off a reward, but now that I’ve done what you hoped, you can drop what you were doing?”

“Partly,” Orykson said. “I am occupied with facilitating a shipment of structure-ore from Nightflock, but this warranted using a simulacrum.”

“Structure-ore?” I asked curiously. It wasn’t relevant, but if I was a cat, I would have burned through all nine of my lives.

“A fourth gate material that’s quite common in Nightflock. At least as much as any fourth gate material can be,” Orykson said, not seeming annoyed by the question. “It’s an exceptionally good material for storage rings and other extraspatial effects, bonding to spatial spells of fourth gate or below and adding a powerful stabilization effect, which allows significantly more mana to be poured into the size of the spatial pocket. Not only that, but it's able to burn mana for mass in order to lower the gate of spell it's working with to form more material - a common use being the formation of third gate storage rings. Due to the trade agreement, Mossford will now be receiving ten percent of its mined ore, and two percent will be going to Mossford’s closest allies: Suntorch, Dragontooth, and Thornfront.”

“Sounds like the price of effects like that is going to see a pretty substantial dip,” I observed, glad I hadn’t picked the ring.

“Indeed,” Orykson said. “It would be a wise investment to purchase some of this ore for your own training. Your brother could assist you in working the physical shape. The market should be flooded briefly in about a month, and since markets usually take some time to stabilize, an ounce will likely sell for about eight hundred silver if you buy directly from a supplier like Silver Barrow, rather than a shop.”

I gave Orykson a blasé look.

“So you want me to get an ounce?” I asked. With a month, that’d be two, maybe three more payments from him, and several missions, but given all my expenses for life, I wasn’t going to be able to set aside thousands of silver.

“If that’s all you can afford, then yes,” Orykson said calmly.

“Could I take out a loan?” I asked. Orykson’s eyes narrowed, but not like he was upset. More like he was thinking.

“No,” he finally said. “However, I’ll give you an advance.”

He waved his hand, lazily and there was a brief flicker of power in the air, but it was gone before I could pick up on exactly what it was.

“I’ve given you the pay for your next month, as well as the remainder of this month,” Orykson said. “I expect you to use it well and invest it into your training. Now, I believe it’s time for us to talk about your schedule.”