Mana Mirror: Chapter Thirty Five (Patreon)

I wanted a deeper connection with the library, and I wanted a communication mirror.

That being said, a lot of my problems right now did come down to cash, or at least a fair few of them did. Based on comments Kene and Orykson had made, I thought a few more advancement resources would be useful, but no more than that.

But… I liked money.

That felt so greedy to think about, but it wasn’t like I was going to be some monster and take advantage of others. I didn’t need Orykson’s centuries of compound interest, the bank accounts of one of the Tower-City’s mass corporations, or the bloody fortune of a conquering warlord in the Unclaimed Lands.

But I did want enough to not have to budget down to the last silver, and live comfortably. Maybe someday I could own a condo or small house of my own, or… Something.

Of course, owning a place, even in the suburbs, would easily cost three hundred thousand silver, maybe more. Three thousand wasn’t enough for a down payment.

But it was a start. I could invest it into my own future, and make more money as a second gate mage, or as a spellbinder.

And I wasn’t going to lie to myself – I was curious as to why the mission hadn’t been taken yet, or if it had, then why everyone had failed.

I peeled the mission off the board and headed to the attendant. As soon as she saw it, she winced.

“You sure you want this one?” she asked. “A bunch of people have taken it, and they’ve all come back empty handed.”

“Did they say why?” I asked.

“They said it was haunted,” she said. “We, as well as the Lightwatch, did a brief investigation, but with nobody seriously hurt, the isolated manor, and the owner openly swearing under truth spells? There’s… Not much we can do. We think it’s probably some sort of local elemental or spirit stirring up trouble, and the crows are a byproduct.”

“That sounds like… quite a mess,” I said.

“It is,” she agreed. “But hey, since the owner’s willing to put up this much of a reward, if you actually succeed, you might be able to negotiate for an even higher reward than what he’s provided us to post.”

I might fail, sure, but if I did, I’d have wasted a weekend. If I succeeded, I’d get at least three thousand silver, and maybe more.

“I’ll take it,” I said decisively.

“Okay,” she said with a shrug, stamping off on the mission. I headed home and let Ed know I was going to head out for a mission in the morning tomorrow, since dad was busy in the shop. I’d tell him at dinner.

“Oh, really?” he asked curiously. “Need me to come? I can probably get off if I run down, Josie owes me like… Four shifts anyways.”

“Is that allowed? I don’t think you’re a contract worker for the other watches. Are you?”

“It’s allowed,” he said. “Not often done, since we have our own work to do, but it’s not like I’m taking the glory from you. I could just go as backup.”

I considered that seriously for several seconds, then shook my head.

“The spirit, or whatever it is that’s calling the crows, hasn’t used any serious attacks yet, and it’s only had first gate mages investigating. Bringing a third gate mage with me might be like pulling out a spell or a knife in a bar fight.”

Ed bit his lip, then let out a long, slow sigh.

“Fine, you’re probably right. But stay safe, okay?” he asked.

“I will. And hey! Next weekend, we have Estragon cleanup,” I said. “We can work on a mission together then. That’ll be fun.”

Ed gave me a goofy grin, and nodded.

“Sounds good,” he said.

“Oh, but… Do you have a spatial storage artifact?” I asked.

He shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other, then nodded.

“Yeah,” he said. “We’re given them as a part of the standard kit for the Lightwatch. I didn’t want to say anything, cuz I know they’re pretty expensive. Also, I can’t use it for daily stuff, or I’d never carry groceries again.”

“Great,” I said. “Mind grabbing it? If you want to hang out some, then I need to purchase one. I don’t think I’ve the money for a storage ring or anything, but Kene said spatial bags were usually a lot cheaper.”

“Sure, but why do I need my own?” he asked.

“Negotiation tactic, brother-mine,” I said with a grin.

“Brother-mine?” Ed asked, scrunching up his nose. “What kind of middle-ages nonsense is that?”

I shrugged and shoved him towards the stairs. Of course, with the fact he was a full foot taller than me, and easily weighed a hundred pounds more, it was more like a leaf hitting him than anything.

“Go get it,” I said.

A few minutes later, he came down the stairs wearing a dull gray storage ring on his right index finger, and we set out to find a decent shop.

“Any idea where to go?” Ed asked.

“Well,” I said. “Orykson would probably want me to go to the same shop I got my suit from. But they’re also a luxury shop. I’m pretty sure that the enchantment on my suits were one of the less important parts of their cost. So I’m not going there – they’ll sell me some fancy leather bag that costs five thousand silver for no discernable reason to us poor peasants.”

“So… I’m gonna assume that’s a no?” Ed asked, gently bonking me on the head.

“I know where to not go,” I said. “That counts for something. Probably.”

We headed towards the nearest shopping center, which was a few miles away, and I was struck by the fact I was able to keep up with Ed a little bit easier. It wasn’t much, but over the past month, I’d been doing a lot of running around.

I smiled a bit. Maybe, if I started working a bit more, I’d be able to actually develop some muscle tone. That would be really nice… It could probably help me pass better.

Of course, if Liz’s family was anything to go off of, I could get absolutely shredded and still present very femininely, but that… wasn’t something I wanted to think about.

So? I didn’t, instead choosing to sketch my Pinpoint Boneshard spell. I hadn’t been as vigilant as I should have been while I was with Kene, so I wanted to catch up.

Ed gave me a strange look, but didn’t say anything.

When we arrived at the shopping center, I shifted to sketching Internal Pocketwatch. It was a lot less threatening, and I didn’t want to scare someone.

“I’ve been to Irio’s Sporting Goods before,” Ed said, pointing at a shop with a brightly glowing red sign. “They… Actually nevermind. They have bags enchanted to clean your gym clothes, but I don’t know if they’ve got any storage enchantments.”

“Yeah, we can pass then,” I said. “How about that place?”

I pointed to a sign labeled ‘Bags, Bags, and More Bags!’, which… I mean, it had the word bags in it more than any sane person should.

We walked past the window, but it seemed to be a custom print shop. Interesting, but not what we were looking for.

There were a few large consignment stores, and some of them may have one, but they’d probably put it at a mark-up.

“How about that one?” Ed asked, pointing to a store labeled ‘Every-Budget Enchanters’. I perked up. That definitely might work.

We inside past rows of fishing poles fitted with simple fish attraction charms, and under a canoe that they – for a reason that was completely alien to me – had decided to show off the flotation magic by having it float in the middle of the main walkway, then past a display case full of shoes, labeled with different running, stamina, or climbing enchantments woven in.

“Anything I can help you fine young gentlemen with on?” a man said from behind us, smiling with the glazed look of someone who was nearly at the end of their shift.

“Enchanted stora–” I started to say, but at the same time, Ed spoke, and I tripped over my words.

“Dimensional rin–” he said, also stumbling.

The employee gave us a long-suffering smile, and led us through a section of the store filled with enchanted cooking supplies until we stood in an isle of bags. Of course. Because every good backpack would be behind the cooking supplies. That was clearly logical.

If the owner of the store had been the one there, instead of a very tired employee, I would have rolled my eyes.

“Oh!” Ed said. “Duh. Why didn’t I look here? Thanks man! That’s all.”

Perhaps there was some strange logic to it that Ed could detect.

But… more likely he was just being nice.

The employee nodded and meandered away, sharply turning down an isle to avoid a gaggle of young teens who passed by. I grinned to myself then turned back to the bags and rings on the shelf.

Everything new was kept behind a layer of enchanted glass, and the pricier items weren’t even on the shelf, but reading the descriptions of them – and more importantly, the prices accompanying those descriptions – I skipped to the far end of the shelf, where the cheapest items were kept. I didn’t need a thirty-thousand-liter sized storage space anyways. I was pretty sure everything I owned could fit in that with room to spare.

The cheapest items were, as Kene had promised, bags. The cheapest were only fifty silver, but they were so pointless that I had to wonder if anyone even bought them – like a backpack that had the internal space of a duffel bag. Considering a backpack wasn’t much smaller than that, I didn’t see why I wouldn’t just carry the slightly bigger bag.

“How much do you have to spend?” Ed asked, pointing at a bag just under a thousand silver.

“Not that much,” I said, shaking my head and laughing. “Two hundred silver, tops.”

I paused. With the forward pay that Orykson was sending me, I could probably afford a thousand silver bag, and if I got the payment from the mission, I’d be able to put it back, and then some.

Nah. That was a stupid idea. Everyone else had failed, after all, and it wasn’t like I was some prodigy. It was a bad habit to get into anyways – something in the apartment could break, I could be forced to buy some healing potions, my broom’s magic could suddenly require repairs, or a dozen other things besides.

“Secondhand would probably be a good idea,” I said, gesturing to the boxes of used storage spaces.

“Hmmm…” Ed said. His fingers hovered over a bag for a moment, then he pulled it away.

“What?” I asked.

“The bag was used to transport sand for a construction crew. It’s an okay deal, but everything is going to come out sandy.”

“Yeah, no thank you,” I said with a shudder.

I looked at a belt bag that could hold twenty liters, but since storage bags were limited by the mouth of the bag itself, I discarded it. I may be able to fit everything I needed into it, but it would be horribly awkward to fish it in and out.

Ed showed me a backpack that could hold over a hundred liters and was absurdly cheap, but it had some holes in it that left its storage space somewhat unreliable to access at times, so we put it back.

I looked at a ring that could hold ten liters, but decided that was too small to be worth the two hundred and twenty silver.

A few more dead-eyed employees passed us and asked if we needed help as we sorted through their used goods, and about twenty minutes into the process the peacepyre floated out of the bottle on my belt, and hovered over my head. Ed glanced at it, so I quickly explained what it was.

I half expected the peacepyre to start diving in and out of the storage spaces, but it just hovered peacefully, occasionally drifting one way or another. I shrugged and gave it a pat on its…

Well, it didn’t have a head. It was an orb of opal fire. I patted the top of the ball.

After another thirty minutes of digging, I pulled out a black leather briefcase. Its handle and strap were cracked and weathered, a few bad days from falling apart, and there was some staining on the leather of the briefcase, but the body of the briefcase seemed mostly unharmed. I unlatched it and relatched it a couple of times, and the extended space within was completely solid.

I cast my Analyze Space spell, looking over the bag. The magic ran through the body, but not through the straps, so I could safely get those replaced once they broke…

I wasn’t an enchanter, and I didn’t understand the strange bending of space in the bag, but it didn’t fluctuate. I grabbed a few other bags for comparison, as well as looking at what was behind the glass. None of the new enchantments fluctuated, so I took the lack of fluctuation as a good sign.

The internal space of the briefcase was just under eighty liters, and the briefcase cost two hundred and twelve silver…

I picked it up.

“This is it,” I said.

Ed made a sour face.

“That makes you look like an old man,” he said.

“Great, I’m sure Orykson will approve, then,” I said with a slight grin.

We headed to the counter, behind which was a tall, lanky man who spread his arms as we approached.

“Ah, hello, hello!” he said. “My name is Larry, owner and proprietor of this fine establishment.”

He seemed to be the only happy person in the store, and I took an immediate dislike to him. The fact he was so joyous, while all his employees looked like they wanted to die?

My dad was hardly the perfect boss, but our employees looked better.

“Nice to meet you,” I said with an equally happy, fake smile. “You see, I’ve just turned eighteen, and I was hoping to get a storage space of my own. My bother here…”

I gestured at Ed, who waved, which showed off the storage ring.

“He’s been kind enough to let me use his for a while, but I figured I should probably start looking at one of my own.”

Step one of negotiating for secondhand goods: Devalue how much you need their product.

I tapped the bag.

“This one seemed decent enough under my Analyze Space spell, but… I’m sure you can see the quality of the straps. One good yank and they’d come right off.”

“One-ninety-five,” he said, seizing the initiative. I should have put my offer out first. Oh well.

“Come on, I’m going to have to spend fifty to replace the straps,” I said. I would, in fact, be doing no such thing – I’d just get some cheap cloth straps, and I may even fix it myself. But if I wanted to really replace the leather straps, that wasn’t a horrible guess.

I withdrew a ring from my pocket and placed it on the counter.

“I’ll do one-seventy-five, if you identify this too,” I said.

He picked it up, turned it over in his hand, then pushed it back.

“Sorry, we only identify elemental and human enchantments, nothing else. I’ll do one seventy, though.”

“You know,” Ed rumbled. “My first storage space was about the same internal size, and I paid the same price, but it was way small smaller on the outside.”

I nodded to him.

“How about one-fifty?” I asked.

“One-sixty-five,” he said. “That’s as fair as you’re likely to get from me.”

If this had just been a normal negotiation, I’d have taken the deal, but… I didn’t really like him that much.

“Nah,” I said, shaking my head and turning to go. “I’ll check with Rick’s, see if –”

I hadn’t even finished turning away before the owner spoke.

“Fine, fine. One-fifty-five.”

I tilted my head as if considering, hoping he’d go lower, but when he didn’t budge, I nodded.

“Deal,” I said.