“So… what now?” I asked, eager to get my hands on a real freaking fireball.

“Well, first you’ve got to give me the money,” Jak’lo responded, holding out his hand expectantly. “A fireball is tier 3, so that would be four gold.”

“Hmm, so the cost is related to tiers? Why not three then?”

“Well, yes, the cost depends on tiers, but also on a couple of other factors. And it doesn’t increase linearly with tiers but exponential. Mostly.”

Secretly, I was impressed with Jak’lo. Somehow, I had assumed that someone coming from a society with magic, with people swinging medieval weapons, and, from what I had heard, dragging a wagon by hand into town would be ignorant of math… but obviously, that wasn’t the case with Jak’lo.

Grumbling to keep up appearances, I fished out another gold and handed it to Jak’lo, studiously ignoring his raised eyebrow at being able to cough up four gold just like that. When I thought a bit about it, being able to pay that much without blinking might seem a tad suspicious. Perhaps one or two people from the EFU had obtained four gold by this time, but not more. But, luckily, he didn’t dig deeper and just took my coins, in exchange for the little container.

Grinning widely, I opened the box, expecting to see some sort of scroll in there that would make me learn the spell in an instant. Instead, I was looking at a small three-dimensional construct made out of a shiny metal-like material that felt surprisingly heavy in my hand for its tiny size. I pulled it out of the box to inspect it closer, before turning toward Jak’lo. “So,… what do I do with this? It’s like a bunch of… runes? Welded together into some sort of structure?”

“I don’t know what welding is, but yes, essentially. Grafters use mirror-steel to assemble these, following standard parameters for, in this case, fireballs. See, here,” he pointed at a tiny ring-structure made out of runes, “this determines the size of the fireball. Which then,” he traced his finger along a string of runes connected to the initial ring-structure, ”is connected to a structure that specifies the kind of motion that can be imbued into the sphere of fire.”

It almost looked like code language, just with runes and in three dimensions. If that was true, and spells could all be determined by the combination of runes… the potential was enormous. It was basically just a secret language that needed to be learned and, once mastered, I’d be able to create and modify any spell out there…

Unless there was something else to it.

“So, what do I need to do to learn the spell then?” I repeated my earlier question.

“Well, here is the bowl of ultimate wizardry…” Jak’lo cackled as he pushed forward a little bowl that had runes inscribed all over it. “Fill it with blood and then dump your spell in there.”

“Uhm, what? My blood?”

Suddenly, I was suspicious. This wasn’t going to be another repeat of my experience with Du’Andrazzil, I hoped…

“Why would you need my blood in there?”

“It shows your dedication to the goddess Xantis, the creator of magic!”

“Uhm…. Ok!?” I kind of mumbled, not sure how to respond to some religious shit. Especially if it was dedicated to some weird pagan goddess that… wait. Maybe gods were real in this world! Fuck. If so… I had to reevaluate my behavior and perspective on magic.

Suddenly, Jak’lo began to cackle madly in his high-pitched voice, while slapping his thighs. “I’m just pulling a wixom out of you, young man. By Xantis, your face was hilarious. It almost made up for having to sit around all day long, handing out spells to ignorant fools.”

I wasn’t sure how to respond to that. And I had no idea what a wixom was. But before I could figure out what to say, Jak’lo continued: “More seriously, the blood is needed, because the spell gets attuned to it. Once that has happened, the blood will be reentered into your veins, and that is that.”

“Hmm, so why would the spell need to get attuned like that?” I asked, eyeing the bowl suspiciously. It wasn’t exactly huge… but that still looked like a fair amount of blood I had to put in there.

Jak’lo cackled once more. “Are we afraid of losing some blood?”

“No, but… I kinda want to learn more about how all this magic works, before I spill a gallon of blood onto some runes.”

With a suffering sigh, Jak’lo responded. “Look, kid, I don’t want to spend all day telling you stuff. That is not part of my job. If you want me to teach you magic theory, you’ve got to make it worthwhile for me.”

“Oh yeah? I see… so what do you want?”

Jak’lo’s gaze slowly moved down from my face to my chest and then to my crotch, before shooting up to my face again. When he saw my stony face, he started giggling.

“You are just way too easy to fool, man! Give me five gold, and I’ll answer a few questions.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” I exploded. “Five gold for a few questions? Fuck you! I’ll give you five silver for that.”

“Hah, I am not the one who is desperate to learn more about magic. And guess what, need drives price!”

“That is price gouging… how about one gold?”

Jak’lo just stared at me, smirking.

Fuck. What a prick. And while I did have the five gold, I really didn’t want to just throw them out there for a few questions. That seemed ridiculous. On the other hand,… where else would I get my answers from?

Shit.

After some more hesitation, I finally reached into my pockets and pulled out another five gold.

“Here you go. I hope it’s fucking worth it.”

Jak’lo grabbed the coins and grinned at me. “Man, I should have asked for ten instead. Do you always cave so easily?”

I didn’t respond to that, beyond giving him another stony glare. This guy was Sue on steroids. And much less cute. Maybe I needed to up my emotional intelligence after all. If I could get a better read on people, I’d end up less often with the short stick in situations like that.

Well, whatever. At least, I’d get some useful information. And if not… I already imagined sneaking up on Jak’lo with my Shadow Skin and giving him a bit of a whupping. Not that I’d actually do it. After all, I had heard too many stories about him being a crazy-ass killer. And his position on the ladder indicated that he was good at snuffing out lives.

“So, what do you want to know? I’ll explain to the best of my knowledge. But,” Jak’lo raised his fingers, “I don’t know everything. In fact, no one does. Magic is an art that is as of yet incompletely understood. But I will fill in my personal theories where needed.”

I tried to organize my thoughts for a moment. “Ok. So, let’s step away from specific spells for a moment… what is needed to get to the Apprentice level?”

For a moment, Jak’lo looked disappointed. “I thought you’d ask me some interesting questions about magic theory… but whatever. To answer your question… you have to reach level 10 on Initiate and then gain twenty more mana to reach level one on Apprentice level. But,” and here Jak’lo raised his finger in an admonishing pose, “you cannot just accumulate mana and wait for that to happen automatically. You have to redesign your mana cycle to achieve the upgrade in level. To go to the Apprentice level, you need to make your mana cycle denser and more compact.”

“What happens if someone doesn’t do that?”

“They won’t earn any more mana starting from a certain point. And any mana beyond those extra twenty is lost when reaching Apprentice level… so most consider it a huge waste.”

Shit, that meant I had already wasted five black mana. Good thing I had asked that question now…

A few questions later, I had a fair idea about the leveling system, which required ever-increasing mana counts for higher tiers of levels, and a different improvement in the mana cycle each time. Apparently, the quality of the improvement was a key determinant of how many characteristic, spell, and, in rare cases, skill points one might obtain on subsequent levels. Interestingly, this was somewhat influenced by the quality of one’s mana channels as well.

“So what are those mana channels good for, and how can one improve them?” I asked after hearing Jak’lo mention them.

“Well, so, you’ll have an iron channel, I suspect, which is what everyone starts off with,” Jak’lo responded. “As I already said, the channel gives you a bonus when leveling. But equally important, or perhaps more important, depending on who you ask, it determines the amount of mana you can send through your channels to power your spells. At an iron rank channel, the conversion of mana into power declines extremely rapidly as you reach the designed power ranking for your spell.”

Jak’lo waved dismissively at the fireball. “See, this fireball, for instance, has a standard charge of forty red mana. The amount of mana you pour into the spell is one of the base-determinants of the effective power of the spell. If you put in less than the forty mana, you can still get a sphere of flames, but it will be sorely underwhelming. If you pump in more mana than the forty, you can overpower the spell for a bigger bang, but the additional damage per added mana decreases at a rapidly increasing rate.”

“So how do higher channels change that equation?”

“Every increased level of mana channel, copper, silver, gold, diamond, adamant, and… well, no one has ever gotten to higher levels than that anyway, but, so, they all increase efficiency. And, more importantly, perhaps, starting from gold they also increase the speed at which you can channel your mana, giving you a distinct advantage in fights.”

“So then… the whole point of having higher-ranked spells is that you can pour more mana into them and therefore make them more powerful, even if you are on iron rank channels?”

“That is one reason, but… higher ranked spells also offer additional dimensions. Often the spell is more intricate and therefore offers a better power conversion than lower-ranked spells. See, Heliod’s Wrath, for instance, is a 6th level spell and works like a swarm of fireballs. It requires at least two hundred mana to work, but the damage output is significantly higher than from say five fireballs.”

“So wait, you wanted me to take that spell before… are you out of your mind? How would I have two hundred mana at this point?” I almost shouted at Jak’lo.

“Huh, well, I guess I hadn’t really thought about that. And… not sure about your intelligence either, now that I think about it.”

“What?”

The more I interacted with Jak’lo, the more pissed off I got.

“You need… let’s see, level 1 spells are free, level 2 spells require intelligence of 10, …” Jak’lo began to mumble as he apparently tried to do some complicated math in his head. “So, an intelligence of about 22 is needed for you to be able to cast that spell. And you need, hmm, a similar amount of willpower to pull it off with any kind of efficiency.”

What the fuck?

“Wait, why do you have to be smart if you have those runic patterns in your blood?”

“Well, this is not entirely understood,” Jak’lo explained, “My theory is, and there is some solid evidence for it, that the runes provide your brain, and channels, a blueprint to be used, but still require conscious processing power to cast.”

“How would you come to that conclusion? What kind of evidence are we talking about?” I asked suspiciously. This was important because it would determine what kind of characteristics I would have to level.

Jah’lo raised a finger. “For one, it is an established fact that those with low intelligence cannot cast higher-tiered spells. Two,” Jak’lo raised a second finger, like a professor providing a list of facts to a room full of semi-attentive students, “You feel mentally exhausted when you cast spells, so it must involve the brain somewhere. And three, people don’t cast spells when they are dreaming.”

Well, that did sound convincing.

“So, ok, back to the blood and runes… why?”

“Hmm, again, there is no definite proof… and there are some different schools of thought. But the theory that I personally favor argues that the runes get copied into tiny little particles in the blood that then get spread throughout the whole body in a semi-biological, semi-magical process. This then allows mana to be accessed immediately and at high speed, because the blueprint on how to do this is everywhere. If you didn’t do this,” Jak’lo again raised his bony finger, apparently his signature move, ”and say, instead put the rune into your flesh somewhere, the spell could only access mana from that particular spot. And that would provide only a pathetic quantity, not useful for anything more than lighting a candle, perhaps. Furthermore, the process also attunes your body to that particular mana, which allows for increased efficiency.”

It took my mind a moment to catch up to the last sentence. “Wait, what? What did you just say?”

“It attunes your body. Basically, your blood becomes a more specialized conduit for red mana, in your case.”

Well, fuck. The process sounded like a virus, or perhaps gene manipulation. And more specialized probably meant that every other type of casting would be more difficult. I needed to find out.

“So, what if someone took a spell based on red mana and another one based on white mana, say that wind-gust spell?”

Jak’lo began to giggle. “What are you talking about? How would you do that? You can’t use red mana to create a wind-effect. Unless you do it naturally, by heating up air causing it to rise… red mana has, mainly, thermal heat and force as components. White mana, on the other hand, is mostly transmutation, alteration, and force.”

After a moment, Jak’lo continued. “That said, I have heard of people having more than one core, but it usually ends rather poorly for them. Mana ends up clashing inside their body, so it is a terrible idea to do that.”

“But hypothetically…?”

“Hmm, hypothetically… one could, maybe. But whatever spell one picks last would determine the attunement of the blood. Or perhaps the highest tier would determine that... or the average number of spells…” Jak’lo began to mumble as he was thinking through the ramifications. “But certainly, if one could cast spells with different mana, it would vastly decrease the speed and efficacy of all other spells.”

Shit.

So much for gaining access to a fireball spell by dropping a few gold coins on a counter.

“Can I return the spell?”

Jak’lo stared at me for a moment, utterly flabbergasted. “What?”

“Yeah, I want to return the spell. I… I don’t like the idea of putting my blood into the bowl and then some runes spreading throughout my body.”

I wasn’t really concerned about those things, well, in fact, the virus-like feature of the process did have me freaked out a bit, but I needed a credible reason to not wanting to use the fireball spell any longer. A reason other than me being able to handle multiple mana types. If Sue and Jak’lo ever got to talk about me, the cat would be out of the sack, but until then, I might be able to keep things a secret.

After a moment, Jak’lo shrugged his shoulders and said: “Sure, I can give you two gold for it.”

“What?” I shouted in outrage. “I just paid four gold for it a moment ago, and I didn’t use it!”

“Well, take it or leave it,” Jak’lo responded with a smug expression on his face.

“You know what? Fuck you,” I growled, snatching back the set of runes. “I’ll just keep it then.”

Jak’lo just smirked. “Suit yourself.”

I swallowed a few choice words and instead focused on what I needed to know. “Alright, then show me how a fireball works.”

“Why would I do that?” Jak’lo asked with raised eyebrows.

“Because I fucking paid you five gold?”

“I think,” Jak’lo said slowly, “that I have provided you with some unique knowledge that no one else in this shard has access to! That is worth more than five gold, for sure!”

“You fucking, greedy, scumbag!” I shouted and began to advance at him. Danger or not, he was gonna get a black eye.

Only to be stopped short, when Jak’lo started his somewhat manic giggle again and raised his hands in a mollifying gesture. “Fine, fine. I just wanted to see how much I can push you around. At least you have some balls. Watch closely now. I am going to do it once with the help of runes and once without. You’ll see a noticeable difference.”