– Era of the Wastes, Cycle 214, Season of the Rising Moon, Day 91 –

A short old man approached Terry and the others. He had a very wrinkly face, a kind smile, and twinkling eyes.

“Greetings young ones. Or well, I suppose you are young ones? You look quite young. Then again, all you mana users do. Quite confusing that.”

The mediary representative of the Guardians went first to greet the man.

“Good morning, Mister Kimutai.” The representative gestured at the three figures behind him. “These are Siling, Terry, and Calam. They have volunteered as your escorts to Biant. They have been vetted by the Guardians. As always, you are free to examine the mission cards yourself if you so desire.”

“Oh no no, that won’t be necessary. Thank you.”

Kimutai walked up to Terry’s group. “And thanks to all of you for accompanying this old one on his walk.”

The representative turned towards Terry’s group. “The beginning of the mission has already been recorded in your membership cards. We have also activated the temporary link between your cards and Mister Kimutai’s client card. If there is nothing else, then you can feel free to go.”

Like this, the group departed from the Guardian headquarters and headed towards the dimensional gate representing the first hub on their trip.

***

“Mister Kimutai?” started Terry.

“Just Kimutai is sufficient, young one. Also, please correct me if I should change my way of addressing you. I am in the habit of going by appearances but for all I know, you three could be twice my age.”

“It is fine. We are— At least, I am as young as I look.” Terry realized mid-sentence that he actually had no idea how old Calam and Siling were. Kimutai was right. This was indeed confusing.

“It is fine,” said Calam.

“No objections here either,” stated Siling.

“I had a different question,” said Terry. “But since we are already on the topic, previously you addressed us as ‘you mana users.’ Does that mean you have never accumulated mana?”

“Not consciously, no. Never. I always thought life was too short and it seems even shorter now.”

The statement baffled Terry into speechlessness.

“Don’t most manaless take a carriage for such distances?” asked Siling.

“Oh yes, but I enjoy the walk. Hiking and taking long walks are one of my pleasures in life. It is a nice counterbalance to the usual day-to-day hectic. Luckily, I am allowed a few eccentricities at this age.”

“What did you mean ‘life is too short’?” asked Terry. ”Mana accumulation increases your lifespan, does it not?”

Kimutai laughed. “That reminds me of a conversation I had once with a friend. I tried to convince my friend Eton of the benefits that some light daily exercise would bring. You know, how it would make him live longer and healthier. At the end of it all, my friend examined me skeptically. Then, he paraphrased the whole proposition as ‘Jogging regularly may earn me some more years of life. However, how many years would I have spent jogging at the end of it all? How many years worth of spare time among my waking hours?’”

Kimutai chuckled in reminiscence. “I thought his argument was a tad ridiculous, but oh well.” He shrugged. “I liked jogging. Eton did not.”

Kimutai turned his gaze back to Terry. “I did not like mana cultivation or spellwork, though. I did not want to spend a significant portion of my waking life engaged in it. Most people don’t, actually.”

“Most?” Terry was surprised. “You mean most people are manaless?”

Now, Siling and Calam were surprised at Terry’s surprise.

“Well, d’uh,” exclaimed Siling. “How do you not know that?”

“Did you never activate your mana sense when you were growing up?” questioned Calam.

“I did, but there were no manaless,” mumbled Terry.

“What?” blurted Siling with mouth agape. “How is that possible?”

“Special upbringing, I presume?” interjected Kimutai.

“Ahh… Oh.” Realization dawned on Terry. “I guess, my circumstances were a bit unusual.”

Calam and Siling waited with raised eyebrows for Terry to elaborate.

“I grew up in the Greenhouse.”

“Wait, what?” Siling was becoming more and more shocked. ”That freaky place where they try to breed the next magic sovereign or something?”

“I wouldn’t call it freaky, but yeah, that Greenhouse. In retrospect, it was a bit odd but it seemed normal when growing up there. It wasn’t exactly bad either.”

“I thought the Greenhouse kids would all go to Arcana Academy.” remarked Calam.

“I did.”

At this point, Siling and Calam stopped walking. They simply stood there and stared with open mouths.

Terry shrugged. “I managed to last a cycle before I was thrown out for failing all my spellwork exams.”

“I never heard of anyone dropping out of the Academy before,” said Calam.

“I alway assumed that that bag of yours was only some weird fan merchandise,” said Siling.

“I was only accepted because they failed to notice my aspect impairment. It was only discovered when we started proper spellwork.”

“And after the Academy, you went right to the Guardians?” asked Kimutai.

Terry nodded.

“Well, that explains your distorted view of the world. Arcana Empire has the highest ratio of mana users among the remaining empires, but even here, they do not constitute a majority. Most people just want a normal life – a stable income so that they can start a family and enjoy their time. Life in Arcana can be pleasant enough even without mana.

“Besides, it may not work any other way. I always figured life inside the barrier would get awfully crowded if everyone were to cling to life for as long as mana makes possible. There is some sort of balance in mana users living potentially longer but riskier lives.”

The group walked for a time in silence before Calam raised another question. “What exactly are you researching at Biant?”

“Oh no, I am employed as a scholar, not a researcher,” replied Kimutai.

“What is the difference?”

“Well…” Kimutai paused to consider the question. “I suppose a researcher gets paid to discover new knowledge. By contrast, a scholar is expected to know existing knowledge. In my case, that means materials science and logistics or how best to allocate and move resources. The magic sovereigns have a new project scheduled near the city and I am hired to support them in their endeavor.”

***

The city of Biant had its own long-distance dimensional gate, albeit a secondary one. Thanks to this travel hub, the actual distance the group had to walk was less than during their trip to Bornais. However, they had to adjust their pace to the slow measured steps of old man Kimutai.

They passed the time in small talk and idle chit chat. Occasionally, Kimutai would take some time to reminisce on his previous visits and how much had changed since then.

After a while, Terry started to use the time for training. He summoned a spare mana container and started to fill it up. Since they were on a mission and needed to preserve their mana for emergencies, he was careful to only fill it at the rate he himself regenerated mana. This way, he would always be at full mana capacity while also training his mana regeneration and accumulating a reserve of naturalized mana in the container.

Additionally, Terry considered practicing his mana crafting. He was lucky that his spell did not have any particular material requirements and in theory he could practice practically anywhere. At home in Arcana City, he had practiced imprinting Immovable Object onto branches or stones whenever he was recovering from physical exercise or had some other downtime.

In the end, Terry decided against it. He feared that it would take up too much of his attention. Terry could hear an imagined voice of disapproval inside his head. The voice admonished him for acting unprofessional and reminded him that he represents the Guardians when he was on a mission. The voice sounded like Ma Isille.

Thankfully, their escort mission ended uneventfully. Kimutai used his personalized client card to confirm the successful completion of the mission. He thanked the three Guardians and then departed into the building in which he would stay for his own task.

“That was kinda nice,” said Siling. “Relaxing even.”

“Yeah, I can see why Kimutai enjoys these walks,” concurred Terry. “That was certainly a bit different from other escort missions.”

“I almost feel bad that he paid for this,” said Calam with a wry smile.

“Don’t believe he paid himself,” retorted Siling. “Most likely, his employer is footing the bill for his ‘eccentricities.’”

“I do not think the magic sovereigns are hurting for mana coins,” said Terry.

“Fair point,” said Calam. “Onwards to Delwood Fort?”

Terry took a time measuring device from his dimensional bag. It was a simple mana-crafted item that had a large and a small light rotating on a circle to indicate the time of day. Terry also had a mechanical watch, but the mana-crafted device had several advantages: It could be read through mana sense. It charged itself using ambient mana. It could synchronize and set its own time according to the position of celestial bodies in the sky as well as through the mana signature emitted by Arcana’s barrier. That last one was particularly useful, because high-quality dimensional bags came with time-distorting effects. These would be problematic when storing a mechanical watch.

“As nice as the walk has been, it also took longer than anticipated,” stated Terry.

“What’s the hurry?” asked Siling. “We still have plenty of buffer time for delivering the item to Delwood.”

“No hurry, but looming deadlines make me uncomfortable – no matter how far away they are.”

Terry took out a map with the marked dimensional gates.

“Back to the primary hub in Baia?” suggested Calam.

“Mhmh, and then take the eastward gate towards Cannington – the first primary hub in the C-zone.”

The three trotted back towards the primary gate they had arrived at before.

***

“What’s up with the worry stones?” questioned Siling.

“The what?” Terry was puzzled.

Siling sped up to walk in front of him, turned around, and pointed at his hands.

“You have been grabbing stones since a while ago.”

“Ah…”

“If you have sorrows to worry about, you can share, you know. My mom says that worrying alone causes ulcers.”

“That doesn’t sound right,” interjected Calam. Then, he shrugged. “But I don’t know enough about biology to be sure.”

“No worries,” said Terry. “Just a normal stone. I am practicing to imprint it with the Immovable Object spell.” He opened his left hand to display the stone before opening his right hand to show the object inside. “And whenever I go beyond my mana regeneration rate, I siphon back some of my mana from the filled mana container so that I stay at full mana capacity.”

“Mana container?” Siling’s eyes sparkled. “Gimme please, I would like to see. I thought about buying one.”

“Me too.” Calam also looked on curiously. “But I heard that the naturalized mana inside would decay over time and then I wasn’t sure if it would be worth it.”

“My pa insisted I purchase some. The stored mana does decay, but at full mana capacity your mana regeneration would go to waste anyway. Storing the mana at your regeneration rate still leaves you better off even if some of the mana decays over time. Additionally, I find them quite useful for training mana regeneration. I could lend you one if you want to test them out.”

“Hmmmm.” Siling seemed lost in thought.

“Hmmmm?” Calam mimicked the noise as a question.

“I’m just wondering if I could use the Share Mana spell to store processed mana that could be quickly absorbed and naturalized by others.”

“Feel free to test it. Not with that one though. That already contains mana that has been naturalized by me. It would have to be emptied before you could use it and that would be a waste of mana.”

“There seems to be quite the crowd over at the info board,” remarked Calam and pointed.

They were presently in Cannington and one of the town’s info boards was on the way to the next hub on their trip. The three decided to head over and figure out what was going on.

Unfortunately, even after they had looked over the board, they still had no idea.

“Greetings. Do you know what all the hubbub is about?” Terry asked a passerby.

“A visitor are you?”

“Passing through would be more accurate.”

“Heh, yes that is about the best thing you can do around here. They’re all excited because of the tusked glacial deer sighting. Its appearance is unusually early this year.”

“What is so special about that deer?”

“Nothing, really. Around here, it is a favorite game for hunters during the season of the Setting Moon. Its elongated canines are useful for some pills or something. The happy faces are most likely hunters anticipating a profitable season. The unhappy faces are the rookies or manaless hunters. The appearance of a tusked glacial deer means that the icicle echidnas are not far behind. That spells the end of their cushy hunts until the Rising Sun will arrive.”

“WOAH!” Siling’s excited voice reverberated in the air.

“Thank you for the information. I wish you will have a nice day!” Terry bid goodbye and joined up again with Calam and Siling.

“What is it?” asked Terry. “Looking to hunt deer as well?”

“What would I want with a deer? No look here!” Siling pointed at one of the notices.

“Bloody frogmouth,” read Calam. “Why are you getting all excited about a frog?”

“Not a frog. A mana-corrupted bird. Nocturnal, which means good eyesight even at night. Blood-aspected corruption, which means increased health regeneration. Above all, it is one of the few minor corrupted that has life sense. Life sense! It’s perfect! When researching possible soul spirits, it was one of my top picks for replacing my falcon soul.”

Terry was overwhelmed when faced with this sudden bout of enthusiasm.

“Aww, you want to replace Birdbrain?” asked Calam. “I will miss that soul.”

“I did not know they were nesting here…” Siling entered her own world of thought.

“How long would it take for you to prepare the replacement of a soul?” After Terry got no answer, he snapped his fingers in front of Siling’s eyes and repeated the question.

“Huh? In my current state, not long, but… I can’t be certain that our hunt will be successful and I would have to release my falcon soul first…”

“Losing the eyes in the sky would make the mark and recapture mission more troublesome,” said Calam.

“Mhmh…” Siling became wistful. “Ah well, now that I know the bloody frogmouth can be found here, there is no rush.”

“I mean,” started Terry. “This isn’t too far from Corsteau. We could come back here on the inbound trip after wrapping up the mana cursed mission. At that point, we won’t have any time pressure.”

“It is already early evening. We could stop here for the night,” suggested Calam.

“Right,” agreed Terry. “We could spend the rest of the evening visiting the local Guardian headquarters and gathering information regarding the mana corrupted. Once we have more information, we can decide if it is workable as part of this trip.”

Siling was beaming at them. “Pick an inn first?”

***

Late in the evening, Terry sat down on the floor in his room at the inn. The room was illuminated by several mana-crafted items that had been imprinted with the Magelight spell.

Terry summoned two metal gymnastic rings from his storage bracelets – one in each hand. Afterwards, he started to harvest mana. After a while, Terry stretched out his left hand over his head. Then, he pulled himself up on the ring that was fixed in place by Immovable Object.

Next, he repeated the process with his right hand. If anyone were to observe the room, they would see Terry climbing through the air – up, down, left, right, forward, backward. First, Terry held his legs horizontally so that each leg formed a right-angle with the torso and pulled himself up. Later, he switched to handstands.

It was an exercise Terry had initially thought of as a counter to Lori’s Liquify Earth spell for their sparring sessions. It was inspired by some of the normal training exercises and equipment at the training grounds. He had tried to come up with other ideas, but all the really good ones would require him to first master hands-free casting and that was a skill still far out of his reach. While Terry could cast without finger movements, he was not yet able to precisely control mana anywhere away from his hands. Furthermore, Terry was still trying to have his off-hand performance catch up with his usual main casting hand.

Nevertheless, Terry had grown to really enjoy the exercise. Aside from the physical exercise – basically doing one handed pull-ups, dips, push-ups, and balancing his body. It served as an effective training for his spell control, mana sense, and timing.

Terry had to keep one spell activated until the next primed spell structure had been ignited. Often, this meant that he had to reinfuse the active spell structure with more mana, especially if the parallel casting of the new spell ended in spell failure. A successful spell casting meant he could immediately cancel the previous spell and so forth.

Every evening, Terry would continue this practice until his mana reserves were empty. Every day, he would try to beat the number of successful spell activations and hand switches from the day before.

Still, Terry remained cautious of being in a foreign location. After the training had emptied his mana pool and he could use the internal pull for increasing his pool size, Terry immediately reabsorbed some of the naturalized mana stored as a reserve in one of his mana containers.

After his training, Terry washed himself off. Before going to sleep, Terry used his Guardian card to flash the links with his family members to indicate that he was okay. In the morning, Terry would do the same.

***

Two days later, Terry’s group arrived at Delwood Fort. Now, they only needed to locate the proper target destination for delivering the storage item.

“I am still wondering what is inside,” remarked Siling. “Who knows what kind of riches we are carrying?”

“Unprofessional to look inside,” stated Terry. “Also prevented by the personalized nature of the storage item.”

“You’re no fun.”

“Don’t believe anyone would hand over riches to some greenhorns like us.”

“Maybe they are trying to be clever and think no one would pay attention to us?” rebutted Calam.

“See? Calam gets it.”

“More likely some supplies of basic mana-crafted items and some boring paperwork.”

“That paperwork could include important spy reports,” suggested Siling.

“Or secret missives to start a revolution,” added Calam.

“Revolution?” Terry raised an eyebrow.

Calam shrugged. “You know, like in the old eras. Empires breaking apart. Kingdoms joining together to form a new empire. That sorta thing.”

Isille and Bjorln had once said that the only people dreaming of war were those who have only ever known peace. Given some of the things described in the Path of a Mage as well as some of the stories from his instructors, a war inside the barrier… Terry recoiled at the thought.

“Spy reports on what?” questioned Terry.

“Conspiratorial plots!” proposed Siling. “Enemy infiltration of the Council! Price fixing in the merchant quarter! Scandalous relationships among the magic sovereigns! I don’t know. That’s the point!”

“I think I can see now why you have been neglecting the courier missions…”

“Not sure anyone would dare to spy on the magic sovereigns,” remarked Calam.

“Maybe our client will satisfy your curiosity,” said Terry. “Once we have found them, that is. Should be this way.”

They turned around the corner.

“Although, if I were you, I would brace myself for disappointment.”

“Hmph.”

“Terry is right,” said Calam. “No self-respecting spy handler would simply admit to their trade.”

“Right,” agreed Siling. “If they don’t tell us, then it serves as proof of a conspiracy.” She giggled happily.

One of the reasons Terry appreciated Calam and Siling as travel companions was that they rarely encountered awkward silences. With Calam he could talk for hours about legends or folktales from past eras. Siling, on the other hand, was well-versed in interesting magic or mana-corrupted beasts. Even if Terry would never be able to use soul spirits, he nevertheless found the topic fascinating. In addition, Siling had a knack for sparking seemingly random conversations – an ability that Terry envied.

They arrived at the counter where a gruff guard greeted them.

Terry reached his hand into his dimensional bag which was currently on closed mode. He retrieved the storage item they were supposed to deliver.

The guard accepted the storage item and acknowledged the receipt. He was much friendlier afterwards. He even seemed cheerful.

“Pardon if it is rude to ask, but do you mind sharing what was inside?” asked Terry.

“Hm? Sure, it is not a secret. Some raw materials and tools, waterproof boots, coldwear, blankets, tea bags, ear plugs, noise cancellation items, and heating pads. A recent lightning storm has messed up some of the fort’s formations and spell imprints. The troops are getting grumpy if they cannot get a good night’s rest. Your timely arrival is much appreciated.”

***