Eli POV

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I made my way back up to the treetops with nothing but the faint light of the stars to guide me. I made my way up one of the trees and off to my left I saw a figure approaching me. It was hard to make out in this darkness, but the horns and shape were too unique to be anything else but Salamede.

"Nice work with the gun. I'd say that scope was a good investment." I said in a spirit connection as she landed beside me.

"Thanks, but don't keep me waiting. What happened?" She asked excitedly.

“Poor structural planning is what happened. All the prisoners got crisped when the ashes got sucked in through their air filtration system. I had a run in with some mages, but they were no problem.”

Salamede nodded as she went to get on my back but I put up a hand.

"It’s too dark tonight for me to be comfortable doing the large jumps with you on my back. The class I have tomorrow isn't until midday so we can move on a little bit and find someplace to spend the night. " I said in a miffed tone before I pointed back up the roads.

She took off along the treetops with me. We moved through the woods at a much slower pace since her suit didn’t have the advanced jump functions mine did, but we still made ok time. I decided that we should push on until we get to the lake. The whole woods were lit up like a party. The orcs were everywhere drinking and singing songs with the deep base of drums and primal whoops or screams. While beneath me I saw a lot of patrols consisting of mages and men scurrying back towards the main fort.

When we came upon the stone mountain it had a large crowd of men who looked to be trying to all get through the open main entrance. I saw one man on top of the wall screaming down at them, but time was of the essence. As we moved off and came up to the lake I motioned towards a particularly large tree near the middle portion of the lake. As we made it up into the trees I could tell Salamede wanted to talk more as she got off my back but we were both too tired as we slung our grass suits into hammocks.

The next morning we got up and took quick showers with some quick and dirty water summoning bark crafts as I didn't dare go down to the forest floor to get into the lake. It was now bright enough that I was more confident carrying Salamede on my back to do the big jumps.

A few minutes into the trek home, I decided to ask Salamede what she wanted to talk about.

"So, what was it you wanted to talk about?" I asked. I had several ideas of the things she might want to discuss and the things we had to talk about so I wanted to get her concerns out of the way first.

"Eli... What do we do now?" She asked through a spirit connection.

I pondered on it for a while. I knew what needed to be done when I was torching those bandits with Gula beside me but I needed the right words to make this course of action more.... palpable. Part of me also wanted to convince her just because it would help convince the doubts in my own mind.

"I think we may have to help the orcs take the viper base," I said.

She was silent for a few minutes with no noise but the whistle of air as we almost glided through the air with my enormous jumps off and onto the huge trees. As she was going over all the same objections I had and worked through all the same arguments and counter-arguments, we made it all the way out of the southern area. At this rate, I would just make it back in time to get to class.

"Eli, what about the villagers?" She finally said.

"First of all, the orcs won't win totally. The most likely outcome is that the orcs expand in the southern region but get halted by the Bulwark and intensify their efforts in the north. But as for the villagers, I don't think it will be too bad. I've never seen orcs attack civilians and that human village seemed well treated.

But am I willing to risk thousands of people's lives on those two data points just to save my reputation? I'll admit I'm not too sure about that. It'll be one thing I ask Gula about." I finished.

"Gula?" Salamede asked.

"The orc with the black neckband," I responded.

"You...You talked with them? Did they realize you're human?" Salamede asked, more curiously than accusingly.

"Yes, to both questions. She and a group of Frojan helped me take out the mages blocking my way. They were more than content to just stay by my side instead of running off fighting so they probably were content with their contribution towards the orc siege in the opening minutes. Given that, it’s pretty safe to say they probably held back and waited for the other orcs to finish the fighting. They’ll still be alive if we need to work with them.

I can't take on the fort with just the two of us. I saved her in the Crypt and she has shown some sympathy for humans in the past when she was involved in another attack I saw. No, it's not the most solid relationship to start out with but I can't work with any of the human factions because no one else has the desire or means to take the fort holding the Vipers' commander. And she is the closest thing to a connection I have with the orcs. I just need a better understanding of the scope of what I'm dealing with if they expand.

And it's not like it's entirely selfish to want to clear my own name. In the future, I will probably save untold thousands of lives with my inventions and scientific wonders. But that will get pushed back years or even decades to get in with any major organizations if the accusations around me don't get cleared."

Somewhere in the diatribe, I lost track of whether I was talking to her or myself. I had been too busy trying to justify to her and my own conscience the action my mind was telling me I had no choice but to take.

"All right. Just make sure you've thought through everything. I know this is a lot to handle for someone your age but you seem to have a good head on your shoulders." She said with a reassuring squeeze on the shoulder.

I was smiling under my cracked helmet. Well, even if she was an order of magnitudes off about my age, she still believed in me which was comforting in that same stupid way any compliment was. After pushing aside my feelings I planned out the next few days.

No matter how much I 'knew' this was the optimal choice, I still had to do some more scouting. If the Coalitions defenses towards the mainland were solid enough and the villages under the orcs control were treated well enough, I could go ahead with the operation. I thought about all the fear and panic that would spread from the orcs victory in the south.

God knows the people were terrified enough of them as is. I spent the rest of the trip mulling over any other way to get ahold of which nobles had put me through this hell but when we got there I was still drawing a blank.

After going through the troll nest and changing into my white and blue school robes with the white undershirt, I put my chain mail veil back on and quickly made my way back to class as Salamede went to a 'meet'. This was a kind of gathering where members of the Kelton community got together at certain times of the month or during emergencies to pool resources and come up with solutions to various problems.

I made my way to the dual towers of smooth white stone with a group of my fellow students, who all avoided me like the plague as usual.

After a few minutes of walking, I made my way into the twin white towers and pushed through the crowd of students and teachers as I walked over the grey stonework on the interior floors. Walking up the massive staircase that served as the means of traveling between the vast open-spaced floors, I made my way towards the 5th floor. Going into the third door on my left, I came into a big classroom with glass-paned windows on the far side and 7 rows of duo tables. in front of a plain wood podium.

A lot of students were talking and socializing amongst themselves and only a few bothered looking my way when I came in. As I made my way to the back of the class, one of the students on the left side tripped me up with an outstretched foot. I managed to recover with grace, but it still drew a lot of snickers from the other students. Keeping my eyes in front of me I made my way to the back left table, the only empty one in the room.

It took a bit but eventually, the teacher came in. She was a wrinkly woman with two wide tufts of brown hair and green eyes. She carried a book with her to the podium and brought silence to the classroom with a simple cough before speaking in her almost squeaky voice.

"All right class. Today we will be learning one of the most distinguishing features of our school. Customized crafting. While other schools would be content to merely keep the crafting classes to only the crafters, we here at The Diamond academy believe in pushing our students to their absolute best performance in all areas.

As such everyone in this academy will be expected to craft their items to best serve their users. If generic trash like flaming swords or rock lobbing shields was the best we as mages could do, any mage would be fit to knock Beth off her throne at the capital as a master crafter. But making items that take into account the users full range of motion, have their enchantments placed where they won't interfere with each other, as well as a whole other host of issues, is what differentiates master craftsman to the people who flood the magic markets with goods for quick gold."

The rest of the lecture was spent going over some basic formulas in passing details and drilling some basic tenants into our skulls, ones that I already knew like the back of my hand. Magic or science, there were only so many ways the human arm could twist or our necks could turn. And whether the jet of flame was fueled by mana or chemical fuel, the same principles of heat dispersion, structural integrity, and the ways someone could turn it off all still applied here just as they had back in my universe since spirit magic and mind-cyber connections had some very rough similarities.

But this was all brand new for my academic compatriots. We had all taken some of the basic crafting courses while I worked on making the bags of holding machine. However, while those classes focused on making some of the most basic enchantments, it was still a sore spot for a lot of the students.

Sure, it wasn't hard once you got the concepts down. But it wasn't as visceral or quick as casting, which had you make the same shapes over and over using mana only with far fewer considerations. Making the wide circles, inner triangles, and squares for spells in mid-air was far quicker than pushing the spirit magic into the material and the enchantments crafters made weren't always the same, unlike caster spells, so you couldn't practice them consistently.

Considering the students were mostly children in late teen- early adulthood bodies from having spent their puberty in a state of comatose to allow their bodies to form the mana pathways, it was considered quite a feat to be able to concentrate for such long stretches of time.

It was near the end of the lecture that the most annoying part came up: selecting a team. Because it was the central tenant of this class that you had to design something specially made for someone else.

"All right. Everyone form up and get in groups of three." She finished.

I looked around and everyone who had looked towards my direction briefly had quickly turned away, but I could see the faint desires in their eyes. Whatever questions people may have about my reputation as a person, my craftsmanship wasn’t in doubt. I looked at the table for a moment when I heard a pair of footsteps come my way.

Looking up I saw Veronica approaching my table. Behind her I saw the black hair and lean-muscle build of Jeff, his distinctive oceanic eyes looking at me with slight friendliness instead of the typical scorn that so many others had.

“Heya, would you mind teaming up with us?” the blond asked. Nothing in her heart shaped face or blue eyes said she registered the whispers around us. Jeff pulled up two empty chairs from the table to our left. In spite of myself, I felt a slight smile steal over my face as they sat opposite of me.

“Sure,” I said. We talked for a while about various ideas and some idle gossip around the campus. It was all very… mundane but pleasurably so. After an hour of back and forth discussion we agreed to meet up the next class two days from now. After that the day wound down and I headed back home in the early afternoon. My home was along the left side of the river bank further from town so I had to walk farther than I did when I lived by the docks but it was on my trip through the streets that I had an encounter with a most curious person.

It was one of the men who had been put into the carriage during the ‘mini’ trials after the dock battle. He was the one with short black hair, now slightly longer, but the cut above his eyes was distinctive enough that I would recognize him anywhere. He was dressed in a brown vest and white undershirt with regular brown cloth pants.

He was looking over the whole street on an restaurants outdoor dining area that was raised on a wood platform with a roof. As he scanned over the passing crowd his green eyes, for the barest moment in time, lingered on me for a moment before his eyes turned away and returned to the slab of pork on his plate.

It was quite curious, but I guess I was still an odd sight for some one new here. I made my way back home and spent the rest of the afternoon working on Salamede’s vine suit. One more good day of work and it would be done. I was still struggling to figure out if these suits should be consecrated or not.

They weren’t technology, or at least they couldn’t ever be a part of Godulus, so should they be consecrated? The air piston was almost entirely technology fueled with magic so I felt that it deserved it but magic didn’t exist in my universe. So, was a craft that was more magical than technological worthy of such consideration? My brief overview of the tech manifests passages provided no insights, so I was just winging it.

I spent a good while in the basement feeding the vines in the new suit mana from my body. Occasionally the mana would get soaked up by the various pieces of bark on the table gradually shaping the half-finished screws, rings, and other assorted pieces they held into the parts I needed to make another air gun to replace the one I had to give to Salamede.

After a good hour I heard a knock on my door through the open hatch of the basement. Moving upstairs, I moved across the dark oak wood floor to open the sturdy door now reinforced with iron bars. Opening it I found Tansen standing at my door dressed in his typical black kimono sporting a wave of sapphires across the chest. Looking past him I could see nothing he brought even as I took in the red hue of the sky over his back and the soft green grass beyond before the rest of the town slightly shrunken from this distance.

“Ah good to see you lad. I wanted to invite you over for a spot of relaxation at the staff facilities while we discus some of your school work. I didn’t want you to start dreading the sound of my voice so I figured this was a nice compromise. I’ve also invited that Kelton friend of yours, who was so eager to agree, her mother even came along.” The black-haired man said. His distinctive eyes showed a genuine warmth in their brown shimmer.

I figured this was as polite and accommodating way of saying ‘we need to talk’ as he could possibly manage so I nodded and after getting my veil, I followed him back towards the academy. As I walked beside him, I saw Salamede and her smaller mother, a scrawny thing with two brown horns along the back of her head and brown fur flecked with grey in a simple brown dress, by the academy entrance. She waved to me with excitement but she reigned it in enough to cross into rudeness.

“Thank you so much for having us over, Academy Head.” She said with a light bow as we all crossed through the gate entrance. Tansen responded with a gracious nod as we walked along the path up towards the central tower with red tiles. The smooth circular structure stood front and center, outdoing the rows of dorm houses that were built into the walls or even the scions customized houses.

We made our way through the front door into the main floor. The floor was of polished light oak and smooth, more greyed out than pure white, walls that slightly jutted upward towards the roof. It was a plain circular room with two sets of stairs on both side flowing up to a wide double door of dark oak. Below the meeting point of the two staircases was another double set of doors which Tansen lead us into after he pressed a circular tube against one of the door handles, this worlds version of a key and lock.

Going through them was a large staircase with smooth wooden oak floors and cave like walls. But these walls were colored the same greyed out white inside the main floor and had bits of water dripping down them, as it led downward further underground. All of this water dripped down into two small channels on both sides of the stairs that flowed down towards what looked like a hallway.

Coming down to the halls, the floor and walls were all dark wood that had a few entrances with curtains for doors. The signs clearly showed the women were to go to the right while we men were to go to the left.

Going through the first doorway on the left was a changing area made in the same dark wood as the hall way but with several stalls of lighter stone for changing.

“All right, lets get changed and start some our ‘academic advising session’. Just leave your robes in one of the stalls ,“ Tansen said as he went up to a bookshelf to the left that was filled with some white unisex skirts that fastened around the waist with two long white cords.

He threw one of them towards me and I headed off into one of the stalls. It had a smooth stone bench on the far side topped with wood and a hook on the inside of the door. Changing into my new attire I put my clothes on the hook and left the changing area to go into the main area.

As I moved past the stone door way to push the curtain aside, I noticed it was emitting a faint wind spell, I couldn’t tell what shape or purpose it had until I pushed through. The first thing I saw was a large pool with the wisps of steam that played off of some larger rocks in its center while the steamy moist air gave the whole place a hot sweaty feeling. The walls seemed to be more cave like and were left in black and grey stone with rough edges.

I saw several other staff members lounging about and some even turned a curious gaze towards me. But before anyone said anything to me, I heard Tansen off to my left.

“This way lad,” He called to me from a doorway to the left that led to another room. I walked across the slick, uneven stone floor towards the room. It had two long tables for massages, with Tansen already laying face down on the farther one getting his back worked on by a woman in white robes. He looked over at me as I still had my chainmail veil attached to the iron pieces resting on my neck but he simply nodded and turned to ley face first into a soft white pillow.

I went to lay down on the closer one and after a minute another woman came in who started working my back as well.

“Oh my, I’ve worked on planks that were softer and that had fewer knots.” The woman said behind me as I lay face down with my head in my arms. Tansen chortled off to my left but I just sighed and enjoyed the down time.

After a while the massage came to an end and we both went back out into the main pool. Tansen directed me towards one particular section further off to the left. It was a different part of the pool wall that had wood for the lisp of the pool that started and stopped at certain points. As I went into the mineral soaked water, Tansen came to sit to my right. After he pressed into an indent in the side of the wood with his index finger, I noticed a wall of milling air come up around us in a wide sphere with the wisps of smoke getting cut in half or coming up to pool in the top of the bubble. Even with it up, I still had an unobstructed view of the rest of the teachers.

“Now that we can talk without having someone hearing confidential information.” Tansen said as he leaned against the wooden section.

We talked for a while, mostly focusing on my reluctance to take on more classes and the low score I got in my tactics class.

“You know Eli, you may be getting close to the end of your crafter studies, but there is still more to learn. Alchemy in particular is an interesting subject. What makes it is so interesting is that while magical materials such as meats and fruits can be used for magical growth, there can be an incredible variety of pseudo spell effects and abilities from various mixtures and poultices. That is if you are attentive enough to minimize the dangers” Tansen said.

I pondered over it for a bit, but my mind still wandered. For some reason I was still focusing on that man with a cut above the eyes I saw earlier. Like there was some itch I couldn’t scratch whenever I thought about him. Then I got that pain in my chest again. It was more severe this time and I even had to dip further into the water to hide my grimace of pain until the moment passed.

Well if I have questions about the stranger, I’m sitting beside the man who would be most likely to know.

“What’s wrong Eli?” Tansen asked.

I got my head fully above the water again before I cleared my throat as I worked out a good story if this conversation took the general route I thought it would.

“I saw a man earlier, black hair wiry build with a cut above his green eyes. You know who I’m talking about?” I asked.

The ridge running down the center of his forehead scrunched up and his eyebrows drew together in a sharp line but he kept the rest of his features in check.

“Yes. I believe so. What do you have to do with him?” Tansen asked.

“After the battle of the docks, I saw him pull a piece of paper out and the judge-“

Tansen put up his right hand.

“Woah now. Let’s start at the very beginning.” He said.

I decided to start the story at me taking Salamede into the academy. Tansen seemed impressed at my battle sense by not just charging into the melee but when I got to the part with… I struggled for the mages names, but they eventually came to me and I already knew the sequence of events I would have to doctor to make the story believable.

“I saw them torching the warehouses, so I used my lava brick launcher to kill the bigger guy who had already been stabbed, during which one of them yelled ‘Ben!’. After that the other two were so distracted trying to get me they didn’t notice the shopkeepers sneak up on them with maces. Before they died they discussed leaving and I heard their names were Dan and Joel” I wasn’t sure of what they did with the bodies so I had to make it all roughly fit the wounds of what had actually happened.

Tansen seemed profoundly irritated at my re-telling. However, whatever the source of his anger was, he kept it in check.

“Yes. His name’s Noah and I would advise you to stay away from him. He struck me as short tempered when I met him in the past and he’s involved with some pretty troublesome people. As for the papers, they were probably military files that automatically put them into the jurisdiction of the military courts” He finished.

I nodded in agreement, so those people were military members that got caught out in the docks. On an unrelated note, I wanted to know more about the grey clothed mages but there wasn’t any way to really ask him about a group of mages that I shouldn’t know about. After all, I had only ever seen them in the gang territories and I had no reasonable explanation for why I would have been there or associated with anyone would have been there.

After a few more minutes of lounging we got out and went back into the changing rooms. This time we took some puffy robes from the cabinet and then we went over to another room whose entrance was another curtain door on the far right of the pool area. Inside was a rather cool room with Salamede and her mother already sitting at a wooden table in the cave like room, both had the same puffy robes we had as they looked over the meal displayed before them.

“Ah bother. We’re short two chairs, I’ll go retrieve them while you guys catch up.” Tansen said before heading out the door again.

After he left through the curtain, I felt the electric sensation of a spirit magic connection.

“Eli! This has been amazing. Thank you, thank you so much.” Salamede said delightedly.

Her smaller mother looked at her for a moment before Salamede gestured towards me with a nod. Then I felt another connection.

“My daughter said you’re ok with talking through spirit magic.” Her mother said.

“Yes, if that’s what you find most comfortable then by all means go ahead.” I said as I looked over the towels they had above their heads that molded around their horns.

“I thank you as well. It’s been quite a long time since these bones have felt so good.” She said.

The table had a large metal pot in the middle that was sunk into the wooden piece with a bubbling liquid of a dark red oil with plates of sliced meats and various vegetables scattered around it. We chatted about our day and other small items before Tansen came back and put up the other two chairs.

“All right we’re all set. This is a communal way of eating back home but the only hard and fast rule is no double dipping.” He said as we both took our seats. We feasted for a long period of time and Tansen asked about life by the docks or the tower while we asked him about the academy and the history only the person who had built it could know.

“Yes, I’m not joking. The dorms were actually brothels. A might ambitious businessman had gambled that the town was going to be a kind of prostitution hub but he overestimated peoples willingness to come so far when the villages local whore would get them by.

Of course, the only things remaining of the original building is the foundation but that does mean, in a purely technical sense, that they used to be brothels.” Tansen finished.

Salamede and her mother tried to not smile but eventually it got the better of them and we all broke out into a light laugh. Eventually our bellies filled, and our time drew to an end. After everyone came out of the dressing rooms and went back up onto the main floor Tansen saw us out the academy gate with a firm handshake for all of us.

“Good day, all of you. And Eli? Consider more about the alchemy specialization. It’s dangerous what with all the parasites and foreign animals that can get involved but very much worth it.” He said as I was the last one to get out. I looked him in the eyes and shook his hand.

“I’ll look into it.” Was all I could promise.

The red and orange splashes over the sky said we had less than an hour of daylight left and the air had the wet chill that told of coming cold.

“Eli. I had no idea you were so close with the head of the academy” Salamede said in a spirit connection as we walked down the path on the left side of town with her mother to her right.

“I don’t think we are. He’s probably just trying to get me out of this ‘funk’ so that I can go on to be a master crafter.” I told her. She stopped at the bend in the stone road that marked where our paths diverged.

She looked at me for a long moment before she started talking again.

“Let’s say we defeat the bandits. The orcs take over the swamp completely and we get the evidence to clear your name... then what?” She asked.

I looked at her for a long moment pondering over all the implications of what would happen and how we could work through all the possibilities

“It all depends on what we find. If the transaction was preserved in a ledger or written agreement, we just make it so that it ‘accidently’ shows up on one of the bandits carts when they flee northward or when word get around that the orcs took out the fort, I’ll bring in a load of documents that I bought off a fleeing bandit who exchanged them for food when I went down to help in the swamps. It’ll be stupid and rash to go down there myself but not too many people will question why I wanted to obtain honor and glory fighting against the green menace.

But if there is no written record or it gets destroyed in the attack, I’ll just have to beat the names out of the commander. Using that I’ll hunt down the nobles and see what I can do from there. Maybe I’ll just have to be content with ending their lives or maybe its several nobles and one of them will have kept a record of the transaction to use as blackmail against their compatriots.

The blunt hard truth of how this will all turn out is: I don’t know. That question of a written record is the biggest factor in all of this and the crux upon which all other plots and schemes will turn. Until I know for sure I can only make more weapons and invest as much time and energy as I can into making sure we have the ability to survive what's coming.” I finished.

She nodded at that and gave me a light hug.

“Well I’m glad that you know enough to be uncertain.” She said before pulling away and heading down towards her house with her mother by her side.

I watched them go and then turned back towards my house. While it was late, I still put in a little bit of work exuding mana into the vine suit and some into the bark pieces shaping the pieces of my new air gun so they could finish their work faster. After wards, I turned in for the night and fell into the hammock with gusto.