During the cultural festival, we didn’t neglect the other activities in our Kingdom. We had dozens of calves and fries baking in their mothers' ovens. Nenandil and I were busy half of the days doing prenatal checkups on the rmaids. We could send the prisoners away anyti but the rmaids grew used to their presence. Between the n extracting sen in the barge and the rmaids fraternizing with said n on the sandbanks of love, I wanted to have no part with it.
I spent my personal ti with better endeavors, like using the services of the dead [Archmages] that pledged themselves to to train my magical Skills. I went with the two palm-sized silk golems in a corner of the reef, training away from curious rmaid eyes. I used {Spirit Pact} on them, fueling their personal growth with 5% of my Exp awards each in exchange to having them cast spells using my Energy pool.
We butted heads a lot at the beginning.
"You blasted [Sorcerers]!" Marlowe cursed. "You think all you have to do to cast magic is to pour happy thoughts along with your MP and blast it out."
"It worked for for hundreds of years," I shrugged.
The dead archmagister huffed and hissed. "What's the most expensive offensive spell you've ever cast? How much MP did you squander?"
"Six point four million," I answered nonchalantly.
Sumsar, the slave-collar enchanter blew a fuse. "Preposterous. A proper [Wizard] could’ve leveled a country with that much MP. I hope you find the laughs you are getting at our expense amusing, Your Highness."
I shrugged, "That's the truth. It didn't level a country but dealt close three hundred million damage to Bundeus."
"Gah!" He uttered a non-gormandizing groan and released dozens of air bubbles.
I set my title to {God Slayer}. "You can check my--"
Marlowe waved away, "I saw it already but couldn’t believe it. Damned flesh clouding my judgnt! Blasted curses, this Age of Eclipse is your doing!"
"Not mine. It was the dumb God that couldn't leave alone. The guy murdered right at birth or before it along with my whole family seventeen tis before I fought back. I get along very well with all deities I've t but two, thank you very much."
Sumsar raised a silk eyebrow, "Just for the sake of argunt, which ones?"
I poked my tongue out, "Not telling. Weren't you guys supposed to be teaching magic and not berating ? Don’t forget who you serve now. I might pick up Necromancy and do so nasty things with your souls."
Sumsar sucked in a deep breath, then bubbled it all out. "As you wish, Your Highness."
Likewise chastised, Marlowe returned to his professor's facade. "When a wizard weaves magic, they have to be mindful of the diagrams. These will unfold into the full description of the effect they want. While Sorcerers patch together the effect directly with their minds with a greater expense of MP, wizards use a precise and efficient diagram to create the sa effect. With a much better MP efficiency."
Huh. Basically, wizardry was analogous to functional programming. What would be sorcery in that parallel, then? OOP? A Lua script? Or maybe a Prolog program. You have just a faint idea of how you reached the result after you burst a couple blood vessels in your head but it did. No. Sorcery was akin to hacking with bash on the command prompt.
"What’s the good in MP efficiency if the bloody thing is awfully damn slow? Rember I counterspelled and ssed with your reef-breaking spells and you were none the wiser."
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The smartass [Wizard] tried to pull a fast one on casting his magic with my own Energy. I counterspell him and created two rainbow-hued glimring {Force Javelins} aid at his tiny golem ear holes.
"Still slow, old man," I taunted
"'Old', said the creature that's been around since the inception of the First Age," the tiny golem groused.
"Okay, let's learn wizardry,” I rolled my eyes. “What should I do?"
He waved a hand and glowing glyphs appeared in the air. "These are the fifty-seven basic glyphs for a wizard’s spells. Your first task is to morize all of them."
Aweso. Not. But that was what’s for dinner so I chomped down on my wanderlust and “sat” down to study. rmaids didn’t sit down. I prepared a ntal compartnt with the image of the glyphs and put myself to study them.
During this ti, I also reviewed my open Perk choices. I had to spend them quickly or I would soon lose them due to the effects of {Bygone Hero}. I was slowly shedding the levels in the other Paths to keep my main progression intact but that would end one day.
You gained the Perk: Social Queen Bee (very rare, situational): Add half your Ego to all Charisma tests against other females. Increase the reaction and reduce the aggression of other females two steps in your favor.
There was a similar Perk for males, its effects were a bit different. Instead of lowering aggressin, it stated that n would beco romantically interested in . A big bag of nope on that one. There was another Perk that caught my interest.
You gained the Perk: Anthem (ultra-rare, situational): Select one original spell-song. That spell song's effect is doubled and its MP cost is halved. You must wait one year before you can change your Anthem...
For a whole month, I kept studying Wizardry for eight hours a day. I stopped the male seed collection halfway through that month. Ten thousand vials of sen should be enough to revive even England's failing sperm bank. The rmaids were satisfied and we had hundreds of new sisters in the oven. The Sunrod farms were a success. Everything was fine but I had to get rid of my prisoners soon or we'd have food issues once the rmaids gave birth. Since I didn't want to slaughter them, I had to contact the King.
I penned the letter, asking for their wergeld to be brought here along with enough space to carry all of them away since the ships they ca on weren't going anywhere. I summoned a ssenger bird with the return feature and sent it flying. Now I only needed to wait for the King's answer.
Training with the dead [Archmages] was very fruitful. I only had two main spellcasting Skills that resulted from the fusion of several others. Both saw so progress.
You gained 6 points in Elentalist. It is now Master 57
You gained 6 points in Evoker. It is now Master 55.
You gained the Perk: Master Evoker (ultra-rare): Your non-elental spells are 50% harder to defeat.
You gained the Perk: Wizardry (uncommon): You use precise spell-formulas. You must learn and morize the formula before casting a spell and must be cast within its paraters.
I now could cast spells in three styles: Sorcery, like Rosewise did, Spell-Song, or using Wizardry.
[Master Evoker] reduced the MP cost to maintain my Force barriers when soone struggles against them by a third. [Wizardry] unlocked the [Wizard] family of wizarding Classes too. I missed gaining Skill Points from Classes, though. Training Skills was too boring, and I had a whooping 61% learning bonus.
I had a hunch as to why they removed Skill Points from the Classes, in addition to the burning desire to spite . With professions, people had less chance of fucking up their build. It streamlined the process of getting stronger for a world of morons. A world of morons, indeed.
Seriously speaking, the general public in late XX century North Korea had more educational opportunities than the average sentient in this world. I’m including the monster species like goblins, trolls, and orcs. That and the gamified leveling system perpetuated the "might makes right" ntality.
But that was sothing I couldn't fix. I could nudge and foster education in a few corners of the world, like in Windere, and hope it would catch. But there was one great benefit to the ruling Class in keeping the people ignorant and weak. It was almost impossible to topple a king. Peasant revolution? Don't make laugh. Ensconced in their privileges, the ruling class felt invincible.
Case in point I finally got an answer from King Romulus IV. It arrived via {ssenger Bird} the next day. I won't reproduce the expletives but his ssage was loud and clear.
Return my son, niece, and the other nobles unhard or there will be war. I won't let you torture them any longer.
Yeah. Sweet torture we were infliting on them. I an, they weren't even forced to mate with the rmaids. That ant the ships were already en-route. He had no idea what kind of hornet's nest he'd kicked.
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