Chapter Fourteen

I was never one for big shows and large events. Not that I had never participated in a few, both as one of the crowd and a person on stage, but in most cases, I would rather stay somewhere warm and cozy with a new book and few distractions rather than be caught up in the hustle and bustle of an event.

But at some point, with more time and experience under my belt, I came to regret some of the time I spent on my own.

There were tournaments and exhibits that I read about that excited me greatly, only for me to realize that I was excited about reading on these events when I could have easily been there myself. 

The door into the VIP booth opened and in bustled the Limpet, carrying a large book squeezed up against her chest. Alex was following right behind, with Rem taking up the rear. 

“Oh! Master!” the Limpet said on seeing me. “I wasn’t sure if you were going to be here.”

“Of course, this is a fantastic learning opportunity.”

The Limpet blinked, then glanced to the front of the booth. There was a wide, slightly angled window that looked down onto a balcony. That balcony, in turn, hung over the edge of the main arena floor. From here, we could see the entire show without wind or weather interfering, but the best seats were definitely on that balcony. 

“I suppose we’ll have to let people see us,” she said. 

“Only for the start. Once the fighting begins, the crowd will have another sort of spectacle to focus on,” I replied.

She nodded, then looked back at me. “What did you mean, by a learning opportunity? Should I have brought more notebooks?”

“You can never have enough stationary,” I replied to which she nodded. The Limpet and I had several differences, but I suspected that we could both be trapped by the appearance of a well-stocked stationary store.

As for her question, I mulled over it for a moment.

The opportunity definitely favoured me. For the however many centuries it had been since I was last roaming around, the world had moved on and changed. The system that had been a quintessential part of daily life in my time was gone.

That had repercussions. The system had rewarded people for working hard and for working correctly. A fighter that trained poorly would level slower than one who trained correctly. 

Putting yourself at risk, learning more, training well, and pushing yourself was valued, but weighted against the risks that came with doing all of those things. Every village needed an adventurer or two, but not for the entire village to be adventurers. 

And so society had structured itself along a few common shapes to allow for that, and within those familiar shapes came familiar patterns for growth and power. 

There weren’t enough bony fingers in the world to count the number of young orphans that took up a rusty sword and became a bright-eyed young adventurer. 

There were familiar paths carved out to reach familiar goals. Everyone even moderately studied understood how to become a monk or a cleric or a paladin. And then people, as they do, discovered the way to reach those goals via the path of least resistance. 

Humanity and the other sentient races are often obsessed with one thing in particular, it’s one of the fundamental pillars of society: optimization.

Discovering how to get the most out of the least effort is one of the central ways to discover how to live a happy life, at least to some. There were others that went against the grain, but those that did either discovered a new most-optimal path, or they’d fall far behind their peers and be used as a counter example. 

But now? Today? There was no visible system. No way to conclusively prove that one way of doing things was definitely the best way. So without that added layer of convenience, the world as it stood now used a new sort of friction to determine what was best.

It was amazing! 

Yes, that did mean that the global average in terms of strength was likely significantly lower, but the techniques? The people of this age hadn’t yet figured out the most optimal methods, and had instead split into sects and small groups and individuals that practiced and learned things the old fashioned way.

What I was hoping to see today and during the rest of the tournament was creativity. 

Then I’d steal the best ideas for myself, of course.

“Master?” the Limpet asked.

Ah, I had maybe been thinking for too long, my resting lich face on full display. “Forgive me, I was thinking about your question. Have you read about a spell called Magic Missile yet?”

“A little,” she said, hugging her book closer. “A lot of the texts I’ve read mention it.”

“I’m unsurprised, it’s one of the cornerstone spells of modern wizardry. In my day, the spell was perfected. Tens of thousands of hours by thousands of wizards were poured into the study of one of the simpler staples of magecraft. In the end, the commonly used version of Magic Missile is a sleek, honed, and nearly flawless spell. If I were to attempt to improve the spell, it would likely take me several decades, and the final result may only be a fraction of a percent improvement on efficiency and damage.”

“It’s a good spell?” she asked. “It’s powerful?”

“No, it’s exactly what it needs to be. Somewhat versatile, somewhat above-average in strength, and very precise. There is little to no room for adjustments because it has been stripped down to the bare minimum and that bare minimum was perfected and made as efficient as possible.”

“I think I get it, but I don’t see what that had to do with, uh, this?” She gestured at the arena as a whole.

I shifted back a little, then flicked a hand to the side, creating the start of a spell, then freezing it in place. It was a single bolt of Magic Missile. I did the same beneath. The second spell was different, the bolt was jagged and glowed far brighter. “This is Magic Missile, and this is Mage Horngott’s Magical Missile.”

“Is it a different spell?”

“It’s a variation. Mage Horngott, first name Nage, family name Horngott, was a toadling from a distant swamp. He wished to be a mage, and knew that mages cast Magic Missile. Bereft of teachers or academia, he proceeded to invent his own Magic Missile. This is the result. It’s unwieldy. It has a one in four chance to explode in your own face, and unlike the perfected Magic Missile, it can sometimes miss outright. It also deals significantly more damage when it does strike true.”

“Oh,” the Limpet said. She squinted, taking in both spells. “That’s what you want to see? Cultivators that came up with something that you already know because they’re not familiar with the version that already exists? But isn’t the version you know better?”

“It likely is, yes,” I said. “But just because I know of a better version doesn’t mean that I don’t want the different one as well. You’ll find, little apprentice, that I am a very greedy man when it comes to spells.”

The Limpet looked between me and the arena. The main floor was currently only being used by a few skeletons, all of them pushing rakes across the sandy ground and leaving trailing lines behind them. The stands themselves were filling up. At the rate they were going, it would only be another hour before they were filled to bursting. The security undead were keeping the crowd moving in a neat and orderly fashion.

As for the competitors, I could see a few of them poking their heads out from boxes along the edge of the arena, no doubt trying to get a feel for the event to come.

“This will be a good learning opportunity,” I said. “If you see any particularly interesting spells or techniques, be sure to point them out. We haven’t yet decided on a subclass for you.”

“A what?” she asked, her head snapping around so fast I worried for her vertebrae. 

“Something to worry about later,” I demurred. 

She seemed ready to worry about it right now, but that was fine. A bit of worry did the heart good. Or so I assumed, it had been a long time since I had worried about anything, or had a heart, so perhaps I was a little out of touch with the living youth of today. 

The arena continued to fill, which gave Alex plenty of time to putter about in the background, prepare tea, and to run security checks on the room. Far too many leaders had died in VIP seating for a maid to do anything else. 

Eventually, however, the loud speaker spells woven onto runes and placed throughout the arena hummed to life, then music started to blare out of them. The show was about to begin! 

***