Chapter 53 Mages (Patreon)

            Near the Great Black Tree Labyrinth stood a town surrounded by wooden walls that were still vibrant with life. Just outside of the wall stood a one-hundred-and-forty-seven-yard tall tower made of stone. It was a tower that could be found in nearly a third of the towns on this and the surrounding moons. It was a mage tower formed with slurry magic. Most of the peasants thought that the mage tower was grown and was a living thing, like their walls and homes, but far from being grown, it was shaped with slurry magic, and thus, they used material principles instead of magical ones to stand. Albeit, every mage tower had runes to heal any damage taken, and at least two slurry mages per shift to combat any mana or essence beast that decided to attack their towers.

            The mage tower was a very busy place, as the mages were responsible for implanting mana cores in every twelve-year-old, warrior, and mage, alongside connecting that core to essence and mana channels. Inside every mage tower was a room where mages pulled souls from other words and put them in crystals. Most were found to be worthless, such as dungeons, and those crystals became the power source for runes and objects to hold essence-imbued objects. Other mages used metal magic to create weapons, armor, and other useful objects with both material and magical concepts imbued in them and usually powered by dungeon crystals. Other mages were administrating the local areas, with both the peasants and warriors going to them for direction, judgment, quests, and to pay taxes. The mages were the governing authority of this and the other moons because of the simple fact that they were by far the strongest faction. Finally, most of the mages spent their time in the tower practicing their magic. If a mage ever wanted to become an immortal they had to be a master of their mind, body, and mana cores, and it took centuries of practice to have a hope of glimpsing immortality.

            On the fifth story of the tower, a mage was in a large room swinging his staff with his right hand and his wand with his left in very specific patterns. If he was a tier one mage, an untrained eye would think that this man was wildly swinging his staff in mockery of warriors, but this particular mage was a third-tier mage, and most people on the planet would only see a blur as he moved supernaturally fast.

            While he was practicing this movement, two people came in, a man and a woman, and they happened to be holding hands. The man continued his movements, ignoring them, and a moment later, a light flashed from his staff, signifying that he had completed his spell. A moment later, he paused and said, “That was a failure.”

            The girl at the door asked, “How? You completed your large spell.”

            “I am a third-tier mage, I need to be able to duel cast all my spells. You should know that by now. In fact, you are both tier two mages, if you ever want a shot at being a third-tier mage, you need to be able to duel cast while in a dungeon, there is no other way to survive third-tier dungeons.”  

            She bowed her head and said, “Of course, master Claude.”

            Claude sighed and said, “You are far too old to be acting so sad. You are what, two hundred?”

            “Two hundred and eleven.”

            “I hear that you and your husband have five children, three of whom managed to become mages.”

            “Our two youngest are only six, and they are more clever than their siblings. We have high hopes that all of our children will become mages.”

            Claude turned to her husband and said, “Although I know your names because I was informed you were coming for the Great Black Labyrinth mission, I would appreciate it if you introduced me.”

            “I am Albert, and this is my wife, Victoria. We are both tier-two mages. We have time, soul, gravity, metal, and vacuum cores. We are here today to recieve our electric cores, and once we have learned electric immunity, we are to go to the Great Black Tree Labyrinth with you.” They didn’t mention their tier-one cores because as tier-two mages, they had them all. Claude, as a tier-three mage, had all tier-one and tier-two cores.

            “That is very basic. If you are not careful, they will stop advancing you and put you two either in pulling souls into cores or into making weapons.”

            Albert shook his head and said, “I don’t think so. Both my wife and I learned time magic before we reached one hundred years old, so we should be able to reach at least a thousand years as functional mages.”

            “It's not your age that is the problem, it's your combat ability. You have both soul and metal cores. The mage guilds mostly use those two cores as support. If the mage guild does not think your combat ability is up to snuff, they will never allow you to attempt the force dungeon. It’s the only third-level dungeon of the elemental circle. That dungeon has monsters with every mage core in the elemental circle of magic, but you will never survive one of the third-tier dungeons of the circle of life without force magic. My recommendation for you two is to wait till last to reach your slurry core and practice combat relentlessly.”

            Victoria said, “That’s why we are here. One of these days, we want to attack the force dungeon as a couple. In fact, we want to attack all dungeons as a couple.”

            “You may be able to attack the force dungeon as a couple, but everyone goes to the folding space dungeon alone. The monsters in that dungeon are masters of illusions, gravity manipulation, and forcing allies to attack each other through folding space. It's considered murder to bring anyone with you when you go there to obtain your core.”

            Victoria paused and said, “But we love each other. We have been together for over a century. If we go into a dungeon, we do it together. If we become immortals, we will do it together.”

            Claude paused for a moment. It was not normal to allow mage couples to go into dungeons together; that said, it also wasn’t common for mage couples relationships to last so long, and it was almost unheard of for a mage couple to have the majority of their children become mages. Usually, only one in five of a mage couple's offspring became mages, and all other pairings were far less likely to produce mages. It was likely a higher tier-three mage, or even an immortal, was allowing this simply because they wanted to see what this couple could do and if they could replicate the success in their offspring. If this couple could become a pair of third-tier mages and learn full-on healing magic, which did not take away years of your life like growth magic, they could live five to ten thousand years, even if they never became immortals. The number of mages they could produce would be astronomical, and if there was a genetic component they, they could uplift all of humanity as a whole.

            After a moment of pause Claude asked, “You do realize that you are getting a lot of special treatment?”

            Albert nodded and said, “Yes. Ever since we had two children in a row become mages, we have been favored by the higher-ups; our third child becoming a mage increased the favor, and with our twins well on their way to becoming mages, we have gotten a lot of extreme special treatment. Part of that is because they do not know if our bloodline is particularly good at producing mages, or if it's because of how we are raising our children.”

            Claude nodded and said, “Yeah, and I am sure the higher-ups are currently trying to find first-tier couples that actually like each other enough to stay together like you have, to replicate how you two are raising your children.”

            Victoria asked, “Aren’t you a higher up? You’re a third-tier mage.”

            “I only have two third-tier mage cores. It will be at least a hundred years before I attempt to aquire a healing core. To have any hope of it I will need to be able to duel cast every spell I know with folding space spells, and those spells are incredibly complex. Every one of them must be cast with my staff after all. Until I have the healing core, I won't have the lifespan or skills necessary to be part of the eugenics council. That said, they see something in you, so they want me to put lightning cores in you two today, and once you learn lightning immunity, we will head to the Great Black Tree Labyrinth.”

            Albert asked, “Why do they have a third-tier mage leading us to a tier-two dungeon.”

            “Because this dungeon is using lightning to affect material things. That means that it will attack in unexpected ways, which will be a great training ground for mages that have a chance of becoming third tier. Although I think it's unwise that you don’t have more combat cores, clearly, the higher-ups think differently, so use this chance to get more combat experience.”

            “What will our mission be?”

            “To find an essence creature with a lightning core and either capture it or transfer the core into one of my created creatures until it can be transferred into another mage. Any more questions?”

            The couple shook their heads no.

            “Good, then let's put in your new core, and then you have a new spell to learn.”

Authors note-I am still pretty sick, although right now its just the rash effecting me. Fortinatly it didnt stop me from writting this chapter yesterday, although today it feels like I have a pretty bad sunburn. I want to get out book 9 the passing of the torch in the next week, it just depends on how I feel. Sorry about that. Thanks.