(TLO) Chapter 116: Artifact (Patreon)

Lucas led them from the room, silence his new companion after his outburst. The short exchange in the waiting room had given Seth a broader understanding of how much the world truly disliked the concept of a pure core. He’d thought they’d simply thought it inefficient, now he knew they hated it. Why? Because it brought death to so many, apparently.

He didn’t dwell on it as he followed Lucas and Jim, their silence playing fourth comrade to their party of three.

It wasn’t long before they arrived at what was the entrance to the testing grounds. Before Jim opened the doors before them, Lucas turned to Seth.

“I know what your benefactor has said,” he said. “I understand that he has his reasons for letting you continue on this path. But it would be wrong of me not to give you the full weight of what you are doing.”

As he spoke, Jim stood to the side like a child bored of his father’s interest in the news.

“A soul mage is a being in tune with the world around him,” the guildmaster continued. “And the world around us is filled with reia of varying aspects. There are countless of them: dream, force, life, fire, lava, ice, wind, sword, spear. They are countless. And as many as they are, we attune ourselves to a single one. While it weakens us to the other aspects, it grants us unrivaled strength, gives us power. Even before Iron, cored yet without an affinity, we feel it. Our reia is filled with the gift of the aspects, the tiniest of potentials that direct us to where our power lies.” He shook his head as if in rejection of something. “To have a pure core is one thing, but to have a core as pure as yours? That is intentional. You willingly digress from the world around you. The purer your core, the more adamant your rejection of the world. Should you ever come to become a Baron you will understand that a mage is nothing without the world around him.”

“Luke,” Jim said. His voice was gentle but held a touch of warning. The guild master was crossing a line.

Lucas sighed. “My advice,” he said, concluding his lecture. “Find an aspect and claim it. As pure as your core is, it’s still not too late to get one. But as you grow, it will become harder. Your growing weakness in the other aspects will begin to tell. You will begin to fall behind even your peers.”

“Luke,” Jim repeated, his voice now devoid of its past gentleness.

Lucas turned a frown at him. “I am still guild master, Jim. And I am a Baron.”

“And I am a House,” Jim shot back. “You will not throw around your title or authority in positions regarding my beneficiary. There are rules, there for a reason.”

Lucas shot him one last glare before turning away. His stand against the use of pure core was beginning to seem personal, not that it mattered to Seth. A more powerful man than him had placed him on this path, it would take more than the ramblings of a Baron to force him from it.

“I will have one of the examiners add your name to the test list,” Lucas said, turning to leave them. “There is only so much you can do with a pure core.”

Seth turned his gaze to Jim now that they were alone and asked, “He does know there really isn’t much in the way of affinities at Iron, right? I mean, it doesn’t begin to tell until gold.”

Jim turned to the double doors in front of them and placed his hands on them. “He does.”

The adventurer’s test took place in a large amphitheater with circular seats arranged in descending order. At the base of the theatre was a clearing wide enough to hold all the children of the seminary and still have space. However, its seats weren’t filled. For a space that could hold at least a thousand people comfortably, there were no more than thirty people seated. Some looked too old to be here for the test.

At its center someone was being tested. He was a lanky man dressed in leather trousers and a shirt. Above them he wore plates of armor with colors of gold and silver. It marked him as either from a rich family or a noble one.

He faced off against a soul mage who was dressed plainly, striking and pushing with an equally adorned spear.

Seth watched the man’s technique with the spear, studying it in comparison with what he had learned in the seminary. While the differences were clear—the man’s technique flashier where the seminary’s was inclined towards fatality—he couldn’t truly call the man’s technique weak.

Unfortunately, his examiner made it seem weak. The unarmed examiner parried and dodged each blow. His evasion was simple, precise. He did not waste any movement. His legs moved only when necessary. His upper body ducked where he chose not to parry, and his arms parried where he chose not to duck. His was a display in mastership.

From the way the examinee reacted with every strike, the man’s opposition of his skill filled him with greater anger. Seth wasn’t sure if the man was arrogant or if this was a normal response to this level of humiliation. After all, he had spent too many years bullied by Barons in the name of training.

“[Equal Strike]” the lanky examinee called out, taking a stance with his spear where the length of it rested across his shoulders to have its tip pointed down.

The Gold examiner watched him with a measured stare, assessing. Something about the way he did so made him seem older than the late twenties he looked.

When the spearman struck again, the examiner slapped away the head of the spear where he could’ve easily dodged it. The spear man spun into the deflection, followed the new trajectory to turn his attack so that he came at the man from another direction. This time the Gold mage leaned back ever so slightly so that the spear passed harmlessly by.

The spearman frowned as he missed but forced forward. Whatever skill he had just activated was proving empty.

The examiner deflected another strike, striking the head of the spear with his unprotected hand, no doubt reinforced by reia. Still, the spearman did not succumb. If his motivation slowly fled him, he did not let it show.

Two more minutes into the test, the examiner had developed a mild crease on his forehead. He wasn’t tiring out. It was merely the expression of a man who was beginning to realize something. Whatever it was, it seemed it had lost his interest a moment after. The spearman came at him again with a spinning attack he slapped away once more. However, instead of allowing the man another attack as he had been doing for most of the test, he closed the distance between them in one step.

The spearman’s eyes widened in horror at the speed of his opponent and he displayed a mastery of his spear as he pulled it back, shortened the length of it between him and the examiner to just the head of the spear and thrust it at him. The examiner moved his head to the side, his approach unhindered by the attack, snatched the spearman off the floor by his neck and slammed him into the ground.

When he rose from the sandy floor, the spearman remained sprawled there, spear no longer in hand.

“Your skills last long enough,” the examiner told him. “And you are acceptable with the spear. Unfortunately, you lack complete knowledge of your skills. You don’t chain them properly. Out in the field it can cost you a lot more than your life.”

The spearman pulled himself up to a sitting position but did not get up. He stared at the examiner, his eyes carrying a mix of determination and offense. It was a while before he finally picked himself up, retrieved his spear, and left the arena.

When he was gone, the gold mage turned his attention to the test takers in the seats. “Fentil Nazwik.”

Fentil Nazwik proved an average boy clad in a fire colored robe. With every step he took, the hem of his cloak billowed around his feet. He had a full head of blonde hair and a tan skin of olive that spoke of too much time under the sun.

Beside Seth, Jim made a contemplative sound. “That’s a nice artifact,” he said.