Cultivation a fantasy li.., p.11
Cultivation: A Fantasy LitRPG Adventure (Battle Mage Farmer Book 3), page 11
Falling silent, Marcos stepped backward, his face glistening with sweat, as if speaking those three sentences had been tremendously difficult. Sharing a look with Katrine, John shrugged.
“That’s fine. Do what you need to.”
“Ah, I think I understand where Sir Marcos is going with this request,” High Marshal Helbright said, rubbing his large mustache with a thick finger.
“Oh? That doesn’t sound good,” John replied.
“The Holy Knights have already been deployed to the border of Allera, Your Eminence, and none of them are available to be dispatched to the valley.”
“Of course. Let me guess, you’re going to ask for my help next?”
“I believe that Sir Marcos is hoping you would be able to assist with a locally sourced strike team,” Helbright continued, as if John had never interrupted.
“I’d be happy to volunteer,” Katrine said, her eyes glowing with barely concealed excitement. “John, you should come too! It’ll be like old times.”
Rubbing his forehead, John closed his eyes and quickly considered his options.
If the undead are starting to make their way into the valley, they have to be dealt with, and two Holy Knights aren’t going to cut it. Even if I send Katrine and Haver, there’s no guarantee they’ll be able to deal with the undead completely, since magical fire is the only permanent way to kill them. It looks like I’m going to have to rearrange my schedule.
Opening his eyes to everyone in the room staring at him, John nodded heavily.
“Fine. I can help. But I need at least a week. Plus, you’ll need to send someone to talk to Haver the Wolf King. If we’re going to hunt undead in the mountains, we’ll need his wolves to scout.”
“Haha, great! This is exciting!”
Ignoring Katrine’s happy squeal, John stood up and nodded to Helbright.
“I have to leave, and I expect to be left alone. From what I’ve seen, you and the council are doing well, Helbright. You make a great high marshal. Just watch the creeping influence of petty corruption and you’ll do great.”
“Thank you, Your Eminence,” Helbright said, happiness clear in his deep voice as he stood up and started to bow.
“None of that, High Marshal. It’s time for the Ecclesia to take the next step, so feel free to implement any of the plans we made as you find them appropriate. You know where to find me if the need arises, but I expect that it won’t. It was nice to meet you, officially, Eva, Marcos. I’ll see you later, Katrine.”
With a nod to everyone in the room, John turned and left the room quickly, with a stride that said he wouldn’t be stopping for anything. Behind him, Katrine looked at the high marshal, her forehead furrowed.
“Next step? What is he talking about?”
Chuckling, High Marshal Helbright sat down again and gestured for Eva to bring some tea over.
“Plans for the unification of the fractured nations, of course. Surely you didn’t think we would be content with just Lepiera, did you?”
“You’ve made plans to take over the other nations?” Katrine asked, her expression incredulous.
“Of course. The light of the Eternal Flame should be enjoyed by everyone. It is the light of hope, the warmth in the darkness. Why would we ever want to hoard it for ourselves? It was only out of consideration for you that we avoided putting the plan into action. However, now that you’re no longer empress of Allera, our acolytes can begin.”
Unaware of the conversation that was happening behind him, John was completely absorbed in his own thoughts as he headed for the general store to meet Ellie. As much as he wanted to avoid fighting, he understood that his magic was, by far, the best way to deal with the undead that were starting to creep into the valley. What was more concerning to him was the fact that they were coming into the valley at all. There had been clear signs of the undead moving around the valley that Haver’s wolves had picked up, and according to Haver’s reports, more and more bandits were vanishing, no doubt being absorbed into the undead horde.
Almost humorously, the destruction of the bandit groups had caused Haver’s forces at Wolf Den to swell in number as smaller bandit groups, completely terrified by the rumors of what was going on, sought safety with the Wolf King. Seeing Ellie directing one of the young men who helped at the general store to load some bags into the cart, John stepped up onto the general store’s porch next to her.
“How’d your shopping go? Any trouble?”
Seeing the hard look John was directing at the store, Ellie smiled and grabbed his arm.
“No, no trouble at all. I got everything I needed and even a few other things. They had a nice bolt of wool I thought I could use to make Ben a coat like Thomas has. I’ve heard him complaining about how his coat was too fancy, and his birthday is coming up.”
“Is it?”
“Yes, in three weeks.”
“I’ll have to get him something. What do you think he might like?”
Thinking for a moment, Ellie pointed toward John’s empty side.
“What about a blade? I know he’s been working with Thomas on using a short sword. He already has the dagger you gave him, so a short blade might be a good present. Or maybe armor like ours? I saw him trying on my bracers the other day when he thought no one was looking.”
“Both great ideas,” John said, nodding to the young man who had finished putting the bags in the cart.
Tossing the young man a silver coin, he helped Ellie up into the cart and then swung himself into the driver’s seat.
“Anything else you need to do in town before we go?”
“No,” Ellie shook her head, “I’m ready to head home.”
Clicking the reins, John directed the horse out of town and they quickly passed beyond the buildings and out onto the open road. As their trotting horse carried them down the road, John found himself glancing over at Ellie. Partly it was in admiration of the way she was dressed, but partly because he was curious about her lack of questions regarding what he and Katrine had talked about at the Ecclesia office. Catching one of his glances, Ellie smiled at him and lifted her eyebrows.
“Is there something on my face?”
“No, I was just thinking about how nice you look.”
Blushing, Ellie looked away but also scooted over a bit closer to him on the cart’s seat.
“Was your discussion profitable?” she asked after a moment of silence.
“It was. Though it’s looking like we’ll have to put together a group to hunt the undead nearby,” John said, his voice growing serious. “We’ll probably leave in about a week.”
“Who will be going?”
“The Holy Knights, maybe Eva, Haver, Katrine, and me. Maybe Thomas as well, depending.”
“Well, definitely count me in,” Ellie said, a spark of competitiveness appearing in her eyes as she turned to look at John. “I’m not going to sit around as the undead threaten our home.”
CHAPTER 14
Life on the farm continued apace, and John found himself busier than ever. Most of his time was spent in the tower, meditating with Ellie and continuing his study of magic, but when he could he helped out on the farm, monitoring the wheat, that was growing nicely, and working in the forge to create tools for the farm. He had ground down the uneven surfaces on the bracer he and Ellie were repairing and finished drawing the new rune on the smoothed surface. There had been a few false starts, but once Ellie had pointed out that they needed to connect the rune to the mana channels in the bracer’s interior as well as to the channels on the outside, they were finally able to complete it.
Emboldened by the success of the bracer, John dove head first into his study of enchanting, only sparing enough time to experiment with the Summon Water spell. Primarily, that consisted of casting the spell and then sending his mana back through it to try and explore what lay on the other side. It was tremendously difficult at first, but John persisted, and after a few days he finally managed to sense something.
At first it was nothing more than a ripple, but once he managed to catch a thread, it was only a matter of time before he was able to get a good enough grip on it to increase his understanding of what he was looking at. As he sent mana into the tiny hole created by Summon Water, he was suddenly struck with a feeling of deja vu. It was as if he was staring through an eyehole in a door in his previous world, seeing through to the other side and getting a fish eye’s view of what lay on the other side.
His first impression was of darkness, and wet. The tiny pinhole his spell had created was completely surrounded by water, and there was no visible light for him to see what was around him. The second impression he got was of pure mana. Even though the mana was clearly water attributed, the level of purity was unlike anything he had ever felt except inside himself. An instinctive yearning bloomed in his chest, and he had to fight down the urge to rip open the modified spell he had cast and throw himself through.
With iron discipline, John let out his breath and swiped his hand, ending the spell and breaking the small connection he had with the plane of water. Taking a moment to stabilize himself, John swiped his hand across the spot where the miniature portal had been a moment before and made sure that it was, in fact, sealed. The last thing he wanted was to inadvertently flood the tower with a moment of carelessness. While he had been focusing on his extraplanar connection, the window he had been hoping for had popped up, and as he read it John found himself grinning widely.
[New Skill: Astral Insight.]
[Astral Insight: You have gained insight into the laws outside this world. Through your study of these laws, you have begun to peer into the secrets of the endless worlds. As this skill grows, your ability to impact, manipulate, and control the barriers between worlds will grow in both power and scope.]
[Astral Insight: 1]
Does this mean I can go back to Earth?
The idea left John’s mind in a terrible whirl, and it was a long time before he managed to gather his thoughts into even a semblance of order. In the deepest corner of his brain he had always hoped there was a way to reverse the spell that had brought him to this world, but that hope had remained buried until now. For the first time since he’d arrived in this war-torn world, he let himself hope, but a moment later that hope was brutally squashed and shoved back in the dark hole it had been hiding in up until now.
It doesn’t matter if I can go back to Earth if this world is destroyed first. Get yourself under control, John.
There was simply too much to do to spend his time chasing flights of fancy, and John wasn’t about to let a vague dream derail what he was working on right now. Shaking his head, he brought up his status, a pleased smile crossing his face.
Name: John Sutton
Age: 28
Class: Mage
Spells: 9
Active Quests: [Grow Wheat]
Skill List: [Mana Breath: 00], [Arcane Tongue: 00], [Mana Control: 00], [Mana Reinforcement: 00], [Mental Model: 51], [Astral Insight: 1]
Skill Points: 0
Spell List: [Fireball (Novice)], [Flame Arrow (Apprentice)], [Twisting Flames (Mage)], [Dragon’s Breath (Mage)], [Summon Water (Novice)], [Water Arrow (Apprentice)], [Downpour (Acolyte)], [Raging Waters (Mage)], [Kelvis’ Greater Scrying (Mage)]
Quest List: [Prevent the Apocalypse], [Grow Wheat]
Doom Points: 95/100
Apart from his new skill, John was happy to see how quickly his Mental Model skill had grown. As he had grown more comfortable with it, he realized Mental Model had two major components. The first was his processing ability, or his intellect. If the game system that guided him had stats, this would have been his intelligence stat. Thanks to the mana that coursed through his brain, John had a nearly limitless amount of processing capability, but using it was another matter entirely.
The other piece of Mental Model, and the one limiting his growth, was the volume of his knowledge. As he learned more about magic from Rebya’s archives, his Mental Model skill grew faster. It was as if Mental Model was developing a library of its own, and as it filled out he was better able to model the world, leading to an explosive growth in his skill. He had just crossed the legendary threshold a day ago, and once he did the skill had transformed, filling his mind with an incredible amount of ideas. There were so many ideas that John had been unsure what to do with them, but as soon as that thought had finished, a structured list of options appeared in his mind.
[Mental Model: Learn to simulate magical experiments in your mind rapidly, using known information to extrapolate unknown information. Consumes mana to use. You have reached the legendary level of this skill, allowing you to process multiple models simultaneously.]
The increase in Mental Model’s efficiency had also brought with it a few other happy surprises, and as his skill level rose, he had also sensed his level of comfort with water spells rising to match it. Taking out the box he had recovered from Catherine over a year ago, John flipped open the lid and looked at the two remaining spell scrolls.
[New Spell: Greater Storm detected.]
[New Spell: Apocalyptic Flood detected.]
[Please select a spell to learn.]
Sensing no rejection from either of the spell scrolls, John reached out to touch the first one, accepting the prompt that popped up.
[Would you like to learn Greater Storm?]
With a flash, the mana in the spell scroll ignited and John felt a rush of mana pour into his brain. Immediately, Mental Model cataloged the spell, but John could also feel a new thread springing up as his skill began to deconstruct the spell into component pieces, storing each of them separately and expanding his knowledge of water magic. Repeating the process with Apocalyptic Flood, John took a moment to let both spells settle in his mind before he opened his eyes and looked at the spells that had appeared on his spell list.
[Greater Storm (Master)]
[Apocalyptic Flood (Forbidden)]
Setting Mental Model working on creating fire-based versions of the two spells, John let out a happy sigh. For the first time in a long while, he finally felt as if he had a way to fight without bringing the world a step closer to destruction. Through his conversations and experiments with Rebya, he had discovered that there was a difference between using the mana of the world for his spells and using his own mana. While his own mana was clearly superior, any spell he powered with his mana released that mana back into the universal mana pool, raising the ambient purity of the mana in the pool, and thus the world.
On the other hand, casting magic spells that didn’t use any of his mana was safe, since the only mana that returned to the universal mana pool was mana that had already been part of it. The clear tradeoff were spells that were no more powerful than the spells of any other Mage. Admittedly, John’s control was better than the average Mage by far, but the power of the spells was fixed. While casting spells without using his own mana would allow him access to magic, it put him on the level of an average legendary Mage. Resisting the urge to test out his new spells, John saw that Ellie had finished up her latest experiment and come over to begin their meditation session.
Sitting together, John felt his body relaxing as they began passing mana back and forth. The method that Rebya had come up with was ingenious, and John found that his meditation sessions with Ellie were quickly becoming his favorite part of his day. Time passed quickly, and once they were done they both headed back to the farm, Ellie to prepare lunch and John to check the wheat. Stepping out of the portal into the cheese cellar, John saw an elderly woman staring at him with wide eyes.
Ellie had found a widow and her daughter from the village to help with the cheese production, and it was clear the old woman was not yet used to the sight of Ellie and John appearing out of thin air. However, in what John found an equally irritating and amusing turn of events, Mrs. Clark was a devout believer in both the Eternal Flame and the almighty gold coin. She had barely recovered from her surprise of seeing the magical lights in the cheese cellar when she had assured Ellie that so long as she was paid on time, not even a whisper of what she saw would pass her lips.
She kept true to her word, and apart from muttering a prayer to the Eternal Flame whenever she saw something magical, she just put her head down and worked. Her daughter, a powerfully built young woman who looked fit to wrestle a bull, was much too infatuated with Even to bother paying attention to what else was going on around the farm, and when Mrs. Clark assured them that Berta would keep quiet as well, John cast the young woman to the back of his mind. With the extra help on the farm, things were running smoothly, allowing John and Ellie to focus on their studies of magic.
The wheat was growing well, and John used his Mana Control to pull the ambient mana together over the field. A fence had been erected around the field to keep animals out, for fear that the mana concentration would harm them, and the wheat appeared to be thriving in it. Touching one of the blades of wheat that had poked up above the soil, John examined the mana in it, using his newly refined Mana Control to try and sense the changes taking place. Rebya had said this batch of wheat should produce seeds that would be able to process mana to aid in their growth, which had John quite excited.
I need to improve my reaper and add a threshing machine. Though maybe I should make them as two distinct machines. I wonder how quickly I could get these into mass production. Actually, I should send them with the Ecclesia to the forges. Those engineering madmen would probably take one look at my design and improve it by a hundred times. Which reminds me, I need to build something lighter. We need something that regular oxen and people can use.
