5 Journey to the Capital
In the end, even though she advanced more quickly than others, she was still a little apprentice when it came to raw magical power. On Gaia, in terms of standing, at the lowest end were the normal people without any ability in magical power. The more powerful the parents, the higher the chance for their children to also be gifted, but at the same time as if the world tried to find a balance, it was also a lot harder for strong magically talented people to have children in the first place.
Throughout the country, if not the whole world, it was common to find eight people without any ability for every two who were gifted with magical power. Maybe half of these had the lowest possible affinity, while the other half was made up mostly of people with lower affinity. It was rather rare to find someone with an affinity higher than medium, let alone finding someone at the higher end of the colors. Those with violet ability were already experts known throughout the country. Blue power holders were also known as Skylords, while green power holders were usually referred to as Hierophants.
It was said that once someone reached enough skill to wield earthly magical powers they would be more in tune with the world around them and could even make the world follow their commands not unlike a god. There has not been an earthly mage or knight in the country for hundreds of years though, so many of the information available to the common people was not much more than rumors.
No one seemed to know a lot about grey and black mages, as there were none to be found in all the lands currently. All people did agree on was that their power must be frightening and whole countries would fall with just their will alone.
With the problem of less children born with the rising power of the parents, clans and big family powers were often forced to invite talents from outside if they wanted to keep their influence.
The few top tier powers in the lands of Luminos, the empire Firestone was located in, could be counted on one hand with one of these five powers being the royal family currently holding the reins. These 'big five' were said to be the only clans big and resourceful enough to manage to hold their power at least stable even with just their own family members.
This did not mean they would not invite talented people, quite the opposite. As if in their own little social world though, status and standing were a lot more important for these families, compared to other clans who made no big distinction between family members and those outsiders who were loyal to them for a long time.
Talented people would sometimes be invited to marry into the powerful families, but as those gifted with ability and their children in general were very precious, because of their low birth rate, these powerful families would never allow someone of their own talents to marry into another family. Even the least skilled person would be a chance for them to have another gifted child born into their family in the future, why would they want them to leave the family?
Apprentice, Journeyman, Master and Grandmaster were the commonly known rankings, identical for both the knight as well as the magical path. It was one thing to be born with a strong affinity, but another one altogether to be able to use that power to the utmost.
Beyond the grandmaster limit the titles were no longer the same and rather hard to compare. Mages who reached beyond grandmaster status were usually referred to as Archmages, while a magical knight who advanced beyond grandmaster was, depending on their role and training either considered as a Warrior Saint or as a Warlord.
Usually the powers of a Saint or Archmage would be beyond the violet magical affinity, at least at the blue or even green levels, but there were also some exceptions, who made excellent use of their violet power and used it more efficiently than others. There were none who would get the title of an Archmage or Saint with just a red or below affinity. The necessary power to achieve the feats someone of this status required was simply not enough if not at least a high level violet power was present. As such if one wanted to become one of the real powerhouses of the country, they needed at least an orange or red affinity and then work hard to raise it to violet or beyond throughout their life.
With only a few dozen grandmasters and less than ten people beyond grandmaster rank in all of Luminos, reaching such a rank brought with it a great amount of status and political power. Such entities were in a class of their own. While it was still manageable to defeat a grandmaster with sheer numbers, even if it would take hundreds to thousands of lives just to defeat a single one, beyond grandmasters, numbers alone would no longer make much of a difference.
People beyond grandmaster rank could at most be fought by a large number of grandmaster and master ranked individuals, but normal people no longer had any part in these fights.
There was just so many people who could gang up on a single person, there was a limit to how much they could do if their weapons could no longer even scratch the skin of their adversary or if said person did not ever seem to tire, if their speed surpassed a normal person's reaction time or if their spells had enough range to kill them before they could even realize where the enemy is located. Not to mention that starting with the blue power of a skylord, a mage or magical warrior would be able to fly. How would a normal person catch such a being in a fight?
In theory, the rankings up to grandmaster were comparable to some degree. A master mage had about the same power as a master magical knight. A mage's power was at its peak when they had enough time to prepare. Communing with the worldly magical power and forming it into powerful magic took time, the higher ranked the magic they used, the longer it would take them. While a magic knight only required a fraction of the time to prepare all of their power for a battle, it was much harder for a mage to quickly come up with powerful and strong spells.
Given the time though, as they were not limited by just the power within their bodies, it was rather hard for a knight of the same rank to compete with a mage, who had the time and means to throw their most powerful spells at them. Like a melee weapon and a siege engine would have a different place and area of use, it was the same for knights and mages. Mages were slow to reach their peak power, weak when caught unprepared but also rather versatile and deadly when given enough time.
Magical knights of any type were usually quick to rise to their full power, hard to catch unaware due to not only their ability to gather their power fast, but also their sharp trained senses , but were limited mostly by their innate power. They would spend their magical power a lot quicker than mages, would not be able to send their power indiscriminately among multiple enemies and would rather focus on enhancing their attributes of their own bodies in order to take out one enemy after the other.
Like others in Firestone, Myra was, in theory at least, just a little apprentice rank mage and an apprentice rank magical knight. Compared to a person without any ability, this was already quite an excellent status, but in the bigger picture she was still not really strong or influential enough to make any difference.
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When Myra turned 14 years old, she finally made the decision to leave the village and find some academy where she could further progress in her studies. There was simply nothing she could learn in Firestone anymore that would benefit her on her chosen path, or one could say on any of the paths she might walk.
Her parents were quite reluctant to let her go, but understood that they would only hold her back if they would keep her here any longer. After lots of goodbyes and many tears, Myra left the village together with a few merchants. Their destination was the capital, Silverspire, where she would participate in a set of examinations to see if any of the academies would accept her.
With her parents help, as well as the money she had saved up, finding accommodations and paying for tuition fees would not be an issue. Making it through the examinations with good results however, was more of a challenge, especially as she was not very sure of what to expect.
The journey to the capital took several weeks, but was quite uneventful. Myra enjoyed camping out in the open, sitting around the fireplace and listening to the many stories the merchants had to tell.
She heard about faraway lands, legends of powerful magical creatures like dragons and listened to the ravings of some teenage boys and girls who would discuss their favorite heroes, the prettiest princes and princesses and the most powerful generals.
Occasionally a magical beast would cross their path, but it would quickly be dispatched by the guards. None of the beasts was strong enough to do any real damage and a few scratches were all the injuries that they had to deal with.
In the end, they arrived at the capital unharmed and parted ways. Myra looked around trying to find an inn, but was quickly lost in the many streets of the city.
Walking through the alleyways trying to find back to where she started was not easy and just when she heard some people and wanted to ask them for directions she stopped to listen more closely. Something seemed wrong and her instincts told her to be on guard right away. She sneaked to the side of a house and took a look around the corner into the next alleyway.
"Leave her alone!" a young man in his teens shouted at some burly men in front of him. Behind him was a girl, maybe ten or twelve years old, who could barely stand on her feet, as if she was drunk. Judging by their outfits and the little magical wand by her side, the girl was likely a mage, or some type of magical caster. It did not look as if the young man had any aptitude, because his movements were not refined enough to be a knight apprentice and a mage would likely have started casting some protective magic by now.
"Now now boy, be on your way, we don't need you and it's your lucky day that I don't get rid of you. We just borrow her for a little while and return her later, no worries." One of the burly men explained, causing all of his friends to laugh at his joke.
Myra might be a little naïve sometimes, but even she could instantly tell that they were neither honorable nor were they up to anything good. She didn't want to make any enemies right when she entered the city either, without knowing much about her surroundings.
Quickly deciding to hide her identity, she concentrated on her spirit and began to change her form. No simple journeyman would be able to change their form like she did, likely not even master mages and magical knights might be able to. Relying on her innately powerful spirit and soul, it was not a problem for Myra to reach out for her old power, except for the immense exhaustion that would later hit her. It was not a good idea to channel too much power through her body after all, it would be better to naturally develop it through training on her own, but in this situation she deemed it as necessary and did not hesitate.
An immense aura could soon be felt in the little alleyway. Not only did the thugs as well as the young man fall to their knees, trembling, but unknown to Myra, even miles away her aura would still be picked up by the senses of some powerful elders. It was after all the capital of the country, the place where one would find most of the powerful people hidden among their clans and families.
