Chapter 3
On the main road through Millou, a young boy quickly walked along the dirt path, flipping a coin in his hand. His clothes were covered with a thin layer of dirt on the outside, yet were spotless beneath the fabric. On his side, a small sword was shoved through a loop of cloth. The last rain had been several days prior, and high grass grew at the sides of the road.
"Mr. Ventex, you're in high spirits, today," An older man sat on his porch and talked to Ventex as he passed.
Ventex paused his steps and caught his coin, opening his palm to check which side it landed on, then replied, "Today's gonna be a good day."
"I hope you're right," the older man said, and Ventex continued on his way.
A common coin could be used for simple divination, but Ventex didn't require any magic to know it was going to be a good day. He strolled along to the village general store, and he put the coin in his pocket before entering.
"Good morning, Mr. Dyon." Ventex said and nodded to the shopkeeper. Dyon nodded back while he spoke to his current customer at his counter, and Ventex started filling small bags with the various goods Lindette had sent him to get. When he finished, he took the bags to the counter and laid them on the end away from Dyon and his customer.
"I almost couldn't believe it, myself," the customer said, not paying any attention to Ventex. "He paid almost a million coins for some plant, and then he ate it on the spot. I've never seen anything like it."
"Those folks in Thiosille are different from us Millou. I once heard about a man who killed another man's entire family just because the man stepped on his foot. You have to be careful when you're dealing with knights and magicians," Dyon cautiously said, glancing around his shop for other parties. He noticed Ventex standing to the side, and he turned back to the current customer. "Verline, let me get Young Ventex, here."
"Ventex?" Verline questioned and looked over at Ventex. "Hey, your name's pretty close to mine," he said and stepped aside for Ventex. "How'd you like to learn swordsmanship from me, a Thiosille Knight Academy graduate?"
"Thank you, but I'm not interested," Ventex replied and moved his bags in front of Dyon.
Dyon opened the bags and weighed them, and he listed the contents, "Two cups of praut, four afwyn, one cup of salt, and half a cup of black pepper. That'll be twenty-eight coins."
"Here," Ventex said and handed Dyon three standards.
"Ventex, have you ever seen a knight from Thiosille? You might've seen the swordsmen from the village, but they really can't compare to a knight who's undergone special training," Verline said, hoping to acquire Ventex as a squire.
"I have to get home," Ventex took his change from Dyon and his bags, then said to Verline as he walked toward the shop exit.
"Well, if you change your mind, you can find me here!" Verline said his last words to Ventex, and Ventex exited the store.
He walked home, carrying two bags in each hand, and used rank 1 spells to make the bags easier to carry. While he walked, his mind went back to what Dyon had said about knights and magicians, and he tried to remember a city or town called Thiosille.
Ventex kept his reincarnation a secret, and overcoming the language barrier between his current language and the language of his previous life was proving difficult. He couldn't directly ask for information about the alliance; he could only try to lead conversations toward the topic. As of yet, Randric and Lindette had never said anything about the alliance, the Emperor of Calamity, or any other major figures or institutions from when Ventex originally lived.
He now lived in a nation called Nephona, led by Lord Julifarc and an assembly of ministers. Ventex had never heard of either of them in his previous life, and Randric and Lindette didn't know enough history to give him a deeper background.
Most of the time, Ventex ignored the shortcomings of his parents. Gathering information on the alliance only served to help protect him from their investigators, but it had already been seven years since his reincarnation. Besides needing to repay a few old debts, Ventex had nothing preventing him from living a peaceful life.
Once home, Ventex placed the four bags in the kitchen, then went back outside. He walked to the area behind the house, away from the road, and drew his sword from its loop. Immediately afterward, he stuck the sword in the ground. Ventex had still not learned any swordsmanship, so he usually only carried his sword to provide an image. He saw boys his age were wearing swords, so he adopted the practice.
Instead of using the sword to train as a swordsman, Ventex used it to train his magic. He opened his right palm and cycled his arcane core, drawing mana into his hand. His spell manifested as a clear sphere with glassy wisps of mana circulating throughout it. He gently cast the spell at the sword's blade, and the sword sunk several inches into the ground.
'Still not ready,' he thought, and he crossed his legs and sat on the grass.
Each higher rank of an arcane core generated more spells, held more mana, and produced greater effects. At rank 12, Ventex could begin to see his spells affecting causality, which would be become more manipulatable once he reached rank 13. He needed to expand his rank 12 arcane core and consolidate the mana inside, and then he would be able to advance his rank. A rank 13 magician was much more powerful than a rank 12 magician, and Ventex's advancement would be coming within the next few days.
Ventex required silence when he meditated. He took a few seconds to harmonize with the sounds of nature, then began circulating his arcane core. Gradually, an invisible vortex opened above him, sucking in mana from his surroundings. When the gathered mana combined with the mana his arcane core generated, his internal mana storage reached a peak amount.
Metaphysical mana fragments floated everywhere in space, including inside physical matter. In Millou, the mana in was particularly dense. Such a situation would happen when no magicians came to collect the ambient mana, and Ventex was thankful for it. His schedule wouldn't be slowed down because of a deficiency of mana, and most of his timetables were accurate to the week.
A few hours later, Ventex's mediation was interrupted by a small body diving onto his lap.
"I got you!" the little girl cheered, and Ventex was thrust out of his meditative state.
"Yep," Ventex said and pushed her off his lap, then stood. "Are Lindette and Karugh inside?"
"Nope, I ran ahead," she laid on her back, beaming, and replied.
"Can you take me to them, Yanelle?" Ventex asked, putting his sword back into its loop.
"Yeah," Yanelle replied and stood. She grabbed Ventex's hand and tugged him to the front of the house, where Lindette and Karugh were about thirty feet away from the house.
Karugh - Ventex's younger brother and Yanelle's older brother - carried Lindette's empty plant gathering basket. Like his brother and sister, Karugh's hair was blond, and he grew it long. His clothes came from Ventex's old clothes, and Yanelle's clothes came from Karugh's old clothes. Next to Karugh, Lindette had gotten a little older, but she maintained a youthful appearance.
"I put the praut and the rest in the kitchen," Ventex said and shook off Yanette's hand. She looked up at him, expectantly. "Can you take Yanette? I feel like I'm close to a breakthrough."
"Awe, but she wants to learn how to do it with you," Lindette said as she approached.
'She doesn't have the aptitude for it,' Ventex thought and quickly checked for a growing arcane core inside Lindette, Karugh, or Yanette. Mana sense made identifying magicians easy, as well as potential magicians. Karugh and Yanette had no talent for magic, and Ventex didn't have the ability to fabricate arcane core potential inside a person. "Some other time. I'm really close, and I need to focus."
"Alright, fine," Lindette stooped and said, and she beckoned Yanette closer. "Yanette, come with mommy and help cook."
"I'll give you a present in a couple of days," Ventex said, and Yanette didn't follow him when he retreated back to the rear of the house.
Ventex resumed mana channeling: pulling mana from the air, the ground, the plants, and the buildings. A large cyclone opened above Millou, invisible to anyone who couldn't use mana sense. If it were the past, Ventex wouldn't have dared to make such a disturbance. However, a rank 13 arcane core would allow him to fight with most magicians, and his past experience as a magician would fill in the gap of power between him and a higher ranked magician.
Magicians were the lowest tier of magic-enabled humans. From rank 1 to rank 3, they could only use spells that moved mass. Once a magician reached rank 4, they would evolve into a mage and be able to generate mass with their spells. For military service, rank 4 was the basic requirement.
Once a magician reached rank 13, they became a magus. Magi wielded the power to command laws of nature, overriding logical outcomes of events. Most importantly to Ventex's situation, rank 13 spells could alert him when a magus entered within a certain distance of himself. Magus spells were truly mysterious, and they were absolutely necessary for Ventex to have a peaceful life.
Randric eventually came home, and dinner was served. Lindette called Ventex inside, and he paused his meditation to have the meal. Rank 13 spells could also help a magician bypass the need for food, and Ventex looked forward to when that happened.
Tonight, they ate diced afwyn with black pepper seasoning. Four afwyn were enough for Randric to have a large portion, Lindette and Ventex to have a medium portion, and Karugh and Yanette to have a small portion. For drinks, they had previously-boiled water with added berries.
Having black pepper added to the meal was a fruit Ventex gained by using rank 4 spells to generate plants that Lindette could sell for extra money. He never let her or anyone else directly see him using rank 4 or above spells, but everyone involved knew he was using unordinary means of acquiring the extra plants.
At night, after Ventex and the rest went to their bedrooms, Ventex continued mana channeling. His vortex would be slightly slower while he slept, but it would be a small difference compared to actively enforcing the circulation.
The next morning, Ventex still hadn't reached rank 13. He ate breakfast with Lindette, Karugh, and Yanette, and then he followed them into the forest.
While he walked, Ventex checked the area with his mana sense, looking for a pocket of particularly-dense mana fragments. Usually, mana fragments were evenly distributed through the air, but special conditions might cause a large amount to gather in one location. Ventex didn't know why it happened, but he hoped he would get lucky and find one such area.
Magicians sometimes traveled thousands of miles in search of mana-dense environments, but Ventex wasn't in a condition to head out on a massive journey. He had more-or-less determined his corner of the world to be safe from the alliance, and he wouldn't venture out of it without at least reaching rank 13.
Divination would help him find a area with dense mana fragments. Although magus spells were the most suitable for divination, a rank 12 could provide a lesser degree of divine knowledge. Ventex carried a coin in his pocket, and one end of it had a small dent on the edge. He tossed his coin into the air, caught it on his index finger, and looked for where the dent pointed.
Performing divination before rank 13 required Ventex to supply the divine instrument with a huge amount of mana. He used approximately four-fifths of his mana supply to power the spell, and he couldn't even be sure that the results were useful.
"I'm going to look over there," Ventex said, and he split off from Lindette and his younger siblings. Lindette had to urge Yanette not to follow Ventex, and she agreed after a small bribe.
Ventex walked for about six hundred feet, then stopped at the base of a tree. His mana sense told him something was accumulating mana near the tree's roots, and he used a rank 3 spell to blast apart the wood that separated him from the mana-sucking object.
What revealed was a small, black orb. The orb was no wider than Ventex's thumb, but its deep blackness was richer than the darkest night sky, and its aura exceeded its size.