Chapter 4 - The Journey

The merchants had only stopped in the first village for about 2 days. During this time Wagner had decided to spend all his time training hoping to get some level of reaction out of his spear. While only the blade had been coated, he still felt like some reaction of the spear and improving his control would advance him to the next level. He started to do the same meditation as he had before, but this time he imagined a flame that slowly turned blue and spun faster and faster. This was his attempt as visualizing lightning, although it was clearly fire no matter what he changed. He knew this meant he was back at square one and had to come up with a new visualization technique.

Wagner started to wander around the village to look for ideas.

"How can I possibly visualize lightning. It's not like fire, I can't start a lightning." He said to himself quietly.

He tried to come up with ideas where there was the most fire, the smithy. Entering the smithy, he asked if he could just watch. The blacksmith was a little weirded out but of course said yes. This gave him some ideas on how to improve his fire visualization but not on lightning. That was of course until the smith took out a fresh piece which he started hammering. Wagner instantly realized when he saw it, it looked like sparks flying everywhere. He figured if he could imagine the sparks coming off metal clashing in his mind he could collect and circulate the sparks into a circle. Thinking this might be the answer to creating a lightning imitation or phony lightning.

1 hour later he was already in the woods meditating and practicing this new idea. While he could feel the difference he still could not get the sparks to be created and to circulate fast enough. He was lacking what made lightning, lightning which was speed and power.

He was now out of time and had to get back with the merchants. After taking down the camp, he was sitting in a carriage, reading the diary again and again. Until he stumbled upon a page that said, "My first mana circle was created when I was able to create an ever flowing ring of water. It feels like a never ending stream, like even if half of the ring were to disappear, the stream wouldn't stop flowing like both ends were still connected."

Wagner thought about this, "How can I make a never ending stream from a couple dots?"

This idea would have to be postponed until the next stop 1 week from now, as he did not want to burn the carriage he was in.

1 Week Later:

"Wagner, hurry up and set up camp!" One of the merchants yelled, making sure they were getting their value out of bringing Wagner.

"Yup, I got it. The camp will be set up before lunch time." During the times in which they are travelling they just sleep in carriages and only pull out cookware.

A few hours later and Wagner had the whole camp set up on the outskirts of the last village trip before the city. This village was even more in-land than the last but there were very few trees around in comparison to the last village. Instead there were vast farmlands but very few farm animals. This was a contrast to what Wagner grew up around which was not a lot of room for farmland but what there was, was used for farm animals. Wagner's village would have been a fishing village if there were more people who were better at fishing but instead everyone was more educated on animals. To not go fishing was more so a local superstition in which the villagers believed that if you ate too much fish than you would become one. This was probably meant to scare some children but ended up changing the main food product instead.

Wagner had never seen so many vegetables in his life, and he was excited to try all the new kinds except he didn't have any money to spare. So he made his way over to the center of the village yet again. This time he figured he might be able to sell or at least trade using his now vast collection of wooden birds. He could only see 3 shops worth checking out. The first one had plenty of vegetables he hadn't seen before and even a couple of them he could feel mana from. The second shop had more scraps and junk like in the previous village. The last shop had Wagner's favorite thing, books and plenty of them.

Wagner walked up towards the first store taking a looking at the two vegetables that he could feel mana coming from.

"I see you can sense mana, these are types of mana fruits. although botanically they are vegetables, nobody wants to eat vegetables no matter how much they help." Said the storeowner chuckling at her own joke.

"How do they help? And how much?" Wagner not knowing anything about them except that he wanted one.

""Well, each one is slightly different. Some boost your physical ability and some boost your mana intake or output. These are lower quality ones that only temporarily increase your mana intake and output. Each one is about 25 coppers." Informed the storeowner.

"If its only temporary, I think I will pass." Wagner said heading towards the next shop.

Unfortunately the next shop had less metals and materials than the old man from the previous village. Leading Wagner to the last stand full of books. He checked all the titles and decided he had to buy as many as he could regardless of the price. He first presented his wooden birds and the storeowner agreed that he could get 1 book free and any others would be 10 coppers.

"Can I take 5 of your books. "Elemental Enchanting for Beginners", "Blacksmithing for beginners", "Alchemy for beginners", "Altao's guide to materials and resources", and finally "The Animals and Monsters of Altao" for 40 Coppers and here are 4 of the wooden figures, only different elemental birds please." Wagner said handing over the majority of what money he had left. Leaving him with only 35 coppers.

"Pleasure doing business with you." The shop owner said, making Wagner feel like he had just been robbed.

While he still had time for the day he decided to start reading the books he had just purchased. First was "Altao's guide to materials and resources" which showed both the elemental metals that he had seen. There was one for every element, including one for all elements. Wagner kept all his focus on the book, slowly starting to recognize more and more of the fruits and metals he had now been introduced to. However now he had seen dozen's more things in the pages that he had never seen before. This prompted him to open the book on animals and monsters. He could now see the birds he had been carving out looked slightly different than what he had expected as they were much larger birds. The golden scorchers were more akin to eagles than falcons like he had assumed. Now he could see so many different options for carvings that he had never seen before. From beasts that spit lava to fish that can create ice, Wagner's view of the world was becoming much more vast.

Before setting up camp Wagner made sure to stock up on wooden blocks for carving, the new options from the book.

Time to go:

There were no more stops until the city meaning all that was left was a week and a half trip until they reached the city. The merchant's didn't really talk much and were not dissimilar from Wagner in the sense that their heads were always in books. This made him realize that nothing will be achieved without research because every book a merchant held was about something they could possibly, buy, sell or create. Wagner took advantage of that and increased his collection, trading sculptures for books, he was able to collect books on different kinds of weapons and craftsmanship. This would be enough to keep him busy until he reached the city.