Chapter -2147483630 (Mana and Classers)

  Ada and Alex were seated at the front of the ranger wagon as they rolled along the road to their next destination. Alex was keeping the horses going straight down the road instead of wandering off to pick at the taller grass along the sides of the road. Ada was seated next to her for moral support and to provide another target should they meet more bandits. This wasn’t considered likely, as bandits usually wouldn’t set up operations very close to each other, but they had been traveling for more than a week since they had been ambushed by the deserters.

  Ada sighed to herself and looked over at her friend.. Girlfriend? They hadn’t gotten around to talking about their official status, but she was pretty sure they had reached the point where they should be updating their relationship on that social media site that somehow managed to keep getting worse every year. Anyway, what was she thinking about?

  “Hey, Alex? Ever since I woke up from my last class up with my head separated from my body, it’s had me thinking about existentialism and what part of this body is actually me. Is there any specific part that is me that none of the rest is? My perception was attached to my head, but it still felt like my body was part of me. It was like it was just too far away to do anything with it.

  “Besides that psychological mindfuck, I had some time to think while my body was reforming from being damaged, and I noticed that my mana wasn’t refilling at a rate that matched what my regen stat says it should, and that rate wasn’t even consistent. I even reconfigured my system to constantly display the actual rate of mana regeneration per second, and constantly refresh whenever that rate changes. It goes down whenever I’m actively using skills like metal manipulation that has a constant draw on mana, even showing negative values when I’m trying to move something big, but it also confirms that whenever I’m moving myself, something is consuming my mana regeneration to make it happen. I don’t know if it’s something I’m subconsciously doing with metal manipulation or something else. Anyway, it occurred to me that whatever is doing it has to move a lot of mass and take some considerable effort to hold everything together while doing so. I remembered something about skeletons evolving to help provide structure to marine life as things were growing larger, which led to the thought that maybe if I had a rigid skeleton, my mana regen wouldn’t dip quite so much just from moving around. I honestly don’t know if it’ll help at all, but I want to try.”

  The blonde druid wasn’t sure what to make of that, as it was way more explanation than she expected to get. Even so, the train of thoughts made some amount of sense and a reasonably logical progression, and she said as much. “So, how do you plan to do it? Once you have the template, I mean,” said Alex.

  “I don't know if it'll be enough, but I do have the iron I, er, liberated and stashed. I need some good charcoal for a carbon source, and I'd like to get my hands on some manganese to make some impact resistant steel.” She paused for a moment, putting together her thoughts before continuing, “I know of a few different ore types that should contain manganese and iron both in a decent ratio with other trace elements. Hell, if I can get my hands on some wolframite, I could make some good use of the tungsten that would probably otherwise get discarded as slag.”

  Alex looked over at her companion, a quizzical expression on her face. “How do you know all this about metals and ores and stuff? I thought you were a computer nerd.”

  “Ha, well, I guess I never got the chance to tell you about that. After high school, I was a bit aimless and didn’t really know what I wanted to do, but I had really enjoyed watching blacksmiths work and learning about the craft. I had the idea that I’d become a swordsmith for the medieval reenactment enthusiasts I hung out with, so I studied metallurgy in college, specifically in historical smelting and forging methods. All of the computer stuff was only a hobby until I caught a big bug bounty and realized that I could make a lot more money doing that and still have plenty of time to work on smithing. I finished the degree, and now my head is full of information about different kinds of ore, what kinds of rock formations they can be found in, how to process the ore into usable metal, and several different ways that was done through history. I never really got a chance to put any of that to use.”

  “Huh, I never realized you were into that.”

  The two women continued chatting as the terrain they traveled through changed from forest to grassland, which gave way to farms and a few houses with low defensive walls. The sun was beginning to reach the horizon behind them, but there were still people visibly working scattered about in the fields.

  Eventually, the sun had dipped low enough to interfere with visibility, and Marcus poked his head up out of the roof hatch.

  “Ladies, let’s find a place to park for the night,” he said. “We’re still around two days from reaching Remera proper, and I wouldn’t want to have to talk one of the farmers out here into selling us new horses if one of these two manages to break a leg from traveling in the dark.”

  “Sure thing, boss,” said Alex. She steered the wagon off onto the berm between the road and nearby farmland where a low stone wall separated the two. Once parked, the rest of the rangers piled out and swiftly set up camp.

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  Two days later, they rolled up to the gates of Remera. Quintus had explained that the city started out its life as a fortress during the height of the shimagu war, and it held a full legion led by one of the great war heroes, Sentinel Grace. The land around the fortress had been nearly impassable at the end of the war after so many high level classers unleashed their skills, each alternately attempting to destroy and preserve the walls. Years after the war, some of the retired earth mages from that same legion returned to the area and smoothed the land into a great plains, opening up the entire region to farming.

  The city had, of course, outgrown the original walls over time, and a newer, longer defensive wall had been built with a few more gates than the single one the original fort had. Pliny went on for a while explaining different features related to the city’s history, but Ada tuned out, her mind focusing instead on how she wanted to build her second class.

  She was pretty sure she was going to pick a metal warrior based class, as she didn’t like her stats being as unbalanced as they were. The brief exchange of swords with Gravity had shown her just how much someone’s physical stats could overcome any skill deficiency, and she was pretty sure that the Sentinel had been either toying with or testing her for some reason. She was severely lacking in both Dexterity and Speed, and that had shown in their duel. It didn’t matter how her skill had seemed to outclass the sentinel, every single feint and strike she’d used had been met with a perfect parry as Ada was simply incapable of moving fast enough to get past the sentinel’s defense.

  At some point during Ada’s mental distraction, the rangers had finally reached the front of the line to pass through the checkpoint. The queue had been considerably longer than the one at Odessos, taking several hours for the guards to get through all of the farmers and merchants in front of them.

  A bored looking guardsman stationed at the gate didn’t even look in their direction before starting his standard spiel, “Alright, what’s your purpose here in Remeros and how long do you intend to stay.”

  Their team leader, Marcus, had chosen to be the one to drive the wagon that morning, so he was already sitting up front. “Ranger Team 13 on our standard route, and we’ll be staying at least a week unless something comes up to keep us longer,” he stated.

  The guardsman finally looked up at that, and for just a brief moment, a look of surprise crossed his face before he managed to school his expression and asked, “Wait, Team 13? How many have you got there?”

  Marcus reached back and thumped the roof of the armored wagon, then spoke down into the interior after Quirinus opened the hatch and poked his head out. “Time to pile out,” he said before turning back to the guardsman. “Full complement: eight rangers and our healer, plus an auxiliary we picked up on the road,” he replied as the squad exited the armored transport wagon.

  “Alright, you all know the drill, all mages must empty their mana before entering, no exceptions, yes even for rangers.”

  Marcus, whose [Leader] class had overtaken his original mage class, nodded to the guard, looked over to his squad of rangers, and said, “You heard the man, Lucius, Quintus, Martelius, and Ada, empty your mana and maybe try to use some less destructive skills this time.”

  Ada couldn’t be sure, but she thought he was possibly making a joke. She changed her mind quickly when Lucius moved a good 10 meters away and created a shining barrier out of pure radiant light. The smirk on Quintus’s face clearly telegraphed his intentions as he rubbed his hands together before calling out, “Ready?” Lucius nodded and replied, “Ready.” That was all the preparation anyone had before a bolt of lightning arced between Quintus’s outstretched hand and Lucius’s barrier and dissipated, but the thundercrack had many of the people nearby wincing and rubbing at their ears and eyes.

  To Ada’s side, Martelius muttered, “Show-off,” followed more loudly by, “Fine, my turn?” Before Lucius had a chance to nod back with assent, Martelius began conjuring an enormous orb of roiling, molten stone. Lucius dove out of the way and yelled out, “Ready!” The orb of lava shot forward, taking a few meters to accelerate before crashing into the radiance barrier, which shattered on impact, and the orb fell to the ground, digging a furrow before coming to rest, where it quickly cooled into a sort of plinth, only missing a statue to perch atop it.

  Feeling inspired, Ada walked over to the still smoldering rock and conjured 200 kg of cast iron, then reshaped it into a statue vaguely resembling their team lead giving a double thumbs up. It had to be hollowed out to get it to an appropriate size, but that was a trivial matter. Converting the surface layer to a protective black iron(III) oxide with [Spellforge] required most of her remaining mana pool.

  “There you go boss, mana pool empty,” she said, walking back over to Marcus, who rolled his eyes at the four mages. He turned back to the gate guard and asked, “Well, are we clear to enter?” The guard nodded and waved them through the gate, but Ada heard him mutter, “Fucking classers,” as they passed.

  In short order, they were entering the old fort which was now being used as both a barracks, hospital, and holding cells for the city guard, as well as a staging ground for one of the legions tasked with maintaining domestic order. The legion’s section mostly consisted of storage for holding equipment and other items for resupply, but there was a mustering yard plenty large enough for the rangers’ use to park the wagon along with stables for the horses.

  “Alright,” Marcus said, addressing his team of rangers, “You’re all free for the rest of the day, but be back before morning. We’ll set up the duty assignments then. You all know the drill, no one, and I mean absolutely no one, goes solo. I want you all in pairs or more. If you need a tumble, go to a brothel. That’s all I have, dismissed.”

  And with that, Ada, Alex, and Atalanta took off together, running for the nearest bathhouse.