Mother of Learning 2 - Outside World

by nobody103

  It was in times like these that he wondered why he even bothered going through this charade in every restart when he could just teleport out of his room at the start of every new loop and be done with it. It would save him hours of frustration and he knew from a couple of previous restarts that nobody threw a manhunt after him if he did that. He'd basically get an extra half a day each restart – that would add up to something significant pretty quickly, wouldn't it?

  But, just as they always did when he considered that option, his thoughts turned to what the reaction of his mother and Kirielle would be at such a move. He never eavesdropped on them during those restarts where he hightailed out of the house at the earliest opportunity, but he couldn't imagine either of them taking it well. He didn't get along with mother all that well, but he knew she cared for him in her own infuriating way and Kirielle…

  He looked at Kirielle, standing sullenly some distance from him. The downside of his increasing empathy skills was that he knew just how devastated Kirielle was at not getting to come with him to Cyoria. If that was so upsetting, he couldn't even imagine how she would react if he did his disappearing trick immediately after he chased her out of his room. There was no way he could do that to her, no matter how much sense it made. He was feeling guilty enough about her as it was.

  He walked up to her and ruffled her hair, which caused her to snap out of her funk temporarily in order to slap his hand away and give him a fierce glare. Or at least what she thought was a fierce glare, anyway.

  "Don't be so gloomy, Kiri," he said. She said nothing, but the spike of anger and resentment he detected in his empathy was answer enough.

  Damn it…

  "Look," he told her. "I'll bring you with me the next time I go to Cyoria, okay?"

  She gave him a startled look as her mind processed what he just said and then looked away with a pout. For a moment he thought she wouldn't say anything, but then her mind stopped cycling between different emotions and settled on faint, suppressed hope.

  "You promise?" she finally mumbled after a few seconds.

  "Yes," he said seriously. "I promise."

  In the back of his mind, Zorian realized he really meant it, too. When he finally decided to go back to Cyoria, he was bringing Kirielle with him. It wasn't sensible in the least – it would cost him considerable time and attention to keep an eye on her and she would be in far greater danger than if he left her behind – but he was going to do it anyway. Not just for Kirielle's sake, either. He kind of missed living at Imaya's place with Kirielle, Kael and Kana…

  He had to take a step back to regain his balance when Kirielle rammed into him, wrapping him in a hug and burying her face in his stomach.

  "You better not lie," she said, looking up at him with suspicious, narrowed eyes. "I'll never forgive you!"

  "Yeah, yeah," Zorian scoffed, pulling at her nose until she let go of him. A loud whistle pierced the air, signifying that the train had finally arrived at the station. "I have to go now. We'll talk about this when I come back."

  Fifteen minutes later Zorian watched a much happier Kirielle waving enthusiastically at him as the train departed from the station. Zorian responded with a much more restrained wave of his own and smiled. Maybe it hadn't been the smartest decision to make, but it was the right one nonetheless.

  ✦ ✧ ✦

  Zorian spent the entirety of the short train ride to Teshingrad trying to perform a headcount of his fellow passengers using his mind sense – a surprisingly difficult endeavor due to the anti-shaping ward placed on the train. While not remotely able to actually stop him from sensing minds, the minor magical static produced by the ward compounded quickly with distance, effectively cutting his range in half. It was uncannily reminiscent of the similar magical static that suffused the dungeon, which had much the same effect.

  Hmm… now that he thought about it, that was probably what had inspired the ward in the first place. Did that mean that practicing magic inside a ward like this one would help him learn how to filter out the Dungeon static? Something to think about, in any case. Making a series of progressively stronger disruption wards to practice on sounded like a lot better idea than his original plan (which mostly consisted of trying to brute force things by practicing teleportation in the Dungeon until he got it right).

  Once he disembarked from the train, Zorian teleported to Knyazov Dveri and immediately descended into the local Dungeon, where he proceeded to pick up every single piece of crystallized mana he had discovered in the previous restart before his unfortunate encounter with the eyebeast. When he tried to cash them in at the Delver Village shop he used for the purpose, however, he ran into… problems.

  Apparently, there was a huge difference between going into the dungeon a couple of times and returning with a handful of crystals each time (what he did in the previous restart) and going in there once and returning with an entire bag of crystalized mana after a few hours. Not only did the shop not have enough money on hand to buy the whole batch off of him, the fact he had brought back such wealth after a single foray into the Dungeon caused far more of a stir than Zorian would have ever guessed. After all, you just don't do that kind of stuff unless you have some kind of secret method that is better than everyone else's or you were lucky enough to hit some kind of motherlode. Either possibility automatically made him a person of interest to every dungeon delver in Knyazov Dveri, as well as quite a few other people as well.

  Any sort of plan he had for the restart immediately crashed and burned. There was just too much attention focused on him, which made it impossible to pursue tasks discreetly or talk to people as a relative unknown. His divination wards got an extensive field test due to the incessant magical spying he had been subjected to ever since, and while Zorian thought they held up admirably in face of foreign assault, he couldn't actually be sure they were never bypassed. One enterprising spy actually painted spell formula onto living moths and turned them into semi-autonomous voice recorders – if Zorian hadn't tried to chase them off with telepathy and found it curious they kept getting back towards him regardless he probably would have never noticed. How many others had done similar things without him figuring out what they'd done?

  Of course, not everyone went with the cloak and dagger stuff. A lot of people simply wanted to talk to him about their amazing offer and what not, and few of them took his 'no thanks' quietly. At least one group outright attacked him when he told them to get lost, though thankfully they weren't all that good at actual fighting and were sent running easily enough. There was also at least one attempt to break into his room, which ended with a would-be thief electrocuted for his trouble and earned Zorian a stern talking-to by the law enforcement regarding excessively lethal security measures.

  Finally, after a week of dodging aggressive recruitment efforts and repelling the myriad magical probes directed at him, Zorian decided to admit defeat and leave Knyazov Dveri. He failed to save Lukav and Alanic anyway, due to all the scrutiny he was under, so there was little reason to stay in the town and every reason to leave. He simply picked up all of his belongings, including a handful of bigger mana crystals he'd never managed to sell, and teleported as far south as he could manage.

  Live and learn, he supposed. The next time he tried to pull off that trick, he should sell it outside of Knyazov Dveri and probably not all at once in the same shop. It was probably smartest to go to Korsa and Eldemar, since they were big cities that probably saw far more traffic in mana crystals and had plenty of shops to sell to. Though Cyoria would probably be even better in that regard, once he was ready to go back there – it was not only big, but also the magical center of the whole continent.

  But no matter, the restart was still salvageable – there were plenty of things to do outside of Knyazov Dveri. For instance, finding the aranean webs to trade with. He knew they existed all over the continent, but other than the destroyed one under Cyoria, he didn't really know the exact location of any of them. Even if he wasn't ready to actually de
al with them properly yet, it wouldn't hurt to spend a restart or two just locating every single web he could find and see just how friendly and receptive to trade each of them was. If Spear of Resolve was to be believed, they were unlikely to attack him outright just for contacting them. Modern aranea were descendants of aranea who grew in power after trading with humans, after all, so most of them should be at least mildly receptive to the idea of doing it again.

  New goal set, Zorian teleported to Eldemar, the kingdom's capital, to visit the Cartographer's Society library. As far as map collections went, theirs was without equal, and it was largely free for perusal as well – so long as you never destroyed anything, you only had to pay for maps you wanted the library to copy for you. Zorian had spent a few days there the last time he had visited the capital, just browsing the shelves for any map that caught his fancy, and swore he would visit again when he had the time. This seemed as good an excuse as any.

  "I dearly hope that's not one of our maps you are writing on, young sir," the voice behind Zorian's shoulder said. "As far as the library is concerned, that would undisputedly be destruction of our property."

  Zorian jumped in surprise at the voice, too absorbed in his research to notice the librarian sneaking up at him. He looked at the map in front of him, heavily annotated and fighting for desk space with several stacks of map cases, travel journals and atlases and then shifted his attention to the old, bearded librarian behind him.

  "It's not," he told the man. "It's the cheapest map of Eldemar I could find in a store I found on the way."

  "Hmm. Would you object if I ask you what you are working on? It is rare to see such a young man here, especially one who is so absorbed in his research."

  "I'm trying to find an aranean colony," said Zorian, not seeing the need to lie.

  "And those are?"

  "Magical talking spiders."

  "Ah. Sounds like an intriguing project," said the old librarian. "I'll leave you to it. As friendly advice, I will note that it would have probably been cheaper to just have the library make a few copies of the maps you were interested in. The Cartographer's Society is not a profit-seeking organization and we try to keep the prices down as much as possible."

  "I'll keep that in mind," said Zorian. "Say, since we're on the subject of copies… do you think I could learn how to copy documents like that from someone? Or is it some big secret of yours?"

  "It is no secret," the librarian said. "The official policy of the Society is that maps should be as widely disseminated as possible, and we do not have a monopoly on that type of magic."

  "Oh good," said Zorian. He knew a few ways to magically copy documents, but they relied on animating writing instruments to transcribe the contents. That didn't work all that well on non-textual content, and was slow even for written works. The spell used by the Cartographer's Society made perfect duplicates of any given map, down to every detail and shade, with only a single spell. "So does that mean you're open to teaching me how to cast the spell?"

  "I'm afraid that isn't one of the services offered by this library. However, if you visit the main offices of the Cartographer's Society, you can sign up for some basic classes in map-related magic, map making, map handling, and map-related research like you're doing right now," the librarian said. "The prices are very affordable and it would probably help you in your quest to find these 'aranea' as well."

  Zorian hummed speculatively.

  "I guess I'll check it out," he said. He certainly had no shortage of money, thanks to his ill-considered stunt at the start of the restart, and he was going to have to spend a few days in Eldemar one way or the other.

  The librarian soon left Zorian to his own devices again, and he considered the map in front of him. He didn't have anything concrete yet, but he had several likely places to look for an aranean web. Korsa, Jatnik, Gozd and Padina were all large cities that had dungeon access and would be easy to reach from Cyoria, the source of the aranean expansion wave. One of them was bound to have the aranea living close by, and they might be willing to give him the location of nearby webs if he asked nicely (or bribed them sufficiently). Korsa was especially suspicious, since the city had an extensive textile industry, including one dealing in special clothes made out of spider silk. They got most of their raw material from Cyoria – unsurprising, as it produced the lion's share of the stuff – but at least some of it was gathered locally… 'from a mostly harmless breed of giant spiders native to the region'.

  Yeah. Totally not an aranean colony.

  Zorian made a small note in his notebook to track down every settlement that produced spider silk in any significant amount and decided to end the search for the day.

  ✦ ✧ ✦

  Zorian spent five days in Eldemar, though in all honesty he got everything he could about possible aranean sites on day three. The other two days were mostly so he could relax a bit and mentally prepare himself for what was to come. The idea of an impending meeting with another group of aranea left him in a depressed mood, since it reminded him of what happened to the previous group of aranea that had gotten involved with him, and that wasn't exactly the best mindset with which to go and meet a bunch of telepaths. He did his best to distract himself by sight-seeing around the capital and browsing various magical stores he encountered.

  He only browsed, though, never actually bought anything - Eldemar was a terribly expensive place to live in, he'd found. Everything, from room and board to already expensive magical reagents had higher prices in the capital than anywhere else Zorian had stayed at. 'Higher quality demands higher payments,' the merchants assured him. What a load of crap. He suspected the average citizen in Eldemar was simply richer than those in the rest of the country and could thus pay more. The large number of theaters, art houses and music halls present in the city certainly indicated that the inhabitants had plenty of money to burn.

  That aside, the city was nice. Orderly. The royal quarter was walled in and off-limits to uninvited commoners like him, but that didn't mean that the government left the rest of the city outside their little bubble rot. There were no obvious slums that Zorian could find – All of the buildings were well cared for and the streets free of trash and decay. Police patrolled everywhere, and were even joined by a group of well-armed soldiers at one point.

  Asking around, he found that security was always tight. Eldemar had been a favorite target for saboteurs during the Splinter Wars, at least one of which managed to set the entire city ablaze. The fire consumed many important buildings, including both of Eldemar's magical academies and its central library. By the time the city had recovered and rebuilt, most of the mages and their attendant facilities had already moved to Cyoria, cementing its rise as a magical nexus of the continent. Eldemar's citizens still seemed bitter about that, harboring a fair amount of resentment over the fact. In any case, security was upgraded immensely in the aftermath of the fire, and never really went away. Even their underworld was thoroughly purged and resculpted into something more manageable. Dungeon delving was forbidden within city limits – instead, the royal family sent in the army into the depths several times a year to get rid of anything remotely dangerous they could find.

  Basically, he could cross Eldemar from the list of possible candidates to have an aranean colony. If it ever existed, it was almost certainly wiped out or chased away at this point. It also helped explain why the invaders targeted Cyoria instead of Eldemar, even though Eldemar contained the royal palace, treasury and most of the government buildings - much juicier targets if one intended to collapse a country and destabilize the continent. The city was too well guarded for such a large-scale attack to take them by surprise.

  He ended up taking the classes offered by the Cartographer's Society. More accurately, he paid extra to have an instructor assigned to him for individual lessons, so he could save some time. Zorian was pleasantly surprised by the mage they sent him in response – the young man assigned to him was polite and straightforward in his teaching methods.
A welcome reprieve from Zorian's usual luck with teachers. He only attended three sessions with the man, but that was enough to give him a plethora of mapping spells, not all of which dealt with classical paper maps. Zorian's personal favorite in that bunch was a spell that created a miniature illusionary replica of the caster's surroundings above their palm – that had been fun to play with.

  It was tempting to just spend the rest of the restart goofing around with maps and visiting various curiosities in the capital, but he didn't. He had a task to do, and an invisible time limit counting in the background. At the end of the fifth day, he gathered up his things and set off for Korsa to find the aranea.

  ✦ ✧ ✦

  Korsa was a big city – the third biggest city in the kingdom, to be precise, right after Cyoria and Eldemar. Even though Zorian was certain the aranea were in there somewhere, he knew it would take him ages to find them if he searched for them by exploring the local Dungeon. So he didn't even try. Instead he approached the textile manufacturer that produced spider silk products and flat out asked him to introduce him to the aranea.

  The man refused, claiming he had no idea what Zorian was talking about before throwing him out of his store with a warning to never come back again. Harsh. Still, Zorian never actually expected his request to be granted. He just wanted the man to inform his aranea trading partners that there was this strange kid going around town asking people about them. If the local aranea were anything like those in Cyoria, that would get their attention in a flash. He wouldn't have to look for them because they would be looking for him.

  It took less than two days for the aranea to track him down.

  It was late in the evening of his second day in Korsa when Zorian felt an aranean signature enter his radius. Considering he was currently sitting on a small hill on the outskirts of Korsa, surrounded with a lot of grass and fields and nothing of any importance whatsoever, he felt confident that it was here for him.