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Core Collapse Chapter 24
🕑 Added 2024-03-28 13:58:13 +0000 UTCChapter 24
Ubo Urban tried to cast Candleflame. And he failed. He tried again, and he failed. He sighed, taking a sip of the tea that he had been served while waiting for the master of the house.
This new version of Candleflame was a spell so simple that a ten year old apprentice could develop it, but she was too inexperienced to teach it yet. That was one of the great problems with magic. It was relatively easy to repeat a spell that you have spent hours or years drilling into your brain, but incredibly difficult to teach the spell to another.
The Mage class was as much a burden as it was a privilege. Perhaps more the former than the latter, at times. The class was technically rare, but within the Urban bloodline it was rare not to awaken as a mage. And thus the burden of ensuring that magic and magic theory survived to the next generations fell on their shoulders.
Oh, it was a gilded mantle, that was certain. The Urbans were well taken care of by the crown, with lands aplenty. While the Weaver Estate was larger and more impressive than Ubo’s personal holdings, Ubo was but a humble scion. The fact that he had been given an estate simply for passing his Mage apprenticeship and becoming a journeyman showed just how wealthy his family was.
Vella, as an outsider, would be left to make her own fortune once her apprenticeship was finished. But the Urban family, upon the recommendation of the crown, was still investing significant funds into the girl’s education. Not the least of which was Ubo’s own time as her teacher. She sat in a corner of the room, making a biscuit hover before her nose.
He wasn’t timing her this time. Not every exercise was a test. Anyway, her goal was to get to three minutes of levitating an object with her mind before moving on to the next stage, so the forty five seconds or so that she could manage now was but a short step on the path that she had to follow. An improvement, one to be proud of, but a very long way left to go.
He would provide encouragement when necessary, or reprimand if she began to neglect her studies, but Ubo had always found that a student who could self-motivate was more valuable than one who required constant praise and support. Especially if they began to confuse the praise with the actual metrics of success. Vella was Ubo’s third apprentice, and he’d had time to practice the art of teaching.
The biscuit dropped, and Ubo judged the girl’s expression.
“You’re improving,” he said. “That biscuit is heavier than the pen I had you practicing with yesterday, and you’re holding it for the same amount of time, give or take.”
“Were you timing me?” she asked.
“Of course I was,” he lied. “But it’s apples to oranges, Vella. To pass the test you must float the pen. Floating a biscuit or a stone is good practice, but it doesn’t count towards taking the next step.”
She nodded, mouthing a few words. She took a sip of her tea to allow her mind time to recover after the exercise.
The room they were in was painted aqua-green, if Ubo had to put a name to the color, with hardwood floors. They had been waiting for almost an hour, but they had come unannounced and been informed that the master of the house was busy when they arrived, so he couldn’t exactly complain. They had been served tea and set to wait in a room filled with books, although none the sort that Ubo personally found interesting.
Finally the door opened, and a young man came in. Ubo could tell that he possessed some sort of Class just by looking at him. With high level Class holders, he could get a sense of their auras, but even at the early stages of their development most non-commoners had a certain sense to them. At least, that was what Ubo believed. The confidential information he’d received from the head of the Urban family all but confirmed his suspicion.
“Tom!” Vella exclaimed. “Look what I can do!”
She began levitating her biscuit once more. She hadn’t rested properly, so she only managed to hold it for twenty seconds before catching it on its fall.
“Congratulations, Vella. I’m sure you’ll make a fantastic Mage. I’m a little confused as to why you’re visiting with your teacher, however. Master Urban? What brings you here?” Tom asked.
“Curiosity, mostly,” Ubo admitted. “Tell me, Tom, are you a Controller, as I suspect you to be?”
Tom’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “What makes you think that?”
“It’s very clear that there is a sanctioned Controller running around the kingdom creating new dungeons and causing issues with the financial system for some reason,” Ubo explained. “And the Urban family has investigated the source of this new Dungeon Steel, and the other fine metals that have hit the market recently. Considering that they come from the same dungeons which have changed within a very small time frame, it seems likely to assume that the young Lord who was gifted a lavish estate by the crown for no apparent reason might have something to do with it.”
Ubo paused for a minute, then added “Also Vella all but told me that you were.”
“I did not!”
Ubo chuckled. “She is a very good student, you know. Of the three young minds I’ve been tasked with, she’s the most promising.”
The praise went a long ways towards distracting the girl’s outrage.
Tom considered how to handle the situation for a moment, then admitted “Yes, I am a Controller. What does it matter?”
“It’s simply one link in the bridge of understanding that I’m forming as to how Vella was able to develop a novel spell without any formal education at all. I’m not certain if you’re aware, but such a feat is an extraordinary accomplishment. Her explanation that she was watching a Sorceress perform magic and drew inspiration from that is far more credible when there is a Controller in the world to summon heroes from Earth.”
“I see,” Tom said. “So this is mage business, and has nothing to do with me directly then? You’re here to speak with Jessica?”
“I would appreciate an introduction to the fine young lady, yes,” Ubo admitted. “But I would be remiss if I didn’t interrogate you first, Tom. I’m curious, what level are you? I don’t have a skill which allows me to simply analyze you, and I find that doing so without permission is uncouth. If you had an Aura I might be able to gauge you by that, but it’s a curious and well known fact that Controllers don’t develop one, so I can make no assumptions about you based on passive observations.”
“I’m level thirty-one,” Tom admitted, seeing no reason to hide it.
Ubo’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “So young? The king must be desperate if he’s leveling you so fast. I admit that I’ve only recently become familiar with the intricacies of your class, but generally the practice is to stretch out your leveling process for as long as possible. Do you know why?”
“Because of the level eighty quest,” Tom said.
“Exactly so,” Ubo agreed.
“I’m a little bit different than most Controllers,” Tom admitted. “That’s why I have the ability to Seed my dungeons with Dungeon Steel and other minerals. And other goods, for that matter.”
“Interesting,” Ubo said. “I admit that I’d be very curious to explore your abilities, but unfortunately it’s well known that only a Controller can perform the Skills associated with their class. Aside from which I might get in trouble with the crown for overstepping my mandate. ‘Tis the crown’s prerogative to manage the Controllers of the kingdom, not the Urban clan. The Urbans are tasked with a separate but just as important measure, and that is the preservation of magical knowledge. Which brings us back to your heroes.”
“They’re not mine, exactly,” Tom argued. “I summoned them, that’s all. They’re their own people.”
“Of course, I didn’t mean to imply otherwise,” Ubo said quickly. “However, I am curious how many you intend to summon.”
“I’ve summoned four.”
“I asked how many you intend to summon, not how many you’ve summoned,” Ubo pointed out.
Tom frowned. “It’s … there’s a complication. When I summon, they come through in batches. I’m not certain that I can limit the number that come through. The last time it was three, and the next time it might be ten times that.”
“Is that a downside?” Ubo asked. “Tom, in the typical lifespan of a Controller, they summon around thirty people from earth. About one in three of them end up being heroes. The fact that you have gotten four heroes out of four summons is a surprising statistical anomaly. A curious one, in fact. I would encourage you to continue practicing your Summoning ability, Tom. You never know who will come through. They might end up being the savior of this world.”
Tom considered. He couldn’t use Alpha Core to summon more heroes. Each core could summon one hero per year, and he had used Alpha, Beta, and Gamma Cores to summon Aisha, Grant, and Emil. But he did have that one Command Core that had survived linking into his network. The problem was that the cores were all already linked into his network, so if he tried to summon one Hero, he might end up with thirty.
“I’ll consider your advice, Master Urban,” Tom said. “Is there anything else? Or would you like me to introduce you to Jessica now?”
“I’ll take that introduction if you don’t mind. Where is the young sorceress?”
“I think she’s inside the dungeon,” Tom answered. “It might be best to wait until she emerges with the others.”
“I see,” Ubo said. “Well, I am content to wait. Would you care to tell me of your adventures, Tom? Or would you perhaps like to hear some of mine, from when I was younger and still pursuing levels?”
“Ubo tells great stories, Tom,” Vella chimed in.
“Alright, let’s hear some,” Tom agreed, and they spent a pleasant hour or so being regaled by tales of the Mage’s adventuring days. With practiced showmanship, Ubo told them the story of how he had burned off his own eyebrows while impress his first adventuring party by starting a campfire with magic.
He moved on to the time that he had misidentified a cursed object as a merely enchanted one, and had almost unintentionally wound up married to the woman he’d given it to. He edited the story for his audience, keeping in mind Vella’s young age, but gave the impression that the woman had grown increasingly salacious until the mistake was discovered. The wedding was of course called off immediately once it was discovered that her feelings were the result of a curse and not her own.
That lead the conversation into the topic of cursed objects in general, and the master Mage gave a number of cautionary tales related to dealing with such dangerous – yet powerful – objects. He gave examples.
A mirror which made you look more beautiful – not just in the mirror but in reality. The downside to the object was an obsession with the object, which had eventually consumed an unsuspecting courtier’s life entirely. Only destroying the mirror saved the young man from madness.
Ubo reported that the king possessed a crown of thorns which was a famous cursed object. It gave the wearer incredible insight and understanding, at the cost of extreme pain while wearing it. For obvious reasons, the crown was only used in extreme situations.
Of course, according to Ubo, the most common examples were weapons that whispered thoughts of paranoia and distrust in their wielder’s mind. They were especially dangerous for their insidiousness, as while they were powerful weapons if the wielder was able to separate the item’s suggestions from their own inner voice, most times wielding these objects resulted in madness or betrayal.
He was summarizing the various sorts of common cursed objects when the adventurers emerged from Alpha Dungeon, and it was time for the introductions to take place.
