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CHAPTER 12 lunatic
🕑 Added 2025-04-29 17:04:18 +0000 UTC“Soren Ambrosius.”
Hmm... The name rang a bell. But… who was that again?
Zogo squinted into the middle distance, deep in thought. Sure, he remembered everything he’d ever seen or heard—but “recall” and “instant access” were two very different things.
His memory was like a high-capacity hard drive from Earth. Excellent storage, terrible read speed.
Wait, wait—ah! Got it!
Soren was the owner of the Soren Mage Tower in Twinspire City. He'd even been mentioned back in Chapter 4!
Come to think of it, Zogo had actually mocked that tower back in the day, before the city even got its name.
No wonder he didn’t recognize the guy—back then, Soren still had hair. A measly hundred years later and now he looked like this? Yikes.
“AHHH!” Aisha suddenly shrieked, eyes wide with recognition. “You’re the Legendary Archmage Soren!”
Soren lit up like a kid who got picked first in dodgeball. He instantly struck the same dramatic pose again.
“I am the great and powerful—”
“Legendary Archmage Soren!!”
“Bwahaha!!”
Zogo observed the two of them with a dead stare. Their combined mental age probably didn’t even add up to legal adulthood.
“But… why do you look so…” Aisha trailed off, frowning.
“Not at all like what you imagined, right?”
She nodded vigorously.
“You were expecting a crusty old white dude in robes, messy white hair, Gandalf beard, leaning on a six-foot staff?”
More nodding. She looked like a bobblehead.
“Hmph! Such a narrow view! True magic requires true muscle!” Soren flexed his biceps like he was entering a bodybuilding competition.
Zogo quietly regretted that time he flew a little too close to the mage tower and accidentally roasted part of it. Should’ve aimed lower.
“Okay, okay, Aisha, focus. We're here for official business.” Zogo tugged her out of the hype zone.
“Oh! Right! This is our patent submission!”
Soren took the documents and gave them a cursory glance. His expression slowly shifted to something… less ridiculous. He flipped back to the beginning and began reading again, this time carefully.
“Can you demonstrate it for me?”
Aisha nodded and cast Jump-a-Jump.
Soren stared, eyes narrowing. After a long pause, he murmured, “Interesting… an illusion-based mimic spell?”
“Yep!”
“Usually, mimicry spells don’t pass for patents—no practical application. But... if the application is play, then the illusion counts as realization. That’s a clever twist. Who’s your mentor?”
He stamped the form as he spoke.
“Ms. Flynne Uman.”
Zogo’s ear twitched involuntarily at the name. He still had nightmares about her pop quizzes.
“Ah, makes sense now. Patent granted! And now—it’s time for Soren’s Question Corner!”
“…What?”
“The great and mighty Archmage Soren may appear at random locations around Twinspire! If you spot him, you may ask one question—and he will do his best to answer!”
Hard to believe a century-old man was seriously referring to himself in the third person, using a radio host voice to explain his gimmick.
Still, since they were here, Zogo figured... why not?
“Is there a way to share Jump-a-Jump with others?” Aisha asked on his behalf.
They'd talked about this. In this world, mages were like isolated islands floating in a magical sea. Spell models couldn’t be transmitted from one person to another.
So Zogo had an idea: if people couldn’t connect to each other—maybe they could all connect to the same thing.
In other words… a server.
A really big server.
“Oh! Now that’s a great question,” Soren said. “Why don’t you just teach it to whoever you want to share it with?”
“I need to share it with lots of people. Including those who can’t even use magic.”
“Hah! Now that’s just silly! We all know spell models can’t be shared! Unless, of course, the Goddess of Magic herself descended and—”
Soren froze mid-sentence. His eyes narrowed. He began to pace.
After a long while, he stopped. “Hmm… maybe not impossible. Your spell model doesn’t need to be cast to be useful, right?”
With a dramatic flourish, he summoned a thick tome—thud!—onto the table. The dust cloud it kicked up was aggressive.
At least 20 pounds. Zogo recognized the space ring it came from. He had one too—but he preferred using a mimic treasure chest. Because the ring was a rare item for him, while the chest monster was, well… just a monster. With built-in storage magic. Perfect synergy.
Soren flicked his fingers. The book flew open, pages flipping at super speed.
It looked uncannily like Earth-style speed-reading, complete with squinty eyes and fluttering pages. Could he even read that fast?
He clenched his fist, and the book stopped.
Reading aloud, he said:
"The gods grant spells in response to prayer. Though they cannot be cast directly, studying these spells allows comprehension of runic intent."
He slammed the book shut and banished it back into his ring.
“So basically, all you need… is a god.”
“That's all we need?!” Aisha choked. Were gods just lying around on clearance or something?! Why were all legendary mages like this—random, chaotic, impossible to follow?
“No no no, it doesn’t have to be a living god,” Soren explained. “There were plenty who died in the Divine Wars of the last era. Later research found that divine remains could store spell models. Followers could still study these spells through prayer. They just couldn’t cast them.”
In other words, you find a dead god’s corpse, get people to worship it, and boom—you have cloud access to uncastable spells.
Zogo saw through it instantly.
The corpse is the server.
The worshippers are the clients.
Faith is the Ethernet cable.
Prayer is plugging in.
The read-only rule? That’s just some weird divine firewall protocol.
Disturbingly sacrilegious... but oddly effective.
Carbon-based servers. Who even came up with this tech tree? Still, its potential scalability beat silicon hands down.
“Can you do it?” Soren didn’t ask Aisha. He turned to Zogo, voice low and serious.
“Do what?” Aisha blinked. She’d clearly missed half the conversation.
“Of course,” Soren said, not waiting for an answer. “Hard to find, but divine remains are still around. There’s a steady flow on the black market—people think they can cure diseases or ascend to legend or whatever. Since I said I’d answer... I’ll take you to check it out.”
He opened a teleport circle.
With a flash of light, one girl, one dragon, and one mad mage appeared in a dim tunnel lit by faint glowstones. It was lined with hidden stalls, most run by masked vendors.
“This… way,” Soren wheezed. “Teleport drained my mana... getting old…”
They arrived at a shabby-looking beggar curled up in a corner. Filthy rags, unknown original color, beard like a shrub. He looked unconscious.
“This is the Seeker. He’s great at finding divine remains.”
“Hundred gold. Fifty upfront,” the man mumbled without opening his eyes. Clearly not the haggling type.
Zogo could afford that. And if this turned into a full-on game release, the return on investment would be way more than that.
“Is he... reliable?” Aisha whispered. “He looks like a scammer. If we’ve got gold to waste, give it to me instead.”
“You’ve never read a novel?” Soren cut in. “This guy is obviously a fallen legend. Tragic past, living in exile. But if summoned... he’ll rise again!”
Aisha narrowed her eyes. “Is he one of those?”
“Nope.”
“…Huh?”
“Doesn’t matter. Pay him.”
Zogo nodded. “It’s fine. I’ve memorized his scent. Dragons have long memories, short tempers, and eternal grudges.”
Aisha sighed and pulled out a royal bank check. The toy store’s profits and part of Zogo’s savings were deposited there.
“Address?” the Seeker mumbled.
“Zogo’s Toy Shop.”
After the pair left, Soren reappeared beside the Seeker.
“Who’s the lunatic trying to defy the gods this time?” the Seeker asked without opening his eyes.
“An ancient red dragon... and a young illusionist who probably doesn’t know what she’s gotten into.”
“The same red dragon who used to rob nobles?”
“The very one.”
“And how’s he planning to defy the gods?”
“By making a game.”
“…Excuse me?”
“I’m serious. And honestly, I think making the game is the main goal. Defying the gods is just a happy accident.”
“…Huh?”
The Seeker sat upright, finally showing some emotion. He stared at Soren like the man had grown antlers.
After a long, stunned silence, he muttered:
“…What a lunatic.”
Soren gave a weary smile.
“Yep. Total lunatic.”
