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An Otherworldly Scholar - 194
🕑 Added 2025-01-15 02:15:40 +0000 UTCA world away, lost among the Appalachian Mountains, was a small cabin with moss-covered shingles, a porch, a chimney, and a shed on the side. There was nothing outstanding about the cabin other than the fact such a simple house belonged to an old eccentric millionaire. The interior was as unremarkable as the outside, save for a minor detail. Hundreds of paper sheets written in an otherworldly language covered the dining room table.
The writing belonged to the common language of the Kingdom of Ebros, and after a year of lessons with a quite attractive teacher, I could read it just as well as plain English. Fifty-eight sheets of parchment and cheap commercial paper were completely readable—forty-two on the table and sixteen on the floor. Another sixty-seven were partially covered. A lot more were completely hidden in the piles of paper.
I tried to move the first layer of paper, but my hand went through it like a ghost. The room around me was only a memory. The original place was a world away, where I wouldn’t dare go for fear of losing my way back to Farcrest.
Earth didn’t feel like home anymore, even with all its decadent luxuries, such as streaming services and door delivery.
I opened my eyes back at the orphanage. Stacks of paper laid before me, one for the notes written on parchment, another for the ones written on commercial paper, another for the incomplete records, and a last one with reconstructions—a year’s worth of work.
I have learned three things. Byrne was brilliant. He worked with the Man in Yellow for a long time before pulling out. And he created the portal in the cabin’s basement. I hadn’t figured out how Byrne came to Ebros initially, but it was safe to assume all his subsequent travels between worlds had been the work of his own mind.
I stretched my back. The bad news was that the part of Byrne’s documentation that showed how to create a portal back to Earth was covered in a blanket of mostly non-sensical scribbling. I got glimpses of it, but not enough to form a solid theory, even with Lyra’s investigation skills.
Using [Mirage], I recreated the moment she realized I was a Runeweaver. I zoomed into her face—priceless. Then, the questions came. Then, the vindication. Lyra wrote the research that had cost her place at the Imperial Library. Verbatim. From the top of her head: Runeweaver Baram’s historical artifacts and the inability to equate runeweaving techniques to Prestige-level enchanting.
Lyra had flown too close to the truth.
Ebros Scholars believed the Runeweaver Class was a natural progression from the Enchanter Class. Much like Scholars evolved into Sages or Tacticians depending on specific requirements, Enchanters evolved into Arcanists or Runeweavers. Lyra believed that Runeweaver wasn’t the next step on the Enchanter evolution line, but an entirely new Class with a unique technique incompatible with Enchanter and Arcanist’s enchanting.
Lyra’s discoveries must’ve triggered a security subsystem tasked with keeping the System’s true identity a secret. Zealots received the Quest and showed up at the Imperial Library, and the next day, Lyra was expelled. All things considered, things could’ve gone a lot worse for Lyra. Astrid avoided the subject, but I knew she had killed people on System Quests.
There was a silver lining in the whole issue, besides that Lyra was safe and happily living at the orphanage. Byrne’s research gave me the tool I needed to inject my code into the System.
Technically speaking, I wasn’t modifying the System, but rather the runes inside my mana pool. Like regular coding, my mana pool was mainly constructed from classes and functions. I couldn’t edit functions, which were probably coded in the Source Crystals, which I started calling the physical core of the System. However, I could edit the parameters and attributes of the local instances of certain classes.
In practice, I could change the color of the System prompts and, more importantly, edit my skills. System Skills weren’t anything more than a list of instructions. For instance, [Minor Geokinesis]’s target had to be a mineral. How did the System exactly know what a mineral was? I couldn’t tell. The System called some sort of detection function during the cast, but that was a black box on its own. However, I could get creative.
I closed my eyes and dove into my mana pool.
The runes and glyphs that seemed so alien before were an open book now—for the most part. I looked for my [Minor Geokinesis] and read through the variables until I found the cast target. Despite being a simple change, the hairs on the back of my neck prickled. A simple mistake, and I could set the target to myself and turn my own bones into pikes, just like those Belya Nara used to attack Firana during the tournament.
I changed ‘mineral’ to ‘wood’ and opened my eyes.
“So far, so good,” I said.
A sudden ping startled me. On the wall, a bluish-grey light turned on.
Lyra Jorn required my presence. I looked at the enchanted pocket clock attached to my jacket. I was late for our meeting.
I jumped to my feet, gathered all the documents in their respective binders, and put them into the enchanted safe. The whole room was thief-proof, but an extra layer of protection wouldn’t hurt. Our biggest security asset wasn’t the enchanted protections or the alarm systems but the fact nobody had a reason to be near the manor.
I walked to the door, but before turning the knob, I had an idea.
I channeled the modified [Minor Geokinesis] skill and aimed at the door. The wood seemingly turned into clay, creating a hole in the middle of the door. I stepped outside before restoring the wood to its original appearance. Other than a slight fracture line, there was no sign of the metamorphosis.
“Hard work pays off,” I muttered with a smile.
The manor seemed deserted.
I entered the western wing and crossed the ballroom into the old kitchen, where Ginz’s workshop was located. The place hadn’t changed much other than in size. Prototypes were scattered around the working benches, tools hung from the walls, and piles of raw materials were stored piled up to the ceiling on shelves and boards.
“Come on, magic man! We don’t have all afternoon!” Ginz rushed me.
I sighed. My Prestige Class and nobility title evoked little respect within the orphanage’s grounds.
“We are indeed behind schedule,” Lyra added.
“You can’t rush art,” I replied, rolling up my sleeves and examining Ginz’s gadget. It looked like the pedal-powered washing machine, but its purpose was far more sinister.
I closed the enchantment circuit a minute later, and the machine came to life. The gears turned, and the churning mechanism inside the canister stirred the mixture. Exhausted, I sat on the nearest chair. Ginz and Lyra were tireless when it came to enchanted gadgets. It didn’t help that I had to deal with a hundred different affairs in Whiteleaf Manor on top of teaching classes.
“If this works, it would be a game changer,” Lyra said, her eyes fixed on the contraption.
I wasn’t so sure.
My eyes wandered through the workshop as the machine worked. Ginz and Lyra had been creating prototypes at an astounding rate. I even questioned if either of them had slept for the past year. Half of the gadgets lying around had been designed to help the Jorn dukedom with their connectivity problems.
The Jorn dukedom was the northernmost territory of the kingdom, an area shredded by jagged mountains and with little room for agriculture. Unlike Farcrest, whose mountain range served as a natural barrier against the Farlands, monsters in the Jorn dukedom were adapted to life in the mountains. It was hard to mobilize an army across the mountains to defend the hundreds of settlements along the range, so Monster Surges displaced a vast portion of the population and claimed many victims.
Lyra’s people were hardy and had survived thanks to their warrior discipline, but Lyra’s dream wasn’t just to survive but to see the Jorn territories flourish.
Without Firana around, the flying machine experiment was shelved for safety reasons. Still, with my blessing, Lyra had sent a working prototype to the Jorn dukedom with a hundred-page document on operating it.
Ginz fed the machine with mana, and for forty minutes, the gears turned. Then, he activated the killswitch, and the enchantment released its mana in the form of harmless blue sparks.
I wasn’t entirely sure if the machine we had just created would help with the Jorn struggle.
“Don’t you dare touch it with your greasy hands,” Lyra said, pushing Ginz away from the gadget.
Since we started tinkering with gears, chains, and moving parts, Ginz’s hands were permanently stained with Gray Thorn Oil, giving them an ashen appearance. The oil was harmless and even served as a hair conditioner in the absence of something better. I had pressed Elincia to produce a few commercial batches, but she wasn’t in the business of making beauty products despite the demand for them—she called herself a serious Alchemist.
Lyra opened the lid, and steam flowed from the opening. With greedy eyes, she grabbed a scoop of the white content.
“This will change everything.”
Lyra brought the spoon to her mouth, and her eyes lit up.
“Bloody Corruption… this is great!”
I grabbed a scoop of ice cream for myself and savored it. It needed more honey, but the taste of berries was very pleasant. Most importantly, it felt like ice cream. Elincia was going to love it. I put a big spoonful in a mug.
“I’m clocking out,” I said. “Make sure to clean everything. We don’t want Stonemason Ants skittering around the manor.”
Ginz tried to take a pinch of ice cream with his oily hand, but Lyra smacked him away. They dismissed me like I was a lowly servant and got into a physical struggle for the ice cream.
I let them be.
I went out through the windows and into the backyard.
Elincia’s alchemy workshop had outgrown the desk in her bedroom, so we had built her a new working place in the backyard. Elincia’s new workshop was an octagonal gazebo with a wooden frame, tall glass windows, and enough space to house her new distillation tools and the hundreds of magically sealed maceration jars. Attached to the gazebo was a greenhouse where she grew rare alchemical ingredients. Next to the greenhouse was the ‘chillarium’, used to grow winter species during summer.
I entered Elincia’s workshop through the open window.
“Got something for you,” I announced my presence.
“One moment,” Elincia replied, her voice muffled by the leather protective gear.
High-level concoctions were potentially dangerous, and more than once, we had to incinerate Elincia’s clothing after a few drops of potions splashed her. During one of her attempts to make a legendary potion, Elincia had created a mixture that wouldn’t stop freezing everything around the vial. She took the vial to the backyard, and I had to use [Pyrokinesis] for three hours straight to prevent the lawn from freezing until the effect vanished.
I was the only one whose working area would pass an OSHA inspection.
Elincia was usually mindful, but there were times when she got a tad too lost in the sauce. Sometimes, I wondered how society thrived in Ebros with all those reckless high-level combatants and supports running around. My Earthly sensitivities towards safety were hard to bury.
Elincia used the tongs to leave a bubbly red vial on a safety rack designed by Ginz. Then, she took off her leather ‘hazmat’ helmet. Her hair was tied in a high ponytail, and her forehead was covered in sweat. She looked as pretty as someone could be inside a cumbersome leather hazmat suit.
“What is that?” I asked, pointing at the bubbly potion.
Despite the lack of a heat source, the boiling didn’t stop.
“Insect repellent,” Elincia said.
Lately, monstrous insects had arrived at the Farlands. The Teal Moon orcs weren’t happy. Man-made structures were Stonemason Ants’ favorite chewing toys, and they were surprisingly sneaky for dog-sized ants. We had a worrying collapse in the iron mine a few days ago, but Lyra’s inspection was inconclusive. Thanks to my ‘tyrannical’ security measures, there were no fatal victims, but as a result, our monthly quota of iron was behind schedule. The orcs blamed the insects for the incident.
“What do you have there?” she asked, eyeing my ice cream mug.
I grabbed a spoonful and fed it to Elincia. Her eyes widened in panic.
“Guack khe huck!”
Cold foods, other than freezing water in winter, weren’t a thing in Ebros. It was strange, considering they had ice magicians and freezing potions available. I guessed they weren’t good at coming up with alternative uses for spells and potions outside what the System determined an item was for.
“Let it melt!” I said before Elincia could spit.
Elincia’s panicked expression slowly turned to bliss.
“Ice cream!” she shouted.
Ice cream, along with carbonated drinks and cheese puffs, was one of the mythical foods from my homeland. I’ve been hyping it up for months, and I was glad the result was enjoyable.
Elincia opened her mouth, demanding more.
“Shouldn’t you be with the kids?” Elincia asked, taking off the hazmat suit. Underneath, she was wearing her usual Renaissance-esque beige dress. Not even all the spare money flowing through our coffers made her get something better.
“Izabeka is tenderizing them,” I replied, feeding her more ice cream.
Not everything was rosy around the orphanage.
The new kids lacked the discipline of the orphans raised in the Lowel’s orphanage. Working with Firana, Ilya, Zaon, and Wolf had been a pleasure compared to my new apprentices. Most of them didn’t even want to attend the lessons, and not even the presence of an almighty Sage could change their minds. Discipline had always been my weakness as a teacher, but we had the right person for the job: the ex-captain of the city guard.
“Any word from our graduates?” Elincia asked.
“Nothing so far,” I replied.
It had been three weeks without a letter from the kids, which wasn’t unheard of, but they usually wrote once a month. Wolf’s handwriting was still the most pretty of the four, but the others were improving.
“They are probably busy with fieldwork. It’s almost summer, so they must fight monsters or escort construction crews out there.”
Elincia nodded. More than a year had passed since the kids left the orphanage, and we were getting used to trusting them. The letters had been positive so far, although sparse in details.
“So, do you want to go for a walk to the river now that the day is so pretty?” I asked.
“Did you check the repairs on the mine already?”
I cursed under my breath. Ginz’s ice cream machine had taken most of the afternoon off my schedule. The worst part of being in charge of a hamlet was all the inspections I had to perform. Lyra and Ginz were of great help, but I was the man in charge when it came to potentially dangerous monsters.
“Tomorrow?” I asked.
“I’m expecting an order from the Alchemist Guild tomorrow,” Elincia replied. “The day after tomorrow?”
“The day after tomorrow,” I said, sitting on the window ledge.
“I will prepare my swimsuit then,” Elincia said.
I blew her a kiss and returned to the manor to put the ice cream mug in the sink. We had a proper sink now, with a potion-purified cistern and water disposal system.
After dropping the mug, I exited the kitchen and walked down the path to Whiteleaf Manor. The orc watchmen greeted me as I passed by. I took the low pass by the riverside and observed the hamlet. Orcs worked the ground and manned the workshops. Most of them were ex-members of the free tribes who didn’t have problems with a more sedentary life. Teal Moon warriors remained in their original territories, deep into the Farlands. Still, we heard from them almost weekly as messengers brought news about monster activity in the nearby valleys. The hamlet thrived.
The twelve white oaks of Whiteleaf Manor greeted me when I reached the top of the road.
Izabeka yelled at the top of her lungs from the shadow of one of the white oaks while the orphans did laps around the manor’s grounds. The blue and gray Rosebud Fencing Academy’s uniform made her look like a mean drill sergeant. We didn’t have a strict dress code, but Izabeka was just more comfortable in uniform.
Astrid and Loki observed the kids sitting against one of the white oaks. Unlike Izabeka, Astrid wore a fashionable short cloak and a loose robe with treacherous folds. I knew for a fact that she had at least a dozen daggers and other nasty surprises hidden up her sleeves. Tendrils of Corruption still crept up her neck and arms, barely visible through her clothes.
“Ladies. I assume here’s the venue of the beauty pageant?” I greeted them.
“So lame.” Astrid rubbed the bridge of her nose.
Izabeka sighed, keeping her drill sergeant demeanor.
Tough crowd.
“Care if I borrow Ash? I have to go to the mines,” I said.
“First taking kids to the Farlands, and now into a mine? You never cease to surprise me, Robert Clarke,” Izabeka said.
She shouted Ash’s name as the orphans passed through the front yard. The boy parted from the group and approached us under the jealous gaze of his classmates. Izabeka untied her belt and threw it to the boy.
“Escort Rob to the mines,” Izabeka ordered.
Ash tied the belt with the sheath around his waist.
“Understood.”
Shu, Notki, and Virdian waved at me before following the group around the manor. We had a dozen orphans between the ages of ten and fourteen undergoing my special training regime to become an Imperial Cadet. Of course, none of them knew that was the program's goal. I had made it clear to Prince Adrien. Only those who wanted to become an Imperial Cadet would undergo the exams.
“Want to come with us, pal?” I asked.
Loki lazily opened his eyes just to turn his back to me. His reaction wasn’t a surprise. For the past year I’ve been using his help to study runeweaving almost daily. Loki was probably sleep-deprived by Changeling standards.
I led the way to the stables, Ash following close behind, and we grabbed two mountain horses.
“How are lessons going?” I asked.
“They are lazy and fickle. Even Shu is more hardworking than half of the new ones,” Ash replied, pulling the reins and leading the horse down the cobbled path. He was catching Lyra’s big words.
I followed.
“Don’t be so harsh. Most of them grew up in completely different circumstances,” I said, trying to sound diplomatic, although Ash had a point.
New orphans weren’t as easy to work with. Some came from criminal backgrounds; others had families until not long ago and found the communal life at the orphanage difficult to get accustomed to. The city guard even threw the ones who were too young to be incarcerated into the orphanage. Very few of them remained more than a week before leaving.
The older the kid, the harder it was for them to adapt to orphanage life. It was considered common knowledge that one couldn’t cheat the System to get a better class. For them, all the lessons and practice were useless.
Still, Elincia convinced many of them to give us a chance, even if only for the roof over their heads and three warm meals a day. She was a way better governess than I could ever be.
“Those who arrived just after the Lich’s Monster Surge have progressed a lot,” I pointed out.
“Those are alright, I guess,” Ash shrugged. “They know we are serious business.”
I smiled. Ash was quite opinionated—judgmental even—but he wasn’t wrong. After witnessing the feats of the oldest kids, he tried twice or thrice as hard. Ash could deny it as much as he wanted, but he also tried to help those falling behind.
“You are doing a good job, Ash,” I said. It was scary how fast a kid could progress when they took things seriously.
“I know,” he replied.
Astrid was waiting for us on the bridge. As we passed by, she climbed on my horse, not because she preferred me as her travel partner but because Bucko was the only horse that allowed Astrid to ride him. Beastfolk had a difficult relationship with wildlife.
Bucko was also the only horse who hadn’t thrown me off.
Astrid leaned against me, looking backward.
“Izabeka told me about the ants. I thought you two could use reinforcements,” she said.
The only visible weapon on her was the sword hanging from her side.
Ash and Astrid got along quite well, considering their somewhat brusque personalities.
I made a mental note to feed them ice cream later.
The mines weren’t far from the manor. We traveled the compressed-dirt road west by the riverside. Old orcs smoked on pipes on the side of the road, waiting for the younger ones to finish their work. They invited us to smoke with them, but I declined, blaming the mine incident. Besides, Astrid hated the smell of smoke, and Ash was too young to smoke orcish tobacco.
We passed the sawmill, where a couple of orcs kept an eye on a massive log while the saw squared the edges. The waterwheel lazily turned, powering the vertical saw. In the courtyard, a squad of young orcs debarked the recently cut logs that flowed downstream. Most of the construction materials produced in the hamlet were used to erect new workshops, barns, and warehouses. The rest went to Farcrest to be sold by Nasiah or exchanged for other materials and finished products.
Little orc kids splashed in the pools formed by the river. They waved at us as we passed through.
To maintain a low profile, we tried to trade with Farcrest as little as possible. Still, the Marquis was too focused on the imminent opening of the trade route with the elven kingdom to keep an eye on my ‘poor’ fief. The fact that orcs were frugal helped us hide that we were growing at an accelerated rate.
Not an hour later, we reached the iron mine. Steel rails crossed the road and led to the warehouse by the river. There, the ore was loaded into rafts and transported through a tributary of the main river to the furnaces. The furnaces, kilns, and quarry were placed away from the hamlet to hide our activity and prevent the dust and smoke from annoying the residents.
We guided the horses up the mountain.
The orc tribes had little metal to work with, so a good chunk of our production was used for crafting weapons, armor, and tools for those still living in the Farlands. The leftovers were used to craft tools and to feed Ginz’s insatiable hunger for materials.
We reached the mines. The site was guarded by a detachment of Teal Moon warriors with rifles hidden under their cloaks. Little One was talking with a group of orc miners. As soon as they saw me approach, the group broke off, and the elite warriors came to greet me. In the end, only those orcs with a talent to control magic had been selected to be part of the firing squad.
“Master Clarke,” Little One said with a smile. “The fixes are ready, and the work has resumed. We hadn’t found signs of Stonemason Ants.”
The pit boss, an orc as big as Little One, nodded.
“The miners are restless. They say they hear skittering inside the walls, which is preposterous. You can’t even hear your own words with all the hammering.”
Lyra’s magical jackhammer had been celebrated among orc miners. Though instead of halving their working hours, orcs doubled the iron production. Everything for the survival of the tribe, they said.
“They hear skittering?” I asked.
“Probably their imagination. We are not made to be underground, but we will if that’s what it takes to help our brothers and sisters,” the pit boss said.
I exchanged a glance with Ash. He nodded, and we got off the horses.
“I will inspect the repairs,” I said.
The pit boss grunted and showed us the way. Unimaginative people were great at some positions, but I would rather be safe than sorry.
“I have a bad feeling about this,” Astrid said as we approached the mine’s entrance.
Comments
Trevayne
Thanks for the chapter.
Paul McGlynn
I agree, it was clumsy. I'm also disappointed that Lyra's reaction to learning that Rob was a Runeweaver was completely glossed over. She was a scholar who got kicked out of the academy for coming too close to the truth about runes, I would have thought we'd get to get a description a bit more detailed than "priceless". What sort of questions would she ask? How would that change the way she interacted with Rob? What sort of innovation could she bring to the table now that she found out that Runeweaving was possible? What's the point of writing about something if all the interesting stuff is going to be summarized in one sentence? Same with explaining that the System was artificial to Izabeka; that was just a "so I told her it was artificial and she was kind of upset. anyway, and after that I went...". In fact, we only got "huh, that explains the enchanted stuff" from Kiln, and then that "oh heck you're a runeweaver" exchange was never elaborated on or expanded upon. What was even the point of Rob conjuring up Lyra's reaction with [Mirage] in the first place if not to replay the scene and describe it to the readers after the fact? Ever since Elincia told Rob that 'Runeweaver' was a quasi-Legendary class and that he needed to be very careful not to let anybody know, I had been anticipating people's reactions to learning that a legendary Runeweaver was in their midst. I thought it would be more than literally nothing. But at this rate I don't even think revealing the truth to Prince Adrien will get so much as a passing reference. It's honestly a let-down.
ElAyVee
You do not want to use flamethrower inside a tunnel, unless you can survive without breathing.
Ben Bass
TYFTC! Great to see that the orphanage is growing, although with a bunch of the ‘original’ kids off at school it is going to be harder to instill the culture they had earlier. I think they will get there over time. In the grand scheme of things one year isn’t that much to get a crop of kids in shape and up to Rob’s “standards”. Now as to the skittering, you should definitely listen to those who work and spend time in a place, they better than anyone else will know when things are right or wrong.
Sam S
..."Lyra opened the lid, and steam flowed from the opening..." steam-> fog ... steam is evaporation due to boiling. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fog
Jouni Osmala
Well, what happens when they get a letter from academy where kids tell them about how they feel about being imperial academy without giving any secrets and in passing mention certain archivist by name. Assuming that everything they send could be read by someone else and the name alone is the main message hidden in a normal letter from kids to their family.
jaskij
You really didn't do a good job showing the time skip. It took me halfway through the chapter before I was sure there was one.
Weird_Medic
It's great seeing how far they came from, but the bigger you are, the more attention you attract. Curious to see how the orphanage will deal with that.
Matthew
Tunnel fighting anything that lives in the farlands sounds like a double helping of "hell no" with a generous drizzle of "only if I can have a flamethrower"
