Advent of Dragonfire [A LitRPG Adventure]

"Two," I say, holding up a pair of fingers. Mazis, a hulking man covered in gray fur and with the face of a wolf, nods down at me from two feet over my head.

"You are getting to be like a bear in svada, teasta," he says. I can't help but smile at the compliment while he turns to shout something at one of the cooks in his terminal kitchen. Ever since discovering Mazis' place on my way to the adventuring league almost a week ago, I have stopped by every day.

"What is svada?" I ask him, dropping a pair of orange coins onto the countertop between us. I could have Galea tell me, the first thing I did when she was up to the task was have her store the entirety of my translation book so that I could search through it at any time. Something is lost, I think, in doing that, authenticity maybe.

Mazis chews on my question, trying to find a way to put it. "It is a store where they sell food grown in the timbar, like sheesh, potatoes, and radishes. They are yuva callis stores. Eh, stores that sell meat. Always on the right, though."

It doesn't exactly make sense to me and takes a moment to parse. Why would a bear in a vegetable store next to a butcher be a good thing? Idioms are by far the strangest part of learning the local language.

"Thank you," I say, leaving the metaphor behind. Before I can say anything else, Mazis turns, receiving my order from another wolfman in his kitchen. He hands me two paper trays, each containing a flat circle of bread topped with chopped and spiced beef, tomatoes, onions, and a little green plant I still haven't identified; they are called faetas. My mouth starts to water as I back out of the line, staring down at my delicious prizes. "Tomorrow," I shout to Mazis.

"See you then," he says before turning his attention to the next person in line.

I have the first faeta folded and half-devoured before I can even make it back to the walkways. The street food is the best thing I have had in Faeth, maybe the best thing I have had anywhere. They are spicier than yesterday, much spicier, just as I asked him. I've always been a fan of hot foods, but it seems that these days there isn't anything hot enough to make me balk. I'll ask him if he can turn the heat up even more when I see him tomorrow.

The walkways running beneath the city are as crowded as ever. I am only slightly irritated today at my lack of access to the faster walkways the Faethian dwarves use. Now that I can read the signs posted above them to some extent, it is clear that only the native faethians are allowed to use them. Luckily for me, I only have one place to visit today, so the inconvenience isn't so great. Today, at least.

With a thought, my inventory window appears in my vision as I drift along beneath the city. It surprised me at first, though in hindsight it very much shouldn't have, that the enchantment in my eye is capable of displaying multiple currencies at a time, and that one of the ones it naturally tracked was the strange Faethian coins. The eye seems to function seamlessly with most things in Faeth. It's not surprising, as about one in thirty non-faethian dwarves have near-identical eyes in their heads. The black and red one, like mine, or one that is a wispy blue with a green iris, which is evidently a competitor to Lady Talagast's creation.

My eyes move to the counter at the top of the window. Just now, it displays two thousand and nineteen yellow coins, forty-nine orange, and six red. Four days ago, I finally got around to visiting the money changer Corinth recommended to me. The man behind the counter boggled as I pulled gold brick after gold brick from my inventory, converting the majority of my black sand into its pure gold form in order to make the exchange. I learned then that the yellow coins are the closest in value to the standard gold that is used in most of the world, each being worth around one and a fourth of a gold coin. In Faeth, the lowest form of currency is red coins. One hundred red coins equal an orange, and a hundred of those a yellow. It continues that way through green, then blue, to finally violet. I have to assume about violet, as every time I ask, no one seems to have ever seen one. In the end, most business is done in yellow coins, called suns. Green is hardly ever used as far as I can tell.

It all makes me wonder, why not just use gold like the rest of the world? They probably have a reason for it. Corinth blamed it on the Faethian goddess who likes to count things. In my ignorance, an ignorance I am fine keeping, I find the whole thing a bit ridiculous. It has nothing to do with the money changer charging me four percent to make the exchange, even if that is daylight robbery.

Just to have the blacksmith make the gauntlets for me had cost five hundred suns, and I had chosen a relatively cheap material for them as well. I began to work on the underlining of the enchantments that I will use in the gauntlets four days ago. Three days ago, I realized that I had made such a massive error in the underlining that I would need to replace the right gauntlet entirely, costing me another three hundred suns from the blacksmith I was working with. Now, I'll be making a left-handed pair, which is a bit unusual. Hopefully, the judges will like it.

The signs overhead fly past me as I continue to ride the walkway. A few of the words are recognizable to me now, and I prepare to get off at the next stop. While I might already have the armor to house the eventual enchantment, half of it anyway, I still require several items to create the enchantment itself. Not the least of which are the myriad of mana affixes that I need to pull off what I am planning. Hopefully, today's trip into the city will solve that issue.

Entering the towering spire that houses "Mato's Enchantments" in the middle of the city, a half-naked dwarven woman smiles at me and hands me a silver ribbon to wear like a sash. I toss the sash into the nearest bin after making it to the stairs. Half the buildings in the center of the city have such women standing at the front entrances, handing out sashes to whoever comes inside. This city is incredible, but it is also strange.

"Hmmm," Mato mumbles to himself, running his purity probe over the length of the infused copper wire I show him. "Purity is denna," he says. This time, I do check with Galea on the meaning of the word, not wanting to look more ignorant in front of the haughty dwarf than he already thinks I am. She speaks fluent Tallic, small wonder, given that she was created in this city. I don't particularly like her translation of the word.

"It is not shit," I say back to him, doing my best to make my Tallic as unaccented as possible. Given the man's slight smirk, I doubt that I succeed.

"Is shit," he says, shrugging and discarding the probe. "Ninety-six percent purity is not usable. Go to the casada meirdas on the west side. They will take it."

I grind my teeth, staring down at the infuriating little man. I know he is right. Every single book on enchantment I have read and put Galea to memorize in the past few weeks has said as much. Half of the writers recommend to never use mana sourced from a person, stating that only the pure mana of natural treasures will do. The other half state that anything beneath ninety-nine percent purity is unusable for anything complex. Two whole weeks of days spent around the fishing hole at the bottom of the city, absorbing as much mana from fire-affixed monsters as possible and subsisting on a diet of almost wholly their meat, have managed to only get me to ninety-nine percent. I manage to kill at least five monsters a day, and apart from accidentally stumbling upon a mid-third-rank monster that I had to retreat from, all of my hunts have been successful. I know I shouldn't complain, magicians sometimes spend years building their affixes ahead of breaking into the third rank. To think that I could do that in just a few weeks because I had access to a rich hunting ground was arrogant. Still, I really wanted it.

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"Take it off my chest," I say to him. The man gives me a strange look, and I realize I used the wrong word. "Body. It doesn't matter." I snatch up the piece of wire, tossing it back in my inventory.

"It is not bad, girl," Mato says. "More pure than last time. Make it pure, and I might purchase some. Now, what will you buy from me?"

"Do you sell mana?" I ask him.

He shrugs. "Not usually. I keep a good stock, but I talassa to sell finished enchantments. In Faeth, the mana toridasa is done by the academy. You are a foreigner, so you might not know."

My response to him is slow. It isn't the fact that he uses words I don't know yet, the spirit speaking in my ear can translate those easily enough for me. It is the fact that every time he does, my mind stops following the sentence, and I have to catch up later after asking Galea what he said. I refuse to let her translate for me in real time. It might be easier, but I doubt that the classes at the academy will be in Castinian. I should make sure that I can understand those before attending.

"Can you sell me these?" I ask, pinching the air and pulling a folded piece of paper from my vault. I set the paper on the counter between us, only to see the man squint at it. I growl at my own stupidity, turning the paper around, and quickly translating the list of different mana affixes and their power ratings into Tallic for him.

He looks them over, mumbling to himself. "You are an enchanter?" he asks, clearly skeptical. "Why ask me then? Go ask the academy."

"I haven't enrolled yet," I tell him, pausing so Galea can give me the word for enroll.

"Ah," he nods, tapping the paper in front of him, his eyes flicking back and forth. "You want to make something good for the judges. Want to get yourself a porta. I do not mind helping a young enchanter out. I can get you this mana for ten thousand suns."

I bite my cheek to stop the immediate burst of outrage that comes to me. Now is not the time to argue about price; that comes later. Even with haggling, something that is looked down upon in Faeth for some reason, I doubt I can get him below four thousand suns.

"Maybe I have something left to interest you," I say, reaching toward my vault.

"I said I will help you. I won't buy shit purity mana."

In reply, I grab a hold of a gold rod stored in my vault, pulling it into existence between us. The gold rod is easily the most expensive of the mediums I have on hand, but it is also the only medium I have found that can contain the mana inside without beginning to decay.

When Mato first showed me how impure all of my affixes were, I was distraught enough to buy a device to test them myself. It wasn't until a few days later that the idea of testing the purity of the strange affixes of mana I can apparently stitch together inside my soul came to me. Being trapped inside that coffin for nearly a month gave me plenty of time to explore the strange ability of my soul to smash the different kinds of mana together. I came to understand the rotation of my soul better, came to figure out a bit of the timing necessary to harness the magic in that way. There is still so much I don't understand about the principles of what I am doing, but I have learned enough to utilize them. All it requires is a bit of patience, really.

The golden medium in my hand radiates magic. Tiny particles of tan mana escape the housing of the gold rod. The loss is hardly quantifiable with the power reading devices I have, but my dragon's eye can still notice it. The particles eat into the flesh of my hand as I hold the rod, spots of flesh too small to see with my naked eye rendered into ash, healing far faster than they are destroyed. Ever since I discovered this form of mana in my fight against Priscilla, I have known how dangerous it is. Testing it with my purity-reading device yesterday, I now know that it is one hundred percent pure.

Mato squints at the golden medium I hold in my hand. "What is this?" A device set on the back of his bench kicks to life on its own, the crystal dome of the construction starting to blink a harsh red color as the entire thing shakes and screeches. Mato jumps at the sound, whirling around, his eyes moving back and forth between his sirening device and the medium in my hand. Fear is in his eyes.

The man jumps out of his seat, ripping open a drawer beneath his table, searching around inside for a moment before pulling free a large tub made of pink glass. "Put it in!" he commands in perfect Castinian. "Put it in now!"

I do what he says, barely managing to get my fingers free before Mato slams a lid made of the same glass on top of the tub. He sighs, sweat dripping from his forehead, and walks over to slap the dome on the blaring device. A second later, it falls silent.

"So, you can speak Castinian," I say.

He growls at me, firing off a glare for good measure. "You bring dangerous magic into my store," he grunts at me, switching back to Tallic.

"Do you want it?"

The man looks between me and the now secured golden medium in the glass box. "What kind is it? It's clearly unstable."

I smirk at him in response, doing my best impression of Jor. I think it works because the man grumbles to himself before fishing around with another of his assorted devices hanging on the wall behind him. The one he grabs is similar to the purity probe, and he takes a moment to fiddle with it in order to get it working. Once he has the device operating, he sneaks the probe into the glass box before closing the lid as well as he can. The magical display on the surface of the device begins to light up, a flurry of information flashing over the top of it before eventually stopping, displaying a numerical range. Mato squints at the numbers, flipping open a reference book and looking it over. I know he finds what he is looking for when he gasps, whipping his head around to look at me.

"Ruin mana," he says. "You brought me ruin mana?"

I try to keep up the smirk as he reveals what I have been wondering about for months. So, this tan mana is ruin mana. The look on his face almost reminds me of the shock that monster had displayed on top of the tree in Danfalla. He called the mana I used then warflame. It is good to know that they are distinct from each other, and doubly good to know that what they aren't some anomaly of magic that I can create. I have no desire to mess around with something as dangerous and unknown as that.

"You give this to me, and I want to report the theft," Mato says.

"Theft!"

"Well, you didn't kill a ruin beast for it," he says, chuckling to himself. "How else would a novice enchanter get it? You must have put it in the gold too, any tavoid enchanter would have used platinum."

"If you don't want it," I say, reaching for the box.

"Hey! Hey!" he yells, pulling the box away from me. He is afraid of the mana inside the medium, which is easy to tell, but more than that, there is greed in his eyes. "Do not be so hasty. It was a joke. You don't understand Faethian joke."

As he speaks, he pulls out the probe in the box, slipping in the purity-reading one. Out of the corner of his eye, he glances at the display, confirming that it is, in fact, pure mana.

"I can take this mana from you," he says. "It is dangerous. Her eyes above, it is dangerous. Also, I will need to rehalm it into a better medium. We can make a trade: the mana you need on this list for the ruin mana. An easy deal."

"Easy," I say, putting my hand on the lid of the glass box, sliding it toward myself. There is something in the way that he tries to stop me from sliding it and entirely fails, which brings me a bit of satisfaction. "Or maybe I sell it to someone who would give me a real price."

"Bah," he barks, straining and failing to pull the box back to his side of the table. "Perhaps I throw in a two hundred suns as well as the mana, to help out a new enchanter."

At that, my smirk turns into a full-on smile. Finally, the haggling can begin.

Twenty minutes later, I find myself walking out of Mato's shop, three thousand suns and several magic affixes heavier. I am so caught up in snickering to myself, listening to the old dwarf swear at my back as I make my way to the door, that I almost run into someone coming in. Almost. The thin man who pushes open the door to the shop sees me a second after I see him, tries to spin to avoid me even though I have already moved out of the way, and trips over his own feet. He falls to the ground, wincing as his shoulder connects with the hard floor.

As he looks up and our eyes meet, I don't know who is more surprised by the recognition that passes between us.

"Jasper?"