NOVEL NEXT BECMI Chapter 163 – Overland Travels
"A trip to Siricil?" Entelia Avom, a common-born Delphan with copper skin and blued hair, born in the Principality of Iendyl and budding Aeromancer, squealed in excitement. "How are you getting there? Are you purchasing a Teleport Scroll or something?" she asked eagerly.
"That would be utterly useless to most of you," I said, looking around the table at my entourage, such as it was. "You have heard me explain about Lived-lines. Surely at least some of you have verified the truth of what they are and that they work."
Nico Bastionelli instantly raised his hand. "Blinks and Jaunts do indeed double in range when retracing a former path. I tested them multiple times," the newly-endowed Alchemist from Fuireze stated quickly for everyone's benefit, his swarthy features calm and measured. Naturally none were high enough Level to Teleport themselves, or they would have graduated already.
The Curse restricting my Levels on the School's property still kept me to Seven, which was totally fine. All I had to do was not Cast anything greater than IV's and I was fine. My effective Caster Level being a minimum of 15 before Spell Power buffs was a different matter entirely.
"You are… going to trace a Lived-line for us?" asked Messime Ievyndr, a blue-eyed and red-haired Sidheduiche elfin taking classes here. She aspired to Dracology, the study of the magical nature of dragons, instead of Cryptomancy, but eh. I had already mentioned the possibility of becoming a Dragon Disciple as a powerful alternative for a warrior-path elf. She just needed to find a willing Gold or Ruby dragon sponsor at this time.
"I am going to be engaged in basically ground-level flight just above the ground, close enough to establish a geomantic connection and perpetuate a Lived-line. I can effortlessly tow any number of you behind me on Force Disks." I glanced around the table again. "This will establish a Lived-Line along those roads, to any cities or towns we pass through along the way, and establish your own future Teleport signatures between here and Siricil, when you are powerful enough to take advantage of such things.
"While it is less than a thousand miles to Siricil as a crow flies, the overland route is closer to seventeen hundred miles, so it will take several days of travel to get there."
They all sort of blinked at me. "Several days?" the Mick spoke up from where he sat at the end of the table. The mages here were a bit nonplussed at having a warrior there, but the Caergard Attendant was plenty happy to pick up books on history from the library here at my recommendations, and had a viewpoint on life very different from any of their own… a viewpoint which was shared widely outside Zanzyr and its magocracy, and so valuable for them to know. "Not several weeks, at the least? And that be if we ride hard every day?" he had to ask.
All the wizards did the math and belatedly realized he was right.
"I can easily average thirty miles per hour overland if I focus, McMikal," I replied calmly, at which he blinked, as that was a full day's travel… per hour! "I imagine we will be stopping at places along the way for short periods of time, and nobody has to know how fast we'll be traveling.
"So, your assignments are as follows," I said, and they all leaned in to hear this. "Let it be known you're going to Siricil. If people have an interest, you'll bring some things along, like mail or something similar… for a proper fee.
"Also, there's some trade goods we're going to be picking up in bulk." I flicked out a neat list, and set it in the middle of the table. "This is for you and your money. Look over the list, figure who knows who and who to buy from for quality at a decent rate, and start making purchases.
"You also need to inquire about what people want. For some reason, there's no regular Teleport-courier service between here and Siricil, so instead of waiting for months for something from there, they can pay a premium for getting it quite soon, indeed.
"See what they want, and discuss what you're going to buy with one another."
Mercantile endeavors were beneath most mages and new to them. I glanced at the Mick, who rolled his green eyes as the students started blathering, having no real idea what they were talking about.
"'ey now, geniuses," he said firmly, in the backhanded compliment kind of way. "Remember they got plenty o' wizards in Siricil, given that the big city has more people than all of Zanzyr, aye?" he said dismissively, cutting through talk of mass alchemicals and Scrolls and the like. "Ye want stuff that be OF Zanzyr. The style an' the fashion an' the quality they don't have there. They got all the mundane stuff, an' they use slave labor to make it cheap. Ye need things that have more than just skill, they have to have style." He nodded at Laurentine Fernucht, a common-born Frier with their trademark red hair and copper skin, with deep green eyes almost as attention-getting as his own. She was the most fashion-conscious among them, preferring tailored robes of green shimmersilk and many a glittering accouterment. "Ye need t' take lead methinks, m'lady Laur. Leave the commodities fer future trips. Ye want to start a fad, make a mint o' coin, then leave it behind so you can leave an' make another fad in the future, aye?"
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Laurentine favored him with a dazzling smile of her own, enjoying being in the spotlight. "You are looking more handsome every time I see you, McMikal," she purred, to which he just shook his head, adjusted the Spectacles of Reading Comprehension I'd given him, and continued on with Smitty Macha Adamevelli's Taking the Wealth of Nations, a nice primer on digging gold out of your economic and geopolitical opponents… and written by a Siricilan, of course.
Really, a better summation of the national psyche of the Siricil Empire than anything else.
"We are all going down to Corocil Avenue, and talking to the designers there, then! Let us see if some of their dresses of more exotic materials can raise some eyebrows…"
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-Hanvol, I'll be setting up a Great Seal across multiple locations on the way to Siricil if you want to start working on organizing a trade network of high-value, low-volume items. If you'd like to recruit some couriers or wizards who want to make money, I'll get the Sims started on the Teleport Item conveyors as well.-
-Yes, my Lady. I know at least a couple retired Wizards who'd be happy to do this as a day job, making decent regular coin. That Wand Recharging service will also be very popular in certain quarters, especially among apprentices in need of coin.- He sounded quite eager to get that online, as well.
-It will take most of a month to get it functioning so it can accept up to V's, but that is the idea,- I /confirmed. The idea that a wizard could drop off a Wand, put up the request for recharging, and other wizards could come in, Cast spells to recharge the wand and be paid for doing so, was another fast and easy way to convert non-specific spells actively into coin.
Us cheating by being able to use Reserves to do the job? Well, free money on our end, as long as we had the right Reserves, which admittedly did need to be at least twice as powerful as the required spell to do the job.
The fun thing was that the Converter would be able to use 'excess Caster Level', something a standard recharging ceremony couldn't do. Wands with variable spells were typically fixed at Six, Staves at Eight. A strong Caster coming in at Twelve could do TWO charges at once on such a Wand, making more idle spending cash.
And all we'd charge would be five gold per charge to use the Converter… which had another purpose behind it.
It was also an anti-Radiance stabilizer!
Directly below Zanzyr City was the (drumroll, please!) Core of Magic, the Furnace of the Spheres, the converted fusion power generator that now disbursed the Radiance throughout Zanzyr, allowing magic to be learned here that couldn't be anywhere else in the world.
The Radiance ate magic when it was wielded by the uncaring twats who manipulated it. Something had to be done to counteract its effect on the world, and I could do something like that.
The Converter effectively sucked in and destroyed the Radiance to make magic, the reverse of what the Radiance normally did. It would use excess Caster Levels to counteract what the Radiance was doing to the manafield, slowing down, if not stopping, what the Radiance-wielders here and among the shadenelves were doing.
It actually wasn't that hard to make the thing, although concealing what it was actually doing took a bit of finesse. It helped I had forty years of experience of working directly with the gammathauma without interference to help matters along, and I was VERY smart and motivated.
That the solution was so basic and simple belied the fact that it would take a lot of magic to Burn the Radiance and get the power back. I didn't know if it was a 1:10 ratio or a 1:100 ratio, or anything in between, as I hadn't built anything in the past to do this, so we could only go by what it had.
I was pretty sure it was 1:1 as far as Immortal Power went, and the Radiance might even be a 'halfway point' between mortal magic and Immortal Power. But what Immortal was going to stick around and just feed a machine so mortals could use power that they weren't supposed to be using, anyway?
Arseholes…
The proper solution to what they'd done would simply have been to make the cheaty way of becoming Immortal via spell research not work. But noooooo, have to punish the whole goddamn planet and magic-wielders in general rather than just remove the goddamn option from the cheaters!...
Getting the ground to set up a business wasn't hard, with Sim Natasha in the Licensing Bureau and spinning up a new license for the service and inserting it into the regs with nobody really knowing or caring where it came from (obscure regulation from twenty-three years ago put into place by Magister Congard Muspier, Thaum rest his soul after that particularly spectacular death by improperly cooked red-dragon flesh burned out his bowels on the john…).
It was going to be interesting to see what was going to happen if and when 'Thaum' discovered what the Converter was actually going to be doing. Well, deal with that when it came time… and it wasn't like I didn't already have other plans in the works for when I needed to take action against the Core of the Radiance down below the City and School here.
After all, the Core was effectively a technological device enchanted to have para-magical effects. There was no way Thaum had any real inkling of how the technology side of things actually worked, and that meant that the Core could be subverted as any computerized device could, too.
Which was something I'd have to go back to Darkmoor and work out with Captain Emeril, giving him some idea of what was going to happen to his beloved ship and scattering crew. Getting ultimate-level security access to the most precious item of equipment on the FS Barhund was going to all be part of that, even with misgivings.
We were playing games with Immortals, all bound up in money-making schemes now.
Well, I'd have it online soon enough, and we'd see how popular it was.
After the trip to Siricil.