NOVEL NEXT Life 1: Week 3a
Life 1: Week 3
WEEK 3 Schedule
Day 1 – Arcanis (+1 Structured Magic & Formal Study)
Morning
: Arcane Gunsmithing (Lecture)
Afternoon
: Magical Ballistics (Lecture)
Evening
: Guncaster Fundamentals (Lecture)
Day 2 – Draveth (+1 Combat & Training)
Morning
: Club: The Librarians (
Training)
Afternoon
: Train with Familiar or Pet (
Bonding Session - Magic Evolution
)
Evening
: Visit the Bazaar of Realities (
Shopping
)
Day 3 – Caelith (+1 Prophecy, Stars, Theory)
Morning
: Magical Ballistics –
Field Trials (Long-Range Arcane Precision)
Afternoon
:
First-Year Exhibition: The Foundling's Proving
(Public Duel, Arena Showcase)
Evening
: Club: The Librarians (Forgotten Gun Dimensions & Vaults)
Day 4 – Ferradine (+1 Runes, Crafting, Mechanics)
Morning
: Arcane Gunsmithing (Workshop – Imbuing Runes)
Afternoon
: Magical Ballistics (Workshop – Effect Zones)
Evening
: Grand Library Research (Topic:
Reinforcement Magic
)
Trace the Magical Lineage of Your Reinforcement Magic
(Discover ancestral spell style or bloodline secret)
Day 5 – Veilmere (+1 Planar & Spiritwork)
Morning
: Arcane Gunsmithing (Practicals – Design & Testing)
Afternoon
: Guncaster Fundamentals (Range Practice)
Evening
: Contract with Lesser Entity(Vote on who)
Day 6 – Zarvian (+1 Beasts & Exploration)
Morning
: Guncaster Fundamentals (Field Drill –
Tactical Deployment
)
Afternoon
: Magic Puzzle Vaults (
Spatial Thinking + Arcane Logic
)
Evening
: Explore Academy Grounds (
Random Encounter – Legacy
)
Day 7 – Hearthrest (+1 Recovery & Meditation)
Morning
: Rest –
Place In Between
(
Stress)
Afternoon
: Meditation –
Levels(Find first legacy)
Evening
: Attend Student Gathering/Event (Crash the Top-tier Talent Party using Harlequin Mask - The Celestial Convergence Party)
-
Day 1 – Arcanis
Morning: Arcane Gunsmithing (Lecture)
Instructor Elra Vintock stood at the black-iron podium of her forge-classroom, soot-streaked as always, goggles perched like twin moons on her brow. A schematic rotated midair behind her—an exploded view of a modular caster-barrel linked to a triple-sigil charging node.
"Today we discuss harmonic sigil anchors—and how not to blow your goddamn arm off when reinforcing a cast-core with elemental bleedoff."
The lecture was intense but rewarding. Joshua scribbled notes, highlighted glyph-chains, and even got praised (gruffly) for his observations on resonant feedback loops. The whole class smelled like iron and charged copper.
Old: Arcane Gunsmithing - Class Progress 21/100
Roll for Class Progress[1d8(Talent) +1 Instructor Bonus + 1 Day Bonus +2 Relationship Bonus]
Rolled, 9
New: Arcane Gunsmithing - Class Progress 30/100
-
Afternoon: Magical Ballistics (Lecture)
High Elf Instructor Liora Fenwick conducted her lessons like a spell orchestra. Today's subject: Transversal Arcanodynamics—the study of how bullets behave mid-flight through multiple layers of reality. "An arcane bullet is not merely a projectile," she intoned, pointer dancing across a glowing chalkboard. "It is a sentence. A declaration. A ripple cast into the multiverse."
Students reviewed real-time simulations—rounds traveling through mirror dimensions, phasing past illusions, curving via gravity wells. Joshua watched one reenactment of a soulbinding slug passing through six planar overlays and hitting a target in a memory echo.
His takeaways: ballistic philosophy, the ethics of smart spells, and how intent modifies trajectory in multi-realm space. By the end, he was leaning forward, eyes wide, as Fenwick casually dissected the metaphysics of bullet time.
Old: Magical Ballistics - Class Progress 21/100
Roll for Class Progress[1d8(Talent) +1 Instructor Bonus + 1 Day Bonus +2 Relationship Bonus]
Rolled, 9
New: Magical Ballistics - Class Progress 30/100
-
Evening: Guncaster Fundamentals (Lecture)
Cassian Varn returned from whatever bounty-hunting dimension he'd vanished into, still carrying dust from another world.
No notes. No slides. Just him. A mana-scorched revolver. And a half-burned wanted poster.
"Tonight's lesson," he growled, "is how to shoot the dead, and put them down for good."
Joshua felt as if this wasn't really a lesson, but a way for the man to vent after the harrowing trip he most likely had fighting what could only be undead creatures.
Nonetheless, he listened just like the other students.
Old: Guncaster Fundamentals - Class Progress 14/100
Roll for Class Progress[1d8(Talent) +1 Instructor Bonus + 1 Day Bonus +2 Relationship Bonus]
Rolled, 7
New: Guncaster Fundamentals - Class Progress 21/100
New Spell Learned! Bullet Time - +1 Bonus to Dodging. Slow down your perspective of time.
-
Give me Class Gains Rolls,
Give me 1d8+3(gunsmithing),
1d8+4(magic ballistics),
1d8+3(guncasting)
-
Day 2 – Draveth (+1 Combat & Training)
Morning: Club: The Librarians (Training)
Focus: Wayfinder's Compass – Multi-Realm Survival
The training didn't take place in a classroom. It began at dawn, when a glyph blinked across Joshua's badge:
"WAYFINDER PING: CODE VERMILION – Assemble at Anchor Gate 3 within the Library. Bring breathers, binders, and bloodsugar tabs."
When he arrived, the rest of the Wayfinder's Compass initiates were already gathering. Some still rubbed sleep from their eyes. Others tightened straps on field packs, checked their wands, or muttered activation glyphs under their breath. The atmosphere wasn't casual. It was prelude-to-disaster tense.
Talor Vance was already waiting—lean, leathery, and half-tanned by exposure to a dozen hostile planes. His right arm was wrapped in vacuum-stitched cloth; his eyes glowed with the pale shimmer of someone who'd stared down a voidstorm and blinked first.
"Have you missed me guys," he cackled with joy once he saw them.
Miss Quill was there and simply said. "Behave yourself, you are the Leader. It is unbecoming of you to act like this."
"You are a killjoy," he muttered. She only had to give him a raised eyebrow, and he quickly moved on, clearing his throat. "Today's lesson," he said without preamble, "is not dying where reality forgets time is a thing."
Behind him shimmered a silver-edged portal. The glyph above it read: Training Simulation Alpha 7E: The Cradle of Broken Time.
https://starvstheforcesofevil.fandom.com/wiki/Plains_of_Time
"We are going in there," Nyree asked aghast.
"Where else will you be going?" the man asked with joy. "Don't worry your pretty little heads though. We will be on the stand-by to pull you out if it gets too tough for you."
No one looked comforted by that, and the man didn't seem to care as he opened the gate which slowly started sucking them in like a vacuum. "Well best of luck in there," he waved as they got tossed into the training simulation.
-
Joshua stumbled out of the portal like a man dragged from the edge of death.
His hair was longer. His face was gaunt and sunburned. One sleeve had been torn off and crudely replaced with vines and stitched leather. He smelled like ozone, rust, and desperation. Scratches formed old maps across his arms, some glowing faintly with dried runes. His eyes, once restless and bright, now looked older—like they'd stared too long into the teeth of something that didn't believe in mercy.
Around him, the other Wayfinders looked just the same as him. "How long have we been gone," he croaked.
"It's only been 3 hours and 48 mins," Talor answered with a grin.
"You know what I mean," he replied calmly.
"Its hard to tell, but our best guess 16 days."
"So you know!" Brannica growled.
"Well it's in the name," he replied with a shrug. Then turning more serious he stared at them each in turn, "this is part of the job. This was training, kids. A controlled burn. You want to call yourselves Wayfinders? Then get used to slipping between you don't belong. If you can't handle it. I would advise you quite while you are ahead. I didn't get this injury walk through a park," he stated holding up his injured arm.
"What you all just experienced was just a taste of what's to come. Not only is traveling to other realms and dimensions dangerous, but time can be wibbly wobbly. The Cradle of Broken Time is nothing compared to the true wilds. Beyond the Veil, time isn't a river—it's a maze on fire. Sometimes it loops. Sometimes it bites. Sometimes you're the one that doesn't come back. If that rattles you? Step off the path now. There's no shame in it."
With that he was gone, leaving them standing there. Miss Quill spoke up, "Take a break for the rest of the day
Skill Gained! Multi-Realm Survival: +1 Bonus to surviving in dangerous places.
-
Afternoon: Train with Familiar or Pet (Bonding Session - Magic Evolution)
Returning to Redhook Linehouse felt like stepping back into reality after a fever dream. The first thing Joshua did was strip off his grime-caked training gear and hit the showers, scrubbing away days—no, weeks—of time-lost grit from his skin. He watched as dirt and dried blood spiraled down the drain, but the echoes of the Cradle of Broken Time weren't so easily washed away. Even now, memory flickers twisted in the corners of his mind like dream-scars—howling sand, frozen suns, time loops that tasted like ash.
His time in that place still left echoes, every time he recalled his time in the place his mind was left recoiling in terror. Still what that terror did more than anything was leave him hungering for more power. He wanted more power. Not for glory. Not even for survival. But because that realm showed him how small he still was.
Drying off, dressed again in fresh clothes, Joshua stepped into the narrow cabinet space that served as his private corner of the dorm. Quiet. Dimly lit. A shelf unit stood to the side—one he'd never used for books.
A tiny snore rose from within. He turned to face his familiar, which was sleeping in one of his shelves with his clothing as a blanket for it. Sleeping, it was adorable. Dangerous, but adorable. Most of the time that was what it did, acting more like a cat then the canine creature it looked like.
And on top of that, it refused to go into its pet chamber which he really didn't have the heart for it. Still he needed to be careful with it, who knew if someone could ever realize what it truly was. He knew the history of it, thanks to the bond they shared and what sort of rarity it was, a great fabled creature.
What interested him was that conversation piece that the princess mentioned on how greater familiar could make better or evolve the rank of your magic into something greater, better, more powerful.
"Hey Vespy," he called out tickling awake the little beasty.
"Stop, stop," it squeaked, batting his hand away. "And you know my name."
"Sure, sure," he smiled. Still amazed at how it named itself once it hatched from its egg. "I have a question for you," he said slowly. "Do you know how to evolve my magic?"
"I did notice your magic is pitiful, which is unbecoming of my human!"
"You keep thinking that little bugger," he rolled his eyes.
"Just being in this king's presence will over time sharpen and strengthen your magic, letting it change into something greater. That's the perk of a bond, most just think familiars are mana batteries and book fetchers, but we are greater than that!"
Joshua's heart thudded. "So… how do we go about doing that?"
Vespy stretched, hopping down from the shelf. "That depends. Your current path is 'Reinforcement,' yes?"
He nodded. "Well," Vespy said, tail flicking like a metronome. "Then the real question is: what do you want your bullets to become?"
"…Stronger."
"Boring." Joshua smirked. "Then how about divine? Untouchable. A force that cuts through lies, fate, even magic itself."
"Now we're talking," Vespy purred. "Then we train. And I'll start showing you the Old Tricks. The ones the great World-Shapers taught the first Chimera."
Joshua raised an eyebrow. "Those sounds made up."
"How will you know that!? Listen to this King, and greatness awaits you."
"Alright, let's get started," he said.
-
4(magic)+7(familiar)+2(bracers)= 13 Progress
New Research Project Unlocked!
Magic Upgrade - Thanks to the Fabled Familiar you found you can evolve your magic, but it will take time and research however at the end of it you will unlock something much greater than the common trash you have. So go full steam ahead in upgrading your magic!
Major Breakthrough needed! (13/1,000)
-
Evening: Visit the Bazaar of Realities (Shopping)
The Bazaar of Realities is neither fully here nor entirely elsewhere. It appears only on certain nights—when the stars align just off-angle and the ley-lines beneath the academy hum in curious harmony. One moment it's a forgotten garden path or a blind alley behind the south colonnade… and the next, it's a city of marketlights and spiraling wonders unfurled beneath an impossible sky.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
The Bazaar is a place that refuses to be pinned down—architecturally or ontologically. Vaulted arcades twist into gravity-warped atriums. Walkways form constellations above your head. Floating gondolas drift through air carved with sigils, ferrying patrons to mall-spires made of translucent bone or crystal, to hanging vaults suspended in starlight, rotating enchantment galleries, and auction towers that descend from the sky like comet-tipped elevators. There are no maps. The layout folds and loops like a dream retold by a drunk god.
The architecture made no promises as it contradicts itself at every turn. Vaulted stone, bioluminescent bone, talking bricks, clockwork plazas, drifting barges, and hanging gardens—all pressed together like competing memories of what a market could be. Floors shimmered with spellglass. Walls listened. Ceilings retracted into the infinite sky. Paths spiral into floating bridges of light that lead nowhere… or everywhere. Mist-hung arcades unfurl into galleries of silence. Some corridors loop endlessly. Some lead back to the moment you entered, but slightly different.
Each market zone bled into the next with no warning. One moment, you'd be brushing past banners stitched with firelight, the next you'd be stepping through waterfalls of glass chimes that led into silence. Every surface buzzes with layered reality — time moves at different speeds in different zones, some shops expand when entered, others vanish behind you forever. It's as though a thousand markets across a thousand realities collided—and politely decided to coexist.
The vendors are no less strange. Few look the same twice. Some wear bodies like borrowed clothing. Others are living metaphors: bartering in forgotten regrets, half-truths, or rhythms only understood in dreams. Others were more concept than form: living promises, sealed regrets, forgotten rulers wearing borrowed flesh.
There are draconic curators, demon tradesmen who deal in secrets and lies, gnomish auctioneers, elven enchanters, and beings who haven't yet been named. Some speak through scent. Some sing instead of speak. One may only communicate through the way their shadow flickers.
What could be bought here was not merely magical—it was definitional. You could buy your shadow's loyalty. A sword that remembered who first drew blood with it. A spell that hadn't been invented yet. You could purchase names you had not earned, futures you hadn't lived, maps to ruins that hadn't fallen, or tomes that refused to be read unless you'd forgotten something important.
Everything is for sale—either through coin or other means. Trades can be made in promises, in destinies, in things you haven't lost yet. Some items cannot be bought until you meet the right version of yourself. The Bazaar is a temptation, a crossroads, a riddle. It offers possibilities… and consequences.
Joshua didn't so much walk through it as drift—his senses struggling to keep up. One moment he passed a fae-run stall that traded in emotions for enchantments, requiring a first kiss for a flameproof charm. The next, he passed a dragon's hoard unveiled for barter in favors and covenants. Goblins hissed riddles for half-cursed trinkets. Dwarves hawked legendary forges-in-miniature. A warlock in glass armor offered spellbooks that could only be opened by lies.
This was no ordinary marketplace. This was where worlds brushed shoulders—where traveling merchants, demi-entities, cursed artificers, and living vaults bartered wares too rare or too dangerous for school catalogs. The air here is thick with incense, starlight, and multiversal bleed. Music wafts through no visible source—sometimes drums, sometimes strange flutes, sometimes your own heartbeat. There was joy here. And danger. It felt like stepping into a storm of curiosity. This was where the multiverse came to window-shop itself. And no one left unchanged.
Image: https://www.worldanvil.com/w/fortuna-nuova-joeydk/a/irene-s-enchanting-bazaar-landmark
-
First Stop: The Shop of Myriad Essence
For Magic Essence(Affinity Booster)
Joshua's first stop at the Bazaar of Realities wasn't for something flashy. It was for something foundational. Something key. He needed power—specifically, a boost to his Reinforcement magic affinity, which sat at a humiliating 0✩. It wasn't enough. He needed to get it up. The slow path of meditation and incremental training had its place, sure—but he wasn't here for some wisdom or training. He was here to win. And there was a shortcut. Essence.
Raw, condensed magical nature—ripped or refined from beings that embodied a specific magic. Reinforcement affinity could be cultivated… or it could be stolen. Bought. Bound.
Dirty business, sure. But this was the multiverse. The line between moral compromise and survival blurred the moment you stepped beyond your homeworld. And Joshua had long since made his bed about that.
That was the thing no one talked about: mages who shared a magic type didn't form brotherhoods. They formed target lists. Every soul with Reinforcement magic was, by default, a competitor—and possibly a future donor to help pave the road for him. Orders didn't form around shared affinity. Too easy to counter. Too tempting to cannibalize. No one trusted their own kind when their core could be plucked, distilled into Essence, and used to bolster their enemy.
So where there should have been brotherly companionship and familiarity, there was only fear and greed.
Asking around where he could find some essence, nearly everyone pointed him to one shop, the Myriad Essence. It seemed to be the one stop shop for every type of essence you were looking for.
It had no true storefront. Just a curtain of incense cords that shimmered like liquified starlight, swaying in a breeze that shouldn't exist—and a doorway shaped like a ribcage, tall as a titan, its bone-struts made of something that might once have been alive, but now thrummed with runes from a hundred dead alphabets.
Above the entry, glowing glyphs spun in an infinite cycle, rearranging themselves every few seconds. Each symbol represented a different magical affinity—Fire, Storm, Blood, Shadow, Reinforcement, even rarities like Null and Dream. Joshua's own affinity glyph didn't appear at first. When it did, it stayed longer than the others. Watching him. He stepped through.
Inside, the air was thick with density. Joshua could feel it behind his eyes—old, ancient magic curled into crystalline orbs, vials, pearls, and suspended motes of colorless flame. Hundreds of essenses—stored, sorted, sealed. Some flickered like candlelight. Others pulsed like still-beating hearts.
The store was vast and vertical, like he had entered the inside of a bottle stretching into infinity. Walls of black jade and shivering obsidian rose upward, vanishing into a skylight that showed not sky, but veins of distant nebulae, pulsing like a heartbeat. The floor? Not floor. A mirror of glass-ice, with silhouettes moving beneath it — slow, crawling shapes that cast no reflection above.
"Greetings," a voice came from everywhere. And then—suddenly—from her. She stood between the aisles of floating relics like a memory that hadn't quite left. Tall. Graceful. Terrifying. Beautiful. Turning to face the speaker, Joshua would admit he quaked a bit inside. This was clearly a Archfey.
Image: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/9359111721396231/
Her skin shimmered like oil spilled on snow—hints of lilac, gold, and blue bleeding into each other. Her eyes were mirrors, but not yours—they reflected the version of you that might have been. Her gown was spun from petals and promises, woven with threads of moonlight and frostbitten music. And around her throat hung a choker of memory-jewels, each pulsing faintly with a name he hadn't spoken in years. She smiled with too many teeth.
"Welcome to the Myriad Essence," she said, her voice echoing slightly ahead of her lips. "Where longing finds form. Where potential begs to burn."
Joshua tried not to flinch. "Thank you for welcoming me to your abode, great one!"
"No need for such formality, little one," it said. "You seek to awaken your magic," she said, stepping lightly toward him. "Your Reinforcement affinity. It sleeps. You wish to rattle it."
Roll 1d6 for Essence rarity!
1 - Very bad 2- Subpar 3- Okay 4- Good 5- Great 6- Amazing
Rolled 5!
Great Essence
Source: From a great creature
Affinity Gain: 0.8 to 1.0 affinity — enough to reach 1✩.
Bonus: Learn a spell! Adaptive Plating - Temporarily reinforce your skin like magical armor. The more hits you take, the tougher it becomes. Stacks defense the longer you're under fire.
-
"I have something that will fit the bill for you perfectly, come," she waved him over. They came to a crucible orb that hovered between them. Inside: a tiny, spinning storm of violet metal and blood-lit sparks. "Drawn from a war-golem who reforged himself each dusk and dawn. Every limb, broken. Every morning, rebuilt itself back up. This essence remembers. And it responds… to those who refuse to break."
Joshua stared. "Price?" he asked.
"I don't mind trading in favors," the creature said which Joshua froze at that.
The Fey where just as bad as demons when it came to favors and contracts, he would be insane to take that and he quickly stated that. "I rather trade in coin," he said pulling out his energy cube which was stacked full of mana stones.
Maybe he would have taken that deal if he was still as poor as before, but now he was quite the rich man. The creature looked disappointed, but it took his coin and he left with his core in his pouch and his cube barely any the lighter.
- 2,000 Mana Stones
-
Second Stop: The Traveling Void Trader
For Training Aids
Joshua's next destination in the Bazaar of Realities was the domain of the elusive Traveling Trader — a dashing, void-touched collector whose presence shimmered like heat haze on polished obsidian. His stall never sat still. It wandered the Bazaar on invisible rails, occasionally vanishing mid-bargain only to reappear halfway across a floating plaza.The Trader's space wasn't a store—it was a roaming showroom of curiosities, half-museum, half-temple. Arc-lit columns rotated with silent displays. Silken curtains shimmered with temporal interference. Dim voidlight glinted off relics locked inside anti-theft stasis fields. His wares weren't tagged with prices. They pulsed with value, like things that remembered being wanted.
And behind it all, the man himself stood motionless—regal, gold-masked, with eyes like polished voidglass. "Ah. You seek ascension through exertion. How charmingly old-fashioned. I carry the weights of fallen dynasties. The mirrors that reflect true selves. The cords of ancient hearts that once dreamed of godhood. Shall we barter?"
Image: https://www.reddit.com/r/Warframe/comments/1k8se31/my_fanart_baro_kiteer/
"I heard you have the best training aids around this place," Joshua answered. Not paying any attention to any of the man's mambo jumbo. He had learned to long tone that out.
"Ah, a young mage in training. What a wonderful thing," the man clapped happily. "I have quite a few wears, but are you worth them!"
Roll 1d6 for Training Aids!
1 - Very bad 2- Subpar 3- Okay 4- Good 5- Great 6- Amazing
Rolled 3!
Okay Training Aids
-
"Let's see what you have," Joshua replied.
Showing him his wear, today the man really didn't have any of the good stuff, still even then it beat any of the others stores. Looking through them, he picked what he wanted and headed out.
10x Incense of Hollow Awakening – Burned during meditation, it severs ego and lets the mage glimpse their deeper magical core. +3 to Spirit Training
10x Mnemosyne Needles – Thin enchanted pins that gently adjust neural flow. Used during study or spell design, they increase magical calculation speed. +3 to Mind Training
10x Gravity balls – A blackened ball woven from the magnetic skin of grav bull. Increases physical strain during movement. +3 to Body Training
- 50 Mana Stones
-
Third Stop: The shadowy peddler
For Research Notes(Magic Evolution)
The next stop in Joshua's wander through the Bazaar of Realities was not something he was looking to find—it was something that found him. The Shadowy Peddler did not occupy a stall, showroom, or tent. He occupied absence. A flicker in the candlelight between other booths. A thin sliver of shadow beneath a bookstore that wasn't casting one. A breath you took—and forgot.
Only after Joshua idled by a sagging ruin of a wishing well did the shadow lengthen. A figure unfolded from it. He wore nothing like a face, just a suggestion of one. Cloaked in stillness, wearing robes that looked sewn from negative space, his voice was soft but carried like confession. "Hello, young mage," the mysterious figure spoke up.
Image: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/11610911539693020/
Joshua would have jumped out of his skin if he wasn't already used to people appearing out of nowhere by now. It did wonders for his heart, but he knew he was being too lackadaisical. "Hello there stranger," he replied with a wave.
"I see you seek change. Evolution. A way to transcend the limits of your Reinforcement magic."
Joshua should have screamed stranger danger especially one who knew exactly what he wanted. Everything about this encounter dripped with mystery, with hidden claws—but there were protections in place. The academy's Bazaar was governed by pacts older than the stones it floated upon. All merchants, no matter how cursed or celestial, were bound to uphold the Rules of Trade. Even the dangerous ones.
Taking the offered bait, "Alright," Joshua said, feigning lightness. "What do you have, oh great mysterious trader?"
Smiling, Joshua had his skin crawl at all the teeth that creature showed from behind its cowl.
He opened his coat—not with buttons or seams, but like a tear in the world—and within, Joshua saw scrolls, journals, brainpages, obsidian slates, and even thought-swarms sealed in crystal.
"I have much," the peddler said softly, with the reverence of a priest offering communion. "But the question, young mage… is not what you want."
"The question is — are you worthy of inheriting it?"
Roll 1d6 for Research Notes(Magic Evolution)!
1 - Very bad 2- Subpar 3- Okay 4- Good 5- Great 6- Amazing
Rolled 4!
Good Research Notes!
Annotated Evolution Codex
Description: A bound volume filled with cross-referenced data, arcane glyphs, and experimentation logs.
Effect: Good boost to magical evolution progress. +50 Research Progress
Magic Upgrade Research Progress (63/1,000)
-
One long-fingered hand reached into the opened rent in his coat and, with delicate reverence, withdrew a single volume bound in weathered hide stitched with inked thread. The tome shimmered—not with light, but with intent. Glyphs slid across its cover like fish in deep water. Arcane diagrams blinked in and out of visibility as if remembering themselves one piece at a time.
"The Annotated Evolution Codex," the Peddler whispered, cradling it like a heart. "Written by four mad researchers who never met. Cross-referenced by a blind scribe in a dream."
He handed it to Joshua. The moment he touched it, the book grew warm—not like heat, but pressure. As if it expected him. "Contained within," the Peddler said softly, "are methods not to learn spells... but to change your very magic. Rethread it. Fold your affinity. Recast yourself."
Joshua opened the first page. Ink flowed like fresh blood. Notes and equations curled into his eyes like dancing roots. Somewhere deep in his core, his Reinforcement magic pulsed, aware that something new had entered the system. A chance to grow. To evolve.
- 100 Mana Stones
-
Fourth Stop: The Great Healer
For Magic Item(Healing)
The air around the next plaza shifted.
Gone were the neon lanterns and chaotic colors of the bazaar's outer stalls. Here, the light was diffused through softly falling petals that dissolved before touching the ground. The scent of clean water and jasmine lingered, and the clamor of the marketplace faded to a hush.
Joshua turned a corner—and found her.
Image: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/21955116929334030/
She stood beneath a paper parasol that cast no shadow, surrounded by pale banners inscribed with sigils of restoration. Her robes were ink-black, bordered with golden thread in patterns that seemed to shift when looked at directly—sometimes celestial, sometimes anatomical, sometimes written prayer. Her face was calm, sculpted like a statue that once held dominion over an empire of silence. Her hair was tied in a long braid wound with white ribbon, and her eyes burned softly with the color of tea-steeped sunlight.
They called her The Great Healer, but no name had ever been agreed upon. Some said she was once a saintess of mercy who renounced her path. Others whispered she was a plague's twin who chose to heal instead of kill.
"Your steps are bruised," she said, without looking up. Her voice was quiet, yet it cleared the fog in his mind like dawn clears a battlefield. "Your soul aches where it should flow."
Joshua blinked. He hadn't spoken of his injuries he still suffered from his dive into the Menagrie to her, but she could tell right away. He knew then she was the real deal.
"Greetings, my lady," he nodded his head to her. "I'm looking for healing items that you can bestow upon me."
He knew from his trip into the menagerie that he needed healing items, his gloves where great for bolstering his health but it wasn't something that recovered damage he suffered.
"I have a few wares, but let's see if they are a good fit for you!"
Roll 1d6 for Magic Item(Healing)!
1 - Very bad 2- Subpar 3- Okay 4- Good 5- Great 6- Amazing
Rolled 1
Very Bad Healing Item!
Yang Tag: Draws energy from the male's body to heal them. Overuse and you might become a soyboy. +1 Healing
-
"This is the only thing I can offer you," she said. She reached into her sleeve, and withdrew a simple paper tag — rectangular, red-threaded, ink-brushed with a shifting yin-yang symbol where one side blazed faintly with amber heat, and the other remained cool and still. It pulsed gently with life.
She offered it to him without ceremony. "The Yang Tag," she said. "Tie it near your heart. It will not save you from death. But it will remind your body how not to fail."
Joshua accepted the tag with both hands, as was tradition. She nodded once.
"Pain is a teacher," she said. "But you do not need to die to learn."
Paying her, he headed off.
- 10 Mana Stones
-
Fifth Stop: The Armorer
For Magic Gear(Armor)
The forge was hidden behind a veil of smoke and heat-slick illusions—like walking through a mirage of molten silver.
Joshua stepped through and entered a cavern of fire and reverence. Ember-lit from below and lined with anvils carved from meteorite, the chamber pulsed with a rhythmic clang like a distant war drum. It wasn't loud. It was deep—a bassline you could feel in your bones.
And in the center — standing sentinel at an anvil made from extinct stars — was the Armorer.
Image: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/6825836928939425/
A towering golem of bronze and obsidian, its form was sculpted in sacred geometry: perfect curves, deliberate joints, eyes like twin bellows of volcanic light. Its face was masked with a runic crestplate—half blackened like it had survived some great blast, half polished mirror. It did not speak with words, but with intent. Every movement it made sent out sigils that danced in the air like ash-feathers.
It turned as Joshua approached, and its hands unfolded from within gauntlets—each finger tipped with an artisan's tool or smith's flame. Joshua didn't ask for anything. He simply stepped forward. From what he heard this being wasn't a thing of many words, all it did was hammer away at great armors.
The golem reached into a molten cradle of starmetal and dream-ore, then pulled free a freshly forged set of armor—still glowing, but unburning. It held the pieces out, one by one, as if reading the shape of Joshua's soul.
Roll 1d6 for Magic Gear(Armor)!
1 - Very bad 2- Subpar 3- Okay 4- Good 5- Great 6- Amazing
Rolled 6!
Amazing Armor
The Revenant Framecoat
Image: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/1618549864248469/
Class: Rare Combat Relic
Type: Living Spellarmor (Reinforcement-Aligned Gunslinger Gear)
Origin: Forged in the dying furnace of a collapsing battle-realm where time, fate, and fire converged. Crafted by the Armorer, a legendary golem.
Core Features:
Throne-Ward Fiberframe: The armor bonds to its wearer's legacy. Automatically strengthens Reinforcement-type magic, multiplying output during moments of extreme resolve, defiance, or sacrifice. +3 Bonus to Magic
"Last Shot" Contingency Core: When near death, the coat pulses with raw magical backlash — briefly freezing time for a single shot, spell, or move. Only usable once per full lunar cycle. 1 shot kill!
Reverent Stand Protocol(Ability): During duels, the armor aligns the wearer's aura with historical gunslingers of legend. Gain a passive accuracy and reaction-time boost when fighting with great foe. Call upon ancient gunslingers(random)
-
When it was done, it turned to Joshua, the air itself rang like a tuning fork. "You've bled. You've endured. But not yet stood," the golem said. Its voice was a forge bell tolling through marrow. "Do you claim your armor, or do you merely wish to wear it?"
Joshua blinked, then nodded slowly. "I claim it."
Without a word, the Armorer reached out — and from a crucible of smoldering silence, drew the coat.
It looked like it had walked through a hundred wars. A long, blackened duster, lined with flickering runes and reinforced with metal threads braided from battlefield echoes. The pauldrons spun once—revolver chambers that clicked into place as if recognizing him.
He reached out. Touched it. Fire bloomed up his arms—not painful, but searing with memory. Not his own. Gunshots through sand. Duelists falling in moonlight. Kings dying with curses on their tongues. He saw them all. And then—
The coat bound to him. The runes aligned. The sigil burned into the back — a shifting symbol that no one else had ever worn. It was his. When the vision faded, Joshua stood taller. The coat hung from his shoulders like a legend told in advance. The floor beneath his boots cracked faintly from the pressure of becoming.
The golem bowed as the armor levitated into place around Joshua, locking silently to his frame like a trusted companion. No words were spoken. None were needed. As Joshua stepped back through the firelight, he caught a glimpse of the forge's far wall. Countless armor forms—silent, waiting, glowing faintly—each shaped for legends not yet born.
He didn't know if he was worthy of the armor. But he intended to become someone who was.
The Armorer gave one nod — a final clang of approval — and turned back to the forge. "Go," it said. "There are wars yet unwritten, and they are listening for your footfall."
Paying the price, which was a hefty one, but well worth it in his mind. Joshua stepped out into the Bazaar once more feeling much safer than he did for a long time.
- 10,000 Mana Stones
-
Alright that will be all for the Bazaar!
It's open once per month so come by to get great gear and other goodies!