New Magic Brothers: A scholar and a tattoo artist walk into a tavern…

The party retreated. The dwarves and Darmon exhausted, Rum suffering from internal damages, and Elrith… well she was fine actually, just out of bolts and a little tired.

As they reached their camp Rum pretty much immediately went into a long magical meditation, in which he tried to the best of his abilities to adapt the Restore Body spell for repairing himself. He really didn't want to go the rest of his life being feeble from this one arrow. Not even the next day if he could help it. After hours of such meditation though, he was finally coming to a point where no more repairs could be done by his power. He was fortunate enough that he no longer felt directly ill, however, he still didn't feel entirely right either. Even after trading for one of the party's last remaining descent healing potions with a few pieces of his share of the loot, even after that he still wasn't entirely fixed. The remaining cure will have to be found in the city. Rum sighed.

Nobody had been in the mood to comment on White Rose, but as they ate a larger-than-usual evening meal, everyone being mighty hungry, they all continued to glance over at White Rose. Rum had taken to hold White Rose's hand, trying to keep the skeleton calm and seated. But White Rose was curious and the skeleton's free hand would point and prod at everything and anything around them, and Rum would have to explain all kinds of things he'd never thought he'd have to explain before. Things such as: what is fire? That question by itself had led Rum into a five-ten minutes long monologue on the nature of flames, the theories used to explain the phenomenon, and through a bit of a detour Rum had also given an introductory lesson on the relationship between magic and fire, using his Channel Bio-Energy spell for demonstration. Throughout it all, White Rose had listened and presumably soaked in the entire lesson like a sponge. Ze – the indefinite article Rum mentally decided to use for referring to a genderless skeleton – had also shown somewhat of an addiction for Rum's answers. Ze kept on pointing and prodding things showing ever more eagerness and curiosity.

It was when the skeleton prodded its bony finger into the nearby Heart-Piercer's round cheeks that Elrith finally had had enough. "Will you please make your skeleton stop poking anyone and everything around it!?"

Rum pulled White Rose close to him. "White Rose is not an it, White Rose is a ze. The term ze is what they used in Magical History to refer to genderless gods of magic, so I think it's the best one we can use for White Rose. Zes an intelligent sentient species of unspecified gender now, and deserves to be treated with the respectful terms you'd show any sentient being."

"Rum…" Elrith facepalmed, and a pained expression shown through her fingers, "the skeleton you call White Rose – IS A SKELETON!" She jumped up from her seat to shout at him, red faced. "It's a heap of bones animated by a necromancer. You might have pacified it with your spell, but it is still a skeleton created to murder to death any real sentient being like you and me."

"Ze is a skeleton." Rum insisted.

"FINE! Ze, zi, za, whatever. ZE is a skeleton, and skeletons are not sentient beings. They just aren't."

"White Rose is a sweetheart of bones about to blossom, that is how it is, Elrith. Ze might've been originally created by Jorteg or one of his underlings for murder, but now I have given ze a personality. And behold! Watch the harmless curiosity of ze. White Rose only wants to know about the world." Rum pointed at Elrith and then spoke to White Rose. "See that woman you were wondering about White Rose? That is Elrith, her nickname is the The Heart-Piercer. She is not a dwarf but a human, despite how short she is."

Elrith threw Rum a disappointed look, almost as if trying to telepathically communicate Not a dwarf? Really? You had to say it like that? She shook her head after a while and they sat in silence for a few seconds. Then her face grew a malevolent grin.

"That reminds me Rum" she said trying to surpress her gleefulness, "could you care to explain to me, and especially Rulli and Gilda over there, why you pulled up your robe in the middle of battle today, to literally take a piss on the people who were saving you? Like actually peeing on them? After I saw it I still can't understand how and why that happened. You really have to enlighten us."

Rum opened his mouth to say something, but ended up stroking his forehead in a pained attempt to try and figure out how he was gonna explain this. In the end he just went for the most straight-forward answer. "I was using the spell Filter Body on myself to remove necrotic magic. The spell requires of me to dispose of that magic, and peeing is typically how I get that done. I wasn't particularly aiming, you see it was a bit difficult to aim with an arrow stuck inside my back." Rum looked over at the two dwarves. "Sorry for peeing on you two. It was not intentional."

Rulli and Gilda stared blankly at Rum, not knowing exactly how to respond. After just a couple of seconds they both broke eye-contact with him almost simultaneously, and simply did not respond at all. Perhaps wishing they hadn't been part of the conversation to begin with, and had never known its content. Elrith felt defeated she hadn't embarrassed Rum more, but she left it at that.

It was soon night and they all slept, Rum tying himself with rope to White Rose to avoid ze roaming about while they all slept. As the morning came they got up and entered the dungeon one last time, although this time just to grab as much of the loot as they'd left behind. Fortunately for them they faced no repaired doors and no new skeletons. In the afternoon of that day they packed up and left their campsite entirely, and Jorteg's dungeon with it.

The sum of looted weapons and armor had turned out to be much beyond what they could've hoped for. Of course, it was all also very much well-deserved, as they'd fought within inches of their lives, and desperately outnumbered. The situation could've ended much differently if Disrupt Skeleton hadn't worked out, Rum mused to himself, carrying bags upon bags of loot on the way back to Ermos City. He really regretted having made this deal to carry as much of it as possible. Because even with the Beast of Burden spell active it was a long trip, and after coming so close to death he was really looking forward to relaxing from any and all adventure for a week at the least. Several weeks if it was possible.

Next to Rum walked White Rose. Ze too carried some of the spoils of war. When Elrith had insisted upon it, Rum hadn't been able to get himself out of her demands. Elrith didn't seem to get it: White Rose wasn't Rum's property. Ze was zes own being now, the being of a whole new species perhaps, and ze – like any being – should make zes own choices. The communication barrier still being not entirely developed however, Elrith had managed to get the skeleton to carry the weapons and armor before Rum had managed to convey the more nuanced problem of personal decision-making. Elrith treated the skeleton like a troop in the military, with her as zes general, ready to bark simple effective orders, and never saying a word too many. Rum meanwhile had the potential fault of tending to pose statements as a question deserving of full sentences containing reflections, arguments, counter-arguments and extensive elaborations, sometimes spiced up by academic detours seeking to bring a subject matter, and its surrounding areas, into its full light. But for a skeleton who had literally been born yesterday, that was a very ineffective way of trying to get a message across.

At the moment the party had a day's walk left before the outskirts of Ermos City. As they'd gotten closer to the city, Rum had found it necessary to trade one of their swords with a travelling merchant to dress up White Rose with a black hooded robe, black boots, black gloves, and black face veil to protect her from the curious, and even worse the scared, onlookers. Twice had travelling groups seen the skeleton and simply bolted off the road to hide in the foliage. In another alarming instance, a rich person's guards had charged at ze, only for Rum to interpose himself between the warriors and his new friend and try to explain that ze was harmless. Lastly, there had been the mumblings, and even the shouts of "necromancer!" Others had been less aggressive, but their faces had and behaviour had told a story nevertheless. Scared, distrustful, shying away from them and hurrying their feet and kicking the horses. In the end Elrith had insisted, and Rum agreed, that White Rose could not wander around in full view. No more naked skeletons, ze had to get a disguise.

White Rose, as a new species, would naturally gain way more attention than Rum would be able to deal with. Thinking about it, he'd realized he might even be accused and persecuted by one of Ermos City's many authorities for dabbling in perceived necromancy. Though Rum wasn't sure if he now technically should qualify as a necromancer. I mean, I have two spells that deal with the undead. But on the other hand both of the spells were counters to the undead, and didn't aid in making more of them. His Bony Love might even be considered a life-bestowing spell depending on one's point of view. Either way, White Rose looked quite a bit suspicious in zes new outfit, but it was much better ze looked suspicious than if White Rose accidentally invited zealous anti-undead lynching upon them.

The party was walking along the main road, with Elrith ahead of the party, and the group following the same ordered line they'd used going in the opposite direction. Now though, Elrith had stopped. On the right side of the road an entire caravan, or possibly more people, had set up camp. She turned around, looking at her party members.

"Camp, people?" she asked. "We won't reach Ermos City before tomorrow, so we should rest, eat and sleep." Nobody bothered responding, not even Elrith waited for a response to her own question, they all just one by one walked off the road and into the large network of campfires.

All kinds of groups where there. Dwarves, mecha gnomes, wood elves, and humans, sat in circles about the different bonfires. As they walked through the encampment, Rum even saw some dark elves and sky elves, which were quite unusual in Ermos. The dark elves had light-blue and greyish skin, with usually completely black-eyes, with sometimes light-blue pupils. They tended to hide themselves from the sun under large hooded cloaks, and were easily sunburnt. Their small clans tended to prefer nightlife, often serving as night guards when living in other settlements, or living off of night-time hunting when they chose to live in their own tiny settlements, which traditionally were lone, tall wooden houses hidden away in areas with little daylight, such as ravines. Rum had known a couple of dark elven communities like that. They generally tended to prefer the isolationist life, occasionally trading with nearby human or dwarven settlements. The sky elves meanwhile had only two known homes, and they were large ancient cities on the peak of some of the known world's largest mountains. Rum had tried to visit one of them. These elves too were generally isolationist, but unlike the dark elves, when they first descended from their mountain top cities, they were quite social beings, jovial even, energetic, and with a curiosity that could rival the gnomes. They were also among the tallest humanoids in the known world. Used to living in the cold of the mountains they tended to wear brightly colored skin-revealing apparel in the lowlands, where their frost resistance came into contact with a significantly warmer environment.

Neither Rum nor his party were particularly interested in mingling with the other groups today. Rum himself had already met sky elves three times before in his travels, one of which had been to a town called Sunseen, lying at the slope of the sky elven mountain of Sunpeak, where was the city he'd tried to enter, but been barred from. At Sunseen there had been lots of dwarves and sky elves living side-by-side, and sometimes in interbreeding families, leading to long-bearded sky elves and tall skinny dwarves.

"Let's take this spot" Elrith gestured at a vacant spot with a few trees and a small pond a bit further away from the rest of the campfires. The benefits of setting up camp next to other travelers was well known: there was security in large groups. That's how caravans got going to begin with. Also it provided opportunities for trading goods and -services, as well as socializing on the otherwise boring, lonely roads.

As they all began to set up camp, Rum and White Rose put down their many sacks of loot, and Darmon quickly walked off in his noisy armor to start collecting twigs to start a fire. Elrith soon joined Darmon in finding twigs. The dwarves spread out in the grass meanwhile and took off their boots and socks to reveal hairy feet, both of them sighing and clasping hands together, enjoying their respite.

Rum too rested, first casting Softify before spreading out onto the grass and closing his eyes for an immediate quick nap. Within just a few minutes though, a lute started playing from within the camp, as well as – singing? He tried to not let the noise bother him. Then came other sounds: the merry assembly of kids and adults. Too tired to care about what was happening, the wizard managed to drift off halfway into slumber before he felt a tug at his robe. Rum opened his eyes to see the hooded and covered up White Rose pointing zes gloved finger somewhere. The wizard followed the finger and it landed somewhere past a campfire. He sat up and, peering, saw in the distance a pair of bards. A beautiful wood elven woman stringing along on her lute a strange but enchanting melody, while next to her, in the front, a human man looked like he was telling stories. White Rose eagerly pulled at Rum's robe and animatedly pointed repeatedly at the scene of fun.

"You want to know what they're doing?"

White Rose ceased for a second, staring blankly at Rum. Then ze simply continued to tug and pull at his robe, hard enough to almost lift him.

Rum got the hint and put out his hands in surrender before getting up. "You want to go watch?" Standing he eyed ze, but the skeleton didn't reply. Probably doesn't know how to. Rum mentally shrugged. Why not. He cast a Restore Body spell on himself for whatever good it might do him, along with the usual mix of Clean Body and Renew Clothes, refreshing him a little.

"Alright, hold onto my hand, okay?" White Rose nodded zes head in response, grabbing his. Together they walked across the grass and passed campfires, towards the gathering, with White Rose walking just a bit faster than Rum, effectively pulling him along. "Now see that person over there?" Rum pointed at the lute player, and White Rose snapped zes head back at him, before following the finger to the indicated person. "She's an elven woman, and she's playing an instrument called a lute, that piece of wood she's holding. The lute is what makes this sound you hear, the melody. When someone is good at playing the lute, they can use it to make beautiful sounds like this." White Rose's eyesockets remained fixed at the woman as they approached the scene.

"And that man next to her" Rum lowered his voice to a whisper as they came closer, "is a poet, or a storyteller. The two can be the same really, as it is here."

The audience, Rum noticed, was a diverse bunch, with humans, mecha-gnomes, wood elves, and dwarves. Rum inserted himself and White Rose next to a group of older dwarves at the back of the entertainment. The skeleton soon became completely captured by the performance, which, Rum learned, was about the old times, of the time before The Three Lost Cities became lost. He listened to the lines of the storyteller, which he quickly discovered were rather problematic.

"And thus Uva the great troll,

from dwarf king Ruffaring,

stole his golden sword, (No she didn't! It was awarded fairly for military service)

her dreadful voice laughing. (That's definitely thick embellishment)

From golden sword I will,

proclaimed the terrible troll,

a necklace smith and enchant, (Yeah this line is true)

for I will wear a king's soul. (She definitely didn't say that though)

Uva with the king's soul, (Again, she didn't steal his soul)

ruled the king's sentiment, (She just talked to him, no ruling)

and a will to wage war, (Uva reasoned with the king, she didn't hex him)

was lost to dwarven detriment." (Actually 100 years of economic prosperity followed)

"UUUHM" Rum found himself noising loudly, and the lute stopped, the storyteller stopped, and everyone including the audience glanced over towards the back. White Rose was confused by this. Ze looked back and forth at the player and storyteller, not understanding why they were looking in zes direction and not performing. Then ze noticed the audience, and zes skull went left and right and all over trying to understand what was going on. Finally, ze realized they weren't looking at ze at all, next to ze – at Rum.

"So" Rum began, suddenly feeling a bit warm, "I couple of comments. First off: great performance, really nice music, good voice, nice rhyme. You know, musically, very excellent. However, and this is my second comment, I did notice the lyrics are a bit, eh, how do I put this? Not true?"

The performers stared at him. The audience stared at him. White Rose, stared at him. In succession, they were offended, annoyed, and confused.

"What you mean not true?" said a dwarf from the group next to him. The man had a beard down to his belly, a wrinkled face, a traveller's cloak, and a scar on his left cheek facing Rum.

"I mean, most of what the lyrics say is at odds with recorded history. King Rufarring, as I recall from my readings, was a petty king on the south-eastern side of The Young Mountains. He was the last warrior king, true, but he promised his enchanted blade to Uva in return for saving his army when they were about to be destroyed by a coalition. She saved his soldiers, and then convinced him to make a lasting peace. She didn't steal neither sword nor soul, and you forget that the most recent golden age of The Young Mountains took place after the wars stopped. Which should make sense, since wars are costly and people have neither the time nor energy to take proper care of each other when there is a war going on."

"That's not what I learned" said another dwarf, a younger one. "I heard this version" and he gestured towards the bardic duo. "A human should not be going about telling dwarves their own history."

"Oh" Rum's eyebrows raised in surprise, "so you're from those parts?"

"Nooo" he admitted, looking a little embarrassed and much annoyed, "Axe Mountains. But it's more my history than yours."

Rum gestured at the storyteller. "He's a human, you had no problems with him?"

"That's because he has the correct account of things." The dwarf nodded firmly at himself.

Rum was about to sigh, but then spotted the sky elf he'd seen earlier, sitting around a campfire some few meters away.

"Hey! You!" Rum shouted. The elf didn't notice. "YOU OVER THERE!" One of the elf's friends pointed out Rum to her. She turned her head sideways and her eyes discovered the wizard staring and making small gestures to come. She put a hand to her chest as if to ask: You mean me? Rum nodded and waved largely for the elf to come over. She hesitantly got up, confused like almost everyone else in this scenario, and strolled over to the scene, a cup of wine in her hand. "Okay" Rum glanced around at his audience, "sky elves have a long and thorough education in such matters, she should be able to tell us." Rum looked back at the sky elf, who'd just stopped at the edge of the show. "You know the fact that King Ruffaring, from The Young Mountains, gave his sword to Uva the troll, right?"

"Why you asking me?" She glanced at the audience, looking displeased at having one. "Introductory dwarf history was just a five year mandatory course, I barely know anything" and she shrugged. "Junior historian of dwarf history, that's an extra fifteen years, I don't have that! If you need a proper historian, now that's a senior, and that's another thirty years on top of junior. I literally have only a tenth the education of a real historian."

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

"But didn't they teach you about the last warrior king of The Young Mountains?"

"Well" she hesitated. "I guess, we did cover that." She put a finger to her lips, thinking, then swirling her cup for a bit. "I guess, yeah. I do remember the last warrior king. What was it that you wanted to know?"

"Did he give his sword to Uva, or did she steal it?"

The whole audience stared with wrapped expectation, including the bards who were looking deeply discomforted and possibly fearing humiliation.

"She gave the sword. And, yeah. There was something about a lasting peace after that, no more wars, and dwarves getting really rich or something. History wasn't my favorite course, I preferred snow gnome architecture, that was my senior specialty, before I became an adventurer." She swirled her cup. "Not much demand for snow castles at Sunpeak. They're kind-of stuck-up about their designs." She sniffed.

Rum turned away from the elf and looked at the crowd. "Well, there you have it folks. I think I was right, and the story should be amended before its next retelling."

"Who cares about accuracy, it's just a bit of fun" stated a younger human man from the audience. "I don't care about the real history. Most people here probably don't care either, we just need a bit of fun. The roads can be so boring."

Rum let the sentiment sink in for a second. "Maybe" he began carefully, "but to those who have never seen a troll, it's a story of how trolls are like, and so I think we should strive to protect the trolls from an undeserved reputation. Shouldn't we?" He met their various faces.

"Whatever" replied the human, "can we just go back to the entertainment? You've made your point."

Rum shrugged, then looked back at the bards, prompting everyone else to do the same. The bards were taken aback a bit, and hurried to whisper something to each other, before starting on a musical act. Not storytelling this time, but some obvious fiction about love.

Rum tried to enjoy music. White Rose, it appeared, quickly got in the mood of it, looking spellbound by the instrument and the singing alike. Rum sighed quietly. Some people are just too careless with the facts. They don't understand that there's always some idiot who'll take the story and act as if it's real. And things like that are a recipe for stupid wars. The history books were full of feuds like that.

Of course, the fact that the most trusted historical accounts and evidence studied by the scholars sometimes had embellishments sprinkled in between the lines, was precisely what made these stories so captivating. But Rum figured that one shouldn't pretend to reflect truth in storytelling, and that this was less important than the act of guiding a perspective. He reflected upon this. A storyteller isn't someone who relays information – a storyteller expands the imagination. They allow people to have thoughts and feelings they otherwise wouldn't be able to. Poetically expressed information does give us these additional thoughts and feelings, yes. But, story and information is not the same, and especially not in the moral responsibility we carry in our expanded imagination. Because when I, or any of these people here, hear a story as but a story, we own that story in our imagination, don't we? And with it we own the moral responsibility for its growth, transformation, and use in us. Once the story is memory, only we can be its custodians, its caretakers. But if that story pretends to be real in any sense – doesn't that responsibility land differently? We then depend on outside forces, for this bard for instance, on how to interpret it in a socially acceptable way. I think that's how someone can inject historical injustices into the stories and drive a crowd of people to interpret the same injustices in what's told. And using norms such as descency, or loyalty to family, clan, city, or kingdom, those stories cease to be but stories, but become catalysts towards destructive interpretations and destructive ends.

While Rum pondered the nature of truth and its expression, White Rose enjoyed and marveled at the entertained, or at least one would think so, but given zes lack of a facial expression or informative body language, one would mostly have to guess. Together they sat, each in their own world, holding hands and watching the entertainment for upwards of an hour before the bardic duo finished, and the sun was about to set in the horizon. Through the latter set of performances, the singing bard, whose name was eventually introduced as Lartho along with his wife Maveli, went around in between their performances and collected donation-payments for their next performance. They call them donation-payments but of course they expect everyone to give, unfortunately I don't have any money, Rum thought staring blankly and a little embarrassed down at the collection hat. The scene repeateded itself several times. Rum wasn't sure but it felt like White Rose had also been embarrassed by Rum's unwillingness – as it must've seemed like from zes perspective – to participate in the collective payment. Each time the bard with his hat came over to them, ze kept gesturing, pulling at and otherwise trying to insist that Rum give money as well. If only I could have, he thought to White Rose's disappointed defeat, as the hat moved over to the next people. I'm sure if White Rose had any money ze would've happily handed it all over zeself, like so many of the kids do on behalf of their parents. But Rum had lots of loot to sell, and so soon he'd not be so completely without money as he was now. Wait, loot?

Rum got up from his seat. "White Rose, just wait here for a moment, I'll be right back, okay?" Rum walked back to his party's camp, and searched the pile of loot. Just weapons, weapons, armor, shield. He rummaged through it all, finally picking up an item. He went back and sat down, just as the current performance was nearing its end. The singer came around with the hat once more, going from human, to wood elf, to dwarf, to Rum – the wizard dropped the item into the hat, causing the singer to hastily grab it with both hands as the hat gained weight.

"An axe?" Lartho the bard stared dumbfounded at it.

"You can sell it" suggested Rum innocently.

The scarred longbeard from before stood up and leaned over to eye it. "Looks rusted" he commented, then gave Rum a faint smile, before sitting back down.

White Rose ceased trying to make Rum hand over anything more after that. Rum hoped his donation had been to zes satisfaction, even if the bard treated the weapon with some degree of skepticism bordering on disappointment.

When the entertainment finished, Rum and White Rose left the area along with everyone else left in the crowd, and the duo strolled back to the camp, where their party members had managed to get a fire going without Rum, and the people were either eating or resting. As he sat down and started to eat some salted mini-sausages given to him by Elrith, the skeleton stared at him. Ze stared at him eating, taking in sustenance. Food was a ritual of life ze didn't completely understand nor had the capacity to appreciate, as the skeleton had no taste buds and couldn't feel any hunger. Rum had already explained food to ze, and just ignored zes stare, letting ze freely study him as much as ze wanted.

"You know Rum" Rulli suddenly said from his bedroll, Gilda's head resting sleepily on his chest there, "there's something odd about you. I mean Elrith has told me you are just power level eight, but what I've experienced of you so far doesn't add up to what anyone would expect of a level eight. The way you used that new spell of yours, Disrupt Skeleton, that was more like what I'd expect of a level 40 mage or thereabouts. I mean, how can you even have so much mana that you can afford to kill dozens of skeletons that way?"

Rum licked his fingers clean of sausage flavor. After finishing each finger he took a sip from an available waterskin before turning towards the dwarf couple.

"I was taught Akalios' Calculus in my first year at The Flipped University. I'm not a master of the method, but I am familiar with it enough to be pretty confident my calculations are not wrong. I've been at power level eight for many years now. Why I'm not progressing I don't know, my life has been eventful enough that I should've seen some growth. What power level are you guys?" Rum glanced around at his party. They took some time to reply, Rulli being the first to respond:

"36" he said, "she is 37" he added, gesturing at Gilda half-asleep on Rulli's rising and falling chest.

"39" said Elrith, looking at the fire.

"34" said Darmon, he too staring at the fire instead of meeting Rum's eyes.

"Wow" Rum remarked. "You said–" he looked at Elrith "–Jorteg's Dungeon was for power levels 30-40, seems I am very much outside the normal for it."

"It should've been 30-40" Elrith responded softly, "but what we faced on that last day was way beyond what a small group of level 40s should ever be able to handle."

"Yes" Rulli nodded from his position on the bedroll, "something must've changed in that dungeon. I heard the last party that went in there lost a party member, but I just took it to be an accident or mistake on their part. But, it seems like Jorteg is taking quite an active role in defending his dungeon. That swarm of skeletons was supposed to kill us all, not just scare us or test us. Jorteg must've been building up a force for the explicit purpose of taking out parties coming into his base. In all honesty Rum, your spell saved us. Which makes it all the stranger you're just power level eight. Are you being all honest with us? If you want to hide your real power level from us, I'm not going to complain about that seeing as how you saved us, but I'm just asking if you really honestly believe you are power level eight?"

"Yes" Rum smiled at the recognition of his efforts, "I honestly believe I am power level eight, or at least that's all I can prove that I am, according to how such things are measured. But I too doubt a bit whether it can really be right that I'm still just level eight." The wizard stopped to think, then, slowly, shook his head, pondering the strangeness of it. He naturally began to stroke his beard.

"You saved us" Elrith mumbled quietly, before sighing. "You saved us Rum" she repeated, louder. "Really you did. I don't know how you were able to, since you say you're just level eight, but you did. If and when we return to Jorteg's Dungeon, I'm betting on that last spell of yours for our success. I can only say that killing that many skeletons was impressive."

Rum felt himself smile a true genuine smile of quiet happiness. His cheeks flushed a little, getting compliments of this degree he wasn't used to. Though it bothered him just a little bit that they'd said he'd killed the skeletons. That hadn't been his intention, and technically he didn't feel like that was what he'd done.

"Technically" he began, a scholarly pride rising up in him, "I didn't so much kill the skeletons. I guess it's more accurate to say I disabled them. Or if we're comparing it to a human: it would be a bit like if I put a human into a permanent coma. Disrupt Skeleton very predictably severs a critical mechanism of functional skeletal intelligence and animation. Now that I think about it, if Jorteg has discovered what I've done to his skeletons, he might actually very easily be able to restore them all back to a functional state before we get back. The ones you destroyed will still be permanently destroyed of course, and all the weapons and armor we took from the skeletons will have to be replaced, but…" Rum stopped briefly as he was seeing the familiar sight of Elrith's open mouthed, amazed, and finally incredulously disappointed expression, "... we don't know. Maybe I did more damage than I thought, or maybe Jorteg isn't as capable as I'm imagining. The important thing I want to get across is that I didn't kill any skeletons, I only disrupted them. I turned them off from killing us, permanently, or until someone fixes them."

For half a minute Elrith didn't have words, but everyone who wasn't sleeping and wasn't White Rose, that meaning Rulli and Darmon, both understood that The Heart-Piercer was very much building up towards a real comment.

"YOU DIDN'T KILL THEM? RUUUM, THAT'S OUR JOB! We are part of an army, remember? And THAT'S THE ENEMY ARMY! Oh gods, how is this possible. We had the opportunity to destroy over a hundred skeletons, and something like half of them we just let be for Jorteg to bring back to unlife. Those skeletons may now end up ambushing the next party and killing their members!" Her yelling ceased. She just shook her head, and facepalmed, but said nothing more. Dropping that implied moral condemnation into Rum's lap and letting him deal with it, was all she could bother doing. She soon lay down in her bedroll, trying to sleep off her frustration with a sequence of smaller sighs.

Rum's self-esteem fell from a tall height. He'd just been praised and felt really good about it, and now he was down at the level of a disappointment again, because of his aversion to power. He sighed and said nothing more while one by one the others went to bed. Fortunately, but for unfortunate reasons, this though wasn't to last. Rum was used to being looked down on, and thus it wasn't too long before his mind strafed from a general negative mood to one of curiosity, lingering on the unbelievability of his power level being at just eight. He too, even though he'd done the calculations himself, understood that something wasn't matching up between his calculated power level and his actual performance. In fact he hadn't changed in power level since roughly a year before he set out on his six year journey. What did this mean? What held him back?

Rum decided to try and calculate again, just in case – just to see if he might've gone up after this dungeon at least. If he truly was at level eight this dungeon trip should've surely seen him shoot forward in level progression, possibly going up two or three levels even. So Rum went through what he remembered of Akalios' Calculus. The calculus consisted of four steps, or aspects, by which it was at all possible to derive numerical values from abstract physical, mental and magical characteristics. The steps were:

A manipulation of mana into some kind of shape, such as a flat square surface, which was supposed to act as a membrane.

The making of a form of mana thread, or mana wire, going from the membrane and into one of the FAOMs – the Far Away Origins of Magic – which where the extremes of the world where people believed the gods of magic to reside. They included The North Peak, a tall mountain in the far north rumored to be inhabited by a group of old powerful deities, this was the most common one. But also The Vibrant Moon, which was the smaller of the two moons orbiting the planet and world of Aclima, where the Lands of Ermos lay. This one was easier to use at night, and here it was said that the sibling gods Naghmath and Trivili resided. There was also The Great Coral Jungle out at sea, a point in the ocean to the far south where far and deep within a ravine, a small city of gods was said to exist.

Because no normal person would likely have the mana to reach all the way to any of these places, one was supposed to send out pulses of mana from the mana wires until giant spells cast long ago by the gods would attach themselves to the wires, and then as the person pulled or pushed the mana membrane across themselves, the mage using the method would gain magical feedback, like little tinglings filling them with coded sensations.

The different sensations would come at various intervals and intensities, and would be felt at various places of one's mana. By carefully recording all of these sensations and qualitatively separating them, one could then use the method of calculation in Akalios' Calculus to gain knowledge of the various different physical, mental and magical characteristics of an individual.

Rum performed this method on himself, using the lazy old North Peak as a reference. For the rest of the evening he worked on calculating, making sure to be as thorough as he could. White Rose meanwhile patiently observed the caravan from their own campfire while standing next to the seated Rum. The observations of White Rose must've been freakish for the caravan guards, who would've experienced being looked at continuously, without end, for an hour or two, their onlooker never faltering, never swaying, never taking away their gaze.

As Rum finally finished his calculations, the results were in. And he did not understand at all how they were possible.

Rum (male human)

HOW AM I JUST LEVEL TWO? HOW CAN A PERSON EVEN LOSE LEVELS? Something was terribly, terribly wrong with his use of Akalios' Calculus. Am I just incompetent? Was he just that bad at using this method, which he thought he knew so adequately well? He pondered for a while, despairing, his heart feeling heavier and heavier as that feeling from before of being so bad at things started to come back. Then, out of the nowhere, he had an idea. What if the reason I'm only able to measure level two, and can't even measure my natural attributes, is because I've forsaken the gods? What if the gods don't understand my mana? What if Akalios' Calculus was never meant to be used independently of the gods, but only as an extension of their magic, like the spells taught at the university?

Rum got up, stroked his beard for the confidence it gave him, and started pacing back and forth in deep heavy thoughts. What if I could make my own method? But how would I even know if my measurements were correct, or even more importantly, comparable? Rum started furiously rubbing his bald head, feeling like he was way over his head on this one. How could little me make a method that probably took Akalios years, if not decades, to figure out. Unless the gods aided him, in which case, how could I ever match that? He walked up to a tree and started kicking it.

White Rose, taking zes eyesockets off the guards, glanced over to him. Ze stood up, and walked up to zes odd behaving – master? No, partner? Guardian? Something like that, ze watched as he abused the tree and hurt himself.

After beating the anxiety and feeling of inadequacy out of himself for a while, Rum stopped, leaned on the tree, and glanced back to find White Rose's gleaming eyes peeking out from zes veil.

"You wouldn't know how to calculate the attributes from a person's power level independent of the gods, would you?"

The skeleton shrugged. Rum didn't notice the new behaviour he'd just witnessed, but walked past ze and gazed at the stars, as if expecting an answer from above. He admired their beauty, his mind calming for a bit. Finally, after a while of star-gazing, he looked down again, at the world before him.

"Curse it!" he exclaimed, mostly speaking to himself. "Curse it all! This is the problem Rum, you are thinking too narrowly! You could develop a method independent of the expectations this world. You could develop a measure of power level that spited it all. The numbers don't need to match, at least not first. I can calibrate the numbers afterwards, by comparison. All I need is a measurement… to do any measurement, a way of knowing when I progress, and when I'm under a buff or a debuff. Curse you gods for making this hard!" Rum symbolically beat the air in the general direction of the north, as if aiming for The North Peak.

That night he went to work immediately. He was gonna make his own method! Earlier he had felt the membrane as it moved across him, and thus he knew, generally speaking, how the membrane worked. So he tried, making a mana membrane for himself. For feedback he made not one, but a myriad of threads which he willed to report about the features which the previous membrane had reported about, things such as muscles, the state of muscles, the interconnectedness of his brain, and so forth. For hours he labored, well into the night, even going back to doing Akalios' Calculus again just to better understand what was happening under the effects of it. Rum also figured out that what was wrong with the earlier steps of Akalios' Calculus was how the magic of the gods was repelling him, almost like the magic didn't like him. However, Rum managed every time to make the magic stay just long enough to tell him what it was doing. And after many hours, the wizard believed he'd finally figured it out, with the mana, the magic and the math having driven him slightly insane on the way.

He still hadn't calibrated his new method of course, so his comparable level was still unknown, but by the accounts of this new method, which felt even more precise than Akalios' Calculus, he got these results:

Rum (male human) – Using Rum's Calculus

He laughed, out loud cathartically to himself, thinking about the ridiculousness of these numbers. Of course this level didn't mean anything to anyone, and barely to himself, because he wouldn't be power level 678 if he had managed to use Akalios' Calculus successfully and gotten the traditional power level measure. These numbers were wildly inflated. Elrith, Rulli, Gilda, and Darmon would probably hundreds if not thousands of levels high in his system as well. The only thing Rum felt really sure about was that he must be way above level two or level eight, as it would be really strange if a true level two in Akalios' Calculus translated into not just level 678 using his method, but also had over 15000 health and over 20000 mana. Of course it was theoretically possible, just intuitively unlikely.

As yet another dawn crept up on Rum's nightly activities, he finally found a spot on the grass and went to bed. Conjuring a Magic Blanket, he wrapped it around himself, cursed the sun for its appearance, and thought about what he should do next.

… if I used this new method on Elrith, which said she was level 39. What level would she be in my system? A question for another day.