Bog Standard Isekai

That night, Brin had a nightmare. It wasn’t often that he had nightmares, or dreams of any kind. [Dreamguard] allowed him total control over his dreams, and that made both dreams and nightmares lose their edge.

This one was different. He was in the Tower again, climbing towards the Grand Focus, only this time, all his enemies were [Mages]. He fought well against those of water, earth, and air, but [Fire Mages] were too quick. Just like Ares’ lightning in that original Mages Duel, their fire was too fast for him to block with glass and they burned him again and again, until he stopped and begged for mercy. He wasn’t even upset, and he didn’t dream of revenge. He just wanted them to stop burning him.

[Dreamguard] allowed him to look at it objectively, almost from the outside. He could see how much of this nightmare was his mind’s reaction to the day’s violence and stress. He could also see that was not all this was. There was something Wyrd about it. It didn’t feel like an attack; more like the landscape was shifting. Large events were sending currents through the Wyrdic sea, and his little boat was bobbing up and down.

He woke in a cold sweat, and immediately went to the warehouse to start an early morning workout routine until the strange feeling was replaced with the heat of burning muscles. The System decided to be generous with him.

Through training, you have increased the following attribute:

Vitality +1

That was on top of all the awards he’d gotten from yesterday.

Through a feat of single-minded resolution, you have received the following attributes:

Will +5

You have advanced an Title:

Mage -> Mage of the Tower

You have earned the trust of the Tower.

The power of your spells will increase in proportion to understanding of the Language and your influence with the Wyrd. You have an increased ability to understand the Language. Gain +20% power from all attributes while inside the Tower.

[Transmute to Glass] +10

[Shape Glass] +6

[Summon Light through Glass] +5

[Summon Fire through Glass] +10

The increases to his summon Skills only served to remind him of the choice that he was putting off. It wasn’t like he was procrastinating, exactly. He’d decided to wait until Lumina got back before making up his mind.

The problem is he already knew exactly what she was going to say, and that didn’t make the choice any easier. [Merge] was the mathematically optimal choice. He’d be getting the equivalent of 2 free Skill points into his sound, fire, and glass summoning Skills. Even if he ignored the edge cases like molten glass, that was six upgrades for the price of one. That’s probably what Lumina would tell him to take.

On the other hand, all that would do would make him more powerful with his most generic, expected abilities. It didn’t make him much stronger with the things he was uniquely good at.

[Multithreading] was the least exciting option to his mind, but also probably the one he should take for his long-term growth. He was level 50 now, so it was time to start thinking about how he was going to scale. Fighting monsters at or around his level was going to stop being a viable method of gaining levels sooner rather than later. He’d need to rely heavily on [Multithreading] to do a hundred different things at once or risk getting stalled out at level 60 or 70. If he didn’t prepare [Multithreading] now, he might not be able to make that strategy viable. Sure, he wasn’t salivating over the [Multithreading] improvement like he was the others, but immortality may well be on the line. He bet that Hogg was going to push him towards this one.

The upgrade to [Transmute to Glass] was the probably the worst choice, and the one that he felt the most drawn to. The truth was, he didn’t know what [Transmute to Glass] would be capable of when he developed it further, but he could hear the Avatar of Glass calling to him. Was that a good enough reason to throw away the six or more free upgrades that [Merge] was offering him? Objectively, no. But he still wanted it.

He washed up, and Tonin was already up and ready to help him dress. Brin fell into his normal routine, appreciating but only half noticing all the little things that his [Valet] did for him, but he stopped himself. Tonin had fought alongside him; he deserved a little more than a seamless transition back to normal.

“Hey, so about Sanpurana…” Brin started.

Tonin shook his head. “I appreciate that you may well be the one person in the world who could relate to my situation, but… I don’t wish to speak of it.”

“Then say no more,” said Brin. “If you change your mind, I’m here.”

“I don’t believe I shall, but thank you. What will happen to her?” asked Tonin.

“For now, they’ll hold onto her for questioning. I’d really like the identity of the [Witch] who put her up to it. But they’ll let her go after a month or two. She didn’t actually go through with it–that will count in her favor, and commoners are too valuable to kill without a good reason. I bet they’ll find her work on the other side of the country and quietly move her out of town. They’ll likely expel her family as well.”

“I see,” said Tonin.

“If you want to see her, I might–”

“Thank you, but no.”

Hogg was already in the dining room, as well as Marksi. A plate had been set out in Brin’s place, still steaming as if it had been placed there an instant before he entered the room. There was no food for Marksi. Instead, he was staring at Fowler’s teleportation orb, set in front of him at the table.

The fact of the matter was that the orb was too big for Marksi to swallow. Even if he reconstructed his head to be twice as large as normal, the orb was nearly the size of a bowling ball. He couldn’t get it down his throat. Hogg had already warned Marksi not to eat it until Lumina could get a team to study it, and hopefully reproduce its abilities, so now Marksi was pretending that was the reason he was waiting. But he was adamant that the orb was his, and he wasn’t going to let it out of his sight until he found a way to put it in his belly.

Brin sat down and dug in, but Hogg flipped the morning paper right over his food. Brin had to pull it off his eggs, but then he noticed what Hogg wanted him to see.

“Hey! There are pictures!” Brin saw three portraits dominating the front page of the newspaper. Up until now, it had been text-only, with slight changes in font sizes as the only decoration, but now they’d managed to print actual images.

He noticed that none of the portraits were of him or even Hogg. Had his heroism in the Tower the night before not even made the front page?

“That’s right! I gave that camera you snubbed to Sion and–”

“I didn’t snub it,” Brin said through a mouthful of toast. He usually had better manners, but this morning his stomach was acting like it had never seen food before.

“--that you rudely, irrevocably, undeniably snubbed.”

Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

“It was cool! I told you it was cool! I just couldn’t see a purpose for it,” said Brin.

“Well, Sion could. He got a team to reproduce the cameras, and he’s renting them to the newspapers,” said Hogg.

“You and Sion control the news now?” Brin asked.

“Cameras, Brin. I don’t control the news. Sure, I’m someone who they wouldn’t risk offending, but that’s not the same as–”

“This headline! ‘Palace Guard Bleeds to Protect the Commoners of Steamshield.’ True, but it’s ignoring most of what happened yesterday. And who are these clowns? Not to be conceited, but I assumed the first face that the newspapers would print would be mine,” said Brin.

“Yeah, that doesn’t sound conceited at all,” said Hogg. “Look at the names. Lumina taught you this.”

Brin read them out loud. “Sansan, Duke of Galego. Adao, Second Duke of Pireyre. I recognize the first names from somewhere, but seriously, does Frenaria really have this many dukes? Trimon, Duke of Ballow and Third Prince of Frenaria. Oh, that’s [King] Lancarote’s son. And these other two… his nephews.”

Hogg nodded. “The Palace Guard is traditionally nothing but a ceremonial position. Normally an obituary would have Class and levels, but they don’t list them here. That’s because the crown doesn’t want everyone to see that a lot of these guys had social Classes,” said Hogg.

There were several other notables who’d died but hadn’t been important enough to get a picture. Nothing on Elpidio, though. After a bit of flipping, he saw that the entire Tower Festival fiasco was relegated to page 5.

“Social Classes or not, I saw them in action. They fought well,” said Brin.

“As well as you would have?” asked Hogg.

Brin couldn’t really argue with that. He flipped back to the front page. “Does it feel to you like the [King] used the Motley Shroud to clean out his basement?”

“That’s an example of an inside thought,” said Hogg. “Let’s not go around saying stuff like that outside these walls. Especially not at the ceremony in the Tower today.”

“What’s going on at the Tower today?”

What was going on, was a visit from the [King]. He’d announced that he would address all the heroes from the Tower Festival at noon, and without providing a precise list, every [Mage] in the Tower and half the commoner staff would be there.

Hogg summoned up a stylish black carriage of hard light, and they packed in together with Jeeves and Bedelia. Brin didn’t bother to bring his book satchel–he didn’t think there would be classes today, but Hogg carried an enormous black luggage case.

It was cartoonishly large. In a world of levels, container sizes were limited more by how silly you looked carrying them around rather than how much they weighed, and there was no way to look cool while carrying this. It was eight feet long and four feet wide, but with only one handle.

He supposed that’s what servants were for. Jeeves lugged it onto the carriage easily and then took a driver seat. Bedelia was still moving gingerly after her injuries yesterday, and climbed in the carriage first, not even offering Brin or Hogg a hand.

Not for the first time, Brin wondered what Hogg had to gain by having his hard light constructs pretend like that.

Once they got to the Tower, there was still a lot of time to wait until the [King’s] arrival, so Brin found Sancha and Ares. Both of them were excited to talk about their new levels. Ares had gone from level 26 to 31, and he’d improved his [Form the Air] Skill to now generate lightning directly, rather than whatever roundabout spell he’d been using before. Bottom line, he was quick now. He couldn’t demonstrate in the hallway, but he promised that he could shoot three bolts of lightning at the speed of thought, rather than with the delay between each one like before.

Sancha hadn’t gained any combat levels, but she was still excited by her gains. Apparently, guiding Brin’s glass copy of her for so long and to such great success had given her an Achievement. Now, her gemstone magic would recognize all glass as within her domain, not just glass that Brin summoned and refined with that specific purpose in mind. None of the three of them really knew what Sancha would do with her new power over glass, but it was always nice to have a new ability.

Both of them had gotten a lesser version of his [Mage of the Tower] Title, with only a ten percent increase to their attribute effectiveness, but they were both over the moon about it.

Brin realized he had no reason to hide his own advancements from them, and even let them know his Skill choices, though he didn’t go into all the details of [Multithreading], mostly because they were difficult to explain. Both of them were of the opinion that he should take [Merge] immediately.

They strode up and down the broken, rubble-strewn halls, with Brin carrying Marksi who was curled tightly around his orb, and picked up the allies they found along the way. Vitor had gained three levels. No Skills, but he was happy with [Mage of the Tower], and worried for Calixtum. A special ritual had been designed to permanently bind the Shroud-infected man, and Brin had no idea where he was now.

They met Almenesh on the way who looked near tears as she apologized for not joining their crusade, but Brin couldn’t have used her. She was a great anti-[Mage], but didn’t have a lot of options for Easterlings. They were joined by Bia with her friends. Gyromia, Nunno the [Illusionist], even Guoncal joined the crowd.

Eventually, it drew close to noon, so they made their way to the auditorium. Some of it had been cleaned out from yesterday’s festival and attack, but there were broken blocks of stone from the walls, and light poured in from the holes in the ceiling the Joy Shrouded had left.

The [King] didn’t arrive at noon. He didn’t even arrive an hour after that. They waited, until even the novelty of comparing all their new levels started to grow stale and Brin found himself shifting his feet and cursing himself for not grabbing lunch before coming in here.

Two hours past noon, the [King] arrived.

Guarded by a few high-ranking officers from the Palace Guard, he crossed from the front entrance, towards the stage the [Bards] had set up. He missed the stairs, and rather than backtrack, simply hopped up the five feet, proving that the ridiculously impractical shoes were no impediment.

The jump pushed some of his curly mane into his face, so he swished it back with a toss of his head, and then stepped forth to address the crowd.

Lumina arrived a moment later, sneaking in the back to no fanfare. While the rest of her army had stayed behind to restore order, Hogg had already told him that she was riding back today on the fastest horse she could find.

Apparently she’d made it back in time, and she’d even had a chance to freshen up, because she didn’t look at all like someone who’d been riding hard all night and day.

She spotted him immediately and smiled, but angled her way around the crowd so she could get nearer to the stage.

Lancarote began to speak.

"Although my chancellor has, often in times recent and long past, been employed, very graciously, to speak very eloquently on matters of state and special interest to the crown, he is not so able to set forth my mind on matters of emergency, knowing not the secrets of my heart. Therefore, I take it upon myself to make my opinions known under the power of my own oration, as indeed it has often been said of me that my gift of speech is a quite notable talent among those meager virtues the gods have seen fit to endow me with.

"First, I must express my utmost satisfaction with the comport of my magical cadre this past day and in truth, in past years and decades. Our fair Frenaria is home to the finest [Mages], the wisest and most powerful, and indeed those in most alignment with the truths of the gods and in keeping with their righteousness, as demonstrated in their valor, their temperance, and dedication to the common good of the people and the honorable traditions which we are duty-bound to defend..."

The [King's] speech was flowery and wordy and very normal. The mental manipulation was very slight and easily discarded, but the effect of the mundane words and their delivery were harder to shrug off. It all felt very run-of-the-mill. This wasn't a heroic [King] rallying his people in their desperate hour. This was all by-the-books. Monsters had attacked. Well, when weren't monsters attacking? The right people had been on hand to deal with it. Things were working the way they should. Yes, it was sad that Elpidio had died, but he was old. The [King] framed the entire thing as an assassin taking advantage of the chaos to rob an old man, and after all, wasn't that pretty much how it had happened?

By the middle of the speech, Brin was already making lunch plans and thinking about when classes would start again.

Brin was lulled into such a sense of security that he almost missed it when the [King] suddenly started mentioning things he really should be paying attention to.

"...in mind of his oversights and inefficiencies, Duke Xander of Cobol has been arrested and will live out his days in confinement, under conditions respectful to his station and bearing. [Archmage of the Mystical Elements] Lumina will receive an endowment of his lands, to be managed at her hand and will be held in her family and upon her posterity in perpetuity, while the remainder of the Cobol Duchy shall return to the purview of Cobol family. On that note, Gracia my dear, I'd like you to marry Xeno of Cobol."

Princess Gracia looked calm and faintly bored when she dipped in a curtsy and said, "Very well, grandfather."

Fat-necked Xeno fell over himself in a deep bow and said, "As you wish, Your Majesty!"

Then Lancarote continued as if nothing much had happened. He eventually called Lumina up to the stage to congratulate her in person on her victory, and then called out a few more notable heroics. Hogg was chief among those, but a slew of [Grand Magi] and even Brin and Vitor were included in the list of people deserving recognition.

After the [King] wrapped up, most everyone stayed in place to gossip about the new revelations, but Brin cut through the crowd to find Hogg and Lumina.

He spotted Bedelia, and she guided him through the mess into hallway out of the atrium, where Hogg and Lumina were waiting. They were all too impatient to go all the way up to Lumina's rooms, so Hogg put an anti-eavesdropping ward on them right there in the hallway.

Lumina wrapped him in a hug and kept her hands on his arms when she pulled away. "How dear a sight, to see you whole and uninjured when I return from an outing!"

Brin resisted the urge to itch the place on his arm that would now have a really cool scar if they hadn't forced that Healing Potion down his throat.

"Are you a noble now?" Brin asked. "And Cobol is marrying into the royal line? What does that mean?"

Hogg looked nervous, but also pretty excited. "He's reshuffling the entire board. Everything is up for grabs right now."

More than anything, Lumina seemed sad. "That includes you, unfortunately. It may be necessary to send you away again."