The Quantum Wanderer

After we wake the next day and enjoy our big bed again, we decide to visit Leopold, and have some additional details on the things that have happened the previous days. We talk to him through the Comm Gem, and portal to his office directly.

“Hi, how are you, Leopold?”

“I am well. How have you been?”

“We are well. These past few days we have been visiting Ironhold, actually.”

“I heard about it. Edward is telling me that he should give me a raise…”

He laughed.

“What did you hear about?”

“Well, there was a whole scene at the Command school. Did you know that you almost caused a death? The professor you got in touch with almost went cray-cray.”

“What happened?”

“After you left, the math you had written was erased while the professor was trying to reach a colleague. He actually tried to kill the earth magic assistant that erased the board. Once he calmed down, they had to place the whole class in a room, and make them keep a secret about that. You should see the cursing the professor did towards the class, when everyone answered him that they hadn’t taken any notes. The guy almost popped a vein.”

I giggled a little.

“I can send them the math, no problem. I can send a couple of them, I don’t mind.” I turn to Siratra. “Do you want to participate on this? There are a couple of things we can send them. You can even bring them the math for areas in a circle.”

“Should I start a merchant business? I could import those sacred statues from the demon kingdom, they are already experts on designing churches… You are going to revolutionize advanced math…”

I shrug. “None of that math was developed by me. This is just stuff I am repeating, and it’s the basic one. They would phreak out with a math called Calculus. I don’t know if they are ready, though.”

“And then, you showed the other guild master one of your cards.”

“Huh?”

“You showed him that you can travel across large distances almost immediately. I am going to ask you to take care with those things. Between math and showing capabilities here and there, it is going to make our efforts of keeping your secret a lot harder.”

“Yes… I see… Sorry…”

“Nothing to be sorry for, it is not something that is hurting us, it is something that may get you exposed, and that’s all. I don’t think there is anyone that can actually hurt you right now. Your lifestyle can be impacted, though.”

“Sure, I will take that into account. Talking about lifestyle, what do you think about Edward’s proposal?”

“What proposal?”

“He told us that, should we want, he can have a house available for us in Ironhold, should we want to spend some time there.”

“Do you like the city?”

“Yes.”

“Are you particularly attached to Frolk’s folks?”

“Not particularly. The people I am attached to most, other than family, are Andrew, Rajesh and you.”

“Family? Do I come after the crows?”

“Don’t be upset. Muninn is family…”

He laughed a little.

“Ok, question. A tough one. The life of Muninn for the life of an unknown human?”

“Why is that tough? Muninn’s life comes first. And tell you what, depending on the human, the life of an unknown crow would come first…”

We laughed. Huginn landed on my shoulder, and inclined her head against mine. Leopold looked at the scene.

“I am telling you, those guys actually understand us… This is creepy. Anyway. If Edward wants to gift you a house, let him.”

“Wouldn’t they expect some kind of favor in the future?”

“Not really. Let’s suppose, for a second, that you’re living there, and that you’re happy. After all, you are going to get well treated near them.”

“Ok.”

“Now, let’s say the moon decides to fall down, on top of the city that you’re living in. If you can, you are going to make it fall somewhere else, right? Perhaps the capital of Arthuria?”

I giggled. “Yup. Not quite like that, but I get your point.”

“So, again, let them pamper you. Just remember, you don’t owe them shit.”

“Thanks. I hadn’t seen this angle.”

“What ever I can do to pamper you…”

And we laughed.

“Talking about pampering, do you know when the guild is going to post the job for the nest extermination? How much are they thinking of paying? By the way, I closed the mine, but those things are very good diggers.”

“We actually appreciate that. And we also appreciated that you did the job so fast. Any other adventurer would still be traveling there. We would only know about the whole thing in another four days.

“Big expeditions like this will involve a lot of money, and a lot of time. We have some values for each type of beast killed, but the organization of something like that will take a long time. By the estimate numbers of this thing, they are expecting somewhere around 7000 workers, 800 soldiers and 90 kings. Of course, there would be 1 queen.

“As for the time, something like this would need at least 10 to 15 full mithril teams, and a lot of steel teams to cull out the worker level monsters. Those teams are few and spread out along capitals and big centers. A lot of them might be already on a job. Putting this excursion together is going to be a nightmare. But that is the bare minimum that we can guarantee that they are not going to be overcome and killed.”

I was doing the math in my head. The 90 kings would pay out 90 platinum. The 800 soldiers would pay another 160 platinum. And the soldiers, another 350 platinum. The problem would be logistics. Traversing that whole maze would take some time. Besides, putting all those things in bags. I could create one bag for each dragoness. Cecilia and Siratra could come with me, since they are on the frail side. I still had Malagar’s wings, his gem, plus another 6 adult dragons’ gems. This could work.

“What does that mine produce?”

“It produces innura. I think I have some here in the guild somewhere. We keep these things because they are useful for some low level jobs. Just a second.”

He goes down the stairs, and a little time later he comes back up again. He has a piece of rock that looks like fools gold.

“The ore itself is cheap. It is mostly mined by slaves, so the mine owner ends up getting some money. The problem with the infestation is that it may reach the village nearby, and then create new nests. These things have to be culled immediately.

“The only people that buy those things are the dwarves. It’s not even smeltable, some people tried. It is like a trinket they enjoy. So some merchants sell that to them, and get some dwarven coins with it. Those dwarven coins cannot be refused by dwarves, so they can later be used to by some mithril equipment.

“A merchant may have to carry two carts filled to the brink with that to get a mithril knife. Probably around 7 carts to get a mithril sword. That’s why they are so expensive.”

“The guild has some other deals with them, that allows us to get the tags. Your tags were pretty expensive, mister.”

I am curious about this thing. I take a closer look at the structure. I pour a lot of mana on my eyes and brain, to make out the structure of this thing. It has actually a lot of metal. The metal has 26 protons in its nuclei. So the nuclei is iron, but… Oh! 2 valence shells…

“Are you saying that no one knows what this is?”

“Like I told you, it’s a trinket the dwarves buy, as far as I know. As far as everybody knows.”

I just start laughing.

“Where do the dwarves get all their mithril? Do they sell a lot of mithril pieces?”

“Not a lot, they are very expensive, actually. They apparently live under the mountains, and they have mithril mines.”

I laugh a lot more. This is just fantastic.

“They don’t have to mine mithril. You guys sell it to them for small copper coins. This is mithril ore.”

“BY THE GODS!!! YOU HAVE TO BE SHITTING ME!!!”

I laugh a lot more. Cecilia picks up the rock from my hands, and takes a look. Then the rock is retrieved by Siratra, that also takes a look. I can’t hold myself.

“I wonder what they think everytime some human gets there with 3 carts filled with ore, to leave with a knife. I wonder how long they take to smith a knife…”

I can almost feel Leopold’s head going through several scenarios and possibilities.

“Marcelo, I am going to ask you and the girls to keep this a secret for now. There are a lot of people that would get rubbed the wrong way by something like this. Do you mind if I share this with the upper echelon?”

“Not really.”

Leopold fixes himself a drink and tries to relax a little bit. Apparently, there is too much happening at the same time. It looks like it was enough subject for a day.

“Well, let me know when the guild has the numbers. We may want to take this.”

We go back to Frolk. During our supper, I decide to talk to Cecilia.

“Cecilia, you mentioned that you have both fire and air magic, right?”

“Right.”

“Ok. Tomorrow, we are going to work on improving fire by using wind.”

The dragonesses seem interested. Ruby is the one to mention.

“Can I do that too, my lord?”

“Oh, of course. You are all my girls, after all…”

Ruby pulls an Aquamarine reaction, and blushes a little bit. Tomorrow is going to be a busy day.

As we wake up, I mentally prepare my agenda for the day. I think that in the morning I am going to try to teach the girls about using oxygen to improve their fire magic, and later I have to get some additional magic bags.

In our own expedition, I am thinking of sending each dragoness on her own. There is nothing down there that can hurt them. And that is going to multiply our speed by 5. Actually, not by 5, since I don’t know how faster or slower I am, and I will have to be pulling Siratra and Cecilia along.

“Good morning, girls. Who is going to join our quest?”

The dragonesses all raised their hands. Cecilia seemed interested. I could see that Siratra would not be that interested in it.

“Siratra, you don’t have to go if you don’t want to.”

“In that case, I would rather not going, master. Not really my thing.”

We go out in the forest, to a secluded place, and I start my lesson about air.

“Ok. I am not used to teaching really, and I don’t really have a plan here. So you should stop me at any time to ask questions, ok? Oh, another thing, I don’t want this knowledge spread, it can have some military uses, and I would rather not contributing to this kind of thing.

“Let’s start by understanding what is air. We can see air as these tiny, tiny, tiny pieces of things. We can imagine tiny little balls of material, bouncing around.”

“Master, do you happen to know how many? Or how large these things are?”

I do some math in my head. I know that 22,4 liters is around 6 gallons. And, on Earth, that would be around 6 x 10 to the 23 molecules. Let’s say some 15 grams for average mol weight, I need 25 times that for a pound, so 150 gallons.

“I am not sure, it is going to depend on somethings that I haven’t measured since I have been in this land, but it would be somewhere around a number of 1 followed by 23 zeroes. Again, I haven’t really measured this, but if I am not off by much, you should have a pound of air in 150 gallons of air. So the particles are really, really, really tiny, right?

“But not all air is equal. It is actually a mix. You have something that composes the great majority of it, almost 4 to each 5 parts. That’s nitrogen. You have another one that is almost 1 to each 5 parts, and that’s oxygen. We have some other things that are really sparse as well. We even have some particles of water here and there.

“There is a tendency of these things to get mixed up together really well, and that’s the challenge we are going to face with magic. Questions so far?”

Cecilia raised her hand.

“What is your question?”

“Starting with the tiny pieces.”

This was going to be a lot harder than I thought. I could see that Siratra was actually worried about any noise around that could distract her. The dragonesses were actually moving their hands around in the air, breathing in and out really slowly. Ruby takes her clothes off and assumes her dragon form. She flips her wings really slow, while watching dust come up from the ground. I can see the mana flowing around her, while she uses it to inspect every little sensation she has. The other girls follow suit. It looks like that helped the information to sink in. They come back to their human form, take a look around, and just sit on top of their pants, naked. Siratra looks a little envious.

I just have an idea. I open a portal to my bedroom in the guild.

“Cecilia, can you over to the guild and bring me some beans? At least two kinds. A pound is more than enough.”

She goes in the portal, and we wait a little bit. After some minutes, she comes out, with two small cloth bags, one containing red beans and the other containing green beans. I pour them on the ground, and I do my anti-gravity spell, nullifying most of gravity. I already have had a lot of practice with this, considering I use it for my flight spell. I keep the beans kind of together, in a sphere of around 2 feet diameter, with magic. They start mixing together, and now the beans are flying around in this sphere.

Everyone is paying a lot of attention. Even Muninn and Huginn.

“Now, imagine that this happens with something a lot smaller. Imagine this each of these beans are as big as Andrea, and we are talking about grains of sand. The air pieces, we can call them molecules, are really really tiny. So small that gravity pulls it with a much smaller force. And this is what I did, I just removed gravity from this area.

“This is what the air molecules would kind of look like. What we have to attempt to do is separating the different particle types, the different substances in the air. It is kind of hard, because everything is way to small to see with the eye. One needs a lot of mana reinforcing their eyes and brain to be able to see individual molecules.

“Now we have the really important information. Fire, and most life as well, use oxygen. So far, I saw that most monsters or people that survive without oxygen are using mana, or magic, to get around that. Fire, even magical one, cannot survive without oxygen. I separated the two of them. You can’t see, but on this side, I have pure nitrogen, and on this side, I have pure oxygen. Just a little bit of each, right? I am keeping this with magic, because it’s tendency is coming back to a mix.”

I grab this little branch, and set it on fire with magic.

“I set this on fire with magic, but now it is burning on its own, no mana being spent. This is what happens when it goes into the nitrogen.”

I place the branch in the nitrogen sphere, and the fire goes out immediately.

“This happened because of the lack of oxygen. Now, let me show you what happens in the oxygen.”

I light the branch on fire, and I put it out, so that only embers are left. I break the branch down, so that it is very small. I get a little away from the sphere of oxygen. When I throw the branch with the embers in the oxygen sphere, it does this big ball of fire, there is a wave of heat towards us, this almost explosion type reaction, but not quite. It looked like those cases where you add gas to an already burning fire. And the branch is gone. Good thing I used a very small branch.

“The pure oxygen, by itself, doesn’t really burn. But the amount of oxygen will tell the speed the fire will happen. Basically, the branch was burned all at once. This is kind of what happens when a smith uses the bellows in a forge. More air, more oxygen. I just used magic and went all the way.

“Questions?”

There was silence. All of them had their mouths open. I could almost hear the cogs running inside their heads. Even Muninn and Huginn were static.

“Now, what I want to you to train is splitting air into those two substances, and keeping them apart. You can check if it worked with a very small piece of paper with some embers. If the amount of paper is small, even if it burns all at once, there shouldn’t be any issues. Just be careful when playing with fire.

“While you play with this, I have to prepare additional magic bags. Siratra, since you are going to be out of this quest, you can get this one that I got from Leopold. It is already very big. I have another one, that was built from a hatchling, bigger than that one. This one goes to Cecilia. I have to build another five ones. I am going to build one for me, the other ones I am going to use Malagar’s leather and the adult’s gems. They should be big, but we are going to need several very large bags to be able to bag the amount of insects we are going to face.

“Do you have any additional questions?”

“No, my lord.” Shandon answered, apparently for everyone. I opened a portal the guild, get the tools I would need, and then I portal to my meat safe. With the amount of mana I have right now, I can perhaps reinforce my senses, and speed things up. I cut pieces of Malagar wings, and start the work. I am doing it using a production line, kind of.

When I am done, I am really tired. I have no idea what time it is. I remove the other gases aside from nitrogen, and I go back to the forest where we were. It is night already, so I go to the guild.

I knock on the door, and Muninn comes out the window to greet me. I take a look at the window he came from, it is my windows, and it is open. It may be late. I jump the window and the girls are sleeping in the bed. I tip toe to Cecilia’s room, and just pass out on her bed.

The next morning, they wake me up. Before breakfast, I go down to have a bath. Once I am back, Cecilia has already served the now reduced people their breakfast. People are starting to get used to the girls living in the guild. Apparently they realized that there is no space for other people with my girls.

We go down for our barbecue breakfast, and I tell them that I have gifts, they are in Cecilia’s room. They are quite excited.

I have no idea on how much their bag is going to hold. The one that is going to Cecilia is already very large. The dragonesses’ bags were created with Elder dragon leather, and adult gem. So a big upgrade on Cecilia’s. I doubt Siratra would ever fill hers, she is not the adventuring type, so there is not much need for her. I was curious about their day yesterday. I looked at Cecilia.

“How was yesterday’s training?”

“O-ei.” She snarled.

“My lord, that was absolutely fantastic! Our fire breath is so much more powerful! It is amazing,” Shandon commented.

As for the other dragonesses, the dragonesses are naturals with air magic as well as fire magic. They use air magic instinctively to help with the flying. This made a lot of sense, really, given their weight and the amount of wing that they would need otherwise. They did have large wings, but their dragon forms were still huge and heavy.

Muninn and Huginn cawed as well. I looked at them, and they placed their wings forward. I sensed the mana, and when I enhanced my senses, I could not believe it. They were actually able to do it. Well, it somehow made sense that they had air magic affinity, I would not expect this much. I hear Cecilia muttering under her breath.

“Evryn a fckng gnius…”

I knew better than to laugh. The rest of the day went by normally. I checked the girls weapons and armor, to make sure everything was ok. The girls went to Orora in the afternoon, as usual, except for Cecilia. She stayed behind training the air manipulation. She complained that she felt like she was in a timeout.

We had already our weapons, the armors, and the bags. We might just be ready for the nest.