Mage's Cultivation Journey 4

Waking up was a disorienting experience, one that I couldn’t get used to, even though it had been a week since I had woken up in a broken old cottage, tended by a teenager. As for how long it had been since the chain of events that ended up in my disappearance from the flying military fortress, I didn’t have the slightest idea.

While a week had passed since my awakening, I had done nothing but fake unconsciousness. I had no choice. I was helpless, even though there was nothing wrong with my body. The same couldn’t be said for the world itself.

There was no mana.

Not a trickle, not a pulse, not even the faintest whisper in the walls.

Just… nothing.

The absence of mana had been disorienting. Mana was the one companion I could trust in the troubling life I had lived, surrounded either by enemies, or so-called friends that would only require to smell a hint of profit to turn into an enemy, a life I lived from the day I had been admitted to my first academy as a scholarship student.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have the luxury of mourning the absence of my most trusted companion, not when I was in the midst of the most dangerous challenge of my life. All stemming from one fact. I was not just in a foreign plane, but likely a completely foreign dimension altogether.

Most likely, one that was at war with the mage civilization, meaning the moment my identity as a mage was revealed, the best thing I could hope for was a clean execution. As for the worst…

I refused to think about it.

It was why I was still acting like I was in a coma even though I had been awake for a full week, living in the tiny, broken cottage, doing my best to learn enough about the place I found myself in.

Even more unfortunately, I couldn’t even focus on the things I would have loved to research and understand, like what kind of energy existed in this plane instead of mana. No, I had to stay small, and understand the tiny village and the surrounding land first, at least enough to fake some kind of identity that would pass the muster.

Deciphering the language had been the first challenge. A significant one, as they were speaking an unfamiliar one, lacking a shared basis. Luckily, while the absence of mana prevented me from casting even the most rudimentary spells, my mental acuity was still there, my natural abilities — the only reason I had been able to get admittance to an academy as a street urchin in the first place — sharpened by years of meditation, careful potion regiments, and many mental techniques.

And, about three hundred languages I could speak proficiently, which I learned as a necessity in my research to understand ancient or extra-planar scripts helped immensely. Some of the ancient languages had some similarities. Not enough to imply a shared root, but enough to guess there had been some connection between dimensions in previous ages.

Those bits and pieces were enough to give me the key to understand. For the rest, I had to sneak into the village whenever the kid who was helping me went out to work, lying in a concealed ditch near the village well, carefully listening to people to get a better sense.

The language was interesting. It was a chipped language, but surprisingly tonal and rhythmic. It felt like a cute mixture of old Runechant, mixed with Eltherian Trade Tongue. It had phonetic structures closer to early Southern Sarn, but with fluid consonant endings that made direct translation a mess.

By the third day, I had a rudimentary understanding of the language, something that even the other mages would have found challenging, maybe impossible. It would have been enough to communicate with my savior.

I continued to hide and listen. Not because I didn’t like the kid that saved me. He seemed like a nice one, saving me despite all the effort it required, and the dismal state of his cottage suggested he could hardly afford such a cost.

Nice didn’t mean trustworthy when considering the extraordinary nature of my origins, and that assumes someone truly believed my excuse, and didn’t just assume me to be a spy of another country on this plane.

Even if he wanted to hide it, there were hundreds of ways for him to slip out a secret of that magnitude. No, my situation was simply too sensitive to take such a risk, especially when the benefits of such an action were nonexistent.

For all those reasons, I continued to stay in the ditch, carefully repeating the phrases I listened to, doing my best to learn not just the language itself, but their accent, mimics, and other habits. I didn’t want to mimic them completely, as they belonged to villagers, who, without a doubt, differed a great deal from the city dwellers and nobles.

No matter how much I observed from the people, there was no way I could act as a native. My lack of knowledge about the common facts would eventually reveal the falsehoods. Coming from a distant land, only to be stranded by an accident was the only reasonable excuse. As for the facts like the distance of the land, and the truth of the situation, I would have to play fast and loose, depending on the kid’s response.

“Speaking of the kid, he should return soon,” I muttered as I walked to the pile of dried weeds that passed as a bed, not that I complaining … much. As much as I hated to admit, as my powers as a mage grew, I got used to the convenient luxuries that came with power and riches. And, despite coming up short when compared to mage lords and other higher entities, a mage of the fifth circle had been enough to completely trivialize the acquisition of ordinary luxuries.

My latest misfortune had been the exception to the case.

I settled on the uncomfortable bed, and prepared for another boring night where I would have to lay motionless, faking unconsciousness, boredom a hundred times worse than any physical discomfort. I needed something to keep me entertained —

“Did you think you would be safe when you ran away from the town! Bow down, apologize, and reveal that coward’s location. I’ll leave a complete corpse! With your martial foundation ruined, you have no hope of resisting me, a martial artist at the Peak of Initiation!” a shout rang, like fate giving me exactly what I wanted.

That was a rather poor threat, I surmised. Give me what I want, and I would still kill you. It must have been a cultural thing. Naturally, I had no intention of moving, any fight having nothing to do with me. I still prepared to peek through the window, hoping to get a glimpse of the fight. The mention of the martial foundation had been interesting.

While I had been eavesdropping the discussion between villagers, there had been many mentions of various entities, from ghosts to gods. Unfortunately, distinguishing reality and superstitions was a challenge. Among the many that had been mentioned, two of them caught my attention.

Cultivators, and martial artists.

The reason for cultivators was easy. Their existence had been proven rather directly to me. I was scared at the first mention, but luckily, the way they were being talked about was more like mythical beings rather than someone you were afraid of coming across while walking around, implying that I wouldn’t be coming across one of them anytime soon.

A fortunate detail. I had access to the full might of a military fortress designed for interplanar invasions, and I was barely able to slow him down. I didn’t fancy confronting one in their home plane without mana.

Meanwhile, mentions of martial artists were far more concrete. During the week, I had listened to many villagers gossip about various figures in nearby towns, throwing around ranks like Initiate and Muscle Refinement while discussing their encounters, even talking about witnessing them fighting about each other.

Those fights had mentioned several supernatural abilities, like a solo fighter beheading a hundred bandits in one move, which implied some martial artists were strong enough to give a mage of second circle trouble.

The challenge was to distinguish between what was the actual capabilities, and what part of was the exaggerations spread based on gossip, and the battle that was about to happen was a good way to start gathering some concrete information. With that in mind, I walked toward the window, hoping that I would be able to see the fight.

But, just as I arrived, a familiar voice answered. “I will never surrender, and I will never betray my honor.”

It was the kid that saved me. Worse, the desperation in his voice was apparent. He didn’t believe that he would live through it. If I had access to mana, I could have helped, but without it… I could do nothing against someone who could use the native powers of this plane. Without mana, calling me a terrible fighter was a huge understatement.

“The smart thing is to turn back and slip out of the village. No one knows I’m here,” I spoke out loud, but even as I said those words, I knew I was trying to convince myself.

I couldn’t turn my back on someone that saved my life.

“You’re an idiot, Erin,” I told myself while I desperately looked around the room, hoping to find something that would help me save him … when my gaze fell on the blanket.

Just the thing I needed.