by James Hunter
Bill paused to make his next words really sink in.
Sam just sat there for a moment, shocked to his core. Five thousand gold or more for a book? That was ludicrous. But if it was true… just how much wealth did the College have at their disposal? Sam sputtered after a second, “Why are they so valuable?”
“But the problem is, there aren’t a lot of magical books just laying around all over the place,” Sam spoke the issue out loud.
“So, what about non-magic books. Can we just use those instead?”
“Like replacing the magazine in a rifle…” Everything was starting to click into place in Sam’s head. Although the magical books looked like books, they were basically six magical machine guns. Some fired fast and held a ton of rounds but were less powerful. Others were more powerful but had a lower capacity for ammunition, like a shotgun with big, deadly slugs. A few were uber-powerful, but single-use, like a rocket launcher. But Sam had to make his own bullets. The analogy wasn’t perfect, but thinking about it that way helped Sam wrap his mind around the casting mechanics.
“Think I’m following.” Sam absently sat down on the bed. “So, a couple more questions. If I have magically infused paper, could I use the outer cover of a regular book?”
“Wait. What? So all the spells I’ve been casting so far are a third less powerful than they could’ve been?”
Bill chuckled.
Sam stood and paced, his mind whirling at all the possibilities. With this class, he might never be as purely powerful and instantly versatile as some of the other Mage classes. His spells were built on items, which he could run out of, but if he had the supplies, the money, the time, and the Mana reserve… it was possible he could essentially change his ‘class’ at will. If he wanted to focus entirely on combat, he could, in theory, bind six different versions of Paper Shuriken all with different elemental effects to six different books. He’d be able to hurl fire-based Shurikens or ice-based Shurikens with equal ease, making him a force to be reckoned with.
“This sounds amazing!” A wide grin broke out across Sam’s face. Still pacing, he ran a hand through his short-cropped hair. “Where do we start?”
Sam felt the wind fade from his sails and a serpent of doubt rear its scared head inside his chest. Contract magic screamed ‘The Accords’, which left him deeply uneasy. Besides that, the term sounded suspiciously like some sort of magical law school jargon, and Sam didn’t want anything to do with that; he’d left the real world behind in hopes of forgetting about things like contract law for a while. “I’m sorry, did you say… Contract Magic? How about starting with Fireballs? Or Ice Bolts? Can’t we start with something cool?”
Bill sighed in his head, the sound like a wind blowing through tall grass in the summer.
Before Sam could even hazard a guess, Bill answered for him,
“What’s a Ritualist?” Sam asked, attention suddenly piqued.
Sam thought about the book’s words, and as much as he wanted to argue, he knew just how right Bill was. He thought back to his real life, to the senators and CEOs who worked with his dad from time to time. Most of them were unassuming men and women. They weren’t overtly famous, and at a glance, they didn’t seem dangerous or powerful. Senator Lonstein was nearly seventy with a shock of silver hair and a double chin that wobbled like a bowl of Jell-O—reminded Sam of the Archmage, actually—but this unassuming man could pass or crush a bill in congress with a phone call. And Mrs. Robertson, CEO of BlackWater Trust, could bury someone with her army of lawyers or take them out in a more physical way with her platoons of black-suited, private ‘security’ guards.
Any one of those guards—most of them former military—could break Mrs. Robertson like a twig, yet she was the one who called the shots, not them. That was real power… and that was what Bill was offering Sam.
He had been running from power all his life, afraid that he wasn’t ‘worthy’ or that he’d turn into someone like Barron Calloway. He couldn’t run from power any longer, though. He’d be a fool to refuse Bill’s instructions.
“Alright,” Sam’s voice was brimming with determination, “let’s learn some contract magic.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Turned out that contract magic was as dull as it sounded. Thanks to Sam’s background in prelaw, the class practically flew by. First, Bill walked him through the basics of material use—how to sharpen quills, choose proper paper, mix and maintain ink, and the basics of spell form calligraphy. All of this earned him four new skills in under an hour, and all of them started out at Beginner Level zero; an impressive feat that was only possible thanks to Bill’s expertise in the area.
Being trained by a Master of a craft has greatly increased your speed of comprehension!
Skill gained: Quill preparation and maintenance. (Beginner 0). Sharp quills mean sharp and accurate writing or drawing! Each rank of this skill increases quill durability by 2%.
Skill gained: Ink preparation. (Beginner 0). Creating the correct color and consistency of ink is paramount to creating beautiful works of literature. Each rank of this skill increases ink purity by 2% and decreases time to create desired ink by 2%.
Skill gained: Papermaking and selection. (Beginner 0). Just because the paper is available doesn’t mean it is worth using! Each rank of this skill increases paper durability by 2% when it is used or created by you.
Skill increased: Scribe (Beginner 0). Learning the basic skill set of this craft has resulted in a massive increase to the starting proficiency!
From there, Bill dove into the big picture complexities behind magical law and contract theory, which was actually quite a bit more fascinating—and terrifying—than Sam would’ve guessed. Truthfully, the principles of law here in Eternium were fundamentally the same as the principles of law back in the real world. It was a bevy of legalese, clauses, subordinate clauses, and other minutiae that any practicing lawyer would’ve recognized in an instant. The major difference, however, was in how contracts were enforced.
In real life, if a party signed a contract, they were legally obligated to fulfill the terms of the contract, but the only real recourse if one party failed to uphold their end of the bargain was legal proceedings and a judgment handed down by either a mediator or through a court. Contract magic worked a little bit differently, making the contracts of Eternium far more binding.
Not a matter of mere legal obligation but a matter of enforced magical obligation. Instead of simply swearing to abide by the terms of the bargain; when someone signed a contract here in the game, it was empowered by a Mana thread which connected the signer’s Core to the contract. The Mana expended was so small it barely registered… right up until one of the parties broke the terms of the contract. Then the magical binding kicked into high gear, causing terrible consequences. Everything from excruciating pain to crippling Mana depletion to compelled behavior and personality changes.
Truly horrific penalties, which made Sam realize just how big of a bullet he dodged by annulling his contract with The Accords and not breaking his contract. If he hadn’t bound himself to Bill—which created a forced class change, allowing him to escape the contract without major repercussions to his soul—he would have been enslaved heart and soul to the College for the rest of his days in the game.
“Sounds like a blast!” Sam replied with a smirk, knuckling his back which was already aching from sitting for so long. “I’m so ready to start crafting.”
“What was that now?” Sam was thinking he had surely just misheard the book. “It almost sounded like you said I was going to have to take Magical Material Creation three separate times? That’s absurd. Why in the world would I possibly need to do that?”
Sam grimaced and shook his head.
“But since you created this class,” Sam now had a happy glint in his eye, “yo
u know which skills to combine, in what order, to make the best Bibliomancer spells and abilities.”
Not a question, but a statement of cold fact, and Bill knew it.
“Teach me,” Sam half ordered, half asked, before lowering himself onto the floor in a meditation pose.
Sam knew absolutely nothing about forges or bellows outside of what he’d seen in games and movies, but he thought he understood what Bill was getting at. He focused on the bottle in his hand, feeling the slickness of the glass, the weight of the ink in his palm. He opened his Core, forcing out a thin tendril of Mana and pushing it into the ink. In his mind, he envisioned himself blowing up a balloon, forcing air from his lungs, inflating the rubbery walls of the balloon which kept the air from escaping into the atmosphere. With a thought and an effort of sheer will, he forged a molecule-thin shell of Mana between the ink and the glass itself, isolating the goopy, black substance from the bottle.
