Despite the smell, he followed Zoltan, eager to learn.
His 'master' restored the tower's illusion, which was fascinating—for exactly three minutes.
"A crazy tribal girl brings me low-grade stones. But this is full of energy," he hummed, inserting his crystal after redrawing the runes. Konrad had a solid guess who that girl was, too.
If they haggled with this scamster, it was no wonder Welf's estimate was off.
And how many fortunes must Lily have crunched? Why?
He let his mind wander for the next fifteen minutes. All that time, Zoltan stared at his contraption without a word, and nothing happened. Then a shimmer—and poof.
The tower materialized in all its glory, and even on the inside, he saw its outside.
"We had 'Introduction to Magic', but I didn't bother restoring it." Zoltan bragged, or apologized?
The page he held was a foreword, differentiating between spiritual and regular magic.
Saints and spirits did all the work for their proteges, but wizards had it rough. They had to do everything for themselves. Given the complexity, it was a huge handicap or an advantage.
A blessing was like having eccentric, rich parents.
Everything's free, but you'd depend on supernatural whims. Starting from scratch was slower, more challenging, but permanent, too. Konrad didn't have much time, though.
"Focus is the most important," the illusionist said. "If you can't clear your mind, it'd be devastating. My first fireball burned down the forest and put me in a coma for three days."
Konrad spent decades with a stressful job. He could've taught Zoltan some tricks about focus.
But to his dismay, spells looked like code snippets from school. His teacher would've called them ugly code. Declaring variables, assigning functions, shapes, mana—
But they were all runes, resembling no written language.
No incantations or ready-made spells, no yelling 'EXPLOSION' and acting cool. It was dry programming, but much worse. Unlike on a computer, he couldn't see what he was doing.
No safety, no debugging steps; it was 'do or die'.
His stomach knotted, trying to memorize his first ten runes, and there were thousands.
Vargas thought he'd learn them in a month?!
"Light is the most forgiving element." Zoltan pulled out his only intact relic, 'The Book of Light'. "After my blunder, my master said, 'Focus on illusions,' too."
"Why light?" Konrad asked, taking notes.
"Well, you can skip the summoning, and bending light takes less mana than shaping matter."
So in that sense, it was 'beginner mode'. If his teacher fooled an entire city with it, that was good enough for him, too. The duke's letter to the king was the immediate danger.
He needed something fast. "I guess it's light magic, then."
"Fine, this rune focuses light, this one scatters it. This binds your spell—"
"Creates light," the boy simplified everything. "And this one darkness?"
"No, um— Let me show you."
Zoltan raised his hand, and all nearby light coalesced into a miniature sun in his palm.
"No creation, I redirected what was already there." Then, things returned to normal, and he grabbed a vial. "And this one makes things invisible by scattering light."
The vial disappeared, but when he moved it, it became visible again.
"It's limited without extra steps, and if you were to cast it on yourself, you couldn't see, either."
He could still think of a few uses for invisibility. But noticing the sun dipping below, he took a break from cramming to visit Vargas.
"Boy," he grunted, "took your sweet time."
Given that he didn't have to do anything, he sure was grumpy.
"Unlike you, I spent the day with, um, research," Konrad scoffed, cutting his restraints. "You could've taken a nap." The man massaged his wrists, raw from the ropes.
"Hard to sleep when your arms scream for release. So, what's up with the Green Mage?"
"Uh, he created a temporal anomaly." He didn't have time to delve into the mystery, but it was a solid working theory. "Much of his stuff is gone, and what's still here looks centuries old."
"Is he alive, or not?" the captain whispered on their way out.
"That's anyone's guess." Something was off. He let Zoltan in on the plan, but didn't ask for help, the exact opposite. Things had to be risky for Vargas to feel indebted and keep his word.
So where did all the guards go?
The road to Aset cut Eytjangard in half, with an inn at the center. The market square was in front of it, and by the time they got there, they wouldn't even bother sticking to the shadows.
The inn's door flew open in their faces.
They jumped behind a stall, giving them almost no cover. Konrad held his breath as villagers spilled into the square. To make things worse, a second group came from the other side.
"Those two are too valuable." One was Zoltan. "But I'll listen to your offer."
"Well, how much d'ya think they're worth?" another familiar voice chirped, and he caught a purple glint. "Like, they ain't cheap, but some haggling's fine."
When he wanted a risky escape, he didn't mean impossible.
He was lucky that nobody looked their way, but it was only a matter of time.
"I don't know," Zoltan said, "I had a lucky strike, so I'm not pressed for trade right now."
"Fine, but don't cry when you change your mind," came a sweet giggle.
"How about only one?" Zoltan's question made him shiver. "This shows potential, so I'd like to keep it." Were they talking about them? That bastard—
"That's a tasty one," the responder pondered. "I'd keep that, too—"
Konrad decided he had heard enough. "Let's get out of here," he whispered.
"Agreed," Vargas gritted through his teeth. "But how?"
Well, it was a crazy idea, but he spent all day memorizing the core runes. "I'll try a spell to make us invisible," he claimed, "but we'll be blind, too."
"What?" Vargas slammed his palm on his mouth, whispering. "You learned for one day—"
"You said I was a prodigy," Konrad shrugged. He had no better ideas.
He knew the variables, the risks, but had never tried the process. He saw one written syntax, too. How did that work in practice? It was like coding, inside his head, right?
His 'Hello World' school project came to his mind, so he went with that.
Light scatter, tied to Vargas and himself. As simple as it gets. Enter.
The world spun around him, the ground trying to run away. He stomped his feet, desperate to hold onto something, and his vision blurred. Which meant he saw—
Shouldn't he've been blind?
The square and the villagers were all messy, but their eyes followed him. Did he fail?
"Oh, Konny boy," the familiar voice called. "Fancy running into you here."
Lily grinned, cocking her head. She wore much more modest clothing than when they first met. No blue war paint, no skin exposed, but she juggled two purple crystals.
Her eyes wandered over Konrad's shoulder, widening for a second.
The boy turned on instinct, but didn't see anything. The captain's grip was strong on his back, but he was missing. So, a partial success?
"L-liliana," he yelled to mask his confusion, forcing a laugh. "Yeah, um, I started learning magic."
"Liliana?" she shrieked. "Aww, I was joking. Call me Lily like the rest."
The rest? Gabrielle called her Lilith and warned him about her. And Lu warned about Gabby.
"Let's catch up when you're not busy." She winked, turning to continue her haggle with Zoltan. Two large crystals glinted in her hands as she teased the illusionist with them.