I have been searching long and hard in various libraries, but one of the questions I couldn’t find an answer for is why knights are more common than mages, who in turn are more common than mageknights.
— Excerpt from Notes For Newstar
Day 6471, 11:50 AM
Rather than risk anyone kidnapping me, Clear Diamondsoul for instance, and using me in a breeding program, I flew a hundred yards into the air in the middle of the stadium before the shocked thousands and activated the suicide seal in my realm. It collapsed, and obliterated me in a gory spectacle the crowd should appreciate.
Day 6457, 11:50 AM
The next moment, I was in the middle of the street, eight days until the Sage’s Realm tournament started. My likeness was grinning at me from above the stadium entrance.
In the end, it was a redo…
I needed to draw less attention to myself. I froze. If I, and all the royals and ducal houses got eliminated in the last event, that means Newt won it!
It was a funny thought, but it gave birth to another. I could share the glory with him. Win some matches, make him win some, take a dump on the Firesahuns because their representative was an asshole.
Once I realized I was standing in the middle of the street daydreaming, I went to the nearest tavern and had myself some tea while plotting out my next steps. After triggering Redo, the outer gods have the information on the following one hundred and sixty years.
That meant I could loop through those two weeks all I wanted. Sure, they will perfect their actions, but they will be close to getting what they want after having a second attempt, so giving them two or two thousand chances mattered little to them, but a lot to me.
I took a sip of the tea, and my lip twisted. It wasn’t worth the high price tag. Not by a long shot.
That’s what I get for walking into a random establishment…
I dropped the thought and focused. My options were hitting the libraries, watching the tournament, participating in it while knowing how things go…
Or I could do that.
I smiled and left the tavern. Now, knowing me, one could expect I’d hit a brothel, but I’ve grown and matured as much as one could expect from me. That’s why I headed to the nearest puppeteer workshop to learn how to build transformable puppets and not something else protected by copyright.
Learning an extra craft, reading the books in the library, and exploring a massive city could certainly pass as a lifetime’s worth of meaningful work. The fact that some of it implied man-sized toy robots was irrelevant. Now if I could make them bigger…
“Hello,” I told the shopkeeper as I entered the nearest puppeteer’s workshop. “I’m interested in an apprenticeship. I have some knowledge of artificing and spell seals—”
“Not interested.” The man folded his arms and glared at me.
“I can pay—”
“Please leave my shop, Sir.”
He was a fifth realm mage or mageknight. Even if he wasn’t, I wouldn’t have forced the issue. You can’t get anything really useful from an unwilling, kidnapped, and tortured teacher. Not that any of those actions crossed my mind.
Instead, I flashed a pleasant smile.
“Very well. Good day.” I left and tried my luck at the next shop.
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“Not interested.”
“Not interested.”
“Not interested.”
“Not interested.”
All the same, until I went to the rundown shop I wasn’t even sure was still in business. A man showing clear signs of substance abuse sat behind the counter staring into nothing.
“Hello,” I told the shopkeeper. “I’m interested in an apprenticeship. I have some—”
“Piss off.” The man’s red eyes focused on me, heaven only knew what he saw.
“I can pay—”
“How much?”
“Pardon?” I was going through the motions because it was the spiel I had already prepared, not really expecting he would agree.
“How much manarium are you willing to pay?” He stared at me with hunger.
I looked around. The shop was full of half-finished or discarded products, dust and cobwebs gathering everywhere they had found something remotely resembling a foothold.
“Ten fourth realm manarium per week.”
The man snorted. “Twenty!”
“Isn’t that a bit too much?”
“Eighteen!” he shouted as if afraid I would walk away.
I could’ve gotten by cheaper, but I didn’t really care about imaginary money.
“All right. Eighteen.”
“You pay upfront.” The man held out his hand as if I had eighteen pieces of fourth realm manarium on hand in case a junkie asked for it.
“I have to go to the guild, but I’ll be back in two hours.”
He glared at me, but there was nothing either of us could do about it. As promised, I brought him the money, and he stared at me as if I were an idiot.
“Your first job as an apprentice is to clean this mess up. I have important business to handle.”
He left the store, not a care in the world. I stared for a moment, then closed the door, and flipped the sign to closed.
Well, this is suboptimal, but hopefully he has some books or something.
I first went into the back and found a barren workshop. The man had sold his tools and everything other puppeteers thought was of value.
Thankfully, that left things they weren’t interested in. Such as a wooden box with ‘Dawn’s first tools’ engraved on the top. I could feel the love from the engraved words, and wondered whether Dawn was the junky, or perhaps a son who drove him to seek escape.
Don’t get distracted. You’re not a soother now, and he’s not your patient.
I opened the box and found easy to follow patterns engraved on wooden tablets. The first few were just grooves one was supposed to move a stylus through, but they grew in complexity, and by the fifth tablet they were runes.
I flipped through the “My First Rune” set to the end, and concluded that while puppeteers relied on runes, they didn’t form complete seals, or at least not in the classic sense. They made strings of runes, which went through the puppet’s body.
Just viewing the contents of the wooden tablets already allowed me to deduce some of the trade’s secrets, but there was more. There were tools, obviously made for a child’s hand as well as a foot-tall wooden mannequin. The doll was finely made, and had visible seams. I pulled on the two opposite halves and opened the doll’s leg. Runes for control and motion were crudely drawn inside, along with the lines connecting them to the rest of the circuit.
In two spots, the crude work was corrected by a hand incomparably more skilled than the one that had drawn the runic string.
Each segment of the puppet had its own runes, connecting them to a larger whole, with an opening for manarium crystals at the center of its chest. I carefully disassembled it, inserted a first realm crystal into the slot, and when I put it back together, the mannequin’s legs moved. I put it on the ground and watched it walk in circles.
So, this is the most basic puppet you can make. It takes no input and moves only in one predefined direction.
I looked around the workshop, but there was nothing worthwhile inside. It didn’t cost me anything, so I started manipulating air and formed tiny, localized balls of wind that flitted through the workshop. They gathered dust as they passed, and once they felt disturbingly more like earth than they should have, I let them disperse above an empty box I had found and declared the garbage can.
Right, I’ll have to invent heat vision and sonar while I have the time.
I thought back, and there were plenty of functional, quality of life improvements magic offered, but nobody around here had considered. For instance, long-range communication. I could think of several ways I could make phones, pagers, and telegrams, depending on the level of technological innovation I felt like introducing.
The only reason I hadn’t done that already is because my realm is low, and I don’t need the amount of money that would flow into my account if I started making such devices for nobility and chivalric orders. On the other hand, the fact that nobody had come up with such a simple concept was also suspicious.
Half an hour later, the shop and workshop areas were clean, two boxes overflowed with filth and debris, and the owner was nowhere in sight.
I looked at the stairs leading up, but entering the puppeteer’s private residence was breaking and entering.
Well, not if it’s unlocked. Besides, if anyone asks anything, I can just say he told me to clean the mess.
As expected, the living space was an even worse mess, and just as bare of everything the addict owner could sell.
Portable whirlwinds swept through everything, and I went from room to room or a home big enough to comfortably fit a family of five. There were no paintings, personal effects, or evidence that anyone other than my absent “teacher” lived there.
