Starlight Necromancer

Chapter 98 - The Mage Tower

"You all done?" Kyla asked, seeing Foster come back out of the office. For privacy purposes, she was asked to stay outside for the duration of the process, to which she only hesitantly obliged. But it seemed like everything went well, so she didn't really mind.

Foster looked at her with an excited smile, "Yep, he's going to just show us around real quick."

"Oh? You don't mind that I'm coming along?" Kyla asked, looking at the employee. Immediately, he shook his head, "Of course not. This is a space where all knowledge is shared, so of course anyone has access to this place. But we do only give these tours to new members, so you are lucky that you came along with Mister Locke."

"Yep, super lucky..." Kyla replied, already seeing that Foster was incredibly excited about seeing the inside of the mage tower, even though he clearly dreaded coming here earlier.

"First, let me briefly introduce you to the structure of the tower. Below us, along Arcadum's bottom layer, is a storage facility, where we keep any materials that our mages might need. Right above that are the archives, in which we keep general information that we accumulated, which is also used for research. Things such as the locations of special materials, or where we could access natural mana laylines." He explained, "And along the middle layer are living spaces for our in-house researches. Many of them wanted the chance to spend as much time here as possible, so we renovated that space for such a purpose." The employee lead Foster and Kyla down the hallway as he explained that there was obviously no need for them to head down there, and that they would concentrate the tour on the upper floors, were the actual research was happening.

"In total, taking the lobby as the ground floor, the Mage Tower has a total of 20 floors. Here on the second floor, we have our offices of course. Floors three to five are exclusively for collaborative research for everyday magic that could better the lives of all people." The employee said, as they climbed the stairs up to the third floor. In front of them extended a large open space, separated into different workstations. Clearly, a lot of different projects were being worked on.

In one corner, Foster could see some sort of water-fountain that clearly wasn't hooked up to any pipes. Somewhere in the middle of the room, a bright light shone right into his eyes. As if someone pointed a spotlight right at him, just that the 'spotlight' was the size of a fist and was floating in the middle of the air. The wizard responsible for this quickly apologized to the people around him. But everyone here had something in common, something that Foster had already seen in the adventurer's guild quite a bit.

"By the way... why is everyone wearing gloves? Is it dangerous to touch magic or something?" Foster asked curiously, and the employee looked at him baffled, "What? I mean, yes, of course it is dangerous to touch magic, but not inherently, it's..." The man explained, looking at Foster's hands. There were some scars along his quite rough hands. They really looked more like that of a martial artist rather than a true mage, so it seemed clear that Foster didn't know much about magic yet. He most likely only recently started exploring the path of magic. Realizing this, the employee quickly chose to explain everything, taking off his own gloves.

His hands were a lot more red than would be normal. Traces and scars from popped blisters covered them, and a lot of the man's skin was just gone, especially around his palm, "It is due to magical feedback. It is mostly noticeable in regard to elemental magic. Personally, I have a high affinity for fire magic, so I use it quite often. Over time, one's hands tend to look like this, simply because the magic you use tends to affect your physical body in small amounts. Those amounts stack up more and more, until you reach such a degree where it's impossible to reverse anymore." The man explained, "As such, when you see a mage wearing gloves, it means they are either there to hide the stacked up feedback, or they are special gloves made to somewhat counteract the feedback."

Foster scratched the back of his head awkwardly. He knew that he would never have to deal with something like that, but he really wondered what would happen to him if he did. If he didn't have that immunity... would his hands just slowly start rotting away off his bones?

"Erm... can you measure your affinity for a specific magic element somehow?" Foster asked, trying to move away from the topic of magic feedback, but the employee quickly shook his head, "Not directly, no. But you see, as you follow a mage type class, your affinities will soon reveal themselves. Certain magic will be easier to cast than other, and remembering how to use specific spells could be like second nature, while for others you will have to attempt and study for years to come. Of course, you will not have that latter issue with spells given to you through your magic skill's progression, but it is rare for a skill to give you access to anything higher than tier three spells anyway. And after that point, you need to proceed through the study of magic, upon awakening your mana for yourself." The employee explained, "Only then can you truly be considered a scholar of the arcane, a wizard."

Foster slightly tilted his head, having heard an unknown term, "Awakening your mana? But doesn't everyone have mana already?"

The employee looked at Foster with a slight frown. Sure, he knew that Foster clearly wasn't quite experienced with magic, but not knowing something this basic still felt rather weird, "Of course, everyone and everything holds mana. But truly mastering your mana, truly making it your own, that is another matter. Only when one awakens to the truth hidden within one's own mana can you fully proceed forward along this path." The employee explained. Foster nodded as if he understood what any of that meant, since he didn't want to seem any dumber than he clearly already did.

"Now, that was the test and display floor, where our scholars cast these daily life spells to test current progress and brainstorm. The other two floors, however... are the actual research floors." The employee explained, as they stepped into the next floor. It was the complete opposite of what they had seen before. Instead of all that flashy magic floating around, all that Foster could see were shelves, bookcases and desks, where dozens of wizards were sitting quietly, working together or independently on new potential spells.

"It's really not as flashy as before, but this is what most of the floors look like. Research for new spells, or changes on existing spells, it's an excruciating amount of work. A lot of time and money goes into it. Sometimes, while it is not usually the case for these 'simple' tier 1 spells, plenty of wizards spend their entire carreer trying to create new spells. Especially shorter-lived races like we humans... for us, this happens more than you may expect."