The First Archmage

(Gavin)

"Papers," the guard at the gate to Isras says, and I hand him mine. He scans them, frowning. "These are Jozan papers, we cannot accept-"

"Papers from a Kingdom that was reclaimed two days ago?" I ask. "King Wesley's son has claimed his rightful place as King. The Councilmen, Enforcers, Executors, and Inquisitors of Turas have been slain, and the soldiers have resworn their loyalty to the rightful King of Jozan. I have not, nor ever have, accepted an allegiance to Turas. Jozan has been for several hundred years now your most powerful neighbor and ally. Please do not think of Jozan as Turas, as they are, indeed, two different things. I have never received papers for Turas, as the rulers of that nation considered me an enemy of the highest caliber, while both the previous and current Kings of Jozan acknowledge me as a powerful ally."

So does the first one, but bringing him up – and asking him to prove it to them – would be a tad bit excessive, I think.

The guard stares at me for several long seconds, and another one looks at me.

"Do you have Access to the System?" He asks.

"Yes."

"Show us your status."

Instead, I make Hero of Nies my Title and public.

"Is that enough for you?" I ask. "As proof of my Access, that is."

"That is enough," he nods, then looks to the guard holding my papers. "Let him in. Rumor has it that King Wesley's heir was returning," he looks to me. "We'll need to verify this information. Judging by your clothes and your robe, you can afford more decent things. In the Inner Circle, there's an inn called the Golden Miracle. Stay there. We will contact you if we find this to be false."

I hide my Title once more and switch it back to its usual.

"You won't," I take my papers back, then show them to him. "These are my official papers, including my official title and status within Jozan, Duke of Zelar. If you're verifying the information, you should also verify that as well."

The guard nods, then waves me in, and I join the crowd of people entering the city.

It reminds me of the royal city back home. That doesn't surprise me too much, as the two cities were built around the same time, and the people in this region of this continent have similar architectural style.

Hence why both Kingdoms have three rings to their royal city, before reaching the ring with the castle itself, and why the thickness of said rings are roughly the same.

I make my way to the Inner Ring, ignoring merchants peddling their wares, including a couple of rather aggressive ones seeing a wealthy youth on his own.

Must resist two strong urges. The first is to mess with them, and the second is to dominate the air in the area with my power, forcing them into stopping. The first one is good for amusement… the second one, not so much for relations with Jozan.

I reach the inn suggested, and find a four-story building with clean paint and trim. I somewhat suspected that it was an obnoxiously wealthy one, and seeing it arrogant sign confirms that.

Making my way inside, I ignore the stares of the patrons wondering what a child is doing traveling by himself.

"Hello," I say to the woman at the counter. "I will be staying here for a short while, time unknown. How much are the rates?"

"Two gold per night," she says. "Twelve for seven. Three per night, twenty for seven, if you want breakfast and dinner included."

"I'll take one week," I tell her, dropping twelve Isilian gold on the counter, the coins coming from my ring, drawing the stares of even more.

"My apologies, Magus," she looks me up and down. "I didn't recognize the runes on your robe. You wear no collar."

"I hail from Jozan," I say. "Its new King, the legitimate Heir to King Wesley, has outlawed collaring Adventurers."

"You also have no tanline, Magus."

"He found a very loyal magician who didn't have a collar," I state truthfully.

So is she respectful of me being a magician, or just confused? Because her tone indicates the former, while her words indicate the latter.

"Which room will I be in?" I ask.

"But all Adventurers are collared," she says. "How would-"

How did I manage to escape being collared? In fact, none of us were collared back then…

"I am quite tired," I tell her. "I flew here from the royal city of Jozan. Would you mind giving me my room key and telling me which room I'm in? I've already paid."

"But you-"

"Want to lie down and get some rest," I tell her. "And so would like to know which room I'm in, as well as receive the key to it. I have already paid. Or should I inform my King that the people of Isil no longer care about granting services which have been paid for?"

"You'll be in room two-oh-five," she hands me a key. "It'll be just up the stairs, third on the right."

"Thank you," I smile, taking the key. "Please be advised that I'll be warding my room, as I'll also be practicing magic in there at times, and when I am doing that and sleeping… or in there in general, then I don't want to be disturbed. And any half-assed magician in here can tell you how interrupting me practicing magic could be… disastrous."

I turn and begin walking toward the stairs, and a trio of magicians approach me, all of them wearing collars, just like every Adventurer I have seen so far in here, apart from the one criminal who tried to pick my pocket on my way to the inn.

No one knows what happened to him, and nor will they ever see him again.

The joys of being faster than literally every other human to the point where they can't even see me.

"Can I help you?" I ask.

"I have never," the magician in the front says. "Ever met a magician with as much Mana as you do. It's so great, in fact, that I can't get an accurate read."

I show him my Mana Pool.

"Sixteen hundred Mana?" He exclaims in shock.

"I have a Resource higher than that," I tell him. "Would you mind moving? I'm here on official business from Jozan, and flew from our royal city to yours, and am quite tired."

"I wanted to know if-"

I don't hear the rest of his question, because, as I told told you just a moment ago, I'm faster than humans. Sure, my senses are powerful enough to hear them, but I can tune them out easily. The brain adapts to that with INT.

In my room, I draw the runes with my magic, creating the barriers I feel necessary, then strip off my clothes and sit in the center of the floor, moving my ring so it hangs from a chain around my neck.

I close my eyes and feel for the Void within me, the way it exists and yet doesn't at the same time. Of the others, it is the one I thought I would have trouble making denser, and that turned out to be true.

As a result, I completely ignored the others so I could focus on Void. If I want to kill a Dragon, this is the one I will need. In order to combat their own Void magics, Arcane and Aether won't be enough – it is the Void I will need to command.

Two Voids cannot exist within the same space, and it results in a cataclysmic explosion.

Well, probably. I can't make Voids big enough to result in that. But when my two small ones collided, there was a brief explosion, then a pull that began to draw things in. It was small enough that I could stop it easily, and I'm a bit nervous to try that again without having enough Void to control it completely.

The Void, unlike most of the others, does not ebb and flow. It simply exists within me, constant, steady, and unchanging. I know it can increase, as it has before, but only slightly. Aside from that, the only change is when I use it.

The Void is a lack of existence, an emptiness that consumes the existence of others, eliminating it entirely. I cannot make it more dense, for there is nothing there to make denser, as it is the lack of existence itself.

That said, I can still manipulate it. Now that I'm settled down and somewhat rested, I am going to try something different.

I manipulate the Void, this time, letting it touch my Health Pool, having manipulated that just enough so that only an amount equal to 1 Health touches the Void.

-1 LFA

+1 VDA

In other words, to expand my Void past simply using it, I must sacrifice others to it.

I push Void up another three hundred points, and feel absolutely the same. Were I to try to increase any other Resource by 300 at once, I would definitely feel the Fog of Power. Hell, several of them would probably put me into the haze and headache stage of it.

Now that my Void has expanded a fair amount, I begin expanding my other Resources, making those denser than they were before. For LFA, I bring it up fifty points. I could probably push it another fifty, but with me going after all of my Resources, I don't want to risk it. With MNA and SPA, I bring them both up by another hundred, and the remaining three, I only bring up by fifteen apiece. As I do Arcane, I can start to feel the Fog of Power at the back of my mind, and know that I was wise to stop at those levels for each.

Finished for today, I stand up, and just as I'm about to walk to the bed, there's a knock at the door. Manipulating light a little bit to hide my parts rather than getting dressed, I answer the door, only to find the blue-haired Stem standing on the other side of it.

"Dude, seriously?" He asks. "Answering the door naked?"

"I'm using light magic to make it look like I'm wearing something."

He looks me up and down, then sighs, looking back up at my eyes.

"You're being lazy," he says. "And I was ignoring that."

"Try not to?" I ask. "You haven't aged a day."

"Of course not," he says. "It's part of my Divine heritage at work."

"How old are you?"

"Ancient as fuck."

"What do you want?"

"Can I travel with you?"

"Get your own room."

I close the door and turn around, finding Stem standing in front of me.

"Seriously, Stem?"

"What?" He asks. "You closed the door in my face."

"I want to get some sleep," I tell him. "Not deal with… with you. Why are you even here?"

"Can I travel with you?" He asks.

Nies?

The god sighs in my mind.

I don't think I can change him on this.

Can you hit him with a Divine Smite?

"That's not very nice," Stem says, and I stare at him. "I can hear all Divine communications."

"This is a private communication between a god and his Hero," I say. "Unless you're saying you're really a Divine Being…"

"No, no," he says. "Definitely a Demigod. Do you have any food?"

"I will spank you."

"Seriously?" He looks excited.

This is going to be fun.

Can you do anything about this?

The fuck you doing, Stem?

"Hi, Nies," Stem jumps onto my bed, kicking his feet, his boots flipping off and landing perfectly in front of him on the ground. "I like Gavin. I'm going to hang around him."

"You do realize," I approach Stem. "That saying you're ancient as fuck kind of contradicts you saying that you're young."

"When did I ever say I was ancient?" He asks innocently.

"Right before you got smacked by me," I say.

"I never got smacked by you," he says, and I smack him in the back of the head. "Hey! What was that for?"

"For annoying me," I say. "As a mere Demigod, you are no match for this Archmage. I have, after all, killed a Demigod before. Unless, of course, you're really not a Demigod, in which case, I won't be smacking you and reprimanding you and treating you like the little kid you appear to be."

"I'm an ancient and powerful Demigod," he says. "My powers are far beyond your imagination."

He just called himself ancient again. He really needs to work on sticking to his cover story.

"Uh-huh."

The Blue Master

Nice try, there.

"I am," he says.

"If you're going to be pestering me," I say. "Then you can sleep on the floor."

"But-"

"Or are you really not a Demigod, and can force me to let you sleep in my bed?"

"I-" he starts to speak. "I'm a Demigod who can do whatever I want."

"Then you want to sleep on the floor."

"I-"

"Will either sleep on the floor, or get his own room," I say. "Only Divine are allowed to share a bed with me. After all, I don't think my Patron would be happy about it, especially since I am vowed to someone, if someone else is in my bed. He is a god of oaths, after all. The Origin of Oaths."

Stem stares at me, then sags his shoulders, looking down before sliding off the bed, a blue mattress appearing on the ground a couple of feet away. His clothes morph into a blue nightshirt, and he lies down, a blue blanket forming over him.

I shake my head, then put out the lights, climbing onto the bed and allow my illusions to fade away, before taking precautions.

Nies?

Yes?

If he tries getting into my bed to cuddle me, please hit him with a Divine Smite. You were a kitty when you slept with me.

What if he turned into his wolfish form?

How wolfish is he?

As wolfish as I was catlike.

So it's an actual wolflike thing, not something like a beastborn or beastkin?

Yeah.

Ah, okay. Thanks, Nies.

I never said I would. That's a lot of work.

I built you a shrine.

That won't work forever, he grumbles.

That wasn't a rejection. I pull my covers up over me, falling asleep as soon as I allow myself to. When I wake, there's a form next to me, and it's furry.

I open my eyes to find a wolflike creature curled up beside me. It has pitch-black fur with an occasional blue streak, and on its forehead, a dark blue swirl identical to Nies's crimson one in his kitty form. This creature has two catlike tails and a bushy wolf's tail, all three of which are curled up towards its front. Its snout and face reminds me more of a fox's than a wolf's, but at the same time, the snout is somewhat more wolflike than foxlike.

Well, at least he's not in his human form.

Rolling over a little bit, I then leave the bed and get dressed, before considering leaving Stem behind.

With a wave of my hand, a sphere of water appears above the sleeping creature, then drops directly on its head.

He jumps up, spluttering, looking around in confusion before glaring at me.

"You want to annoy me," I say. "You'll have to deal with me being me, Stem. I'm leaving, and I'd rather you not come and annoy me because I left you behind."

He sighs, then morphs back into his human form.

"I'm heading out for breakfast," I tell him. "Are you coming with me, or have you decided you'll annoy someone else instead?"

"That was a rude way to wake me up," he pouts.

"Pushing your presence on someone who doesn't want it is also rude."

I turn and leave, and hear Stem follow behind me. The innkeeper looks at Stem, frowning.

"He's an annoying person," I tell her. "Who just randomly showed up as I was heading to bed."

"I'm the Super Young, Smart, Talented, Energetic Me!" Stem announces. "I'm not annoying, I'm Stem!"

"You're annoying," I tell him, then look back to the innkeeper. "Will I need to pay extra for having someone else sleeping in the room?"

"No, Lord Magus," she answers. "There is no extra charge, up to three members."

"Thank you," I tell her, then look at Stem before looking back at her. "Do you have any rope?"

Her respectful facade fades for a moment as she looks amused, then quickly returns to the more respectful look she had.

"No?" I ask. "That's fine."

I snap, and thin metal chains form around Stem, tightening and holding his arms tight against his body.

"Hey!" He exclaims.

"I can gag you, too," I hold out my hand, a chain extending from him to my wrist, wrapping itself around me.

"You're awful," he says, and I look at the innkeeper.

"I am sure," I say. "That your food might be wonderful, but I would like to eat at various places, as I have never traveled to Isil before, and would like to try various local cuisines, and see the differences in your food from ours. Is there anywhere you'd recommend?"

"Yes," she answers as the chains vanish and Stem mutters about how abusive I am. She looks at him, but keeps talking. "If you take a right when you leave here, Lord Magus, walk down the street and take the first left. On the right side of that street is a restaurant called the Ancient Porker. Not a lovely name, but definitely quality food that fits a being of your status."

"Thank you, ma'am," I say, then turn and begin to walk towards the doors. "Come, Stem. You will obey my orders like a puppy, just like you were when I woke up this morning."

"Hey!" He protests. "I wasn't a puppy, I was a wolfie!"

"Quiet," I order. "Come. Follow. Obey. Die."

"I'm not going to do the last one, probably ever," he mutters.

The doors open just as I'm about to reach them, a quartet of soldiers entering, along with a man I recognize as former nobility of Jozan. I say 'former' because his expression tells me he's probably someone who was very loyal to Turas.

"Hello, Fartkey," I smile. "How are you?"