Chapter 606. Gathering Knowledge 1

Chapter 606: Chapter 606. Gathering Knowledge 1

"Hey, Dad!" Alvera greeted once the door closed behind her.

"Hey, sweetie," Alex replied in a garbled, ominous voice.

"Hold on. Let me disable the security in the room," Alvera said, waving her ring over a pad beside the door. "That should do it."

The Dark type energy covering Alex’s body finally retreated, revealing him sitting on Alvera’s bed. There was nothing else in the room to sit on besides the floor. It was a perfectly aesthetic living space.

"So? How’s the infiltration going?" Alex asked as Alvera began stripping off her clothes and headed toward the small shower in her quarters.

"I was close to failing the entrance examination," Alvera complained as she stepped into the shower and turned on the water. "I couldn’t get the meditation right because I was used to either enhancing my Aura or my spine for my Electric Affinity. I was lucky a Senior Mage who wanted to fuck me ran his energy through my body, showing me the type of energy I needed to grasp and the pathway I needed to circulate it through."

"Do you think you could teach others how to meditate?" Alex asked.

"I could try, but I might accidentally hurt them," Alvera replied as she began washing herself. "The meditation technique I learned was specifically for Electric types, and I bet the spells I’ll be exchanging my points for will be the same. Honestly, I think we’re going to struggle to get everything we can out of these magic towers. I tried poking around in their library, but the defenses were solid. Not only were the room and shelves enchanted, but the books were as well, preventing anyone without the proper identification and points from accessing them."

"They’re a suspicious bunch too," Alvera continued, "since they conduct background checks on every applicant before accepting them. I was lucky I decided to play around as an adventurer before trying my hand at the Lighting Tower. It made it look like I had suddenly gotten lucky as a Tamer and started becoming active after spending years as a farmhand. Even so, I still had to wait months before they finally let me take the exam."

"How was it on your end?" Alvera asked.

"Much easier," Alex replied. "Now that I have a grasp of it, I can train anyone who wants to become a knight. I’m lacking in quality and variety when it comes to breathing techniques, but that shouldn’t be a problem. I can just get more from the royal families. I’m planning to raid them and see how it goes."

Alvera turned off the water and grabbed a towel, quickly drying herself before putting on the standard-issue Lightning Mage Apprentice robe.

"Be careful, Dad," she said, genuine concern in her voice as she sat down beside him. "Magic in this world isn’t as primitive as it looks. It’s almost as advanced as the security systems back home. In some ways, it’s actually harder to deal with since they use magic. If they had technology instead, we could probably just hack our way through everything with Rotom."

"Don’t worry. I’ll be fine," Alex said, rubbing Alvera’s wet head. "There are only two royal families for me to steal from, and no matter how good their security is, I’m confident I can get away without much trouble."

There were three kingdoms on the continent.

To the south was Wedgehurst, the kingdom of knights. It regularly dealt with magical creature stampedes coming from the south, forcing its knights to constantly fight for survival and producing some of the strongest on the continent.

To the north was Wyndon, the kingdom of mages. Technically, it still had a royal family, but the king and queen held little real power. The kingdom was effectively governed and protected by the Magic Council, which was made up of the Tower Masters who led each of the elemental towers.

Then there was Hammerlocke, situated in the center of the continent. Unlike the other two kingdoms, Hammerlocke was a collection of feudal territories that were constantly at war with each other. Knights and mages regularly sold their services to whichever lord could pay the most, while merchants happily supplied weapons and armor to the highest bidder. It was a land where power could be bought, sold, and fought over with very few rules.

Together, the three kingdoms maintained a delicate balance of power, one that could shift if their circumstances changed even slightly.

Wedgehurst had enough powerful knights to overwhelm the other kingdoms, along with the ambition to do so. However, the constant threat of magical creature stampedes kept them focused on defending their homeland, preventing them from ever acting on those ambitions.

Wyndon had more than enough powerful mages to lay waste to the entire continent, but they were far more interested in pursuing greater knowledge of magic and preferred to keep their hands out of politics. At most, they kept their monarchs under control to make sure they didn’t get any bright ideas.

Hammerlocke was no different. If its nobles, mercenaries, and merchants ever united under a single banner, they could potentially rival the other kingdoms and conquer the continent. Yet none of them had any real interest in doing so. Why fight and die to conquer a continent when, royal family aside, they would only end up ruling roughly the same amount of land they already controlled? They were far more interested in what was in front of them than chasing the lofty ideal of a united land.

"Well," Alex said, standing and stretching his body, "since you can’t get your hands on any of the other towers, I’ll send anyone who’s interested in the family to come and try their hand. Everyone looks about the same age as you, and since you’ve already paved the way, they should be able to follow roughly the same path to get in. Although, I want you to try teaching them a generic meditation technique first so they have a better chance of passing their exams."

"Sure. Who, um... who do you think is going?"

"There’s Lyra, Mika, Marnie, Iris, Nyx, Rhea, Sable, Lila, and Veran at least. I don’t know about the others, but I’m sure they’ll speak up if they’re interested."

"About Perrin..." Alvera began, fidgeting.

Perrin wasn’t allowed to know about this medieval world of swords and magic because she technically wasn’t part of the family. Neither Alex nor the girls were comfortable sharing this particular discovery with outsiders, mainly because of Hoopa. There was no way they could let just anyone in on the secret without risking Hoopa’s existence being discovered as well.

For now, Alex planned to keep this in the family until Clarissa was eventually forced to reveal it. That would give them as much time as possible to take advantage of the world before the League inevitably demanded a piece of the pie.

Still, Perrin was close to the family, and as far as Alex knew, she wasn’t a blabbermouth. At worst, she might accidentally publish a picture containing some clues. Even then, it would only become a problem if someone noticed them, and Nyx could always deal with it by hacking the picture or the source afterward.

"Tell you what. If you can convince half of your mothers to agree, you’ll have my permission."

"Yey! Thanks, Dad!" Alvera cheered, standing up to peck Alex on the cheek before throwing her arms around him.

Perrin was a sweetheart, and pretty much everyone in the family liked her. She regularly hung out with them whenever Alvera returned to the hub for meetings or to resupply.

"Sure thing, sweetie," Alex said, hugging her back.

"Oh, right!" Alvera said, pulling back and opening her backpack. "I recently took down a Black Magic Tower and collected the remains. I think we’ll be able to build our own magic towers soon. I also found some shredded books that might be able to be pieced back together. They should at least give us a much more extensive library of magical knowledge."

"That’s good," Alex said as he began transferring everything from Alvera’s backpack into his own. "We’ll have to wait until Rhea has a better understanding of the tower, though. It might interfere with our technology. But if the two can be combined, I’m sure we’ll be able to strengthen our outposts and castles even more."

The father and daughter continued catching up until late into the night, when Alvera was called away to meet with the Senior Mages due to her accomplishment. Alex slipped out of the tower the same way he had entered, climbing back through a window designed to detect intruders but unable to sense his life force while he was covered in Dark type energy. Perhaps that was simply a peculiarity of Lightning Magic, but Alex considered himself lucky that Alvera wasn’t in a Fairy, Bug, or Dark Tower. If she had been, he might not have made it out without being caught.

Once he was safely outside, Alex headed south toward Hammerlocke Kingdom, where he planned to start raiding nobles and royal families for their techniques. He wanted to gather as much information as possible so they could eventually develop their own techniques with the help of science and technology. The more extensive their library became, the better.

Alvera’s recent haul was particularly valuable in that regard, as it contained a wealth of information on shortcuts to power and the drawbacks that came with them. If they could study enough of those techniques, they might eventually be able to create their own without those drawbacks.

Their ultimate goal was to develop a technique that would allow someone to grow as both a Knight and a Mage simultaneously. If they could accomplish that, they could combine the two paths from the very beginning instead of having to choose one and potentially spend years developing it before attempting to learn the other.

But that was something to worry about in the future. For now, they needed to gather as much knowledge as possible.