Orphan at the Edge of the World 64 Crystal Cage 2

Orison was about to ask more when a passing man said, "You folks might want to move from the platform. If someone else comes barreling through, somebody might get hurt."

The young mage thanked the man before walking off the slightly raised circular platform. Duran stood next to him and studied the platform which made Orison curious in turn. It wasn't anything fancy but switching to spirit vision, Orison did notice the two interlocking squares that formed an eight pointed star. The triangular portion of each point had a spell model embedded in it that had a vague similarity to the one Orison used to make beacon jumps on their previous world.

"Sick," Duran said.

Obviously not slang, Orison asked, "Why do you say that?"

"It makes you need it, the big crystal music box. If you're not infected, you can't use it's things," Duran said while scowling.

Orison continued to study the platform for awhile before reaching out with magic to activate the device above it. The whole thing was magically and spiritually locked down. Orison could only see the models on the platform. The device above it was even off limits to his spirit vision. Further examination was cut off by a flash of light.

A young, blue eyed man with feathery blond hair and an athletic build appeared on the platform beside a tall and equally well put together man with long black hair and dark eyes. The black haired man also had two sets of horns, one long and one short, that grew horizontal from his temples along the curve of his head and slightly curled at the ends, long up and short slightly down. He also had a tail, more dinosaur-like than lizard-ish even though it was thinner.

The blond haired man saw Orison and came walking over with a smile on his face. The young mage became wary and ready for trouble. Upon seeing Orison take a loose fighting stance that shouldn't be that easily noticed, the bond haired man frowned, looking a little sad.

"Do I look so different you don't know who I am, Little Boss?" the blond man said.

Orison immediately relaxed and said, "Now that you're a little closer, talked and I've had a few extra seconds, yeah." Turning to the black haired guy, Orison said, "You're Rithus?"

The man nodded with a grim look on his face and walked over with a strangely wide and awkward gait.

Concerned, Orison asked, "Are you hurt?"

Rithus tilted his head slightly to the side, looking confused.

"Why are you walking like you've ridden a horse for too long?" Orison said.

Rithus walked closer and leaned down a bit to whisper, "My parts...down there, they're on the outside. It-it feels wrong!"

Trying hard not to laugh in the face of Rithus' misery, the young mage said, "Go through Morrel's forms a few times... Not your modified one, the original... Like this, like I'm doing."

Gan introduced himself to Duran properly and the boy just nodded, saying his name once before lapsing back into alert silence as Orison walked Rithus through the stances. Once it looked like Rithus had the hang of it, Orison asked him to ignore the strangeness of sensation and walk in the 'always ready' pattern which was essentially just walking with an ingrained sense of balance and measured step. With Morrel's martial training as a guide, Orison had Rithus capable of walking without drawing unwanted attention fairly quickly.

Gan interrupted them after a bit to say, "Uh, we only have two days to choose a trainer and they're broken up between the five capital cities. After that, the transporters and trainers won't be free anymore."

The time that Gan and Rithus had already spent on this world was five hours compared to Orison and Duran just finishing their first. That time had been spent well despite Rithus' weird walking. Gan had managed to figure out a good many things, including on where they needed to go to get what training.

Unfortunately, Duran put a blot on that by pointing out an unpleasant truth. "Gan can. He's infected. We can't."

After more discussion and Orison filling in some blanks based off of Gan and Rithus' experiences, the young mage realized their group had some big problems. Duran's excruciating process of explaining what he knew a few words at a time made that problem clearer but offered no immediate solutions.

This world had a clear division between two types of people, the Chosen and the Children. The Chosen were those called to the 'spirit of the mother', the big crystal music box, to be given a spark, the infection. The Children were their descendants, up to three generations. Beyond three generations, the Children became infertile but that generation of descendants had the greatest number of new chosen selected from it.

The Chosen could get a leg up in life by benefiting from devices that instilled a year or so worth of learning at a time and could go to any one of those trainer devices to learn from it for a fee that got increasingly more expensive. The Children could use general devices and store items in a limited extrdimensional space using their inherited 'infection' but the trainers wouldn't work for them. That wasn't to say that the Children couldn't learn. They just had to do it the old-fashioned way.

It was a no-brainer who had the advantage but the Children weren't overtly discriminated against. They were simply relegated to support and were encouraged to learn for the purpose of innovation and discovery. The drive to learn by personal experience outside of what trainers required for integration and retention was something that the vast majority of Chosen seemed to lack entirely as they grew dependent on the easier learning provided by the trainers.

There were major downsides to being one of the Children that discouraged them from seeking to step out from the support role no matter how skillful they became. Creatures only dropped things for Chosen before disappearing. Also, the Children didn't re-spawn like Chosen, they just died and disappeared like creatures did.

The world had a lot of game-like qualities but it wasn't a game at all. The Chosen might be able to re-spawn but their souls would take the brunt. After a few deaths without time and soul enriching experiences, the 'mother spirit' would deem the soul too tired to return and place it back into the 'cycle'. Creatures of the world had a similar phenomenon that guided their existences, biggest difference being that their spaces accumulated things from birth and dropped them at death. If the creatures became too low in number, they'd begin to re-spawn too. Even natural resources would renew themselves after a time.

The loop wasn't indefinite. The Chosen were selected around adulthood which ranged from eighteen to twenty or race equivalent years. In five to seven years, the trainers stopped working for them and in ten to twelve, the re-spawns would stop happening as well. Once in a great while, a handful of figures among the Chosen would rise above the limits and transcend, motivating the other Chosen to strive for similar glory. From Orison's perspective, the world was an efficient, well maintained and balanced soul farm.

Orison sighed deeply and said, "Alright, it's not that bad of a trap. We can see that Gan wasn't brainwashed by the 'song' and radiation you protected us from, Duran. It just adjusted them to better fit the world and instilled some awe by letting them feel it's record of 'motherly love'. As soon as he knew the truth, it lost most of its grip. Right, Gan?"

The archer nodded and said, "It's kinda sad. I'm almost resentful, almost. I wouldn't go around trying to wake up others if I were you. I have a strong feeling that it would be dangerous."

Orison acknowledged Gan and said, "The important thing is that we don't fall into everyone else's pace. To get what we need from this world, we have to play along but we're just like the Children, except for Gan. I'll be able to figure out workarounds eventually but we'll need to hit things one at a time.

"I don't think I need to say this but... Gan, if you die, playing catch up will be very hard. I have a feeling the soul fading thing is going to take a lot away from you and you might lose your conduit. I couldn't see your map 'key' or conduit before with spirit vision but I can see them now. That crystal thing has it's tendrils wrapped around them tightly. It might not even re-spawn you at all."

Orison spent some time observing the culture and how people got the things they needed. Fortunately, although almost everyone did space to space transfers for currency and stored their goods rather than carry them, there were a few who didn't. Despite those few being in the minority, no one really seemed to care.

For whatever reason, gold was the only currency. Orison now understood why the silver and copper coins in his inventory had all vanished, turning into a slightly smaller amount of gold instead. He wasn't going to complain as that had nearly tripled the amount of gold he had but he was also anxious. Having close to a hundred thousand gold might seem like a lot but a single stay at an inn was thirty in Lavendar, the village that they had found themselves in.

Though it would put Gan in a bit of a time crunch for free training, they waited until a less crowded time of day and had Gan activate the transporter. Since the chosen could bring one of the children along with them, it was easy for the young mage to pop from one place to another with Gan. By around midnight, Orison finally felt confident that he understood all the parts of the transporter's interlinking models. Returning to their rented inn room, the young mage spent the rest of the night stripping the trapped crystal in his space of those models and transferred them to a broken shard of eternium from the finger that had shattered off the formation. After testing that it did work but pulled around a hundred gold from his space each time, the mage was filled with a mixed sense of accomplishment and agitation.

Once he finished copying the pattern onto another shard, Orison was interrupted by Rithus moments after handing the shard over. "You do not need to make another for Duran. The shadow in my bones has seen what you have done and now does it for me. It's eating the bad crystal and keeping the good things. With time, I'll have all the good things but I need to see them to know what's good and what's bad."

Orison shrugged and handed the shard to Duran.

The boy said, "More can fit. Wick is shrinking the lines."

Orison said, "What is Wick?"

"The tree." Duran stated woodenly.

The young mage smacked himself in the head. Each one of them had a unique way of seeing things and between them all much more of the puzzles and mysteries surrounding the mountainous crystal's cage could be solved. Pooling their knowledge and supernatural abilities together, they came up with a plan.

Making full use of Gan's free day of transporter and trainer interactions coupled with his ability to bring a person along as a retainer, the three others had their turn observing the two devices as well as how space to space transfers worked. Two more days down and nearly half of Orison's fortune spent, all four could now pass as chosen. The remaining large problem that no one could make any real headway in was how to remove the 'infection' from Gan. When the time came for them to leave this reality, no one knew how it would affect him but since they were all 'locked in' even the idea of how to leave was an unknown at the moment.

Shelving that issue for the moment, Orison went over their gains in the past two days as they spent the night in Lavendar yet again. With Orison's trapped crystal as reference and pattern stripping material, they could copy over the models they needed. With Wick the tree's help, these copied models could fit onto the two shards that Duran and Orison each carried one of. With each usable model stripped, Rithus' shadow could understand more of the crystal and the greater one behind all this.

After spending quite a bit of that two day span unlocking the ability to use the trainers under the guise of careful consideration about their future path in life, the group of four were perhaps one of the most knowledgeable sets of chosen at the starting line. Because of this, they all had an understanding of the next step after basic training sets that had them being more careful about their choices and that would lead to less wasted time later. It also illustrated yet another problem. Once these choices were made, it was impossible to change one's mind and learn another set without waiting for a year or temporarily forgetting one, a process that required dying once. That meant, unlike other chosen, once they picked, that's what they'd be using for the whole time they were here.

The beginning maximum was two combat training sets, one gathering and one processing profession, only one of which was free for Gan. Due to the window shopping, they were aware basic combat jobs mixed to make specialist jobs and made plans to pick accordingly. Without spending too much time admiring the capital cities, the group of four bounced between them to get the training they wanted.

Gan picked up archer and druid so he could become a ranger later on. He didn't have much of a hunger for magic but what little he did find appealing, druid had it at low enough proficiency it wouldn't stop him from getting what he needed to pursue what he wanted. He also didn't have a taste for crafting or artistry but dismantling and leather working didn't bother him much. Within the knowledge for dismantling was a change to his infecting crystal that would slow down the world's reclaiming of things that he killed and mark parts he kept in his space. Orison understood why chosen approaching the end of their 10-12 year term almost all picked it up.

Rithus' choices were a little baffling considering what they knew of things but Orison trusted him to do what was best despite how the world wanted things done. The former Marshlander had chosen elementalist and lancer for his combat training despite no specialist jobs linking them. After some consideration, Rithus also dropped a gathering training to pick up the least popular woodworking training and tailoring as well. With a faint smile, Rithus patted his craft bag to reassure himself before it once again vanished once no one was looking.

Duran picked guardian and healer with little fuss but Orison had some doubts as to whether the battle cleric specialist job had anything to do with it. Unsurprisingly, the boy chose mining and blacksmith, more because he had no real interest in craft work but was familiar and wanted to be helpful even if he didn't particularly like it. The boy wasn't particularly motivated to excel but was more than willing to pitch in and seemed to have an innate dislike of watching others have a hard time or get hurt.

Going last, Orison, had changed his mind on picks. Originally, he had planned on picking in line with the knowledge of what would give best bang and not overlap with other's choices but Rithus and Duran had reminded him indirectly that it was more important for pursuits to keep true to one's own path and desire. He chose summoner and artificer.

Both of them were at the very bottom of suggested first choices as they were complicated and considered support roles. Summoners were considered to be half healer and half guardian, not good at either but paired well with healer as a primary focus. Artificers were considered half elementalist and half adventurer, terrible at either but paired decently with them. They were so theory heavy that the trainer docked a training slot, only allowing him to get the alchemist training but not the herbalist gathering training that would make it worth while. Though Orison wanted to complain about that, after finishing the alchemist training 'installation', he had to admit that his head felt a little overly full.

To finish off, Orison had to buy the gear and equipment everyone's training required. That mostly only pertained to crafting and gathering jobs but Orison wanted his people to start off with decent defensive gear because the free starter stuff was all garbage. No one would be fighting as a group or making anything for anyone else until they'd done the follow up instructor guided classes and practice exercises that came with the trainer downloads.

This world wasn't filled with morons and the capital largess provided instruction to keep promising hopefuls from rushing off and getting themselves killed. The leaders of various organizations also didn't want the market flooded with cheap, shoddy works that would cause people to get hurt or sick. In fact, they didn't want markets to be flooded, period, and would direct new tradesman to the goods or services that currently were most needed in their fields. They insured everyone had something to do without stepping on each other's toes or crashing the value of things.

The following instruction period was going to be responsible for separating the group up for nearly two months. The last night in Lavendar was a short, informal farewell party. To keep anyone from being cut loose with no one else around for too long, the order of instructors was shuffled around until everyone would have someone else in the same capital that they were in with two glaring exceptions, both of Orison's combat instruction periods and Gan's druid instruction.

Truth was, aside from the two weeks that Orison would be spending with Duran as the boy's protection target during guardian training, the schedule was more of a psychological salve. Everyone would mostly be too busy with their instructors to do much more than check in with each other. So the next day, everyone bid their farewells to each other as they went about their own way after Orison doled out a few hundred gold to each person.

Chapter end