Land of Magic

10

“Yesterday. Today. A hundred years ago. Time flows differently for me. You know that.”

Jean bowed again, and then turned to the startled disciples. Only Hadjar and Einen weren’t surprised by the exchange. Both of them felt the same energy in the old man that they’d felt in little Serra and Erra. The Gatekeeper wasn’t human. He was a golem, one so complex that it could’ve easily competed with the Key and the List of the ancient civilization. Well, the most valuable treasure of the library of Mage City had really been the elixir, because the rest of the knowledge had long since been either rediscovered or surpassed.

“You can enter the Treasure Tower only if the Gatekeeper allows it. The Tower is empty today, but that only happens on exam days. Right now, the Treasure Tower is only open to newly arrived disciples. Otherwise, we would never have gotten here because of the crowd.”

It was quite a logical decision. Hadjar presumed that the remaining two exams had already been completed as well, but neither the fully-fledged nor the inner circle disciples were visible on the horizon.

Maybe they didn’t want to risk bloodshed? Their pride was as important to the young practitioners as the air they breathed. Einen and Hadjar could endure most (but not all) insults. To someone younger and endowed with great power, a sidelong glance was a cause for a blood feud.

“Gatekeeper.” Jean made an inviting gesture.

The old man grunted something unintelligible and rose from his seat. When he reached the disciples, he gave them a slightly mocking look, and then went over to the massive gates. They were bolted with a metal that Hadjar couldn’t recognize and protected by a ten-layer barrier of magical hieroglyphics. Huge, woven from light, they hovered in the air. The energy they radiated felt much heavier than Dalit’s pressure had been. Hadjar had no doubt that the spell had been cast by someone even higher than the Lord level.

“The spell of the Ten Worlds,” Jean explained while the Gatekeeper was doing some sort of ritual. He made strange gestures with his hands, gradually pushing the hieroglyphics aside. “Thousands of thousands of years ago, a single spell was cast on the Treasure Tower. It was created by the founder of our school — cultivator Boundless Sky.”

After another hieroglyphic was pushed aside, Hadjar shivered slightly. He knew perfectly well that he couldn’t even scratch such a veil. If he tried, the power contained in the spell would scatter him to the wind.

“What level was the founder?” A voice called from the crowd.

“No one knows,” Jean said a little mysteriously. “He was clearly beyond the Nameless Level, the one that comes after the Lord level. Nobody knows what such a high level of cultivation entails... Well, humility is also a worthy trait for a cultivator to possess, so I will elaborate that you probably can’t find the answer to that question in the Empire.”

A wave of murmurs and whispers swept through the crowd. Hadjar figured Jean was lying. The Mentor surely knew about the existence of the Land of the Immortals, but apparently, just like Hadjar, he had no idea what level of cultivation a cultivator needed to reach to become an Immortal. As for the Nameless level, Hadjar had heard of it in the Sea of Sand.

A few minutes later, the Gatekeeper opened the tower gates. Mentor Jean was the first to enter, followed by the disciples. A sigh of admiration and surprise escaped all of them. Hadjar and Einen had seen something similar before in Mage City, but they couldn’t help but marvel at the sight as well.

The huge room was filled with shelves of books and scrolls, racks with numerous weapons, and shelves with a variety of reagents and alchemical pills. There was a price tag next to each item. It was painfully similar to the kind of library the Imperials had brought with them when they’d supposedly wanted to help Lidus.

“There are seven floors in the Tower,” the Gatekeeper’s voice sounded very hollow in this vast space. “Every disciple of ‘The Holy Sky’ School has access to the first floor. The second floor is only for fully-fledged disciples and higher. The third and fourth ones are reserved for the fully-fledged disciples that pass a test.”

“What kind of test?” Somebody asked.

The Gatekeeper completely ignored the question and continued:

“The fifth floor is only for those who pass the third and fourth test, and also have the medallion of an inner circle disciple. The sixth one is for those who meet the previous conditions, as well as pass the test of the sixth floor. The last floor, the seventh, is only for personal disciples of Masters and Mentors. However, just a wooden token isn’t enough to access it. A disciple has to pass a test and only then can they get access to the seventh floor. Only six of the current seventeen core disciples have access to the seventh floor.”

Hadjar looked up. A wide ramp ran up the side of the wall, ending at the ceiling of the second floor. The first three floors were the most ‘open’ and hardly had anything valuable on display.

“Look at your tokens carefully,” Jean said, pointing at the chest of one of the disciples. “Do you see that stone in the center? Touch it with your mind.”

Hadjar complied with the request. Concentrating, he detached a part of his mind. Each cultivator visualized this process in a different way. It was easiest for Hadjar to imagine that his thoughts, after turning into a stream of wind, were free to leave the halls of his mind. When his mind touched the stone, the number 150 appeared in his mind’s eye.

“All of you, after passing the exam, were given some Glory points. Using them, you can buy any of the items stored in the Treasure Tower. You also have to pay to attend lectures, training, or use the training grounds. You also have to pay for a space to study in and maintenance. However, the fees can also be paid with Imperial coins. For an ordinary disciple, it costs fifty coins for six months, or three hundred Glory points.”

The 1:6 ratio surprised Hadjar a little. Still, he was familiar with the system. It was almost the same thing he’d seen in the Moon Army, so it wasn’t surprising that a similar system was being used in the Empire itself. 

“How do we earn those points?” Einen asked.

“Yes,” another young man asked, “what do we need to do?”

“We’ll talk about the points later. Right now, you should walk around the first floor and look at the things on offer. I would advise you not to buy anything just yet. Just look at the prices so you can form an adequate plan for the future.”

Hadjar and Einen nodded to each other and went in different directions. That way, they’d be able to see more and then exchange information.