9 CHAPTER 9

The White Spire was like a city in itself, the place extended in many floors bellow and above the ground, the fraternities of the mages was something so obvious in this place that they actually lived in different parts of the stronghold and the size of their territory was directly proportional to their overall power and influence in the tower, fortunately, those that weren't from any faction could sleep in the mage quarters that were inside the main tower.

The place was extremely different from Ghislain circle in many ways, the hallways were extremely big, enough to fit entire caravans inside them and Templars squads formed of five or more Templars could be seen from time to time patrolling the whole compound.

Instead of servants, the ones doing basic chores and serving the mages and apprentices were people with lifeless eyes and emotionless hearts, those were the Tranquil. Mages who went through the Rite of Tranquility and belong to the Formari of the Circle.

The Formari was formed by individuals who focus on using their talents to create various items, most notably enchantments. Some Formari also creates and sells herbal items such as potions. The Tranquil belong to this group and do all of the enchanting on behalf of the Circle, as working with raw lyrium poses too high a risk to mages whose connection to the Fade isn't severed.

Just thinking about enchantments made Abraham's heartache... he tried once, had to stay in bed for a week because of this, just approaching the raw lyrium made his guts tremble with pain and his veins burn as if they were in a fire.

The Antivan mage told him about the rules, explained how he could continue his training, and gave him the key to his room, apparently, they have separate rooms for everybody here, a feat possible only due to the sheer size of the stronghold, and to make this even more surprising, half of the place was abandoned and entrance to those locations was forbidden due to the presence of demons, spirits, dangerous wild animals, curses, hexes, traps, etc, needless to say, that half of the stronghold was a natural deathtrap.

As for Rhys room, it was on the other side of the tower, after bidding his farewell to the boy, Abraham started to prepare his plans, the first thing he did was sign a requisition request for an enchanted bag with a capacity for at least 40 kilograms worthy of materials, a journal with a thousand pages to make notes about his goals, progress, and researches, and finally, a map of Thedas to aid him in his travels.

The next few months were spent only in preparation for the future, the first hundred pages of his journal were transformed into a grimoire of sorts, containing the questions for every single useful spell he would need on a daily basis, be it to cure him of poisoning, infections, diseases, or to help him track down someone or something as well other useful spells he wasn't willing to waste his time memorizing, after all, there are just too many of them, it would be better to simply organize them in categories and further organize each category in alphabetical order.

He also made progress with spiritual healing magic, managing to summon one spirit of compassion after several tries, although it was still quite difficult, he tried using this magic using Solas' method but he always failed, in the end, he could only think that his knowledge of spirits, the Fade, and the veil were still too lacking for him to summon then through that method, he would have to mimic Solas' actions and dream in ruins to experience the Fade for real and then try again.

He also managed to acquire special permission to wear customized robes after bothering the First-Enchanter for an entire month, Abraham wasn't stupid, he feared for his safety more than others, so to make his life easier for the future he decided to finally build a set of armor for him.

Although it took him basically forever to recreate the material he wanted to use, since he wasn't really a genius of chemistry back in his previous life, only giving the subject proper attention now that he was a mage, he still managed to successfully recreate Kevlar, in fact, he owes this achievement to the fact that he had read the guide on how to rebuild civilization from scratch for the stranded time traveler, after all, he could remember bits and pieces of it every time he went to sleep since he actively focused on it every single day before sleeping.

In the end, his full set of equipment was composed of a gambeson made out mostly of Kevlar allowing it to be thinner and lighter, a riveted mail, and a long dark green overcoat with some personal touch to the design.

You must be wondering why he chose this, right? The answer is quite simple, this seemingly humble set is actually way more efficient than anything the people of Thedas used in many ways, his protection wasn't just good it was fucking overpowered, it didn't matter if it was blunt weapons, katanas, spears, arrows, etc, his armor was good to deal with literally everything, and to make it even better, all enchantments on the pieces of armor were focused on defending him from any kind of attack, from spiritual, to physical and even magic, the only things he added offensive enchantments were his two new rings, his new necklace, his new stave, and his boots, they were all enchanted with enchantments focused on increasing the power of his spells and increasing his reserves of mana.

Combining all of that, he should have become at least twice as strong in terms of offensive power, as for his defense... well, if he was, to tell the truth, it should be even better than the best equipment one could acquire in Dragon Age Inquisition since Kevlar is such a superior material, heck, maybe it could even be considered as a level five material, something that didn't exist in the game...

Okay, that was some bullshit, but when considering everything through practical means and quality his equipment was indeed better than anything in the games and the reason was simple, he was using the collective knowledge of the humans from his previous life, focusing on efficiency more than anything, after all, who wants to wear fashionable plate armor when you can use some common and cheap pieces of clothing that are actually stronger?

Abraham couldn't help but bit his lips as he walked towards the First-Enchanter chambers, never in his life, he thought that he would opt for efficiency instead of cool looks... It was like he had just lost his gamer self that always used the coolest looking pieces of equipment even if their status were trash.

He knocked on the door and waited for an answer.

"Come in, it's open."

Going inside Abraham looked at the old man sitting in his chair while writing something on a parchment.

"What do you need Abraham?" The man turned to look at him and raised an eyebrow seeing his weird choice of equipment, it looked like something only a beggar would use, little did he know that was exactly what Abraham wanted everyone to believe, they would never expect his armor to actually be way better than theirs. And to make things even better, only he knew how to build this kind of equipment.

"First-Enchanter Edmonde, I came here to request leave permission to continue my research on the ancient elves."

Edmonde sighed and massaged his forehead as he leaned his back on the chair. "Abraham, I already told you that my answer is NO! You won't leave the tower unless in official business for either the Circle or the Chantry!"

"First-Enchanter please listen to me, can you truly say that the research of your mages isn't official business of the Circle? In the little time I have been here I proved my ability again when aiding the Enchanters in their research and troubles. Heck, I even cleaned one of the Circle basements that were infested with those giant crawling spiders alone! How many mages inside the tower can do what I did without a scratch? You know I'm capable of defending and taking care of myself!"

"Boy just listen to the nonsense you are speaking!" The first enchanter stood up and hit the table with his clenched fists. "Not even a year passed since you finished your harrowing, even if you have the level of ability of an Enchanter you certainly do not have their experience nor their contributions! Why would allow a recently promoted mage to wander outside and endanger not only himself but others as well!?"

"Then at least let me complete some mission for either the Chantry or the Circle! I won't be able to prove myself if you don't allow me to do it!"

"No! You want to prove yourself then you need first to take an apprentice and become an Enchanter! Only them, after one or two years I'll allow you to go out in missions."

Abraham sighed and left the First-Enchanter chambers, where would he find an apprentice? And also, what should he do in those two years? The time he has to learn everything that he needs is getting lower and lower with each passing day...

As he walked through the tower, he happened to notice that Rhys' room was open curious he approached to see if he was there.

However, before he could knock on the open door to announce his presence, he noticed Rhys on the other side of the room, he was looking at the wall and seemed to be speaking alone...

"Yeah I know what you mean, but there's nothing I can do about it." Rhys stopped for a moment and nodded. "Indeed, but even then I do not know why others can't see you..."

Then it looked like he patted someone in the back as he said. "Don't worry cole, I'm sure you will be able to make more friends in the future."

Cole? What the hell? Abraham gulped and slowly left Rhys' room, now was definitely not the time to speak with him, besides, didn't he just heard something quite... interesting? There was a companion in Dragon Age Inquisition called Cole, he knew that Cole was a spirit and that he could also control who could see him and who could not in the game, could it be that Cole was here?

He wasn't sure, it could be a coincidence, or Rhys might have gone nuts, he would have to investigate this matter later.

As he went down he decided to stop by the refectory and eat something, but what he found was some sort of commotion.

There in the entrance, a group of brats was surrounding a young female elf with long blonde hair. Soon he found out why... there asking to be patted by the girl as if it was a dog was a big matured red lion.

He watched in amazement as the girl commanded it to do some tricks and things like that, at first he thought that she had raised the creature since it was a cub, but soon he realized something interesting, while faint it was possible to sense some sort of wave of mana coming out of her, and it seemed to ignore other people as it entered the body of the lion.

Could it be that she had a special gift to control wild creatures?