Chapter 20

Title: Tuula

After leaving the temple the two quickly reached the city of Tuula where they wanted to stay for a bit. During this time they found work to do. While they were working in the town they wanted to get a foothold in Ionia and properly learn about the country. Earning money was another goal that should be more feasible in a city, considering that both Phesto and Nejime were skilled individuals.

As for the work they did, Nejime found something interesting in a public venue near the city's market. A few times a week teachers from nearby schools, dojos and clans would visit and hold public lectures. The lectures were free to attend and the lecturers would earn donations from the attendees. Seeing a chance for herself and feeling somewhat confident in her skills, Nejime wanted to hold public lectures as well.

To be allowed to teach, she had to hold a test lesson for a few city elders and teachers from nearby dojos. If they were satisfied with the lesson you would be allowed to teach. Though the extent to which the elders and teachers were satisfied determined for how long and how often you could teach.

As the size of the square was limited and only a certain amount of public lectures could be held before it turned chaotic, a time limit was introduced for each public lesson, so that a few subjects would not dominate.

But there were also some exceptions, such as a teacher willingly giving their time slot to another teacher. This was initially introduced to allow lecturers to be more flexible and readjust their schedules depending on the situation. Though since then it's been used for many more reasons, a lecturer requiring more time or simply using their time slots as a favour that they can give away.

Though this wasn't the intended usage, the number of lecturers wasn't too big and everyone knew everyone so a few irregularities never caused too much damage or chaos.

Though she definitely wanted to hold lectures she wasn't sure yet what kind of topic she should teach. With Phesto she was always in a one on one situation and it was more of a discussion anyway, but that wouldn't be possible for a timed lecture with multiple students.

So for the first few days, she spent a lot of time listening to other lectures and talking to them after their lectures. This was how she found out the criteria for holding public lectures in the first place.

After a couple of days, she had a clear grasp on the type of lectures that were held. In short, most lectures could be divided into two types. The first type was the city elders teaching fairly basic things, similar to basic education. The second type was lecturers from outside the city, usually nearby dojo's teaching their dojo's beginner techniques and advertising for new people to join them. Since Nejime didn't have any grand plans and just wanted to earn some money she was going to go with an approach similar to the city elders, going for more basic magical knowledge.

Thanks to the schooling she had received, she had quite extensive knowledge. And even though some of her magical theories had to be readjusted to work in conjunction with Ionia's spirit, she mostly finished adjusting her magical knowledge thanks to Phesto and their discussions every night.

Phesto on the other hand situated himself in the market. There he learned about the different items being sold and bought. He was fairly confident that if he learned a bit more about the prices of goods he would be able to use Energy Sense and the system to accurately appraise items to sell and buy at good prices.

Though he had another goal as well. That was practising Energy Sense, he still wondered what would happen if he reached lvl 100 in a skill. Would the skill stop levelling? Would he unlock a new skill? Or would it just continue levelling past 100 as if nothing ever happened? He was only a few levels away from reaching 100 so interacting with new objects on which he could use Energy Sense was one of the best methods of levelling it.

In general, he had noticed that most skills level efficiently whenever he gained new insights on their functions, or he utilized them in situations they had not been in before.

This was why he still struggled with levelling Energy Strengthening. It wasn't every day that he interacted with a new energy form, so now all new insight came from either himself, Nejime or the system's occasional inspiration coming from its automatic guidance function.

Still, even if he could improve Energy Strengthening more quickly, it really wasn't up there on his priority list anyway. He had a lot of success with Spirit Attunement recently. With Nejime meditating with him he had probably the best source of insight in all of Ionia for this skill. After Energy Sense, Spirit Attunement would probably be the next skill to reach lvl 100.

Within the next few days, both Phesto and Nejime got into the tempo of the work they were now doing, slowly getting more information and earning money. Phesto gained information from the items he appraised and the people he sold and bought from while Nejime got her information from other lecturers and the occasional student.

During that time a shipment of weapons from Kashuri came to Tuula. The more common weapons were sold in bulk, but the better weapons from that batch were to be sold individually, of which Phesto was able to get his hands on a sword and a bow. He did not yet have the chance to analyze a rare or magical weapon yet, so he wanted to see what made this sword and bow worth being sold individually.

[Name: Harmonic Cut

Type: Sword

Creator: Unknown

Attack: 15

Affinity: 0

Effect: 'Harmonic' improves the wielder's attunement with Ionia while this sword is held.]

[Name: Guiding Spirit

Type: Bow

Creator: Unknown

Attack: 20

Affinity: 0

Effect: 'Guided' Based on the wielders attunement with Ionia's spirit and the affinity with the bow, arrows fired from this bow will be enchanted to home in on targets the wielder wants to hit]

He could definitely see why they would be sold on their own, they both had their own effects and would be potent weapons. He was also interested in this new stat that he saw, 'Affinity'. That one was a bit weird, did it imply that he could attune to each weapon similar to how he could attune to Ionia's spirit? And would that mean that both these weapons had a spirit? Or did it just mean they had the chance to for a spirit? He somewhat hoped it would be the latter, it was still part of a man's romance to have something hatch and letting it grow up to become one's assisting guardian.

Though he wondered how rare these weapons were exactly. But since they were the rarest weapon he has seen yet he spent most of the money he earned the past few days and bought them. He didn't regret the purchase though, the effects were very interesting, especially the effect 'Harmonic', it would most likely further boost Spirit Attunement.

Looking at the weapons and their effects Phesto realized that he got a little too comfortable these past few days with both him and Nejime spending their time learning, working and training. Learning smithing and creating much grander artefacts and weapons would allow him to become even more comfortable, there was no reason to take it easy now, he could always do that later. He still had time to become strong enough to survive the next few catastrophic events, maybe even enough to reach a state where he could stop one or two of those events.

Would that make him a hero? Stopping events no one knew about from happening certainly wouldn't make him famous. But waiting for disaster to strike knowing full well he could have avoided it just so he could save people at the last second seemed too sleazy and somewhat disgusting.

Whatever the case, he would train to his best capabilities and grow however much he could. As long as he had the ability he would help.