That morning, Jess went to the Mage Quarter. After a few days of rest, he figured he looked presentable again.
His face was still bruised, and he walked a little awkwardly, but at least the bandages were off his arms. On the surface, he looked like a normal person ready to get back to everyday life.
He knocked on Edan Marin's door, but the master mage wasn't home. A young woman in her twenties was cleaning the room.
She looked over. She had a square, slightly stern-looking face with sharp features, and short dark-brown hair brushed neatly back. Jess immediately thought she looked a lot like Marin.
“Hello. You're Mr. Jess Seso, right? Father went to Redridge Mountains. He might not be back for a week. He said you might visit soon, but he didn't mention you were so young...”
“Are you Master Marin's daughter?”
“Yes. I'm Amy Marin, a trainee mage at the Wizard's Sanctum. By the way, you ran into gnolls near Westbrook Garrison a few days ago, at night, didn't you?”
“I did. If it weren't for Master Marin, I might be dead.”
Amy Marin looked worried. “I never thought the gnolls would come back now. The orcs did terrible damage to their tribes when they invaded this land. With the orcs driven back, the gnolls benefited too. And now they've turned around and started attacking us. It's awful.”
“Maybe they're not smart enough to understand gratitude or cooperation,” Jess said.
“I wish I could think of them as simple beasts, but gnolls have warlocks too. Dark magic may accept anyone willing to accept it, but it still takes a certain amount of intelligence to understand spells. Sorry, I'm getting off topic. What happened that night still frightens me a little. I worry about Father getting hurt. He asked me to show you the work when you came, so let's start here...”
As Amy set down her things and washed her hands in a wooden basin, Jess said, “Actually, I came today to talk about the pay.”
Amy dried her hands. “Don't you know what mage assistants earn at the Wizard's Sanctum? Oh, you're from the north, aren't you? From your accent, I'd say the Kingdom of Lordaeron.”
Jess gave a quiet “Mm.” When he'd first arrived in this world, he'd learned Common with memories of Chinese and English still in his head. He'd worked hard to avoid sounding strange. Back then, he'd never imagined people would be able to tell he was from Lordaeron as soon as he grew up.
“Then I'll give you a quick rundown, and you can tell me what you think,” Amy said. “Six silver coins a month. For meals, you can go to the dining hall at the Wizard's Sanctum with the mages. As for housing, the Mage Quarter has free dorms for apprentices and assistants. They were always full, but some apprentices went to Nethergarde Keep with their teachers because of the expedition. There may be rooms available now. I'll keep an eye out for you. You could move in as early as next month.”
“Thank you. That's a lot of trouble to go to for me.”
“Not at all. I should be thanking you for helping Father.”
“Are the meals free too?”
“Yes, though they're pretty boring. Just a few kinds of pastries and bread. If you want something nicer, you can eat at the taverns outside. But I'd stay away from the Slaughtered Lamb. I don't recommend it. There's always something odd about the atmosphere there.”
This was almost exactly what Jess had hoped for. He just had to stay in his rented room another month and pay another month's rent. He could live with that. Afterward, he'd have a free dorm room!
He'd expected the salary to be a little higher, especially for a job in the Mage Quarter, but six silver was already better than many jobs in the city.
Most importantly, he finally had a chance to become a mage.
“Now, about the work.” Amy picked up a mop. “Every morning, before Father comes here, around this time, you need to clean his study. Mop the floor and dust everything. Ever since the ogres came through, there's been much more dust here than when I was little. You usually won't need to sort the books. Father puts those away himself. Compared with having to organize the library like I do, it's much easier.”
Cleaning a study and dusting were no problem for Jess. He'd even been a classroom cleaning monitor for several years in middle school.
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“When Father gets back, he'll explain your duties in detail. For today, you can clean this room first.” Amy wiped the sweat from her forehead and sighed in relief. “Finally, someone to help me. Since Father sent his apprentice to Redridge, all these jobs have fallen to me.”
“That's all fine, ma'am.” Jess couldn't help asking, “Actually, I wanted to know when I can become an apprentice.”
“An apprentice?” Amy paused. “You mean a mage apprentice at the Wizard's Sanctum? My father's apprentice?”
“Yes.”
“An assistant and an apprentice aren't the same thing... An assistant helps mages with their everyday work. An apprentice studies magic.”
Amy said it as if it were obvious. Jess felt as though he'd been struck by lightning. How could becoming a mage's assistant not lead to becoming an apprentice? What kind of logic was that?
So that was it. That was why Marin had agreed to hire him. He'd only wanted someone to do physical chores, not a student.
Then why had he asked all those mysterious questions? Jess felt as if someone had led him on and broken his heart. Though feeling that way about an old man was pretty weird.
Seeing the boy's surprise, Amy asked, “How old are you?”
“Seventeen. Almost eighteen.”
Amy shook her head. “To become a mage apprentice, you usually need to start training young. Around eleven or twelve. By your age, unless you have exceptional talent, it may already be too late to train into a competent mage. Father had me start studying at the Wizard's Sanctum when I was twelve. I'm twenty-six now, and I'm still not a full mage. If I haven't advanced by thirty, he'll probably be disappointed.”
She sighed. “Though there are quite a few trainee mages in their thirties at the Sanctum. Most became apprentices before they turned fifteen.”
“What if,” Jess said, “and I mean what if I had a lot of talent? An incredible amount?”
“You've never tried casting a spell?” Amy asked. “Master Medivh could already use several schools of magic skillfully at ten years old...”
Oh, so he was playing with cheats, was he?
Big deal, having Sargeras, the demon lord and Dark Titan, possessing your body!
Big deal, having an eight-hundred-year-old Guardian of Tirisfal as your mother!
Jess clenched his fists. Not having some special advantage hurt so much when the mindlessly gifted bloodline geniuses of this world could leave you in the dust.
He took a deep breath and calmed down. “Someone like me... obviously can't compare with the most powerful mage in human history. But I still want to try. Is there some way to test my talent?”
“Of course,” Amy said. “The most basic foundation of all arcane ability: making a connection with the ley network.”
She took a book on arcane runes from the shelf and opened it to a page showing a rune. Jess recognized it as an arcane rune.
Using it as a guide, Amy skillfully drew on a blank paper scroll. She was nearly done with a fairly complicated new rune.
Jess began to feel unsure of himself. He doubted he could learn to draw that smoothly even after ten years.
While she drew, he even glanced above her head to see if she'd secretly cast an Arcane Intellect buff on herself. Otherwise, how could a mere trainee mage be this good?
When she finished, Amy handed him the unrolled scroll. “Please make it glow.”
“What?” Jess stared at the rune scroll in his hands. “Aren't you going to tell me how?”
“A talented child learns to resonate with the ley network as they grow and practices that resonance out of habit, the way some children bite their nails. It isn't painful. It's addictive... So very few children deliberately hold themselves back. High elves are an extreme example of this habit. If you don't know what to do, it may mean you simply aren't suited to being a mage.”
“Really?”
Jess was starting to get annoyed. He gripped the scroll, closed his eyes, and tried to sense this so-called ley network.
The ley network could be understood as Azeroth's veins.
Azeroth was actually a young Titan that had yet to be born. Pure arcane energy, not blood, flowed through a Titan's veins.
The Well of Eternity, guarded by the ancient elves, was a wound accidentally left by Aman'Thul—the ancient leader of the Titans, ruler of the Pantheon, and father of the gods—when he tried to remove an evil, twisted parasite from Azeroth.
Every living thing born on Azeroth was affected by the ley network to some degree. And creatures that could use it would, in turn, affect the network and even Azeroth itself.
Jess refused to believe he couldn't resonate with it.
Maybe this was where his special power finally appeared. Awaken, supreme magical talent!
He concentrated so hard he even ignored the dull pain in his lower belly, where Hogger had kicked him.
But after concentrating for ages, the scroll hadn't changed in the slightest.
Are you sure you drew that rune right, trainee mage?
He wanted to ask out loud, but couldn't bring himself to.
Amy took the scroll, glanced at the rune, and it immediately gave off a faint whitish glow. The walls and everything in the room were covered in a soft purple light.
“That's how it's done.” Amy raised her eyebrows. “I'm sorry, Mr. Jess Seso.”
Jess's head buzzed. He didn't want to believe this was the result.
What kind of trip to another world was this?
He didn't just lack talent. He wasn't even as good as an ordinary apprentice?
But the frustration lasted only a moment. Over the past decade and more, he'd gotten used to disappointment like this.
He'd actually taken similar little arcane tests as a child. They hadn't been nearly as reliable, but they'd still told him something. He'd just hoped things might be different this time.
In the end, nothing had changed.
He realized the path of a mage might be closed to him.
“Thank you, Miss Amy,” Jess said. “Actually, I don't necessarily want to be an apprentice just to learn magic. I also want to broaden my horizons and learn things I don't understand yet.”
Amy narrowed her eyes and smiled. “I'm glad to hear you say that. The library is open to everyone who works in the Mage Quarter. Come back this afternoon and I'll give you an identification badge. With it, you'll be free to enter and leave the Wizard's Sanctum.”
“Great. That's exactly what I was hoping for.”
Even as Jess spoke, an idea was forming in his mind. He had to visit the Slaughtered Lamb again... No, not just once.
He needed to go back again and again. Not only to earn money, but for something much more important.
Dark magic wasn't arcane magic. As Amy had said, “Dark magic accepts anyone willing to accept it.”