Chapter 21: Contracts

Evin was unconscious for almost a week afterwards. When he finally woke up, he had to be hospitalized for almost a month, as the pain and trauma his body was experiencing after having his mana-core explode wasn't something he could survive at the leisure of his own home.

His family would come to visit him occasionally, but Evin could see some traces of suspicion and hesitation in their faces when they talked to Evin. Well, it would be obvious after what Evin had done to those men. And according to Theor, it seemed like Lora and Elina still had some nightmares about that night.

But Evin had a feeling that his family wished to ignore those dubious points about Evin and pretend that nothing out of the ordinary happened for the time being. Evin did not mind playing dumb alongside them, but he had a feeling that they all had to face the problem in the future.

Aran also came at some point and congratulated Evin on becoming a pseudo 1st grade citizen.

"How were you able to come back two weeks earlier than expected?" Evin asked the man.

"My service was already finished. I was just preparing to traverse the distance normally, through a military transport device, but I went dozens of gold coins into debt and rented a Cosmic for an hour. Well, you can guess what happened next, quite easily,"

Renting mages sounded a bit unethical to Evin, but it also sounded exactly like what a Cosmic Feline would do.

"How did you know that Kens would take such drastic actions against us?"

"Well, as I've hinted, I didn't actually know what was going to happen, although I had a bad feeling about everything. But I also have a security beacon on my body that notifies me when the magical devices that you use are activated. After that, I informed my contracted Cosmic and started negotiating a deal with them," Aran explained.

"By the way, I always wanted to ask this of you… Are the Cosmics trustworthy?"

"They are trustworthy. They will try their best to get a better deal out of every character they communicate with; but after they make the contract, they will not break it. They may seem a bit questionable at first, but you must understand that they are a race that has connections with every mage in the kingdom. If word comes out that they openly swindle their customers, their prestige will plummet greatly"

"Is that so? Then it's great if it is true. What else do you know?"

"They prefer to keep their distance from the other races, strictly keeping their relationship to business. I have heard of some humans receiving guidance from them, but I personally don't know how… Perhaps one simply has to pay enough money. Honestly, they are too elusive. But one thing is for certain. If you can offer enough benefits, they will do anything in their power to get them from you. The Feline's motto is: 'Everything can be bought with money', after all," Aran replied.

Evin was delighted to hear such news. He would be able to implement his plans much easier with this confirmation.

"One more question, could you tell me about how the economy for Mages work?"

"As you know, most normal people use bronze, silver and gold coins. But us mages mostly use mana lodestones. What do you know about them?"

"Practically nothing, I only know it stores mana inside itself somehow and allows mages to absorb the energy inside. I also noticed that it recharges over time," Evin replied.

"Hmm, something like that. As you probably know, lodestone is another way of naming a magnet. So, mana lodestones are exactly that. They absorb mana from the air, and the mana sticks to it like moss. After a long time, you can find that some part of the mana has actually become part of the lodestone. There are two principal ways to differentiate lodestones: quality and size. Size is quite obvious, the bigger the better. For quality, we categorize lodestones into three tiers: dust, rock and crystal"

"Dust is the most commonly found state of mana lodestones. Over time, they would accumulate and turn into the rock state. A few decades later, it would become crystal. But, as I've mentioned earlier, you can use the Heavy World to accelerate the process somewhat"

"So, what's the main form of currency for mages? Lodestones?"

"No, mages make up only about 10 percent of the total populace, so while lodestones are a little expensive, everyone still uses gold and silver. There are some periods when lodestones are more popular than gold, but such periods will never last because of one simple reason: every century, all mana lodestones are used up to create World cores. Soon after, they will reappear in the wild, making it so that any kind of accumulation of lodestones is meaningless."

"What? Why?"

"The reasons are unknown. But you will probably learn many other theories regarding this phenomenon in the Academy," Aran shrugged.

"Anyway, the lodestone market is simply too chaotic. Sometimes, an important discovery appears, and it requires enormous amounts of lodestones to research. Then suddenly, lodestones which used to cost a few silvers would actually start costing gold coins, or vice versa. So I don't recommend you invest too much in them"

"One more question, is there a way to make a contract that is impossible, or at least extremely hard to break?"

"What are you trying to do… Sigh, there are. There are a few and I will tell you about the most safe one first, though they're practically impossible to find. It's called the Velvet Contract. You know that the Final Empress' original name is the Empress Velvet, right? She used to be called that for about three centuries, but then her other name, Final Empress, became much more popular in the countries under her rule. It also sounded much cooler. Anyway, the Velvet Contract is basically the same as swearing on the name of the Empress. If you fail to uphold your end of the contract, you will instantly be smitten with divine punishment and die. The other party will be informed of your death as well. The problem with this contract is the how rare it is. The Empress only gives out a few hundred of these contracts every few decades, and it vastly depends on her mood. So you can be sure that only very wealthy people would have the chance to use it," Aran concluded.

"Are there more of such contracts?" Evin asked. Unbreakable contract is good and all, but something actually obtainable would be good.

"Yes, yes. I'm getting to those. They're called the World contracts. This time, you swear on the name of World Authorities. Failure to uphold the contract results in you being smitten by a slightly smaller and kind of survivable divine punishment. Though if you do manage to survive, you will find that you became unable to use said World. You have a chance to fix your relationship with the World Authority afterwards, but it's quite a slim chance. This contract is not rare, but whether or not you will be granted the contract will depend on the World Authority's decision"

"Okay, thanks for your help, Aran" Evin remarked politely.

"I should've stayed back and let you keep acting like a kid. Look how mature and uninteresting you are," Aran then lamented.

"Humph" Evin snorted and said his goodbyes.

"If you hit a huge deal with the Cosmics, you owe me about 180 gold coins, alright? Do you know how expensive that metal panther was? Not to mention my house and every other device in it. I saved your life and everything, too"

"Sure, sure," Evin sighed.

The two exchanged pleasantries and Evin was left alone in the hospital room again.

Evin didn't bother asking about Aran's deadly spell. Judging from how mages acted, Evin could tell that they weren't able to indulge certain information to others freely.

'Well, all things considered, I should focus on obtaining more gold for the time being,' Evin concluded.

"But I guess I should do it when I get released from this place..." he muttered.

…