A New World, an immersive game experience

"Ah, Count Eldrian. This is everyone who was hand-picked to help you keep the manor in top shape. Let me introduce you to everyone," Darren said with a smile and introduced everyone one by one. 

Shockingly, the people weren't just maids and gardeners. There were also craftsmen, beginners in the field if one would consider their Tier. But what they could make were heaps and bound beyond most craftsmen on earth. Excluding modern items from the equation. 

The entire ordeal just took a few minutes, but Eldrian was still so in 'magic mode' that he forgot nearly everything immediately. Luckily, players had a very handy ability to record events. He would go through it later when he was in a better state of mind. 

After the little break, Eldrian returned to reading. Only to be disrupted again three times, as Tjan, Brazen, and Aspen respectively arrived. 

For them, Eldrian was far more welcoming, taking a good half hour or so to help them settle in while already missing Maia's tea. 

The new maids made just as fine a cup, but Eldrian had gotten used to the young beastkin and how she wasn't quite able to be entirely silent. How she would sneakily try to figure out what Eldrian was doing and thinking, and how she seemed to know just when to appear. 

A few more days passed as Eldrian finished going through three of the five books. 'I still need to learn a lot.' Eldrian mumbled as he consider all the topics he had only been able to read. Unable to digest and self-assess. 

"But, it is about time I start making some Tier 4 spells."

With that, Eldrian got up and headed to the mage association where he returned the books he had finished and picked two new ones. Along with that, he also picked a couple of spells to analyze and deconstruct while also giving Myropsis a visit. 

It quickly became apparent that moving from Tier 0 spells to Tier 1 spells was not going to be an easy task for her. She had great talent to be able to gain moderate control of her Tier 0 spells by now, but that was massively lacking compared to Eldrian. 

...

A week quickly passed as Eldrian continued to read on magical theories and slowly worked on deconstructing the spell modules. He also actually did go out with Flavia, and her friends, and Erik, and even met his sister there, which was quite the welcomed surprise.

'I need a more concrete spell. But learning spell modules is a step back and relying on emotions is a step too far.'

What Eldrian had done over this week was focus his research on spell modules and how mages normally modified them. 'Of course, it had to come down to math...' Eldrian had grumbled when he looked at the equations one mage had shown as an example. 

Due to this, Eldrian had hit a roadblock which he couldn't just push past. He had to go and learn these equations, and they were not something trivial. 

Naturally, Eldrian's first turn had been to ask the department heads to focus his studies on math. And so, over the past week he had mastered the basics of calculus one. 

But, to Eldrian's dismay, the math the mage had used was either a far higher level, or limits and derivatives had no place in it.

So, Eldrian was unable to move forward. 

"Hey!" Eldrian shouted and waved at the shocked group who turned to him in astonishment.

"Eldrian!? What are you doing here?" Therdul asked while approaching to properly greet a friend. 

"Ran into some trouble trying to continue my growth." Eldrian said while rubbing the back of his head, "So, I thought I might as well do some quests and refill my funds."

"And what can stop you?" Zyviss asked while throwing his arm around Eldrian in a brotherly manner. 

"Math..." Eldrian said and the two immediately became disappointed too. 

"You serious?"

"Yup, and the problem is I don't even know what type of math it is. Heck, it seems even Miracle doesn't know."

"What!?"

"Well, it's that, or they feel I need to learn the basics first. But if that was the case I would think they would share it with me." Eldrian commented, unknowingly causing a certain observer to sigh. Obviously, it was the latter.

"Maybe you don't really need the math?" Zyviss proposed and Eldrian shrugged. 

"I might be able to get lucky, but if I want to create my own spells consistently then it is a must."

Naturally, the two stared at Eldrian in stunned silence. 

"Did you really just say 'create'?" Ilmadia asked from behind the trio in sheer disbelief, "Not modify; create?"

"I did," Eldrian replied while turning to greet the Moon Elf. Eldrian felt that her look of disbelief was a bit over the top. 

After a few seconds, the three sighed in near unison and accepted that it was just Eldrian who was built different and ignorant of the difference. Which itself was astonishing, how he could stay ignorant was totally unbelievable. 

"Eldrian, who is that?"

"Who? Oh, Tjan. Hey, Tjan! No need to stay that far back." Eldrian shouted before answering the questions. "He's one of my retainers."

"Retainers? You have NPC followers?"

"Hmmm-mmmh." Eldrian hummed with a nod before explaining to them what he had recently gone through. Obviously, he hadn't thought to share it all through chats. Eldrian wasn't a chatty person in general, outside of magic topics that is. 

"So you're a count now?" Elizabeth asked with a bit of disbelief.

She had caught the tail end of the conversation, but hearing that Eldrian could hire up to a thousand NPCs left a sour taste in her mouth as a guild master.  As a friend, she was happy for Eldrian, but the sour test remained as a guild master. 

Currently, the guild could only have five hundred players. Meaning, as a guild, they were weaker than Eldrian in sheer numbers. Should he actually hire an entire army. 

"Heya Elizabeth, any good quests I can help with?"

"Certainly, we have three A-Ranked quests which we can't accept since we can't handle them."

"What's the details?" Eldrian asked as the group slowly drifted to Phoenix's tents. They were still operating from the camp in Pyknos forest, which was mostly deserted and still in disarray from the attack.

Adventurers were slowly repairing and maintaining it as having a safe place to fall back to about halfway into the forest was nice.

"They are all monster hideout extermination jobs. Normally we would refuse them and instead offer to cull the monsters. But, if you are here we should be able to complete the extermination."

Eldrian immediately thought of his time in avgi where he had fought so many goblins while trying to save Vivian. "What type of monsters?"

"Goblins, Kobolds, and Kassa," Seeing Eldrian's confusion Elizabeth quickly explained, "Kassa are some type of reptilian monsters. Though, from what I heard it is more that it is a collection of similarly looking monsters rather than a single type of monster."

"Then we certainly don't want to start with them," Eldrian said, his words obviously carried significant weight since they were basically relying on him to carry them through. 

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