William and Sarah heard the name of the Wildflower Mage for the first time. He was named "Brewer."
"…Hm. I planned to keep my first identity a secret from these two for a little longer." Brewer said, pretend-sulking.
"Identity, my foot. From how much you were talking all the way here, I don't think you would've kept your name a secret a second longer. But anyway, welcome back, you fiend."
Brewer chuckled at that, and suddenly, a strange crystal formed in Lady Celine's hand. She clenched it tightly, and it dispersed into the light. This light streamed everywhere and eventually lit up the torches on the sewer's walls, revealing the number of people that surrounded them by now.
Warily, Sarah looked around and counted around 20 people around them at once. She guessed that these must've been Lady Celine's entourage or something of the sort.
"Here, take this." Lady Celine said.
She tossed another of the crystals to Brewer, who immediately crushed it. Light swirled all around his body before it entered him through his skin and disappeared.
"What was that?" William asked.
"…A special, but simple, magic remedy I need to use every few weeks, because the Karmic Debt that was let out from the statue had even affected me, and quite severely, by the time I found out."
Lady Celine looked at William briefly, before looking at Sarah. She saw the strangely sympathetic expressions on their faces and laughed.
"…Mundanites are truly interesting. They don't even know what Karmic Debt is, yet they still feel sympathy for you. That is what ordinary life does to you. It makes you fragile."
William glanced at her.
"What do you mean?"
"What I mean is… you two should stop feeling things like sympathy from now on. In this new world, that will get you killed quickly."
William stared at her for a short moment and then asked a peculiar question out of nowhere.
"Did you know about all this happening before it did? The creation of a new world and all that stuff."
The people surrounding the three of them began to clamour, and even Lady Celine couldn't help but stifle a grin because of that question.
"Of course we did. The lands beyond your world are much more different from yours. Even though our worlds are all just components of the "Endless Sea" that is the universe itself, we have adjusted to our harsher environment and therefore advanced much more quickly than you have."
William nodded, understanding a bit more about the otherworlder's understanding of the merge now. However, Sarah wondered whether the Endless Sea that Lady Celine talked about was just outer space, or beyond space itself.
"Anyway, since you two know little to no information about this new world at all, I'll be glad to give you some more information, and for free this time as well, with you two being Brewer's companions and all."
"Hah, I didn't know an information vendor like you would do things for free," Brewer said, "You used to always scam me out of items on the daily!"
Lady Celine rolled her eyes and ignored him, but just after, Sarah stepped forward. She didn't waste any time asking what she wanted to ask.
She wanted to know what exactly Mana was, and everything related to it.
Lady Celine nodded and explained that Mana was both your life force and the power that operated the natural world. A set amount of Mana flowed through your body at birth, which could increase as you age.
Through concentrated training, there was a guaranteed way you could learn how to control Mana through specific breathing and mental techniques. Animals had it easier than this, as they could manipulate Mana through pure instinct even from birth, without any specific breathing techniques. Although to "mutate" into a Magic Creature, they needed to live long enough for the Mana inside them to condense and harden, or to experience a Mana influx.
Once able to control Mana, humans could learn profound ways to become stronger, such as either becoming a Spellsword, a Sorcerer, a Mage or a Magician.
The difference between each of them was that a Spellsword manipulated and controlled Mana in such a way that created a "sword-adjacent" power aura, allowing them to handle the sword in a unique, extraordinary way with their ability.
A Sorcerer used Mana to access different types of magical energy, which usually came from the world itself. These magical energies came in the form of Water Energy, Moon Energy, Spiritual Energy or whatnot.
A Mage uses Mana in a more specific way to either create or use catalysts, and these were to control the natural elements of the world itself, making them capable of many things.
And finally, a Magician uses Mana to enchant and use spells. They could enhance the performance of others, whether in a battle or not and were separated into two groups.
"So, what's this then?" Sarah asked as she summoned power from her benefactors in the palm of her hand.
"Ah… so I was right about you after all!" Brewer said while Lady Celine looked upon her with interest.
"You have a very special power, young lady. Among the two groups that Magicians were split into, you fall into the "Benefactoral Magician Society", which is much rarer and more valued than ordinary Magicians."
Sarah stared at the flowing power in her palm, satisfied. She smiled and looked over at William, nudging him.
"Phew… fine," William said, as he transformed, "This… is my power!"
Flowing ink surrounded him, and golden light flared from his body, with the ink covering him like a cocoon. The cocoon pulsated, and then he burst forth from it with a transformed body.
"…"
Lady Celine observed him tentatively.
"Ink, huh? That kind of power is so extremely flexible that I can say you're almost as valuable as the girl next to you. You're perfect as a Spellsword. But it's not only that. You also have a Crucible Mark near your chest…"
"A Crucible Mark?" William asked as he looked down.
He guessed that she was talking about the closed eye near his chest, which he still didn't know what it was.
"What is it?"
"The Eye of the Unknown," Brewer replied, "A mark that signifies the gaze of the Primordial Deities upon you. There's an enormous chance that the eye will never open, but once it does, you will be recognised as a Herald of Gods. If that's possible, and you manage to collect a Divine Fable, you will become a Divine Champion."
William blinked, as he registered all the words entering his ears at once. A chilling feeling arose in his stomach, followed by the second-biggest feeling of excitement he had ever felt in his life.
This bubbly feeling was the result of his youth as an edgy kid, as a kid who once wanted the apocalypse to ravage the world, just so that he could become special, even though there was no guarantee that he would become as special as he hoped even if it did happen.
But, even up until now, he still had the desire to become "special". Unique. And, now that the world has changed like this, almost as if God was listening to his hopes, he could finally become the person that he had always wanted to be. A legend in the making.
"Wait, hold on, Primordial Deities?" Sarah asked, snapping William out of his euphoria.
"The Primordial Deities are the true Gods behind the creation of everything. We have known of the name of their pantheon for a very long time, the Skies Beyond, yet no living being has seen a non-vague hint of their existence ever."
"This is why people still believe in the orthodox religions."
"What's more is that we humans tend to draw focus away from the Primordial Deities themselves, and more towards certain aspects of them, which is how most orthodox and unorthodox religions came to rise in the first place…"
"What little info we do know about them, however, is that they are all "Gods" in the sense that they have a single characteristic that makes themselves divine. As if they were one being, split into many different beings that are semi-independent of themselves."
"They are also unkillable, and seem to exist in the highest dimension that can be achieved by reality."
Lady Celine sighed, realising that she split way too much information by then.
"I guess I got too caught up in my interest in you two. I tell you what, the next time you two want to gain information from me, it'll be double the price. And that goes for you too, Brewer!"
Brewer gasped almost exaggeratedly and stepped back.
"What did I do??? If it's gonna be like that, then I'll also have to relinquish my services to you."
Lady Celine glared at him. But, Brewer looked like he didn't care in the slightest.
"Fine. But, you two will still have to pay double the price."
They nodded, and Brewer grinned.
"Alright, we're gonna head on out of here now. Since, of course, we originally came down here to hide our heads from the Knights of Conquest after us, but, what these two learnt from you was a great haul as well. I wouldn't have bothered with explaining all that."
"…The Knights of Conquest? Ah, because they've tried to claim the land aboveground, eh? Well, they're certainly gonna have trouble with that…"
Brewer gazed at her, intrigued. However, Lady Celine halted any more information coming out of her mouth.
"Pay up, and then I'll talk."
"…Fine."
After fishing into a pocket, he threw her a large, oddly shaped silver coin. And two more, at that.
"…Hm. I learnt from my associates that six of the Lesser Kings were planning to take over this entire region in one fell swoop. They're also planning on building a joint kingdom from the ground up."
Brewer nodded his head slowly.
"This is good…"