Chapter 25 - Episode 24-Shopping for magi particles

After the 4 spies left, it was followed by few hours of silence. I took this time to eat something for lunch and take some rest. It would have been really hard for a normal person to go to sleep after eating food with high energy content, but for me it is a piece of cake to fall asleep.

I just laid flat on the desk of my store while using my hands as a sort of makeshift pillow.

I dreamt of being back in heaven while sleeping for centuries as a sort of revenge for being made to work hard. Then I proceeded to eat and play/create games, while catching up with all the shows, novels and manga's I missed in that time, while conjuring some legendary food and eating them as snack.

But suddenly Juliet popped up on the screen which was playing the 25th remake of the King Kong movie set in the year 3237 of Earth. The King Kong transformed into Juliet as she jumped out of the screen roaring and beating her chest, then she proceeded to beat me up, followed by strangely saying "Oi kid wake up". Realising that it was all a dream, and someone was trying to wake me up, I woke up, while wiping the drool off my face.

I saw that quite a few people were waiting in the room. They all looked annoyed at being made to wait.

The person who woke me up shook his head saying "Are you awake now? Can we have something to eat?"

"What time is it? How long have you been waiting" I asked in reply to their question.

"2pm, we have been waiting for close to 10 minutes now. Can I please make my order now?" Wow slept for close to 3 hours. Man, I really want to just sleep, I miss the times when I could sleep for decades and not having to wake up for going to toilet, eat food or be woken up by anyone or anything.

"Yeah. Choose whaaa*yawn*aaaat you want from the menu?" I said while yawning, I proceeded to hop of the desk stretching, while none of them at the front, even came forward to look at the menu. They all seemed kind of disgusted to come forward.

Seeing my inquisitive look one them spoke up "Can you wipe the remains of your drool from the desk?"

I looked back the desk and noticed that part of my drool was on top of where the menu was engraved. I took a towel and a small vial containing some form of cleaning liquid and cleaned the desk. After that they all came forward to order.

I noticed that these people were all agent/spy materials, and there was a slight tension in the air among them. Seems like more of the nobles and influential people have been alerted. They are all sending their people in to see if the information they got is right or not.

I smiled while I took order from them just remembering their order and table numbers, while not bothering to even ask their name, finding it useless to remember the name of cannon fodders.

There seemed to be about quite a few people as the line extended outside my shop. I started cooking and brought out the food to them. They ate while those who were waiting in line were using their sheer willpower as trained agents, while some were using their air magi to resist the smell. But they all never missed the expression appearing on the face of people eating.

Suddenly all those standing in line went full on defensive as they noticed the glowing effect appearing on those who have finished eating. After finishing their meal, the first group who made the orders, all went out to inform their masters reluctantly- due to, likely having not taken or given enough money for second serving.

The second group of orders came up. They were bit anxious and excited at the same time. They were all only partially informed of the mission objective, probably given a simple order such as test the food here and see if it is able to increase magi particle accumulation.

The same situation kept happening till the last one left until 5pm.

So much money I really need to convert these gold notes into platinum chips, otherwise it will be annoying and not safe to carry around.

I left all the plates and cutleries that were meant to be cleaned in the dishwasher. Although the science of this world is not on par as Earth, they replaced everything science could give with magi.

Magi's are capable of producing what is known as magi crystals. These crystals according to their size and colour are capable of storing magi. The stored magi can be performed using the magi particles that makes up the crystal. However, the crystals get smaller and smaller till they disappear when they are used. Using this magi's started creating appliances with magi crystal embedded in it, as a way to make some money, for their research purposes. Once the crystal disappeared from an appliance they can buy a new crystal and replace it in the appliance. There are magi's out there who are willing to sell some magi crystals for money.

The menu board on my desk is magi appliance capable of engraving whatever I want on the board. Along with the 'Open' and 'Rules and Regulation' sign. I have also added a temperature adjustment appliance in the whole shop. I also have blenders, oven, microwave and stove in the kitchen powered by magi crystal, instead of using firewood like primitives. Even, everything that is found in the kitchen of a modern restaurant in Earth is here.

Magi has advanced so far that people have invented transport similar to public buses, cars etc powered by magi crystal instead of coaches driven by horses or beasts. All in all, magi has replaced science in this world. Although not everything found in earth has been invented here yet (computer, internet, etc), most of it has been invented here to not make one miss Earth, if someone were to be transported here.

However not everyone can be a magi here. To be a magi one needs to have talent, which shows how quickly a magi is able to advance in rank. Magi's talent are divided in 4 tiers: No talent, Low talent, Medium talent and High talent.

So, the accumulation done by a high talent magi in one day takes between 10 to 20 days for medium talent, while for low talent magi it takes 90 to 100 days, while for a no talent individual it will take about 1000 days.

Everyone is tested for their talent as soon as they are born. Most people tend to be no talent, while the count of people goes down the higher up talent you go.

The reason why talent is important is because all magi's needs to accumulate magi particle in their body, to enable them to use magi spells. Once accumulated till a certain stage, they are easily able to keep up spells that were difficult to maintain in previous rank quite easily, due to their body passively absorbing magi particles to refill lost magi particles.

So, as an example, a non magi will need to accumulate 1 magi particle and say if it took 1 hour for him to accumulate. Then after 1 hour he will become a rank 1 magi.

So, if a rank 1 magi were to accumulate 1 magi particle per hour, and he needed 10 magi particle to rank up to rank 2, then he will be done in 9 hours.

Then once he moves onto rank 2 he will need 100 magi particles to advance, but this time he will be able to accumulate 10 particles per hour instead of 1.

However, a rank 2 magi will never have his magi particle count drop below 10 magi particle once he is rank 2, as his body will automatically replenish the lost particle as soon as it drops below 10. So if a rank 1 spell tends to use 1 magi particle per second, then in rank 1 using that spell will only last for however much magi particle they have accumulated. But once he/she reaches rank 2 he can keep up the spell indefinitely.

However, say if someone is in rank 1 and he accumulated 8/10 magi particles. Then suddenly he is put in a life and death situation and had to use a magi spell that took 5 magi particles to cast. So now he will only have 3/10 magi particle, all the time he spent to achieve the 5 magi particles is lost. So, he will have to spent another 5 hours to regain the lost magi particle, instead of it passively regenerating.

This the same for all the ranks, so if someone was in rank 3 and had 900/1000 magi count and used a spell that costed 900 magi then he will only have 100/1000 magi left (as the body always passively replenishes the previous ranks magi particles.). Thus, magis only use spells that is one rank below them always to fight unless it is a life or death situation.

Due to this reason it is important that everyone is able to accumulate enough magi particle to reach rank 1 before they are even given a chance to be taught about magi spells. As attempting to cast a magi spell without any magi in body is like trying to use a phone without any charge, it just simply won't work.

However, the magi accumulation ratio isn't always: rank 1-0/10, rank 2-0/100, rank 3-0/1000. It fluctuates and changes according to person, but the general pattern remains, that the higher rank you get, the harder it is to advance.

However, life isn't so simple like the scenario used above to explain magi's ranks, as people are born with different capacity of magi particles. Someone with high capacity means that he would need to accumulate 1000 magi particles in rank 1 to advance to rank 2. Someone with a low capacity means he/she will only need 1 magi particle to advance to rank 2. Then there is the most common capacity needing only an average amount to advance in rank.

Both type of capacity has advantages and disadvantages. Having a higher capacity usually meant he or she will be able to bombard their enemies with spell, however they won't be able to control their spells. While people with low capacity will have a massive control over all the spells they cast and having extremely good control of exterior magi particles. However someone with average capacity is expected to have best of both worlds, instead, he/she will only have the worst of both worlds, being only able to cast a limited amount of spells without enough control over them.

So, if a person with high capacity were to cast a fireball spell, he or she won't be able to have enough control over the spell. They would just be able to launch the spell in the direction of their enemies and bombard them to death, with fireballs. While a low capacity spell user can compress their fireball to the size of a grain of rice, without losing any power or destruction and send it toward their target, without anyone noticing anything and killing them off silently.

So, combining these two factors you get a variety of magi such: people born with higher capacity and low talent, someone with low capacity high talent. Due to this it became really hard to classify magis and their strength. So, the magi association laid out 2 requirements to classify magi ranks: one the accumulation of magi particles, two the magis ability to fight against an award user of the same rank. The magi association had an equipment being able to measure out which rank of accumulation a person was on, along with if he or she had high or low capacity or the average capacity. So, if someone were to reach rank 2 and wasn't able to defeat a rank 2 award user then he won't be classified as a rank 2 magi.

John to was tested for magi talent as soon as he was born. He was found to be among the no talent, with an average capacity. Having neither a high nor low capacity, it was deemed better that he was not to be trained in magi art, along with the fact that John wanted to be an award user. Therefore, it was a deemed a waste of resource and time even if John was capable of reaching high rank, as his magi rank will be lost as soon as he becomes an award user.

But fate was truly against John, as not only did he not have any award, but he is not able to accumulate magi particles anymore. The least magi particle can do when consumed by Ez, is that being able to make sure Ez is in top shape and increase his healing speed. Maybe it can delay his soulless condition for a while, before the healing caused by magi particle not being able to keep up with the destruction.