Guest Room 023, Royal Palace.
Capital City Gerfast.
Great Western Empire
June 6th
Year 1052
While the Seventh Finger was having a close shave with death against the new generation First Hero on the Beta Continent, the Second Hero was having a nice afternoon meal with one of the guests of the Empire who attended the previous night's ball.
A tempered glass table sat on the balcony of the luxurious guest room, with our resident hero, dressed in a casual short-sleeved polo and simple black jeans with his similarly coloured slicked-back hair on one end.
On the other was a dark-skinned woman with long legs, messy waist-length hair that covered her ears, and a somewhat sleepy expression on her face.
Naturally, this woman was the Vice Chief Grand Magus of the City State of Magic, Kasteblum, Joanna Ritz.
Also known to many, as the 'Laziest Mage Alive'.
'Funny how a lot of people don't recognize who she is till they hear that title.'
Evan thought to himself as he took a bite of the carefully prepared steak, nodding in satisfaction at the exquisite taste of the meal.
"Long story short, you guys plan to release the waypoints to the public by the year-end, huh?"
"Not end…next year beginning."
"Same Difference."
Evan shrugged in reply to Joanna's words before taking a sip of his strawberry wine. As for the subject of their conversation; it was about one of the greatest innovations that was going to shock the entirety of Aidos when they were released.
Teleportation Waypoints.
Devices that allowed one to transfer matter from one point to another, without traversing the physical space between them.
According to the timelines in the game, these were things that were supposed to have been fully developed by the City State of Magic, Kasteblum, towards the end of the year 1055, but due to circumstances Evan was unaware of, they were completed a whole three years earlier.
'I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing.
Both the fact that they could complete it earlier and the timing of the release.'
In the game, 'Aidos Online', in-game teleportation, or rather, 'fast travel' was naturally available to make things easier for players who did not want to go through the stress of running across (exploring) the map just to get to their destinations, however, this was only to specific major locations on the map like Country Capital Cities or certain historical locations.
But after clearing the main questline up to a certain stage (Dealing with one of the Eight Disasters), the number of locations one could fast travel to was tripled.
Teleportation magic was something that existed in Aidos, and it could be used via various means, including but not limited to, teleportation stones, artifacts and mages with spatial attribute magic and skills.
However, for those who did not possess the spatial attribute or a spatial type skill, using teleportation was quite a difficult feat, as such, they had to rely on rare teleportation artifacts or single-use teleportation stones.
It went without saying, that all these were very…very expensive to acquire.
Kasteblum, however, planned to make these a lot less rare and expensive by introducing these devices they called Teleportation Waypoints.
They were the results of attempts to recreate the devices seen in the memory gems left behind by the Chief Grand Magus of Kasteblum who was one of the few survivors of the City State's destruction at the hands of a certain Deadly Sin 1000 years ago.
Since they were built to be able to carry over a hundred people in one jump, these teleportation Waypoints were very large, enough for the aforementioned amount of people to comfortably stand inside them without having to squeeze together.
They had multiple interconnected magic and ether spatial formations, intricately designed to work and complement each other without issue despite the use of two different energy signatures.
Each one came with two parts, a dematerializer and a rematerializer; known by the less complicated names of 'Entry Waypoint' and 'Exit Waypoint'.
They were all connected along a large-scale magical network, and for successful teleportation from point A to B to be possible, both the Entry waypoint at A and Exit waypoint at destination B had to be active at the same time.
If the Exit waypoint at B was not activated, then the Entry waypoint at A would be unable to initiate the teleportation in the first place.
It required the operators of these formations to be communicating constantly so as not to have any problems whatsoever.
Powering these formations, required magic stones…lots of magic stones, as such, the users of these Waypoints had to pay for the magic stones that were being used to power their teleportation.
Kasteblum had already concluded developing these waypoints, and now they were mass producing them in preparations to sell them off to the Countries of the Alpha continent by the beginning quarter of the year 1053, exactly six months after the trains would begin service.
The plan was that by the end of the year 1053, each major city on the Alpha continent would possess a teleportation waypoint
Now then, about Trains on Aidos.
These were another piece of magi-technology that was being developed before its time in the game.
They were the end result of the Alpha and Beta Continent's leaders and researchers, seeking new ways of air and land transportation.
In the end, they had ended up devising the 'ideas' for these trains, and the Alpha continent ended up with the role of developing them.
On the other hand, the Beta Continent drew the lot for developing Air transportation methods, and 'Airships' were what they had come up with.
Afterwards, both continents were to exchange these technologies after deploying them in their own lands for some time.
However, countries related to 'The Five', already possessed the magi-technologies of the other continent.
Take the Beast Kingdom for example, the only country on the Alpha Continent that possessed the technological know-how to make Airships already, or the Dwarven Kingdom of Stonehammer on the Beta Continent which could already develop trains.
Returning to the matter of Teleportation Waypoints, Joanna casually revealed to Evan that there were already some waypoints deployed in other major powers of the Alpha continent, linking them to the City State of Magic.
There was the issue of these waypoints being used for invasions, but as stated earlier, unless both entry and exit waypoints were activated simultaneously, the teleportation attempts would see no success, and these countries knew better than to keep them activated at all times.
Besides, although Kasteblum was a Major world power, they would suffer great losses if they provoked other Major World powers on their level and were ganged up on with no allies on their side.
"Teleportation Waypoints sure do sound like a nice magi-technology to have around. I could name a few countries and empires who would want to monopolize that magi-tech."
"Monopolize?"
"Yep. It's the kind of thing that people would covet and want for themselves alone."
Evan replied to Joanna's question, citing the fact that a few countries would definitely have thoughts of Annexing Kasteblum after they released this technology into the world.
In fact, in the game, a few Northern Alpha Continental countries indeed had such thoughts of taking control over Kasteblum.
'Countries like Terrok and their colonies…'
Avoiding the war was also part of the game's major questline, as such a war would have greatly diminished the power of Aidos' defending force against the incoming demons.
Kasteblum, although small, was the hub of magicians, alchemists and other related professions who resided in the Alpha continent.
They also had tons of Adventurers, A, S and SS ranks who resided there because of their dungeons and the double experience effect they had.
And then the City State's battle mages, especially the powerful Blue Robed Senior Mages and above.
The Mages of Kasteblum had six ranks; Apprentice, Junior, Intermediate, Senior, Great and Grand.
Each rank was then further subdivided into three categories, differentiated by the colour of the robes they wore.
Green robed were the lowest, Red Robes in the middle, and Blue robes were the Highest.
The higher the mage's rank, the darker the colour of their robes, so it was very easy to identify a battle mage when they wore their official robes.
On a side note, Sir Czac, who had participated in the Cheverton incident, was one of the weaker Grand Mages, being under the Green Robe Category.
Also, despite being the Vice Chief Grand Magus, Joanna was not the second most powerful Magus as her title would make one think since her strength was also only on the level of a Green-Robed Grand Mage.
There were more powerful Grand Magus that existed in Kasteblum, the Red-Robed which had levels around 500 and the Dark-Blue-Robed which were basically the Elders of Kasteblum.
Each one was an existence of at least Level 600.
Powerful old Mages that although Gavin, the current Chief Grand Magus could best them in one-on-one battles, even he would be in trouble if they all attacked him at once despite the fact that he was the individual strongest with a level close to 700.