Cardinal

"Hurry! Hurry!"

"There are new quest NPCs at the gate."

"Whats the point in rushing, don't you think that place is already crowded?"

"I doesn't matter, all I need is to know why that NPC is present in this town and not at the others."

Listening to the passerby talking about a strange Quest giver, two wonderers headed to the Magician Academy front gate. On the left side of the stone brick wall, an NPC clothed in gray robe, gray pointy wizard hat, gray age-worn leather gloves, and a wooden spear fashioned staff with the wood warped around the blue stone like a burning flame. The NPCs facial features were so refined that it looked like an avatar of a long deceased actor of long ago, it looked so beautiful and handsome at the same time.

In fact, if a person was who lived two hundred years ago is still alive they will recognize this person, the NPC was the first actor to be contracted to promote the implementation of virtual education and gaming, the person stared many advertisements including in-game appearances. For the 50 or so years that he lived promoting the virtual educational system, he was in and out of the virtual and real world.

Many years have passes after his death the people managing SDC.inc were made to vote on whether the company should enshrine the star on a monument of his statue or to be recreated as a virtual character, this sprung a debate between morals and right of the departed, but the last words came and the decision was for him to be memorialized in a statue and a virtual character. With the collection of the many data recorded in his headgear, programmers and scientists analyzed his mentality, physique, and mannerisms re-creating his figure when he was in his prime in an artificial intelligence unit, under the category of learning machine.

With his lean athletic physique, wittiness, and and original choice character, he was redesigned as a wizard, hidden in the name Cardinal, an expert in tactics and warfare as if trained in the military.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

"Sir. Is this really alright to release this NPC?" said one of the assistant programmers in the controls room.

"It's his Memorial Day, we should at least pay respect to the departed." The head administrator stated.

"But..."

"Not everyone is aware of who he is, and not all can go to his monument, with this at least we can make people aware of the existence of such a patron." The supervisor added before the trainee could state other excuses.

"Can we at least alter the intelligence level? It's too high for this stage of the game." Boots said.

"I wish we could do that too. But during the alteration test it was found that the AI would self distract if any alterations of any kind is performed on the neural system." Admin admitted.

"Interacting with that NPC will seam like they are actually interacting with another person rather than an NPC, the only thing that can be controlled is the quest that he gives away." Supervisor informed the staff.

"So, better look out for any possible over-compensations. We don't want the AI to be giving out over-leveled or Legendary standard items for this one-week event." Encouraged the Administrator.

"Yes! Sir." The staff responded.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

"Are we going to Cardinal?" SayaShin asked if they should participate on this event.

"No! Let me finish my Tailor quest first."

"Ohh... Yeah... About that... Here, take this." SayaShin said pulling out some large wheel and a middle point from his inventory.

"Oww... Wow... a spindle! Where did you get this stuff from?" Mizarin excitedly looked at the large spindle before her, it was the size of a bicycle, with a pedal at the side of the wheel, and a chair beside the needle point.

"I got this from the Master BlackSmith, there were two types, a small one that would produce threads with a lot of time, and this that is less time consuming. The tread spinning takes ten minutes to finish one whole spool of line, and with your 3% per second mana regeneration rate the mana cost of 10,000 MP per minute should be a piece of cake." SayaShin Informed.

"How do I use it?"

"First you place any other source of mana for the thread on these three plates right here but you can keep them empty. I purchases this because it allow the user to place substitute source of mana, as long as the item has mana to provide this spindle will continue to rotate and make mana threads. On this chair you can sit and supply mana to make your own mana thread, usually the users would just supply their mana on the items but if you sit here and place some other mana source on those plates, the tread will be mixed with your mana and the materials mana." SayaShin explained how to use the thread spinner.

"Wow... I can do that with this?... Umm. Hmm Hmm Hmm, you just opened a lot of possibilities with this one you know!" Mizarin exclaimed while trembling in excitement.

"Thats a relief, you have been pulling me along and improving my status. I'm glad that I could return something to you." SayaShin felt relieved when he saw that his best-friend who have been providing him with great help has finally received something from him, that she considered of great value.

"What are you talking about? Anyways lets go hunting at the Spirit Shrine, farm some spirit stones then meet up with the others at the grave yard!"

"How about we go to the magicians Elemental Garden to hunt some elemental stones."

"Do you think we can challenge those lesser elementals? Wizards and summoners dose not need any support class when entering the Elemental dungeon, and according to the Wizard section of the forum each floor has a boss. Taking down the boss with the other elementals are easy for the wizards because they could just use the opposing element, we have neither of those elemental spells."

"Can't we go and learn some at the wizards library?"

"I have tried that one, the spell I learned while reading a spell book on [Fire Ball] was [After Glow]" reciting the spell name invoked the spell causing Mizarin to glow a fiery light like the glow of an evening bonfire in summer, mesmerizing, gentle, and warm glow.

"What does that spell do?"

"It just keeps me warm on a very cold environment. I can cast this as a buff, but the effects depends on the mana targets supplied."

"Wow... Can you cast it on monsters?"

"Haven't tried that one. What gave you that Idea?"

"Its just that you said; 'the effects depends on the mana targets supplied,' do they need to be aware of the skill or is the mana consumed unsupervised?"

"Damn! Your on a streak today."

"Ohh Came on. Its just today, let's go and learn some buff skills and challenge that elemental dungeon, if we couldn't challenge it, abandon!"

"Okay, lets entertain this but just this once."

"Why do you agree so easily?"

"What can I do otherwise? I can read it on your face. Planning on descending to that place to test an unsupported theory, if left unsupervised it would be catastrophic." Mizarin berated with the facts.

"To the library again then?"

"To the library."

Inside the library Mizarin and SayaShin went straight to the Fifth floor, searching for higher class offensive magic spells from the restricted section of the magicians books.

"Why do we have to get spells from this floor?"

"These spells are spells that players can only read back here when they reach the bottle neck before taking the first tier class advancement. at least thats what the magicians guide tells. But since we can't actually acquire offensive spells from the Magic Books, why not go to the highest standard. Maybe later we could actually have some offensive spells for our respective classes from a Skill Book."

"Yeah... I get that we need some offensive spells, but why here?"

"The spells here are higher class than those at the lower floor, obtaining high class spells are our priority. The lower class spells we can go read some later... go and get some books that attracts your attention."

After some time of searching and browsing the shelves. Mizarin returned with Four books, one for each elements;[Flush Flood], [Tornado], [Fire Storm], and [Earthquake]. While for SayaShin; [Tempest], [Hail Storm],[Sandstorm], and [Water Spout].

SayaShin's preference was an immediate vicinity Area Of Effect skill, a skill that spreads out centering the spell-caster, while Mizarin's choice were projectile class AOE spells, a highly destructive long ranged spell.

While reading the spell books at the reading table of the library fifth-floor, SayaShin was having a hard time comprehending some contents of the book that he had selected, Mizarin on the other hand seamlessly skimmed through her selection as if she was born to read those books.

"How many skills have you obtained from the book's so far?" Mizarin asked SayaShin as she closes the book she was reading.

"This is the fifth one, How about you?"

"Eight, I rescanned the books and only got one skill from each."

"Wah... You read so fast."

"I'm going to test some of the spells, so I'm setting the environment for the floor to be spell casting space, see you at the casting training are." After saying so, she faded into an apparition then vanished.

"See you," SayaShin whispered to himself while reading the book on hand.

On the training ground Mizarin was casting spells after spell without a care of any damage to the structure or to herself. Inside the training space any casters can cast their spells infinitely, only caring about the cool-down time and casting time of the spell, this particular space was designed to provide players a firm grasp of the skills that they have learned, incorporating the skills that they already posses with the newly acquired ones.

Mixing and matching spells could produce some extravagant effects, just like matching clothes, any miss-matches would make the person look unattractive. The spell combinations would depend on how long the casting time, the duration of the spell, the amount of mana consumed and the amount of mana that can be regenerated.

Having a perfect combination was, of course, not easily attained but not impossible. A prime example of this is the Talisman-Grimoire-Kagome Dance, Mizarin's favorite. A combination of techniques of casting that meshed so well that the caster could invoke spells continuously without rest, trampling over any experts who call themselves wizards. Tho only drawbacks from the spell combination was that the caster could not use any offensive spells due to the class restriction, and the designated use was to amplify the spells and defend the caster simultaneously, which is a great deal.

On another training space, SayaShin was casting spells one after another observing how much the spells he cast would cost him. Having a lower mana pool than his friend, he had to be very careful on the matching of his spells. Unlike the other who has high mana pool, he on the other hand has high mana regeneration rate of 5% per second, which many other players would only dream of obtaining at the early stage of the game.

During the training session of the two Oracles, they both have been able to device some spell combinations for the spell that they have acquired. While they were playing around with their researching and affiliating skills combinations, a message came from the leader; AleyaNala.

[AleyaNala: We are logging off early today, some strange quest is going around the Magicians Academy. Reset and reconnaissance for now. Later!]

After the message was received the entire group of their party went offline, leaving the two stupefied. To think that the NPC that everyone in the academy was frantically visiting was really an event NPC. but this did not matter to the two, as they concentrated their mind, creating synergy on their spells.

[Mizarin: Heading out now, let's rest as well, and join the others for this stranger quest.]

[SayaShin: How about your Tailor Quest?]

[Mizarin: Going to do it later, I need some break to refresh my mind. I can't seam to find any more plausible combination for my spells.]

[SayaShin: Okay, I'll log-off a little bit later, some refining some combinations I have thought.]

[Mizarin: Don't stay for too long, we at least need to be on time this time around.]

[SayaShin: Okay, I will be out in at most an hour. Let's go fro a jog later, I have something to talk about.]

[Mizarin: Okay cool. I'm off]

Following Mizarin s declaration her name went gray on the friends list.

Earlier that day SayaShin received a message from the center, stating the date and time of their departure and his designated department.