Hugo backed up, away from the woman in the fox mask. The two thugs walked closer to him, moving to surround him. Hugo glanced around, looking for escape routes.

She said, “Oh, don’t run now. I would hate to have to tell the sentinels all about you. I don’t want to lose my new best friend.”

Hugo stuck a hand into his pocket to count the money there, before stopping himself. He said, “What makes you think I have to pay you anything? You can’t blackmail me. Just because I don’t like the attention, doesn’t mean that I am willing to do anything to avoid it. If you really want to, go ahead and tell the sentinels all about it. Maybe they will give us both medals for doing our civic duty.”

By now the three of them had Hugo surrounded. What he said was true though, he was never afraid of the sentinels. He hadn’t told them before because he had no evidence and he was afraid they wouldn’t believe him. The fox gang couldn’t blackmail him. They couldn’t even threaten his friends and family, since he had none. That was a bit sad.

He was done giving in to the fox gang. They had pushed him around during his last life, taking away his every freedom. Not anymore. He wasn’t going to let them have any power.

“We don’t need to blackmail you,” she said and took out the cobbled together shimmer caster “You are going to hand over your money out of the goodness of your heart. We are friends, aren’t we?”

Hugo glanced back and saw the men had weapons too, one had a length of pipe and the other had a wooden club. He forced himself to laugh and said, “We aren’t friends. I am a mage of the Blue Lion Academy, and you are going to need more than a few common thugs to get one copper penny out of me.”

The four of them stood there, no one willing to make the first move. Hugo nonchalantly stuck his hands in his pockets. He wanted them to think that he was so powerful that he wasn’t even taking them seriously. While his hands were hidden, he fabricated the same knife from the other night. It took a third of his mana pool, but now he was armed with a sharp skeleton of a knife. This time the handle was better designed so he wouldn’t cut himself.

He stared at the shimmer caster, knowing that one shot would put him out of the fight. He decided to take it out of consideration. He created a round shield in front of the caster and anchored it to the weapon.

The fox woman stepped to the side and fired. Unfortunately for her, the shield moved with the gun and absorbed the shimmer. The barrier was destroyed but the cloud of shimmer was dissipated. Hugo immediately created another shield in front of the gun. Each shield took him a second or two to create, so he knew he had to be quick. She just tisked and threw the gun to the side. It must have only had one shot. She drew a knife instead.

One of the gang members had maneuvered behind Hugo. He slowly shuffled to the side and kept a careful eye on the man in front of him. When the thug’s eyes narrowed, Hugo ducked to the side. A club whistled through the air where his head had been a moment before.

Hugo kicked back blindly, his foot connecting with the man behind himself and pushing him back. At the same time, Hugo put a shield directly in front of the woman and man. He used their bodies as an anchor, so even if they jumped back, the shield would still be directly in front of them. He tried to put it close enough that they wouldn’t have the leverage to quickly break it.

While those two were occupied with their respective shields, Hugo pivoted and pounced on the guy with the club. The thug was obviously an experienced fighter. He avoided a kick and a stab from Hugo with ease. The thug wasn’t faster than Hugo, but he seemed to be able to read his movements and react to what he was about to do.

Knowing that he didn’t have much time, Hugo leapt at the thug, his arms wide. The thug managed to land a hit on Hugo, but still fell to the tackle. Now that he had him in his grasp, Hugo was able to quickly overpower the man, knocking his head against the cobblestones, hard. It wasn’t enough to knock him unconscious, but the thug was woozy and out of the fight for now.

Hugo rolled to his feet and scooped up both weapons. With a club and a knife, he approached the remaining two gang members. The woman in the fox mask managed to break the shield in front of her at that moment and leapt towards Hugo. Her dagger flashed forward.

His high dexterity allowed him to avoid the worst of her strike, but the knife still left a score across his cheek. The face injury brought back a lot of bad memories, and Hugo’s anger spiked. He stabbed at her with his knife, and while she was dodging the strike, he swept out the club from the other side. She wasn’t ready for his speed and the club took her legs out from underneath her.

He brought up the club with a scowl, but the sound of a shield shattering brought his attention back to his left side. The newly freed thug swung at Hugo with his length of metal pipe. Hugo was only barely able to bring the club into position to block the strike. A loud clang rang out.

This new thug was fast, Hugo was just barely able to keep him at bay using two weapons against the thug’s one. Hugo attempted to jump back to disengage and give himself time to think. The thug didn’t give him the chance, jumping as Hugo did, and continued the fight.

Hugo created a shield to give himself the space instead, but after he took a step back, the thug broke it with two quick strikes. In the meantime, Hugo gave himself another weapon. This time, he made a large round barrier and attached it to his knife hand. It was like a second bat, pumped full of mana so it was strong.

The longer reach allowed Hugo to force the thug back. Hugo used his new construct to swipe at the thug’s legs. The long length and weightlessness of the blue club allowed him to get a lot of speed out of his new weapon. He swung at the thugs legs with a grin on his face.

Which the thug actually dodged, jumping over the swinging barrier bat to Hugo’s surprise.

While he was in the air, Hugo quickly changed direction of the construct and swung it back at him. Since it had almost no mass, quick redirects were easy. The barrier bat made contact while the thug was still in the air, and sent him sprawling across the cobblestones. He landed behind the woman, who hadn’t gotten back up yet, the injury to her legs too great.

Hugo almost leapt forward to press his advantage, but stopped himself. He recycled the barrier and lowered the club. He said, “Stop. This is over.”

The thug that he had knocked away rolled to his feet, mostly uninjured. He didn’t attack though, looking at the woman in the fox mask for instructions.

Hugo continued, “I am holding back because I respect the fox gang.” He almost admitted that he couldn’t beat the fox gang if they all came at him, but reconsidered and said, “I am choosing to let you three go, without more serious injuries. Let’s both forget about this, alright?”

There was a moment of silence. The third thug got up, still holding the back of his head. He wobbled over to the woman in the fox mask who was still sitting on the ground. She said, “Leave now. And stay out of this part of town. Stick to uptown if you want to stay in our good graces.”

It wasn’t quite what he wanted, but Hugo let it go. He backed up and left this street, only letting them out of his sight once he turned a corner. It would be annoying to stay out of this part of town, since it was the middle class part of town and a lot of good shops were here. But he supposed it wouldn’t be too hard to avoid the fox gang for now. He would be getting a good deal stronger at the academy and then he could do whatever he wanted.

...

The next day, towards the afternoon, he set himself up at a tea shop in the merchant district. He had discovered that most of the foot traffic passed through the street in front of him. He kept a careful eye on the traffic outside of the tea shop, looking for the hedge mage he could recognize on sight.

He also kept an eye out for the three fox gang members from yesterday. He didn’t think he would see them though. They knew now that he couldn’t predict the future, and that he was capable of protecting himself. They would probably just move on to easier targets.

His vigilance was less than stellar though. As his second cup of earl gray grew cold, a hand fell on his shoulder. He hadn’t even noticed anyone approaching him. He looked up to see Marius.

His heart sank. Somehow, the grandcryst had been stolen despite his warnings. Damn that stubborn man. He probably kept the grandcryst in the apartment. And now he was here to interrogate Hugo, assuming that he was in league with the thieves. Hugo swore internally and tried to keep the panic off his face.

“I don’t know who you are, but I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart,” Marius said.

Hugo just sat there in stunned silence.

Marius sat down across from Hugo and said, “I didn’t want to believe you, but I hid the ... you know what, somewhere else last night. Fox gang thugs broke into my girlfriend’s apartment, just like you predicted.”

“You actually listened to me,” Hugo said with a surprised smile on his face.

“And it saved my life savings. How did you know?” said Marius.

Hugo thought for a bit and said, “I can’t tell you. I shouldn’t have known that bit of info in the first place. If my source of information got out, they would be in danger.”

Marius nodded and said, “I won’t ask about it anymore. I owe you a debt of gratitude. What is your name?”

“It’s H.. Cristian.” Hugo said. He had gotten used to using his real name, but he didn’t want Marius to guess who he really was. Other than his mother, Marius was the only one in the world that knew him well enough to suspect the truth.

“Cristian? Ok. Cristian, mage apprentice. Until light becomes shadow, until the rivers run dry, until the moons no longer rise, I am in your debt,” Marius said with his hand on his heart.

Hugo laughed, recognizing the oath from a two copper novel he had read, “Oh, are you Peter the Allred? Does that mean you are an adventurer, out to save the city from destruction?”

With a laugh he said, “Nah, no true adventurers around here. It isn’t possible.”

“It isn’t even possible? I used to love reading about them. And now you are dashing my childhood dreams by telling me it is impossible. I thought you owed me,” Hugo said with a laugh.

Marius tipped his hand back and forth and answered him seriously, “There aren’t any true adventurers on the wheel. These eight cities don’t have any powerhouses like that. Plenty of people are close, but none like the ones you read about in the books.”

“Why not? Is it because those books are all fiction?”

“Nah, some of them are kinda true. But not around here. Few different reasons for that. You got the shimmer corps, they keep the power hungry harvesters in check.”

“The nobility like to be the only power hungry ones around,” Hugo said.

“Right. The other reason you don’t have anyone truly spectacular around here is from the soft cap on ranks because of shimmer mountain.”

“Soft cap?”

“You don’t know that one? Ok, how to explain. Alright let me ask you a question. You got a domain, you got lots of money, what is stopping you from getting to rank 96?”

“I don’t know, time, I guess? You rank up from killing monsters, and there aren’t enough high leveled monsters to rank you up quickly after rank 30 or so.”

“So close, but not there yet. There aren’t a lot of high ranked monsters around here. There are plenty of high ranked monsters beyond the reach of the mountain. Beasts rank up the longer they live around mana sources or kill other monsters. There just aren’t any high ranked monsters around here because they get pulled in by mana starvation every heartbeat. Most monsters that attack the city walls are less than a year old. Any older than that and they would have left this territory or been killed during the previous monster wave.”

That was terrifying to think about. Hugo had seen humongous abominations, ones so large they had knocked down walls, and they were baby monsters. What kind of power would older monsters have if they had a few decades to grow in power?

“That brings up another point in the no adventurers around here. Adventurers take risks, they go to the monsters, fight them in their lair. Not so much around here. Here your mages just wait for the monsters to come to them after new years. Even harvesters like me get half their income from protecting the walls after a heartbeat.

“The eight cities around the mountain really are great places to live, raise a family, but they are too safe to breed true adventurers.”

If this life was safe, he didn’t want to know what dangerous was, Hugo decided.

“Anyway, enough about adventurers. Tell me what I can do to pay you back,” Marius said.

Hugo thought about it for a moment. What did Marius even have that he wanted? Money, of course, but he wasn’t really hurting for it right now. Maybe his skills?

“You are a barrier harvester, right? I am training to be a barrier mage. Do you think you have any tips or tricks that you could teach me that the academy wouldn’t?” Hugo said and gestured to the academy uniform he was wearing.

Marius leaned back in his chair and thought for a bit. “Well, that is a bit of a tough one. The academy charges so much because they have a lot of secrets. Those mages seem to know everything. Simple folk like me don’t have much that makes us special. If I did, I would already be rich, right?” Then he remembered the grandcryst, “Or richer at least.”

“I bet you know something, or can do something that the mages can’t,” Hugo prodded.

“Hmmm,” Marius thought about it, “Oh! There is actually one thing. Almost all of the barrier mages, even the sentinels I know, are slow. It takes them a second or two to create barriers. That’s fine up on the wall, but you have to be faster to survive as a harvester.” Marius flickered shields into existence around him to demonstrate.

Hugo was properly impressed. He had thought that a second to create a shield was fast. Marius was much faster. “That is cool. What is the trick?”

“It’s not so much a trick as an exercise,” Marius said, “Instead of trying to create a full strength barrier all at once, you start with the shell and then pump in mana. It’s just as strong or stronger than mages do, it’s just much faster.”

They spent the next ten minutes talking about how to do it and the exercises Hugo would have to do to get good at it.

“Thanks so much, Marius, that really helps me out. Your debt is fulfilled and your honor restored,” Hugo said, quoting the two copper novel again.

“That isn’t enough to repay my debt to you. Not nearly enough. I want to give you some of the money from the sale of the...” he looked around and then whispered, “Grandcryst. I don’t have the money with me right now, it’s in the bank. Where can I find you?”

“You can send me a letter at the Blue Lion academy. Cristian Firero. Just include whatever you think is fair. The skills matter more to me, really.”

Marius got out a charcoal pencil and jotted down the name. Hugo had to spell it for him, which was actually good. He had said his own last name wrong earlier. It was Fieraru not Firero. Marius gave him a weird look when Hugo spelled it out. He just played it off as if Marius had misheard him earlier.

“Good luck to you in your studies, Cristian.”

“Thanks Marius.”