The Blue Blood Mage: The Duke of Montenegro Book One by Ben Pollard

Author:Ben Pollard [Pollard, Ben]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2023-08-30T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

We continued our travels later the next day. Initially my thought was to hand over a bunch of bank notes to Lady Meredith, and there you go, a bank is made. Turns out it is slightly more complicated, and expensive, than that. My experience with banks was with fiat currencies, not physical commodities. The important distinction is that the bank in question needs to have the commodity itself on hand to back the promissory notes. Most of the taxes collected by Risin were in copper and silver so I opened an account and exchanged some of my gold for the smaller change metals. Only the gold changed hands, and a lot of paperwork was generated. It was all very complicated. I made Anton handle almost all of it.

The perks of an authoritarian regime.

The town of Star met my expectations of a medieval town. A nauseating mix of human and animal waste, garbage, and a tannery. The breeze from the nearby sea blasted the odor as we approached Star, so we all looked forward to leaving as soon as possible.

The town wall and buildings were made of a darker rock. It wasn’t quite black and the eastern sunrise glimmered off the surfaces in town. Those not covered in shit anyhow. I decided that I didn’t want to stay in an Inn here so I made Anton inform the merchants that, should they wish to stay, they would need to meet us outside the gates come sunrise.

Anton informed me that the local nobility wasn’t in and that they would be terribly sorry that they missed me. It seemed they didn’t like to stay here any more than I would. Dinner that night was stuffed Quail, greens, and what looked like purple potatoes.

Later the next day, we made it to the coastal road, and had one more stop in the town of Plav before we made the Capital of Montenegro. The city itself didn’t have a name that anyone else knew, but everyone called it Montenegro.

I continued cultivating my mana while we traveled, very close to completing my core. Eight kernels made a loose sphere with space for one more. After that I would need to compress them down into a single metaphysical object. For the last several days the final kernel didn’t want to slot in. The kernel itself acted like it had a will of its own. The books mentioned, briefly, a second path of specialization; it did not say it was a requirement though.

The normal Elements didn’t resonate with me. The concepts were too simple. Necromancy was banned for good reason, and the taboo for mental control, that I didn’t want, wasn’t worth the risk of a peasant revolt for mere convenience.

My focus on Arcane energy gave me a great deal of flexibility. My powers encompassed Telekinesis, Light, and Space magic. The classical Air, Earth, Water, and Fire Elements were answers for the states of matter as the ancients knew them. Modern Earth science has progressed much faster than here.

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