He was heavier than I thought he would be. With the extra weight of the armors, which both of us was wearing, I had to half-drag half-carry him. He had to be tied to a chair in a crew quarter, since I had no prisoner room. Not that crew quarters were any better than a prison. With the door locks being operated by Josse, he had no chance of escaping from the metal room. I found some interesting points while stripping him of his armor and weapons. While the equipment was interesting, it was his body that had my immediate attention, and it definitely wasn’t his handsome face. It was the ears.

“Of course the first one I see had to be an elf. Called it.”

They were sharp. Couple centimeters longer than normal, but not as long as fantasy ones. Also, he wasn’t as lanky as I had imagined. He was pretty much human, besides the ears and the pretty face, but he could just be ridiculously attractive human with weird ears. Med scanner showed that his organs, bones and brain was not different than expected, but the DNA analysis was going to take some time.

Josse also notified me that goblin corpses I had brought back had couple of surprises, but I had to deal with the belongings of my surprise guest first. His armor was definitely was not cowhide. It was as flexible as kevlar, as springy as cotton yet very hard to cut through. It took almost all of my body weight to puncture a small hole into it. If this world had goblins and elves, god knows what kind of monsters also existed. Orcs and trolls, wyverns or dragons, this leather could belong to anything.

He had a metal plate with scribbles in his waterproof backpack. Existence of dog tags meant he was a member of some sort of organization. It could also be some kind of ID, but my bet would be on some kind of army tags or, well, Adventurer Association.

Other than these, only thing of notice was the handful of tiny blue crystals on his pouch, alongside some silver and copper coins. That reminded me, I never did check if the goblins had some kind of magic cores on them. What kind of fantasy monster didn’t have magic cores..? I decided to ask Josse if one of the surprises of the corpse was this.

“Indeed, goblins had small crystals such as these growing between the lungs, right next to the heart. Med scanner couldn’t find what it was made out of, as it was never designed to work with such materials. Nothing in the genome points to a process that could create them, but such a small genetic sample and novelty of the genetic code means we can’t be sure. Also, the sperms of the creature are simply ridiculous. It’s so potent it could probably breed with almost any mammal.  Its sperm carries gigantic amount of data, changing and corrupting the gene of any eggs it comes in contact with. Med bay computer claims that there is a very high chance that it could pregnate a human, forcing her to give birth to a goblin. Boss, if we can send this data to proper scientists and researchers, it would revolutionize more than one field overnight.”

I may not know much about biology and genetics, but it fit. Not with the science, but with the fantasy. Goblin kidnapping and raping others was the most common of the tropes.

. . . . .

I was in the midst of contemplating what to do with the guest when Josse informed me that the guest was up. He woke up quite fast for someone who had a concussion. I decided to take a tazer to my date with the prisoner. Not that much could happen without finding a solution to the language issue. With this being a whole new different world, there was million and one ways their language could develop.

“Boss, he is screaming something now. No idea what.”

It was rather unnecessary, as I could hear his shouts from 2 rooms away.

He fell silent when I entered, before asking something to me. He mumbled something to himself, as he saw puzzlement on my face.  Next, he closed his eyes after giving me a small glance. I figured that he was doing something a second later.

My head felt as if someone hit it with a sledge hammer. My eyes went watery, I could feel my legs almost buckling like noodles, but I managed to brace myself with the assistance of the wall. My military training kicking in, I pulled my tazer to shoot him.
“Please! Don’t!”

“Give me a single reason not to.”

It took me a second after that to realise that I could understand him. The elf spoke as fast he could, still afraid of the weapon aimed at him.

“It was only a Tier 0 soul link spell! It wasn’t supposed to do this! Please, lower the weapon!”

Magic. Of course magic was a thing. Why wouldn’t it be? If you go fantasy, why not go full fantasy.

“Boss, are you talking with him? He is still talking in his tongue, but the speech recognition of your brain is lit up.”

“He claims its magic, soul link or something. Shame I am no researcher, they would go crazy with the new laws of the universe. A small proof of soul alone would cause them to lose themselves.”

The back and forth with Josse was happening with the aid of the brain implant of mine, as the prisoner was sitting in the chair, now sweatier, with the weapon is aimed at him.

With my attention freed from Josse, I turned it to him.

We had a lot to talk.

. . . . .

In the end, I decided to let him go. He took his leave at the sunrise, with a self imposed vow of secrecy. The vow was, of course, a sham. I didn’t even need the help of my implants to notice it.

His visit didn’t leave me without rewards, though. As it turned out, he was quite the talkative one when under distress. While he spoke whole lot of nonsense during the night, there were bits of information about geopolitical situation, magic, technology and cultivation.

But before that, most important thing turned out to be the reason I reacted so badly to the soul link trick.

Its seems like, the ship and I took in a lot of mana during the decent to the planet. Mundane metals that the ship was made out of was not capable of absorbing the mana, but my flesh body could. And it did just that, a lot. According to the Galdwin, the ex-prisoner, my body was saturated with it. Application of any magic by me or to me, tried to manipulate mana within cells, but as my cells were too full, it forced them to enlarge, almost turning my brain and body into mush. Thankfully, soul link wasn’t really a spell, rather a trick to align the mana resonance of 2 souls, allowing them to understand each other’s intent. It was a rather interesting phenomena, you see. For example, since I had assumed he was an elf, when he introduced his race, I heard  it as “elven” instead of “%##$@^”, as the listening Josse claimed that he had said. But since my race, human didn't have a word in his language, he heard the pronunciation of the word, rather than a translation of it.

Anyway, according to him, best way of passing the danger was to train as a warrior. Apparently, training would slowly use the mana that had seeped into my body as a fuel, reforging my cells to be more resilient, my muscles to be stronger, and my nerves to be faster. He also explained me how to train, too.

His knowledge was rather limited, but technology wise, the world seemed to be at around  14^th-15^th century. Production of arms and armors- Metallurgy was highly advanced, but techs such as gunpowder, cement, or printing press had not been discovered. There was also no chemistry, with alchemy and magic replacing it as a subject of education. Speaking of education, there were schools, but they were with small classrooms, made up of the children of wealthy and elite. Most towns didn’t even have one, with only the largest ones and cities having them. Children of nobility and brave men who were knighted at the outskirts were mostly educated by private tutors.

To me, it seemed like the main reason the technology had stagnated at this level for centuries was due to cultivation. Countries didn’t need to invest in education or technologies to get stronger, but in magic cores and knights. 100 Tier 1 soldiers could barely defeat a single well armed Tier 3 one. High living standards or constant technological improvements didn’t matter. So what if your people were richer or better educated, if the other countries could steal it with force and strength. So what if your swords didn’t rust as easily or was cheaper to mass produce, if 1000 of them couldn’t cut through a warrior a few levels higher. In the minds of the elves of this world, answer to most questions was to get physically or magically stronger.

Geopolitical situation was complex, but the short story was that it was a time of bloodshed. The empire, which was hundreds of km north of here, had managed to unify the continent with force in short 50 years. But the new emperor, a buffoon of a man, declared that he would unite both continents and started a war without having enough naval forces to dominate the sea in-between them. The result was that most of the army, which had conscripted strongest elves of the continent, didn’t return. As a result, the land erupted in chaos. Kingdoms and nobles revolting, bandits looting and pillaging, old enemies trying to take out their rivals. This happened 2 years ago, and the situation was starting to calm down. Both new and old lords had managed to enforce the order once again.

Cultivation was rather simple. For warriors, when your body felt full of boundless strength, you had to either take a core of a higher level, or train for some more time till your body decided it had enough, and jumped a level. It was similar for mages, only difference being instead of your whole body, you had to force mana to form or fill a magic core near your heart, with your will, just like the ones monsters had.

But doing it without proper education and body analysis would be exceedingly dangerous, thus requiring support of a Tier 3 mage at the least to start a life as a mage, to enter Tier 1. The difference between warriors and mages were that, warriors couldn’t manipulate mana outside their bodies. They didn’t have the talent for it. If they had, they could do both, as only thing stopping you would be old age.

Apparently, mages could cast spells by forcing their will to form a magic circle in air, forcing mana to follow the patterns and rules set by the runic language of the circle. As Galdwin was not a proper mage, his knowledge was extremely limited.

Also, it turned out that the tags I had found on him was his town ID, as this world had no adventurer association.

Monk_Origins

The name of the novel was a last second thing. Really, it didn't even occur to me to think of a name until scribblehub asked me...

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