Natural secret realm are the more common. They form spontaneously as an awakened or manabeast of high enough realm perishes and their core decomposes. The process is unknown, despite there being attempts to explore it. The best senior mageknights could confirm was that like there being a certain chance for manabeasts to form a core, so too exists a chance for the secret realms to form.

  — Excerpt from The Secrets of the Secret Realms

  Day 239, 6:35 PM

  After some six loops of mixing and matching things, I think I have a decent way forward. Like all the previous loops, I resumed brewing potions until it was time to pick up Newstar at the gate. Three loops ago, I had found the perfect solution, and I just went with it.

  “My friend,” I hooked my arm around his shoulders. For some reason, the chummy approach had worked the best. He probably thought he had forgotten meeting me and just went with it. “Look at him closely. His clothes are cheap and travel-worn. You can see the smears where he tried to wash it free of blood. He cannot replace soiled clothes and has to wash them by himself, meaning he is dirt poor.”

  I flourished my free hand at Newstar’s general appearance.

  “You stand nothing to gain if you throw him into the dungeon. The city will take his manarium and release him from the dungeon in a week, meanwhile you have gone through all that trouble and paperwork over nothing.”

  Then I looked Newstar in the eyes, knowing he would follow my script. “Boy, show him your purse.”

  The contents were disappointing, to say the least. Newt’s money sack bulged, but it bulged with gold, which was incredibly stupid. He painted himself a mark, but lacked the money and influence to get out of trouble.

  The guard tsked and moved to snatch the manarium, but I held him firmly.

  “Listen, friend, those could cause you a lot of trouble.” I took a first realm crystal and dropped it on the ground. “Look here, you dropped this.”

  I picked up the shiny gem and handed it to him. The man eyed me suspiciously, probably realizing he didn’t really know me, but he neither protested nor extricated himself from my hug.

  “We all saw you drop it,” I lied with a smile, “it is perfectly fine if you recover your own property. Nothing anyone could complain about.”

  He nodded, and I released him, letting him back away with dignity and a non-trivial bribe.

  The scammers were about to try to extort me, but I didn’t let the viper open its mouth. The glib one had a venomous tongue. Fortunately, both were craven.

  “I can break your legs here, and nobody will say a word. Move to the back of the line. Behind the commoners.” The well-placed threat worked, and Newstar and I could talk in peace.

  “How have you been, Newstar?” I smiled at the youth. “Right, you owe me six manarium crystals.”

  “Fin—What? Why six?”

  “I paid one out of my own pocket, saved you some trouble and a ten crystals’ fine, for which I deserve half. One plus five equals six.”

  He blinked, but eventually nodded.

  “Good.” I said. “I am not poor, and I would have just taken my manarium bit back, but you need to learn a lesson from this, and people learn best when you hit them on the sack.”

  The young man was still dazed from the entire experience. The conmen, the corrupt guard, and the knight in shining armor all happened too fast for him to process, despite him being a third realm mage.

  “What lesson do I need to learn?” He asked the same question as the last two times, and I grinned.

  “Sometimes being reasonable with people is unreasonable, often because people themselves are unreasonable.” We continued chatting until we entered the city, where the next stage of Newstar’s wonder began.

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  “Does everyone know you? How?” He asked after the tenth person greeted me in the street.

  I took a pair of meat skewers offered by Brittle. He begged me to take the money back, but I just kept walking.

  “Not everyone,” I said, “but a lot of important people. As for how, I told you, amiability is the key to life. Everyone needs something or has problems too big or too tedious for them to fix themselves. I give first, asking nothing in return, and people will almost always reciprocate in kind. Just like you.”

  “How do you choose?” Newstar asked after a short silent spell.

  “The people I help?” I asked to stick with the script. “Well, there are multiple factors. You never help those too weak more than once, they will never return the favor, and if you help them twice or more, they will demand help, expecting it as a heaven-granted right, and frankly you will no longer wish to assist such clingy people. You rarely get to help those much stronger. Their problems are too big, and if the solution requires intricate skill or profound knowledge, which if you possess, they might capture you and force you to slave away for them.”

  I took a bite of my meat before continuing.

  “Then, there’s the matter of personality. Sometimes, a prostitute or a bandit deserves a second, maybe even a third, chance, and I extend a hand. Sometimes, the honorable hero idolized by the masses is secretly a scumbag, and I avoid them.” I smiled, unable to tell him I could see how things panned out two weeks later. “I guess you will learn with time and experience.”

  Newstar nodded, just as confused as he was before I answered his question, “Where are we going?”

  “The scribes’ guild. You want to join, right? Library is important, but you have nothing to pay for access to the books you need, and your future guild has some relevant free literature for you. We can go to the adventurers’ guild later, if you still want to join.”

  “How do you know where I wanted to go?”

  I smirked, going a bit off-script. “I doubt you are here for the fancier brothels or to sell your nonexistent wares. You are too irrelevant for imperial summons, know no other crafts—”

  “All right, all right, I get it.” Newstar laughed. “You know, you are scarier than you were in my nightmares before I met you?”

  “Oh?” I cocked an eyebrow. That was new. “I hope I am not your heart demon. You can quit magic outright if I am.”

  We kept chatting about nothing, people greeting me and me greeting back, until Newstar worked up the courage to ask a serious question.

  “Do you know anyone in the scribes’ guild?”

  “I know one member very well, and I have some passing acquaintanceship with several others. Same goes for the alchemists’ guild, blacksmiths’ guild, herbalists’ guild, and several others.”

  “You are a member of all those guilds?”

  “Sharp.” I nodded with a wink. “That is one of the reasons I believe you will push your realm far. What you are lacking is not brains, but life experience.”

  “I have experienced a lot,” Newstar mumbled, and I smacked him in the back of the head.

  “You have experienced a lot of good things and some bad things. That is all. You are a virgin, never got drunk—”

  “Shush!” Newt hissed in panic. “Not so loud.”

  “There is no reason to worry about your secret.” I smiled. “Everyone can tell you are a virgin by the way you walk.”

  He looked down at his feet, then his legs. He glanced at his reflection in the storefront, but saw nothing out of the ordinary, while I allowed myself to burst into laughter.

  “Oh, hey Dandelion!” Drypatch, the store owner, waved with a perplexed look, and I waved back.

  “See?” I said. “That is how much you lack experience.”

  Newstar grumbled, and went quiet for a while, then continued with random, unrelated questions until we reached the guild building.

  “I will walk you inside and vouch for you. That way, you can take an early exam instead of waiting two moons until they gather a sufficiently large group.”

  “Thanks.”

  “No problem. I do want my manarium back now, though. The other five can wait until you start earning, or you could join me on a little outing I have in mind. Clear your debt, and earn some gems while you are at it. Alternatively, you can sit here, scribing seals, and pay me back once you earn enough.”

  “How much manarium do I stand to earn by working here?”

  I knew he would become an independent, which meant a piece or two of second realm manarium per day, but considering his talent, it was a pittance.

  “Look, you can earn some crystals here, but I have a mission in mind which should pay more.”

  Newstar took my words at face value and entered the reception.

  “Dandelion.” Dolorna sat straight and smiled. “What brings you here this early?”

  “Greetings, Dolorna. I brought an acquaintance of mine to take the test. It is an official referral, and he is going to smash the test, so you better call old Barb immediately.”

  “Guildmaster Barb will have your hide if you are wasting his time.” Dolorna bit her lip, genuinely concerned for my sake. Barb wasn’t a morning person.

  “Yes, yes, he will grumble, then he will see my young friend’s talent and try to snatch him from me. I know how it works.” Then I turned to face Newstar. “You owe Dolorna one first realm crystal, Newstar.”

  We waited a bit after she left to fetch her boss, but soon enough, his shrill shout came from outside.

  “Dandelion, you have some nerve, calling me here directly to test some brat after you refused to work as my assistant. Not only that, you’re wasting your time and talent brewing swill with that fogey clown!”