I was walking along the seashore with Elesya. Although the sun was shining brightly, the day was cool and pleasant enough. We passed a group of students playing with a ball made from strips of cloth sewn together. The ball seemed to be filled with a soft material and didn't bounce when thrown to the ground—but it didn't need to. The youngsters hit it with their arms, tossing it from one to another in a game that resembled volleyball.
Ten minutes earlier, Elesya had come to ask if I wanted to join her for a walk by the sea. Since I had nothing better to do, I had accepted immediately. A stroll along a Mediterranean-looking seashore wasn't something to turn down.
"Don't you attend classes anymore?" Elesya asked.
The sea breeze was strong and had tousled her hair, making it look ruffled. Even though she had tried to keep it in place with two hair clips, the wind had ultimately won.
"I could go," I began, unsure how to explain my particular situation. "Right after the exam, some of the professors assured me that my knowledge of magic was so vast that there was no need for me to attend their lectures anymore. I was only expected to show up for exams from now on. They told me they didn't want to interfere in the initiations of my master, Hermes Trismegistus."
I hesitated a second, then explained the situation more clearly.
"It's a kind of tacit understanding—I don't bother them, and they don't bother me. It's a sign of mutual respect," I added meaningfully.
Elesya smiled and nodded, signaling she understood what I meant.
Still, I was pleased I didn't have to attend any classes. Unlike the other students, I had the entire day at my disposal and could do whatever I wanted.
Elesya began to tell me little stories from her life as a student—those small, trivial things that keep a conversation going—as well as some of her plans for the future. I wasn't particularly curious about her personal life, but I listened attentively. The little details she shared helped me understand the kind of world I had been thrown into.
"How come you're free right now, Elesya? Shouldn't you be in class?"
"Of course," Elesya laughed. "Right now, we're supposed to have Rare Plant Magic. But the professor hasn't shown up for years. He just lets his assistants teach, and they tell us to read the textbook on our own whenever we feel like it. So all the students take an hour-long break during that class."
"But... aren't you falling behind?"
"It's an unimportant course," Elesya said. "That kind of magic hasn't been used in centuries, but it's still taught at some universities to preserve tradition."
When it came to magic, there were many things I didn't understand, but I nodded like a true expert. Elesya saw me as an important mage, and it wasn't the time to shatter that illusion. Cynically speaking, that was probably the only reason she bothered talking to me.
Elesya was an ambitious young woman and had worked hard to get into Whyrmlitus. Her parents were low-level clerks from the outskirts of Atrolos, not very wealthy. They didn't own any slaves, but in addition to their salaries, they had a house they rented out. The income wasn't much, but it helped cover Elesya's tuition fees.
We reached an abandoned lighthouse, and I sat down on the sand. It was a good moment to ask more questions about their magical world—questions that had long troubled me, without any easy answers.
"Tell me, Elesya, why isn't your magical world more prosperous? Why do you still need slaves? As you know, I come from the Opposite World, where there's no magic. But you should have all the advantages on your side. For example, why don't you create gold and silver through alchemical means?"
Patiently, Elesya began to explain how things worked in her world. The alchemical techniques used to turn lead into gold had been lost centuries ago, and in recent times, no one had managed to rediscover them. And even if someone did succeed in producing gold from base metals, what good would it do?—Elesya argued. If gold became abundant, it would quickly cease to be valuable.
Elesya told me the legend of an ancient alchemist who, after discovering the secret of transmutation, began generously distributing gold to all the poor. At first, everything seemed fine. People were happy and bought everything they needed.
Soon, however, prices across the kingdom began to rise dramatically. What could be bought today with one gold coin cost three tomorrow, and five the day after. Things worsened when commoners refused to work anymore, expecting the alchemist to keep supplying them with gold for daily life. The fields were left untilled. In desperation, the king was forced to replace gold currency with iron coins, as a piece of iron had become more valuable than an equal weight of gold.
People tried to make tools out of gold, since iron was now too expensive for craftsmen. But gold proved far too soft to be useful. Golden axes lost their edge after the first strike, knives broke with the first use, and golden nails bent when hammered into planks. Even golden ploughs weren't any good—they were heavy and deformed when turning the soil.
In time, a terrible famine gripped the kingdom, and trade collapsed because there was nothing left to sell. Gold was thrown into the streets by those who had no use for it. Neighboring countries refused to trade, knowing they'd be paid only in heaps of useless gold. In the end, the alchemist was stoned to death by the very people he had tried to help, and the king ordered all the gold given by him to be collected and thrown into the sea. The alchemist's manuscripts were burned, so no one could ever rediscover the cursed secret of gold-making.
"I understand the moral of your story about gold," I said, "but what about food? Couldn't a mage, say, multiply loaves and fish to feed the hungry?"
Elesya chuckled softly at my question.
"Sam, just because there's magic in our world doesn't mean anything is possible," she cut short my enthusiasm.
Elesya explained that multiplication spells did exist, but they were difficult to perform and drained a lot of energy. Even the best mages in the kingdom could barely produce a handful of grain per day—far less than the hundreds of thousands of sacks needed to feed the population. So even in a magical world like theirs, ordinary people still had to sow seeds in the fields, smelt metals, and extract ore from the earth.
"But can't demons be used for labor?" I asked, eager to explore every possibility. I didn't know much about demons, but I remembered how, on my first day, I had encountered Martulus, a lesser demon the dean used to punish students. I could still feel the sting of his blows on my back. Honestly, I'd have liked to see that demon put to some heavy labor.
In a few words, Elesya clarified this point too. Demons were sometimes summoned and used in battle by war mages, but their usefulness for other purposes was limited. In any case, they weren't suited for work. Not only did they require complex spells to summon and control, but they were also too unintelligent to properly carry out tasks. There was a tale of a pharaoh who had tried to build a pyramid with the help of demons, hoping to complete the structure ten times faster than he would with slaves. At first, things looked promising—until one unruly demon dropped a massive stone slab on the pharaoh and his entourage, killing them all. Since then, no one had attempted to use demons for human labor.
Demons weren't even good as advisors. Elesya told me that serious mages had long since stopped summoning them for guidance. Demons gave the impression of knowing everything, but they lacked a true understanding of our world. Their advice was, at best, foolish and contradictory. That was the best-case scenario—assuming the demons didn't start spewing empty words that merely sounded profound.
But the worst thing, in Elesya's opinion, was when demons told you exactly what you wanted to hear—a temptation few mages could resist. Who wouldn't want to be flattered and encouraged every day, no matter how poorly they performed?
There had even been even more serious cases, in which demons told the summoning mage exactly what he wished to hear—and disaster followed. Lost battles, fallen kingdoms and empires, ruined cities, sunken fleets, and famine-stricken lands—all had resulted from mages who blindly followed the foolish counsel of demons.
From Elesya's descriptions, I began to understand that mages were, for the most part, a useless and almost parasitic social class. Common people would have managed just fine without them. Mages had only one purpose in society—to rule.
The only ones who seemed even remotely useful were the agricultural mages. They cast spells to enrich the soil, drove away pests, summoned rain, and located underground water sources. Still, they were considered inferior by other categories of mages and treated with utmost disdain.