Mana Well 9: Spoils
"You're back," said Sara "you don't look good though, what happened?"
"Huh," said Kurt, he felt fine "why?" He looked down at himself and he was pretty dirty. "Ohh I was trying out some things with these water boots," Kurt gave a big leap up in the air and touched the ceiling which would have given most people trouble with ease, " and sort of fell a couple times figuring it out."
"Amazing," said Layla, "I never saw someone use it like that before, very creative."
"Anyway, what did you find? I went around a few places, took a few notes on what they are selling. There are definitely a few weird ones, and some of what you'd expect," said Sara.
Kurt started to pull out everything from his bags, and separated things by where he found them. "See the map's not very good, it will be outdated a lot faster than I thought. I assumed the patch worked layout would remain, but on my way back I realized that not going to be true for very long, but it won't matter so much once we know what we want. Ohh and I made a bunch of pressings of stuff." Kurt pulled out the rubber banded notebooks, "and I'd kind of like to know which ones of these fruits are edible?"
Sara picked up one of the stones and stared at it. "Kurt this is the biggest one of these I've ever seen."
"Huh, there are bunch of them around really. That's not even the biggest one by a long shot."
Sara stared back at Kurt, "do you have any idea what this is?"
"It was shiny, so. Not really."
"This is a mana stone. These help people enchant objects, they are super valuable."
"Really?" said Layla, "because that's not a particularly pure one."
"Huh?"
"Well look at it barely has a glow at all."
"Glow? This isn't glowing, it's just the pattern on the inside is changing a little, only mana stones do that."
"You don't see it either Kurt?" said Layla.
"No," but then Kurt really focused on the stones out there, and suddenly with that focus the same sort of light that came from the illusionary copy cat started to form around them, some brighter than others. "Wait, I sort of can see if I look at them just right." Picking up a particular one.
"Yes, that one is the most pure."
"I'm not sure how much purity matters," said Sara.
"Well I wouldn't worry anyhow they should just get more pure with time," said Layla.
"What do you mean?"
"They are now washed in my well, so these stones are gonna grab a bit of it with it."
"But how does that make it pure?"
"Ohh, I guess purity is the wrong word, charged maybe? Maybe that's why the purity doesn't really matter as you say, it may just lose that charge in the forging process but allows the new form to use the mana more efficiently. I'm sorry I'm not a blacksmith, the gnomes might know more about it. Although, they may just eat it as well."
"Eat it?"
"Yes, I'm not sure if this is on their diet but several minerals they eat raw. Is that strange? "
"To eat rocks?"
"Isn't salt a rock, I hear humans love it. Put it on everything."
"That's different."
"How so?" Layla said, tilting her head to the side.
"I think we went off subject, we can definitely sell these, what about those ones?" said Kurt.
"Nah those ones are basic, nothing special, maybe if it was a massive amount we could do something. And this one is basic obsidian, so that is not very useful," said Sara.
"There were some places."
Layla seems confused, "um it just the glowing one that is very different from your world I would think. Now that I know that," picking up a rock, "this is a metal ore it should be good."
After looking at his map, "ohh yeah it was like a bunch of that right here, no where else, but it was dug right into the cliffs, hard to get out."
"I don't know much about that, I got a friend that might ill ask him if it is something he wants or needs." said Sara, grabbing the ore."The fruits and berries are different, are any of them glowing?"
"Some, why are they different?" said Layla.
"Well for one we don't know if they are edible, nor if they are poisonous."
"Well this fruit here I would definitely say is poison, as well as these berries, good thing you didn't taste test. But the rest I would say are edible, I'm not completely sure though, humans are not elves or dwarves or gnomes. These two are known to be edible for most animals."
"Honestly this world may have a whole new culinary expanse, how many herbs and spices look like nothing really. People used to fight wars over spices."
"Culinary? What's that?"
"Like food, and different ways to prepare them. Humans love making their food delicious in all sorts of ways like," Sara smiled at Layla "with salt." Apparently Sara had also gotten into the habit of explaining some unfamiliar words for Layla as well.
"You two seem to be getting along."
"We had a little girl time."
"I'm not exactly a boy or a girl though," said Layla
"I don't care. I'm not going to call you an it. That's rude."
"I guess I do appear feminine, I could change if you want. I do have a way to like, build a different frame, I just feel comfortable like this really. I'm more of a manifestation of the well now, it's will if you want."
"Don't complicate things girl," said Sara.
"Anyway, I think we have some good and some bad here, I will look on the other side of the canyon tomorrow, I wanted to get a better look at that forest thing," said Kurt.
"Forest thing?" said Layla.
"Yeah, at the end of my journey I sort of saw it, it seemed weird."
"How so?"
"Like it was hard to look at, how big it was, how far away it was."
"I don't think you need to be too curious yet Kurt, there are things here you'd want to avoid."
"I know, I wasn't planning on going into the woods, just figure out what it is. Don't worry I plan for it to be the place I head back from, I won't do something crazy. Just check it out."
"Well, be safe. Those water boots seem like it's a fast escape. Use it," said Layla.