The Insider System

Chapter 11: The Magic of Magic

Lake felt something moving his body and was about to freak out when he remembered that he asked Sam to wake him up in time to go hunting. Opening his eyes Lake was relieved to find it was in fact Sam. He was a little worried that Wallace had come for rent and Lake hadn\'t decided what game he was going to shove corn into next.

Sam saw that Lake was awake and said " The hunters are gonna be meeting up soon we should get going." Done rubbing his eyes, Lake asked " We, why are you going?" Sam held up a piece of paper and said, " My dad wrote this letter and told me to give it to whoever\'s leading the hunt today." Seeing the letter was sealed, Lake was curious what it could say. All he could do was hope it was telling the hunters to look after him.

Feeling his stomach rumble, Lake realized how hungry he was, "Hey Sam, do you have a bag I can borrow? I need to bring some stuff with me." Sam shook his head yes and left the room when he came back he had a small satchel with him. " This is the bag I used when we were moving, but I haven\'t used it since." Lake took the bag and thanked Sam.

He was starting to become indebted to Sam and would need to pay him back before he left, and Lake knew how he could do this, by getting Wallace\'s Scarerat back, or at least getting revenge on whoever stole it.

Putting on a solemn face, Lake told Sam " Last night when I was coming home I saw your dad\'s Scarerat was gone." Sam puffed out his chest and said " Can you believe how well it works? It can go for 8 hours on full charge." Lake was so confused, what did Sam think he said? Lake thought it would be best to check where whoever he marked last night ended up going. Using his mark skill Lake saw the Light was back in the field around where the Scarerat should be. Seeing that he might have been mistaken, Lake thought back to last night.

He hadn\'t gotten very close because he didn\'t want to start a fight. But remembering he had marked the person and not the sack it had been carrying Left Lake with one obvious possibility the thing he had seen last night was the Scarerat. Lake had just assumed the scarerat was just an inanimate object when he first saw it, Lake realized he had seen it from an earthlings perspective and had not accounted for the fact that magic existed in this world. This opened his eyes to the fact that he needed to learn how magic worked; he had yet to see anyone cast a spell that he knew of but Lake guessed that most obvious spells were used in combat situations.

Lake saw no reason not to start now, " How does the Skarerat work? I saw it moving last night." With his chest still puffed out from pride, Sam said, " My dad makes golems. But what\'s special about the Scarerat is that it is self-sufficient and ignores everything other than rats. You see, normal golems are a pain to charge, and attack anything that gets too close." This really changed the way Lake saw Wallace; he realized he was a wealth of knowledge and he could probably learn a lot about magic from him. " So what did your dad change to make it better than other golems?"

Sam changed to a new pose that Lake hadn\'t seen before, he looked like a teacher in front of a black board " First is the pole it sits on during the day, it lets the Scarerat charge during the day by absorbing the magic in the environment, the second is the sack it carries and puts the dead rats in. You can think of it as its stomach, my dad said most people don\'t realize small monsters like rats have magic cores because they are too small to use but the sack can absorb the magic so the Scarerat is able to use them to keep going for longer. The way he got it to not attack." Sam suddenly covered his mouth and said, "My dad told me not to tell anyone about the Scarerat, he said these are trade secrets."

Changing the subject slightly, Lake asked " What is your dad\'s job?" Sam thought about it for a moment " I\'m not sure, he went to town a few months ago to change it because his Enchanter job had reached max level. So you\'d have to ask him." What Sam said and the fact that the job screen was a golden color made Lake think being able to change your job at any time wasn\'t normal, but he had no way to confirm this right now.

Lake remembered he had a place to get to and said " Let\'s go. Also, is there any breakfast? I\'m hungry." As they left, Sam ran into the kitchen and came back with cornbread for the both of them. Scarfing it down, both him and Sam decided to stop at the well for a few seconds to drink some water, then they both raced to the meeting spot.