Minute Mage: A Time-Traveling LitRPG Progression Fantasy

There was a line to get into Carth, customs guards checking luggage and noting some other personal information of the people trying to enter. It wasn’t long, but it was still a bit frustrating to have to wait in a line after traveling for so long. We stood in line with the carts of goods and the travelers, with guards lined up alongside us in case of a monster attack, until eventually we got to the front.

We stepped up to the pair of guards by the front gate. They wore basic chainmail – though whether it was Enchanted, I didn’t know – and each had swords on their sides. One held a notebook in his hand, and the other a rock.

“Names?” One of them asked. He was the one with the rock, which I now recognized to be a Truth Stone – it’d alert him if either of us told a lie.

Erani stepped forward, placing her hand on the stone. She’d told me before about how she made semi-frequent visits to Carth, so she was familiar with the process. In fact, some of the guards even knew her personally.

“Erani Wos.” She stepped back and let me put my hand on the stone.

“Arlan Nota,” I said.

The other guard nodded, noting our names.

We continued like this for a minute or two, with the guards gathering basic information on us – where we were coming here from, why we were visiting – Erani just said ‘business’ and that seemed to work – whether we had been convicted of any crimes, that sort of thing. Then, the guard asked another question.

“Are you Classed?”

My stomach sank. If they asked me what my Class was, what would I say? I couldn’t lie. Would I just have to… walk back? I glanced over at Erani, but she didn’t seem worried.

“Yes.”

“What’s your degree?”

I blinked. “My… what?”

“Oh,” Erani stepped forward, “you aren’t familiar with entry into big cities, are you? Uh, so, you start at wood, and every ten Levels, you go up a degree. So 0 to 9 is wood, 10 to 19 is copper, 20 to 29 is silver, and so on. They just want to make sure they know your general Level, since higher Leveled Classers can, y’know, kill thousands, destroy cities, all that stuff.”

“Oh. Well I’m wood, then.”

The guard jotted this down, and then closed his notebook with a snap. He went over to a side room, and came out with a leather necklace that had a wooden badge dangling from it.

“This is your degree badge. You’re gonna need to wear it whenever you go out, or at least just have it on you somewhere. Visually, it just looks like some engraved wooden jewelry, but we’ve Enchanted it so that if a city official scans it, it’ll tell them your basic information – we’ve got you in the system now. You can also use it as a proof of Level.”

We finalized everything, Erani got a degree badge like mine, and the gates opened before us.

As we stepped into Carth, I was overwhelmed by a sense of wonder. I’d never been in a big city like this, so the size of it was what struck me first; I couldn’t even see the far wall from where I was. The gate opened into a large road that led far into the center of the city, with a bustling population walking it, walking in and out of side-roads that splintered from the main street.

“The college won’t be open this late,” Erani said to me as we walked into the city – it was close to dinner time, so the sun was just beginning to set behind the walls. “Do you just want to get a room, rest for today, and go tomorrow?”

“Sure, that sounds good,” I replied. “We’ve still got some daylight left, though. Do you want to get dinner and maybe wander the city a bit if we have time afterward?”

“What, like a date?” Erani laughed.

I shrugged. “Yeah, if you want.”

She blinked, obviously caught off guard. “...Uh, I was joking.”

“I’m not,” I grinned, amused at her surprise.

“...Um, you know what? Yeah, sure. Let’s go on a date.”

“Sweet,” I smiled. “Know any good places?”

We ended up going to a restaurant that was called Durim’s Best Beasts. Its main selling point seemed to be that it sold all kinds of exotic monster meat that was difficult to acquire. They sold meats from higher-Leveled monsters, like Drakes or Sphinxes – one dish was even topped with an Elemental’s core shavings, which I didn’t know was edible – and they also sold meats from monsters in far-off regions, things like Sandwurm steak or Mountain Giant ribs.

Of course, due to the rarity of the ingredients, everything on the menu was pretty expensive, the cheapest option being over forty copper.

“Uh, not to be lame,” I said, “but would it be possible for us to go somewhere else to eat? I literally don’t have enough money to pay for this.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Erani responded, looking up from her menu. “It’s my treat.”

“You sure?” I asked, surprised by her generosity.

“Yeah, yeah. I’m Level 9, remember? I make enough from adventuring that I can pay for a fancy dinner or two. Besides, my parents aren’t exactly happy with my profession, but it’s not like they left me destitute. Consider it thanks for helping out during that fight with the Anacaps.”

“If you say so,” I shrugged.

After we both decided on what we wanted, a waiter came to take our order. I ended up getting the fried Brass Wyrmling with a side of Black Ooze pudding – the pudding didn’t sound tasty, but Erani insisted it was good. Despite her recommendation, the deciding factor for me ended up being that the dish was cheap – I knew she said she could pay, but I still didn’t want to burden her purse too much.

Erani, on the other hand, got the Chimera salad, which included parts from each different section of the multi-headed monster. It was apparently her favorite dish from this place.

Once the food got to us, we each dug in. The fried Brass Wyrmling had an interesting taste; the texture reminded me of pork, but it was much softer and flakier, with a spicy flavor that had me constantly sipping my drink. The Black Ooze pudding, on the other hand, had a flavor that was entirely unique. It had a significantly acidic feel – I suspected that the only reason the portion size for the pudding was so small was that I would start taking damage if I ate too much – but the taste was incredibly sweet in the best way. It really felt more like a desert than an entree.

“See?” Erani asked when she noticed how quickly I ate the pudding. “I told you it was good.”

“Yeah, yeah, you were right,” I smiled. “How’s the Chimera?”

“Great! They included the Dragon wings from it, which always catches me off guard when I get some on my fork; it’s so tangy compared to everything else.” She took another bite. “Where do you want to go after we’re done eating?”

“I’m not sure, I don’t really know where anything is,” I laughed. “What’s up with that giant tower out in the middle of the city? I could see it from outside the walls.”

“Oh, that’s the Carth Clock Tower. It’s a really popular tourist spot, so we could go there after we’re done. I went during my first time here, and the view was incredible.”

“Oh, yeah, that sounds great. When did you first come here?”

“It wasn’t long after my sister enrolled at the college, so… maybe four or five years ago? I think I had recently turned eighteen.”

“If your sister enrolled four or five years ago, then she must have graduated recently, right?”

“Yeah, it was a few months ago, at this point.”

“Huh. I’ll have to wish her a happy graduation,” I chuckled.

Erani laughed too. “I’m sure she’ll appreciate that.”

We continued our conversation throughout the rest of the meal, until we eventually finished and left. It was dark out at that point, but street lights – metal poles Enchanted with Perpetual Illumination – kept the city illuminated despite the night sky. The bright night was something I wasn’t used to seeing, and it took a bit of getting used to. When we turned a corner, the clock tower suddenly came into view, no longer obscured by the buildings next to me. Up close and in person, the gigantic structure towered before me, making me feel absolutely tiny in comparison.

I gazed up in wonder at the marvel of engineering. “How does it stay standing?”

“The entire thing is reinforced with Royal Steel beams.”

“Holy hells… That much Royal Steel alone must have cost half as much as the entire city!”

Erani chuckled. She seemed to enjoy seeing me so amazed, looking at me more than the tower. I pretended I didn’t notice.

“Shall we enter?” She eventually asked. “They’ve got a staircase that leads all the way to the top.”

I laughed. “It’ll be a long climb, but sure.”

It was, indeed, a long climb. Flight after flight of industrial-looking stairs, we stamped our way up. The long, enclosed space made our footsteps echo loudly as we climbed. Almost a full ten minutes later, once we finally got to the top, I was completely winded – and I’d trained to be a Melee-Type Classer. I was impressed that Erani stuck it through the whole way without the past physical training to help her.

There was a simple door at the top of the stairwell – a bit anticlimactic if you asked me, considering the amount of work it took to get there. I pushed it open and walked out onto the metal balcony that surrounded the top of the tower. There were a few other people up there with us, looking down at the city, but it wasn’t so crowded to take away from the view.

And good gods, the view.

When I first looked over the balcony, I audibly gasped. Up so high, I felt like I could see the entire world. Tiny people below me, carrying out their nightly activities, wandering through the roads. They looked like insects from up so high. All of the buildings meshed together to make a cityscape that looked like it was out of a painting, with the magical lights illuminating the streets giving the whole picture a mystical ambiance.

Out in the distance, I could see across the forest roof, covering my vision with a lush green. Cutting through the trees were the well-traveled roads, snaking off into the darkness. I felt like I’d have been able to trace our entire path back to Ordensville if it was a bit brighter out.

Down in Carth, I could see the places the crowds were gathered, like a real-time popularity map of all the locations in the town. There were random neighborhoods and back-alleys with barely any stragglers wandering through them, and then there were places like the markets and the college I’d meet Erani’s sister at, where there were so many people that I couldn’t even see the ground under them.

“This is beautiful…” I murmured, hands gripped firmly on the railing of the balcony as I peered over the edge.

“You’re having a much stronger reaction than I had when I first saw the view.” Erani remarked, smiling at my expression. “It’s nice to see you aren’t all jokes.”

Her words broke me out of my stupor, and I managed to tear my eyes away from the view to look at her. “Well, I’m still mostly jokes, so you will have to put up with that. Still… I think I just realized what people mean when they talk about something taking your breath away.”

“The view really is like nothing else,” she gazed across the skyline. “It’s things like this that make me want to travel the world.”

“It’s things like this that make me want to learn a flight Spell,” I laughed, gazing back across the skyline.

Erani stepped up beside me, close enough that her shoulder almost touched mine. I barely noticed, though, too distracted by the view. However, I did notice when she placed her hand over mine, lacing our fingers together.

I smiled.

“Ow!” The silence was suddenly broken by Erani yelping in pain, yanking her hand back. “You dick!” she laughed, giving me a playful punch on the arm.

“What did I… Oh, shit, I cast Noxious Grasp again, didn’t I?”

She laughed even harder. “You still aren’t noticing? If the damage doesn’t kill me some day, you’ll just surprise me to death. I swear, my heart nearly leapt out of my throat!”

“Sorry,” I smiled sheepishly, “kinda ruined the moment, didn’t I?”

“Yes,” she finally stopped laughing, but still had a grin on her face, “you kinda did.”

“Well, I might have to ruin more moments in the future,” I chuckled. “You’re really cute when you’re mad.”

“If you keep casting damaging Spells on me, I’m pressing charges.”

“Ah, well, I’ll just have to find a new and interesting way to do it each time, then.”

“Please don’t.” She rolled her eyes, smiling, then looked back down at the cityscape below us. “It really is beautiful, though.”

“Yeah,” I said, looking at her, rather than the city. “Beautiful.”

We eventually made our way back down the Carth Clock Tower, the night sky full of stars above us. We went to an inn and rented a room, one with two beds — Erani said she didn’t trust me not to kill her in her sleep if I was touching her.

Once we got in, we used the baths they had available, and went to sleep.