Shades of the New World

Chapter 200: The Oath

It was hard for Evin to describe how old the man looked. Countless lines of wrinkles on every part of his body, dry skin riddled with black and brown spots, his sunken eyes looking at Evin from inside his almost hollow eye sockets. His expression would occasionally contort into a grimace, even with him doing nothing and his slightest movements would be accompanied by sudden flinches.

One more thing Evin noticed was that when his Western Oath took notice of him, it started to become riled up and aggressive.

"Sit down. I'm really not in the mood to play a staring game with you," he ordered and slouched back into his seat, breathing out a small sigh of relief in the process. 

Although the man was scary, Evin didn't feel very threatened so he sat down on the seat. But he still scraped his tongue thrice and entered his battle mode, keeping his mind sharp and focused. The man in front of him was old and crippled, but Evin could tell that his mind was still functional.

"Am I to understand you want to become a proper mage?" the old man asked.

"Yes, you can call me Evin, I want to be registered as a half-core Light Mage," Evin answered.

"Heh, a half-core already How admirable. In any case, take this lodestone and absorb it to your limits. Oh, you can call me Zayev" the old man said and pulled out a big chunk of a lodestone from beside the table.

Evin did as ordered and the old man nodded.

"Alright, a barely below average half-core then. That is enough to get you your identity as a mage. Usually you go through a few demonstration spells..." the old man said and then pulled out another thing from beside the table. Evin saw it and it looked very similarly to the Oath Stamp that he had to use two times at this point, except it had two entries.

He then looked at Evin for a small moment and a flash of understanding sparked through his eyes.

"I'm assuming you're a Child of the Empress?" Zayev asked suddenly, a slight grimace on his face.

Evin guessed he heard the info from somewhere in town, so he didn't linger too much on the fact and nodded.

"Then it's easier. I won't have to cook up some scary story for you, since you'll understand that it's just a fearmongering propaganda, I just have to tell you the truth. I'm what's called an Oath-punished. The reason why I'm sitting in front of you, broken and battered, is because I've broken the Kingdom's Oath and I'm here to act as an example for you to not break it. I'm not sure if you know, but after you break an Oath, you usually don't end up dead. After all, you're a mage, a half-core at that. Even if the Oath crushes your heart, like it threatens to do every time you try something funny, well... heh, you should have a dozen other methods to deal with that, don't you?" the old man said with a pant. Pausing a bit, he continued.

"Instead of trying to crush your heart, the Oath will actually turn liquid and assimilate itself into your heart. As far as I know, this process is unavoidable, after all, heh, I've tried it myself. It will try its best to debilitate your mana-core's functionality and then act as a beacon for the rest of the kingdom's mages. Any mage within a certain area will be notified of your position and enforced by the Oath to hunt you down and report you to the kingdom," he said with some difficulty.

"If that's all, then what happened to you?" Evin asked, wondering why the man looked so fucked.

"Ah, this This is just old age. Since I've lost my access to the World of Healing, my body became vulnerable to the countless common threats that surround us everyday. But I'm still happy to work for the kingdom, and with this, I'm able to convince young mages to not fall on the wrong path," Zayev said with a wry smile.

Obviously, Evin could see that the man was being forced to say these things.

"What about super-imposers and lesser-imposers?" Evin asked.

"Sadly, I don't know much about those, but since there hasn't been a case of a World Domain user going rogue in about five centuries so I guess we can say that either the Oaths do their job well enough, or they are bound by something else entirely."

"If it's so convenient, shouldn't I be worried about the Oaths having a backup control measure or something?" Evin asked.

"Ah, you don't have to worry about that. Do you know of 'Absolutes'?" the old man said with a sigh.

"Yes, a spell or something else that's almost guaranteed to happen," Evin replied, thinking of the conversation he had with Nasst.

"Ah, I wish every kid I meet could be like you. The last one had to sit here for hours to understand everything. I'm really not someone who should be teaching these things to kids," Zayev said with a dry chuckle and began explaining: "Since you know about Absolutes, then you should know that they usually have a limitation of some sorts, right?" 

"Ah, so the limitation for the Oath would be to not act upon anything other than what the Oathtaker promised to do," Evin replied.

"Exactly. It's a powerful thing for sure, but it won't act out of line, that you can be sure of. There's also the Empress' decree on it as well," Zayev said and paused for a bit.

'Ah, with the Empress' backing it, I suppose I can feel safe,' Evin thought and realized that having a literal deity watching over you was pretty nice sometimes.

"Let's get back to what we were discussing. About what would happen if you break the Oath. After the kingdom takes hold of you, well, your fate can go in a few different ways. If you're powerful enough, you will most likely end up as a fighter of some sorts, doing the kingdom's dirty bidding. If you're not so powerful, then you might end up like me, working as a Secrets Keeper for the kingdom, or some other profession that might be in demand. Well, the worst-case scenario, you might end up a guinea pig for some laboratory," Zayev said with a grimace.

"And why haven't I heard anything about this when I took the Oath?"

"Perhaps you didn't ask? Or perhaps the person who was in charge of letting you take the Oath didn't bother to explain. But, heh, I'm afraid you're not allowed to regret now as it's a done deal," Zayev chuckled painfully.

Evin tried his best to remember what happened when he took the Western Oath. But try as he might, he could only remember getting creeped out by the Oath Stamp. There wasn't much about the consequences of breaking the Oath. Ssatsko and Aran had only told him about the Oath's rules.

"Now, let me tell you what my job is," Zayev said after letting Evin think for a bit.

"You should know that since you took the Oath of the West, you must report any methods of spellcasting to the Kingdom. Let me tell you how that process works," Zayev started to explain.

The old man explained that as his title of Secrets Keeper implied he was someone who was assigned to act as a middleman between the kingdom and a mage. 

Evin would tell him how his spell worked and Zayev was supposed to tell him whether the kingdom had knowledge of said spell.

This implied that the person in front of Evin literally knew every spell and its application in the Kingdom. Thinking of the massive amount of mages in the World and the countless spells that were already in the archives of the kingdom, Evin couldn't help but be impressed. 

In any case, if the kingdom had information about a similar spell, then Evin was free to go, but if it turned out that Evin created a completely unique spell, then he had two options. One was to go and teach how it worked to the Kingdom, and the other was to keep the spell secret and pay the 10k gold or work for the kingdom. 

Zayev then told Evin that he didn't have to worry about him being bound by information banned by other contracts and whatnot when he was speaking of these matters. Just like how the Cosmics had the privilege of witnessing literally anything in the World without consequences, the West had the privilege of learning any magical secret that was available to them. Except of course, the ones that a mage wanted to keep secret. The only exception to this was the Northern Horn. The North held the privilege on that. 

Zayev then laughed and told Evin that although it would be a secret, if the kingdom learned of its effects and they liked it, they would do their best to dig the method out of him. Hearing this, Evin realized that it was exactly what happened with Aran.

"And how am I supposed to trust you on this?" Evin asked Zayev, but the old man only laughed and pointed at the Oath Stamp like thing on the table.