The two newcomers picked their way down the treacherous new cliff-face, their origins as different as their demeanors.
The first, Valerius, moved with a fluid, arrogant grace, his fine-if-torn noble's tunic and high-leather boots completely out of place on the wild mountain. His hand never left the silver-chased hilt of the rapier at his hip. The second, Boro, was his opposite: a wall of muscle, shorter, broader, and built of pure, dense sinew. His orcish heritage was clear in his thick, gray-green skin and the small, upward-curving tusks at his jaw. He carried a heavy, clanking leather satchel of tools and moved with a careful, grounded weight.
They stopped at the edge of the "garden." The wave of pure, concentrated life-force washed over them, and both men visibly recoiled. Boro, the Orc, let out a low groan, his eyes wide.
"By the Ancestors... the smell... it's... it's like the Green-Heart of the world..."
Valerius, his face pale, was staring at the glowing apples. "That... that is not a garden. That is a miracle."
His eyes snapped to Kalagar, who was still seated on the porch, holding a half-eaten one of the miracle-apples. This was not a peasant. This was not a simple hermit.
Valerius stepped forward, executing a shallow, if respectful, bow. "Sir. I am Valerius of House Corvus. This is my associate, Boro. We find ourselves... unexpectedly... in your domain."
Kalagar took another slow bite of the apple, the crunch loud in the sudden silence. He regarded them from his chair, projecting an aura of supreme, academic boredom.
"So I see," he said, his voice flat. "You are trespassing."
The cold, indifferent reply threw Valerius. He was a high-level (Level 6) Master Swordsman and a noble. He was accustomed to deference, fear, or at least curiosity. This... this was annoyance. As if a god were being bothered by insects.
Boro, ever-direct, stepped past Valerius. His eyes were fixed on the chasm that split the earth just yards away. "We saw the cliff. The 'cut.' The great chasm. Did you do that?"
Lila, who had been standing silently, tensed. Her hand twitched.
Kalagar didn't even look at her. He just raised his hand, a simple, dismissive gesture. "My disciple was... re-landscaping. It was a sloppy first attempt."
The two newcomers froze.
Valerius and Boro exchanged a look of pure, unadulterated horror.
"Re... landscaping?" Valerius repeated, his voice barely a whisper.
"A... disciple... did that?" Boro's jaw dropped. "Sloppy? Master... sir... that is a conceptual severance of geo-kinetic law! It's a clean cut five miles deep!"
Kalagar S. Sully sighed, the sound loud and aggrieved. He was internally panicking, but externally, he was a professor whose lecture had just been interrupted. "You are loud. You are disturbing my reading." He gestured with the apple. "State your purpose, or leave. My disciple can... show you the way down."
Lila, misinterpreting this entirely, put her hand on her hip and took a half-step forward. "Master, should I tap them down?"
The word "tap" hung in the air. Valerius and Boro looked at the girl, then at the chasm, and a horrifying piece of logic clicked into place.
"No, no!" Valerius said, holding up his hands. "We... we seek nothing! We... we seek knowledge!"
He was a disgraced genius. He had been cast out of his family for his "heretical" sword arts—his obsession with cutting beyond the physical. He had been searching for a master, someone who understood the true nature of the blade. And he had just stumbled upon a being whose disciple could "re-landscape" a mountain.
"Master!" Valerius dropped to one knee, his pride vanishing in the face of true, unfathomable power. "I am Valerius. They called me the finest blade in the Five Kingdoms. But I am a fool."
He drew his sword. It was a beautiful, faintly glowing blade, humming with its own mana. "I have trained for twenty years. I can cut a falling leaf seven times. I can cut a stream of water in two. But that..." He pointed to the chasm. "That is a true cut. It haunts me. I must know. How?"
He bowed his head. "Please. Teach me."
Kalagar stared. He was so, so tired of this. He didn't want a swordsman. He wanted a librarian. He didn't know the first thing about swords. He had to make something up. Fast.
"You are a fool," Kalagar said, his voice sharp.
Valerius flinched.
"You are," Kalagar repeated, standing up. "Because you think in terms of 'cutting.' You are wrong."
He walked over to the front of his own simple, woven tunic. This body's predecessor had been a man of... eclectic tastes. Down the front of the tunic was a simple, metal zipper, a mundane technology utterly unknown to this world of magic and runes.
"Look," Kalagar said. He gripped the zipper-pull. "My tunic. It is 'one.' A single piece."
Zzzzzzzip.
He pulled it down, revealing the linen shirt beneath. "Now... it is 'two'."
Valerius, Boro, and even Lila stared at the simple, mundane mechanism as if he had just performed a divine act.
"Did I 'cut' it?" Kalagar asked, his voice laced with pedagogical scorn. "Did I 'break' the fabric? No."
Zzzzzip.
He pulled it back up. "One."
Zzzzzip.
"Two."
"The 'cut' you seek is already there," Kalagar said, tapping his own chest. "The 'seam' exists in all things. Space itself is a fabric, boy. You are just... opening it. Your sword is not a blade. It is a zipper-pull. Stop trying to 'cut' the world. Just... un-zip it."
Valerius, the sword-genius, looked at the zipper. He looked at the chasm. He looked at his own hand.
A 'seam'... a 'path'... I am not cutting... I am opening...
[System: Potential Disciple 'Valerius' is attempting to comprehend [Lesson: The Zipper-Pull (Conceptual Severance)]...]
Oh, no, Kalagar thought, seeing the new prompt in his vision. It works on them even if they aren't disciples yet?
[...Comprehension: SUCCESS!]
[Potential Disciple 'Valerius' has comprehended: [Blade of the Void] (Top-Tier Sword Art).]
Valerius stood up, his face pale, a look of ecstatic, terrifying revelation in his eyes. His mana-infused rapier began to hiss. A faint, black-purple aura coated the blade.
"I... I see it," he whispered, staring not at the mountain, or at Kalagar, but at the empty air beside him. "It's... it's everywhere... The seam..."
He lifted his sword, not in a powerful 'cut,' but in a delicate, precise pull.
Zzzzzzzzzip.
There was no sound, but the air tore.
A three-foot-long, perfectly black gash appeared in reality. It was not a 'cut.' It was a hole. A rip in the fabric of the world, revealing a silent, star-filled void on the other side. It hung there for two seconds, absorbing the light, and then, with another silent zip, it sealed itself shut.
Boro, the massive Orc, stumbled backward and fell on his rear. "Void-cutting... He... he just cut a hole in the world! The Demigods forbid that! That's... that's Level 9 magic!"
Valerius, trembling, dropped his sword. He fell to both knees, pressing his forehead to the ground, his entire body shaking with adoration. "MASTER! I am Valerius! I am nothing! I am your blade! My life, my sword, my soul, all of it is yours! Please, please, accept this worthless disciple!"
Kalagar hadn't even had time to process that he'd just taught someone how to violate reality with a piece of clothing. Before he could speak, Boro, the Orc, scrambled forward on his knees, his bag of tools rattling.
"That... that was..." Boro stammered, his eyes wide. "But... what about me? I'm... I'm a builder! An artificer!"
He ripped open his satchel and pulled out a beautiful, complex... and utterly lifeless... golem. It was the size of a cat, made of brass and copper, its every surface covered in immensely detailed, interlocking runes.
"Master!" Boro pleaded. "I am Boro! They exiled me from the Iron-Clan! They said my ideas were 'heresy'! I try to make... life! Sentience! My runes... they are complex! The 'Eight-Fold-Logic-Matrix'! The 'Divine-Soul-Schema'! It takes me months to carve one, and... and..."
He tapped the golem. Its head whirred, it stood up, its legs twitched... and it fell over onto its face.
"...and it falls over!" Boro roared, slamming his huge fist on the ground. "It's stupid! My runes are complex, but they are weak! Your disciple..." he pointed at Lila, "...she makes life! Your other disciple..." he pointed at Valerius, "...he un-zips the world! My creations... fall over! What am I doing wrong?!"
Kalagar S. Sully was at his absolute breaking point. He was surrounded by overpowered, emotionally unstable geniuses. He was tired. His apple was getting warm. He just wanted to read his book.
He snapped.
"It's because you're an idiot."
The mountain went silent. Valerius and Lila froze. Boro looked up, his face a mask of pure shock.
"You're right," Kalagar continued, his voice dripping with the cold, precise scorn of a tenured professor ripping apart a graduate student's thesis. "Your runes are stupid. 'Divine-Soul-Schema'? What arrogant, pompous nonsense. You are trying to build a god before you can even build a box."
He snatched the golem from Boro. "You don't need 'divine logic.' You need simple logic."
He spun on his heel, grabbed a piece of charcoal from the porch, and knelt by the (thankfully un-cracked) wooden decking. He wrote, his script angry and sharp.
"IF: (it sees a cup) -> THEN: (pick it up)."
He drew another line.
"ELSE: (do nothing)."
Boro stared at the "runes." They were... childish. Insultingly simple.
"Stop trying to build a 'soul'," Kalagar spat, tapping the wood. "Build a process. A program. If this... then that. If this... then that. If-then-else. A thousand simple 'if-thens' build a complex machine. You are trying to build the roof before you have the foundation!"
Boro, the "genius" artificer shunned for his "weird" ideas, stared at the simple "if-then" logic.
His world... shattered.
A 'program'... not a 'soul'... A 'process'... 'If-Then'... it's... it's a new runic language! A 'Logical-Rune-Set'! It's not one complex rune; it's thousands of simple ones, all linked!
[System: Potential Disciple 'Boro' is attempting to comprehend [Lesson: Basic Programming Logic]...]
[...Comprehension: SUCCESS!]
[Potential Disciple 'Boro' has comprehended: [True Creation Runes (Runic Programming)] (Top-Tier Artificing Art).]
Boro's thick, calloused hands began to glow with a faint, blue, grid-like light. He snatched his fallen golem. His fingers, which should have been too clumsy for fine work, moved with impossible speed. He wasn't carving. He was just touching the existing runes, and they were re-aligning themselves, breaking apart and reforming into new, simpler, interconnected patterns.
He muttered, lost to the world. "If-leg-sensor-is-0-then-motor-is-0... If-eye-sees-Master-then-bow... If-eye-sees-broom-then-equip..."
He worked for a solid minute, his face a mask of pure concentration. Then, he set the golem down.
Whirrrrr.
The brass golem stood up. It turned its head, its new, glowing blue-crystal eyes looked at Kalagar, and it performed a perfect, fluid, ninety-degree bow.
It then spotted the broom Lila had dropped earlier. It whirred over, its tiny brass claws perfectly grasping the handle. It lifted it... and began to sweep the porch.
Lila shrieked in delight. Valerius's jaw, which had been on the floor, somehow dropped further.
Boro just stared, and two fat tears rolled down his rugged face, sizzling on his hot skin. "It... it works. It listens."
He fell forward onto his face, his forehead hitting the wood. "MASTER! My clan was right! I am an idiot! And you are a GOD! My life is yours! My creations are yours! Teach me more of this... this 'True-Creation'!"
Kalagar S. Sully stood on his porch, a profound, soul-deep weariness settling over him.
In front of him were three disciples.
One could cleave continents.
One could cut holes in reality.
One could apparently build sentient AI that did chores.
A tiny, brass golem was, in fact, sweeping around his feet right now.
He looked at the three kneeling, worshipful figures. He looked at his book, lying forgotten. He looked at his magic apple.
He took a very, very deep breath.
"Very well," he said, his voice the absolute pinnacle of bored, profound authority. "You are... accepted."
[System: Disciple 'Valerius' (Level 6) has been accepted.]
[System: Disciple 'Boro' (Level 5) has been accepted.]
"Lila," Kalagar said, not looking at her.
"Yes, Master!"
"Show these two... geniuses... where they can sleep. Not in the cabin." He pointed to a pile of scrap lumber. "Build a shed."
"Yes, Master!" Lila beamed, her pride swelling.
"Master!" Boro and Valerius shouted in unison, their voices ringing with devotion.
Kalagar turned, walked back into his cabin, and firmly shut the heavy wooden door. He leaned his entire body against it, sliding the deadbolt into place.
He looked around his small, quiet, one-room sanctuary.
"Three of them," he whispered, his eyes wide with pure, unadulterated panic. "I have three of them."
Outside, his three new disciples looked at each other, their faces glowing with a divine purpose. They were on the holy mountain, at the feet of the god-master. Their new lives had just begun.