บท 33: Lesson from the monster-sage

"Origin mage?" The humanoid monster repeated Tom's words as if unsure whether it heard them correctly. "Don't tell me, you are one?" he added a question when Tom's expression ascertained it that he actually heard him right.

"Yup," Tom replied while shrugging his arms. "So? What does it mean to be one?" he asked again while making sure that the entrance to the corridor was a single step behind him.

'Judging from its reaction, there is something important about this spell or class or whatever,' Tom thought, inspecting every last detail of the monster's facial expression.

"Well... While I know the answer, our fight could hardly be called a fight if I were to explain it to you," the monster replied while openly hesitating. "Hey, is the offer of just letting you go through still valid?" it asked after just a slight moment of thought.

"As long as it will apply both to the current passage and to the moment when I will be going back, then sure," Tom replied without even a moment of thought.

'While there is a huge chance killing it would give me another skill from the tome that would drop out of it,' Tom thought, fighting an inner battle to decide what he should do. 'No, unless this skill is some kind of overpowered shit, I don't stand a chance against this monster,' he shook his head before looking up at the monster's face.

"Well, we have a deal then?" the monster asked as it wobbled weakly on its feet.

"Yeah, deal." Tom nodded his head while trying to not show just how shaken he was.

'To think that there would be monsters capable of negotiating such a deal.' The current situation went against almost everything that Tom believed to know about Dungeons Online. While he was aware it wasn't some kind of silly game, he still had a lot of experiences traversing through the dungeon.

And right now, this monster was willing to just look away as he would pass through. This fact alone stood in opposition to everything that Tom learned about the dungeons by touring them!

"Okay then, I guess I should hold up my part of the deal first," the monster said before clearing its throat with a cough and sitting on the stone floor. "An origin mage is someone capable of using origin magic. In other words, by being an origin mage, you are the absolute ruler of all the origin magic," the monster explained. It was clearly trying to keep its words as simple as possible.

"You do realize how little does it help?" Tom asked, slightly annoyed by the faulty explanation. 'If that's all, then I could figure it out all on my own just from the name of the skill!' he complained in his thoughts.

But he didn't allow the inner state of his mind to show up on his face.

"Can you hear the rest of my explanation before jumping to conclusions?" the monster asked sharply, dissatisfied with Tom rushing things.

"Sure, go on," the young man answered, once again resting his back against the wood of his spear.

"Origin magic refers to the basic magic. I won't explain the entire theorem of magic to you as I doubt you would understand it or be happy with that in the first place. Let me put it in different words then," the monster announced before rubbing its chin.

"You can consider every magic spell to be a construct made from basic building blocks," the monster started its explanation once again. "A firestorm is created by combining a storm and fire, or rather, blaze building blocks. But both storm and blaze consist of their own building blocks, which are also a combination of even simpler spells," the monster continued.

'Doesn't it have a sort of sage aura to itself?' Tom observed the changes in the air around the monster as it continued its explanations.

"At the very bottom of the list, there is the origin magic. In essence, every kind of magic spell that exists is formed by a sufficiently complicated structure made out of the origin spells," the massive monster explained.

Yet as it rubbed its chin, Tom's vision wavered for a bit. For a moment, the monster's entire body appeared to compress and turn into the picture of how anyone would picture an old sage. Rather than rubbing its chin, it was brushing through its long, white beard. Rather than crudely squatting on the floor, the sage sat in a lotus position.

But this image only lasted for the shortest of the moments.

"That should summarize the basics. And I believe you should understand what mage of origin is, now," the sage-like monster finished its explanation before raising its eyes on Tom. "Do my words satisfy your curiosity?" it asked.

"Yeah," Tom nodded his head before moving his back away from his spear and pulling the weapon out. But rather than moving forward to delve deeper into the dungeon, he actually bowed to the monster in the best salute he could imagine.

"This student greets the teacher and thanks for the lesson." Tom's words weren't ridicule. On the contrary, he was genuinely thankful for the help. And the strange sage-like aura of the monster, even though it only appeared for a fleeting moment, was still more than enough to compel him to act humbly.

"You truly are something else," the monster smiled before standing up and moving to the far end of the room. "It's a pity... Or nevermind," it smiled after interrupting its own sentence. "Let me leave you with one last piece of advice, just because I grew to like you," the monster announced as it approached the wall of the room.

Then, as if it was the most natural thing to do, it slammed its massive fist into the wall. It then pulled its hand back, holding the shiny 'data' stone in its fingers. Then, a move too fast for Tom to notice later, the 'data' stone went flying only to land at the young man's feet.

"Try decomposing this mana stone with your ability. I believe it should serve as the last straw that holds you from exploring the dungeons in the way that man intended."