Shades of the New World

Chapter 31: The Horn Ceremony

Dinnertime was nearing and Evin was sitting in his bedroom, reading about the Ivari. Rith was sitting next to him, cuddled up and slightly dozing off.

The horns on the Ivari's heads were the product of The World of Fire's Authority, Selat's powers. The Ivari mages were known to be the strongest in the World, thanks to their ability to control one or two Worlds like they were their own limbs. Commoners could also receive a horn during the Horn Ceremony, which required everyone in Ivari to attend at the age of seven. 

Though the amount of people who actually got a Horn was quite low and were called Hornbearers. Most of them were like Lora, who had no horns whatsoever.

But the ones who had them, although still weaker than most mages, they were still a force to be reckoned with, thanks to their access and extraordinarily precise controls of one or two magical Worlds.

But the mages of the Ivari were the real trump cards of the Northern Plains. The common Hornbearers were scary, but their powers were still acceptable, since they could not use big spells. But the mages did not have such a liability. They could channel seemingly impossible spells with surgical precision, which gave them an unsurmountable advantage over human mages. Their only weakness was their reduced talent with the Worlds aside from the ones that they were good at. They could work it out somehow, but they could never threaten other trained mages with it. But one could not even call that a proper weakness, because a jack-of-all-trades can never beat a specialist who trained with one element their entire life.

Not only that, the Northerners were forced to join the military at the age of 15, teaching them basic cooperation tactics, clearly dividing the specialists, so a decently organized team will ideally not have any weaknesses. These points led to the conclusion that the Northern Army was the strongest in the Empire, and they proved it time and time again in the War, while everyone was fighting against the races that lost the Twelve Race War and were exiled to the Southern Islands.

Luckily for the other countries, the Northerners preferred peace and unity over everything else. There were exceptions, of course, but they numbered few and could never find the support of other Northerners. They could only meekly follow the trend, or leave for other countries to try their luck in a foreign land. These ambitious Northerners would be culled without mercy, since the rulers of the territories did not wish to meet trouble in their respectful areas. Any sign of a lone Northerner gathering strength would be enough to mobilize an army to subdue them.

Evin found such information very interesting, but his goal was information regarding the Horn Ceremony, so he searched ahead for that and soon found some writings about the Ceremony.

Every winter, all children who reached the age of seven, would gather in various spots of the North, to pray to Selat and wait for his blessings. Although most would get only one horn or none at all, some would get two, instantly making them a target of cultivation. Especially so for the young mages. If a mage with two horns did not have enough backing, one of the Great Tribes of the North would be able to take the mage under their wings. They would give him harsh training, but they would also let the child have a safe environment for growth.

The horn's color related to different Worlds, similar to how mages would get a tint of such color when they were using the energy of a World. Red was Fire, light blue was Water, beige was Earth, Storm was colorless, Darkness was black, Light was white, Space was golden, Thoughts was silver, Heavy was dark purple, Time was dark blue, Life was Pink and Emotions was different for everyone.

As for commoners with two horns, they would receive training on frugal and precise usage of Mana, making them stronger than most weak mages, and if the person was talented enough, they would be able to contend with some of the stronger mages as well.

There were also a ways to increase the amount of mana a horn could absorb, and one of them was using World Core shards of the same World. World Cores were called such, because it was basically a condensed form of a World, which were created every century due to the phenomena that uses up all the lodestones on the World.

Evin wanted to learn about World Cores but there wasn't much information regarding them in any of the commoners books. They just knew that they existed, but most of the information was held by mages.

He put a bookmark between the page he was reading, and put the book away.

'Grandfather seems to be very strong then. His accessible Worlds should be the World of Fire and the World of Life, according to the horns on his head'

"I'm really lucky my mom is a Northerner, while my dad is from the West," muttered Evin, feeling blessed with his luck.

'When Two Tales gave me my perk, I joked to myself, saying that my reincarnation cheat is starting at the same line with everyone else. But now I finally understand how lucky I was, compared to others'

Evin did not have the reduced talents of Northern mages, but he could freely enjoy the benefits of being one after he went through the Horn ceremony. As far as he knew, he did not have problems using any of the Worlds. Him not using some Worlds like the World of Water and the Luminous Word was by his own choice; and for the Worlds he could not use now, like the World of Space, he just needed some guidance on them.

He sighed a bit and started petting Rith. After a bit, he slouched into her, fully enjoying the large Feline's silky fur.

"Stopp" came out a weak protest from the drowsy Feline.

"Aren't you supposed to be monitoring me? Why are you sleeping all the time, then?"

"Ugh go away, I'm tired," she replied and tried to push Evin away from herself.

Evin obviously would not heed her orders and continue to bully the Feline when she's tired.

"But still, why are you tired so much lately in the first place?" Evin asked, noticing that the cat was much more lethargic than usual.

"Ugh I think I'm pregnant," came the unexpected revelation.

"What?!"

Utter shock and confusion could be felt in Evin's voice. Soon, he calmed himself and started thinking about the situation.

"When did you even manage to get pregnant?" he finally asked.

"You do realize you sleep for about a third of the day, right?"

"That's fair, but I didn't see another Cosmic hanging around here. Do you have a husband, and you just teleport over to him when I sleep?"

"No It's just a normal cat," replied Rith, sitting up.

"What? I thought Cosmics would prefer to keep their blood pure? Are you going to get arrested and detained for getting pregnant from a normal cat?"

Needless to say, Evin's imagination was going way off topic.

"Well, it's not a normal cat, technically. I'm sure it's a quarter Cosmic, judging from how it acts. And as for your question, no. We don't try to keep our blood 'pure', as you stated. The higher ups would much prefer us to have more kittens with normal cats. One of our race's goals is to raise the general cat population's intelligence levels, so I'm not really having a forbidden affair, like your imagination is suggesting to you," replied Rith with a tsk.

"Well, tell me more"

"Since I'm pregnant, in about two months I'll have maybe five kittens. Maybe four or all five of them would be born with higher intelligence than normal cats. They'll be a little more than half-Cosmic, and would support the Cosmic's goal of raising the cat populations' intelligence. There will be a chance that one of them would be born as a Cosmic. And also, there will be an even slimmer chance of one of them becoming a normal cat which is able to use magic and channel the Worlds," Rith explained patiently.

"What happens to them?"

"The latter cases would be taken by the Cosmics to be trained and educated, while the normal cats, I'd raise them myself until they are ready to leave my care,"

"But aren't you afraid that your race's ability to channel the Worlds would be weakened?"

"If it is the Blood of Cosmics that allows us to channel the Worlds, then why are you asking for our tutelage?" Rith countered the child.

"Ah, I'm dumb. Don't mind me"

" 'It only requires some time to ponder about. No need to beat yourself over it' " said Rith, mimicking Evin's voice.

Hearing the line, Evin's face darkened a bit. Satisfied with Evin's reaction, Rith continued: "I can't believe you had such thick skin, to actually say that when you were just copying ideas from your home world"

"Hey, don't remind me of that. I was having a good time, then. Maybe I got a little cocky, alright?"

"Sure, sure," laughed the Feline in response.

"By the way, how many kittens do you have in total?"

"I dunno, close to a hundred, I suppose" Rith shrugged. A hint of sadness in her voice.