"In answer to the master, the needs of a magician in Anicane are many, even more so for one who has recently been promoted from a lower level, such as yourself. As I've said before, you will need to feed yourself well over the next few months, which will easily take 40% of what you have each month.

In addition, as a blacksmith, you will need to purchase your own materials to create artifacts. The sect will give you materials to try out, but they won't be enough for you to fully master your new skills, nor will they be able to be used in artifacts for sale. So you'll need to buy materials. That alone would be enough to bankrupt you, master.

You'll also need to buy books on techniques, access to some services in the city, self-defense artifacts, and forging artifacts.

As I said, the amount you have now is just enough to survive. If you want more than that, you'll have to become an active member of the sect and collect stone coins quickly."

She explained to him, talking a lot as she always did when answering his questions.

Being an artificial intelligence, Prisiche almost always tried to cover all relevant aspects, even if only briefly.

After her answer, Vicente walked around the central area of Ravengarde, familiarizing himself with the local service options and their respective costs.

There was only one currency in the Light Cay: the stone coin.

As a result, a stone coin wasn't worth muchafter all, weak, low-level people used the same currency as the strongest people in the area.

Something simple, of 1st grade item, would cost a few stone coins. But a higher-quality resource, useful to 6th stage magicians, could easily cost tens of thousands of stone coins.

As a result, resources of 7th grade or higher were completely inaccessible to the current Vicente!

'I thought these 100,000 stone coins were a lot, but they're incredibly few. They probably gave it to us to make us spend it quickly and force us to join the sect.'

Vicente understood the situation newcomers like him would be in.

The sect wouldn't really force anyone to do anything that wasn't in their own best interest. But they certainly encouraged newcomers from lower planes to quickly become active members of the sect.

From what Vicente could sense, after a single walk around the available area of the city, if you weren't careful, you could easily spend the 100,000 coins in less than three days.

Ravengarde's possibilities were very good. Someone like him could easily come into contact with 7th grade resources and be dazzled by how easy it could be to gain resources that would cause massacres of continental proportions in their old planes.

However, if one forwent all these opportunities and just use their coins to feed themselves, it was quite possible for such a person to spend the entire first year in Ravengarde without getting involved with the sect.

Yet, this would also mean that at the best time to adapt to this reality, such individuals would waste an entire year doing nothing really productive.

Vicente wouldn't do that even if the sect didn't encourage it, so he wasn't bothered in the least by the encouragement Stonewall gave newcomers like him.

In addition to the high-quality products that were readily available as long as one had coins, the place also had several interesting places to visit.

There was a cultivation tower in the middle of the area, where Vicente knew he wouldn't be able to go for the next year, but which he could use after the break to quickly cultivate. From what he had heard from Prisiche, this place had special cultivation rooms that could make Archmages advance in a matter of hours.

The problem with this place was the cost. An hour's use of one of the cheaper rooms cost 50,000 stone coins.

Vicente also discovered an artificial pentagram shop where one could not only buy pentagrams and absorb them quickly, but also pay for a special pentagram evolution service.

At this point, he couldn't help but ask Prisiche about it.

She answered him. "Natural pentagrams can evolve. But even animal pentagrams can be improved. After all, if they are in the same beasts, they can grow with the strengthening of those creatures. So it's possible to improve even that kind of essence."

This intrigued Vicente and made him remember how one of his pentagrams of bestial origin had evolved upon his arrival in Anicane.

"How is that possible?" He asked. "I understand these pentagrams evolve as long as the ones that created them exist. But after absorbing the pentagram, the magician cannot strengthen it."

"The magician themselves doesn't really have that ability. But with a special device, you can temporarily release your pentagram from your body and let it enter an artificial body that will develop it for you," she said, with a twinkle in her eye.

"But that's only for geniuses and the children of great experts, master. It's cheaper to buy a cyan pentagram than to make a green pentagram become cyan, for example."

Buying a cyan pentagram would already be impossible for 99% of the people in this world, so the evolution Prisiche described was really for very few individuals.

'Fortunately, my pentagrams are already of excellent quality and I don't have to pay for such a service.' Vicente sighed as he continued to learn what an Archmage like himself would need to use during his journey in this place.

Even though it was only his second day in this place and he still had a lot to learn, he wanted to go to the Registration Center later today to activate his Stonewall membership status.

There was no time to lose. The sooner he started, the sooner he could progress beyond this area of Ravengarde.

If the mana out there was so much stronger than here, his cultivation would be swift after his first year in this place!

Even though he was only a 3-Star Archmage, he already felt confident that he would be a peak Archmage or even a newly promoted Magus in just over a year!

He continued his journey through this enormous area of the city, learning more as he continued.

He had arrived in the city a day ago, but hardly anyone in this place seemed to value people like him as much as the books said they did. However, it wasn't because he wasn't valuable to the sect, but because there were hundreds of people like him in this place!

In the past 500 days, 189 people who had been promoted from lower planes had come to Ravengarde and joined the sect!

Just as many had arrived in this area in the previous thousand days, some of whom had already perished, and some of whom had left this area covered with matrices to protect newcomers like Vicente.

Still, there were at least 300 people of similar status to Vicente living in this area, enough for everyone to be used to newcomers from lower planes.

But even though the people there treated people like him naturally, that didn't mean there wasn't respect and special care for people of that status. Everywhere Vicente and Prisiche went, they were well looked after.

Finally, a few hours after leaving the residential area where his home was, Vicente finished his journey to the Registration Center, a grandiose building that looked like a bunker on the surface.

There were no windows around the large rectangular building, while there were many guards around the area. But even though it didn't have a very welcoming facade, the place was beautiful in its own way, with golden details, a few statues here and there, while people walked from one side to the other.

When he entered the main hall of the Registration Center, Vicente felt like he was entering a large terminal from an airport on Earth. The traffic in the area was really intense, as people with large pieces of luggage made their way from one side of the entrance hall to the other, with a few "baggage" checkpoints.

There were several self-service terminals, counters with probably artificial intelligences similar to Prisiche at work, and lots of signs and projections showing the directions.

But Vicente didn't need to find himself in this place to know where to go. Prisiche took the lead, grabbed one of her master's hands and pulled him toward where he needed to go to activate his registration in the sect.

"This way, master." She said in her usual good-natured tone, racing a distance of 300 meters inside this place, reaching one counter available in the area.

She told Vicente to give his ID to the woman on the other side of the counter, which he quickly did and began his journey as a de facto member of Stonewall.

"Vicente Fuller, from Polaris Realm..." The attendant read the form with Vice's basic information, confirming a few things with him before moving on.

"Very well. Your Stonewall membership is now active. Follow your holographic companion around our center to learn more about your functions, rights and duties from now on."