Black Magus

“I must admit, I was peeking during our class. You hold powerful magic. I am eager to see the outcome of your duel.”

I looked up from my not-quite French onion soup to see Kaolinite standing next to Slate. smiling as if it were his birthday.

“Thank you.” I nodded at him and fell back into my soup without another word. “But there’s more to magic than just innate power. And even I have a weakness.”

“Wise. Humble too.” Kao harrumphed before gesturing to the seat before me. “May I?”

I silently nodded my admiration and breathed a sigh of relief as they started chatting amongst themselves. To ensure it lasted, I started playing as if I were exhausted after emptying my Well over and over again in class. Which I was, but not to the extent that I displayed. Luckily, neither of them seemed to pay me any mind as I rose from the table to head off to the dorms.

A quick smoke later and I was in my room, slumped atop my pillow with my mail strewn across my desk.

I awoke from a blissful sleep around one-thirty and waddled to my desk to scan the contents of my mailbox from last night. Textbooks for Zeff and Olga’s courses.

In all, there were five of them. Though, much to my frustration, an attached label told me they’d been enchanted to fill out upon the completion of our lessons or other various tasks. As such, they were mainly for review. Besides Olga’s textbook, we were given a bestiary, herbarium, and a rockhounding log that were similarly enchanted to be blank. In them, a new entry would be made whenever we studied, killed, or butchered a specimen in the Wilds. While empty, each of them had different chapters and sub-sections for the different realms and biomes, power levels, and uses for each item, which suggested to me that we’d be keeping these tomes for life.

It was obvious they didn’t want students like me to learn the material on their own and attempt to skip class, leading me to believe there were just as many, if not more practical exercises given alongside these lectures that they didn’t want us to miss.

With that out of the way, I moseyed outside to sit with Zakira and smoke while I recounted the orientation and my first day at the Bodhi Tree. It went without saying, but I became a skeptic of the academy after first hearing about it when I was younger. But, as they say, hindsight is 20-20. As far as I understood it, it wasn’t that the Academy kept their knowledge secret. It was simply inaccessible to the rest of Maru and worthless to most members of society. Even those who sought the power of the divine tree had to cross a sea that was light minutes in radius or otherwise find a divine tree. Then they had to drink its sap, and I was sure only the Headmaster could make it to produce the stuff.

However, that also spurred questions. Namely revolving around the notion that every guild had a divine tree. If that were the case, the fact that I never heard of Grandpa Lich or Emperor Deapou having one was a gaping plot hole. That said, Grandpa Azrael did mention Grandpa Lich disbanded his military after his death. And he was infamous for his undead armies; a guild in and of itself, essentially. Besides, there was much of Odissi that I never saw. And I never even stepped foot in Deapou until my awakening.

But I digress.

What I now knew about the academy was beyond my expectations. The Tree itself was something to marvel at, but the spaces inside it truly astounded me. Never had I seen an instance of magic that even resembled spatial magic. But here it was at the academy. In nearly every room and hall. More so, I expected either rampant bullying and bad behavior or painfully uptight rules to be found in excess. Instead, I got a pleasant middle ground. It was essentially a magical university. And since we were considered adults, we could smoke and drink as we pleased. In the designated areas, of course. On top of that, it was a veritable gold mine of knowledge. Doyle’s class surely impressed me. But I couldn’t help but anticipate our lessons later today.

Unfortunately, though, it wasn’t even sunrise. So I did as I always did and fell down the rabbit hole of pondering the things I knew.

And the things I thought I knew.

At the forefront of my mind were two things. Anti-Magic and the Void.

The former was present all around us. In every room. In every hall. Even the weakest of my spells would revert to unattuned mana and absorb into the walls and floors the moment I began to cast. I was unsure if it was because of the Bodhi Tree itself, but I knew of only one material capable of such an effect as of yet. That said, I couldn’t sense or see any Negstone lining the walls or floor, removing my assumption that it was almost constantly surrounding us.

While I had no answers, I still questioned the nature of the anti-magic I’d seen thus far. Particularly its effects. Because of the assessment, I wasn’t able to test the little ring they gave us. I could only take note of its physical features and learn what little I could as I took it on and off. I knew that I couldn’t store it in my Shadow Pocket and it absorbed any spell just like the walls here. Yet it didn't change the spells that upped my strength and constitution, just like these here halls. But that was all. I only wore it for the physical assessment and my fight against Velasco. And it wasn’t as if I was trying to use my abilities in either of those situations.

And then there was the void. Which, in a sense, also had anti-magic properties. It nullified whatever it touched. Albeit via destruction. But there was still one unanswered question revolving around the power. Its nature.

For that, I had four hypotheses. The first and most basic theory was that it was nothingness in the form of energy. It was emptiness, entropy, and it erased anything it touched.

The second theory was that it was Alpha and Omega in a malleable form. The magical representation of both the emptiness that persisted before the big bang and the void that eventually claims all universes once the stars die and their corpses dim down.

The third was that it was like the intergalactic voids in deep space. Spaces like the Bootes Void. A space 165 million light-years in radius with only 60 known galaxies. While relatively empty of matter, such voids were filled with electromagnetic radiation and brimming with dark energy, the energy hypothesized to be responsible for the acceleration of the universe’s expansion.

My last theory was that it was akin to a type of antimatter. Or rather, its ability was to overstep entropy and get a hundred percent of the energy contained in a piece of matter. It was the magical form of Einstein’s famous equation. Wherein energy was equal to mass times c, the speed of light in a vacuum, squared. With it being 299,792,458 meters per second; or 186,282 miles per second in the broken unit of measurement, any number multiplied and squared with the speed of light equates to immense quantities of energy. The problem was, something like a combustion engine would have the majority of that energy lost to entropy. Mostly in the form of heat. But something like antimatter, or potentially the void, would bypass that, resulting in a one hundred percent conversion of matter to energy.

Or that's what I assumed. But my experiment from Doyle’s class made me think otherwise.

Regardless of what it was, my sorcery undoubtedly made whatever it touched something different upon being reabsorbed. A fact containing several questions. Notably about the differences between my sorcery and my magic. According to what I’ve learned, the former stemmed from my physical body while the latter resided in my spiritual body, with my Mana Well. Yet, the fact that I still had a Void Core and bled red blood seemed to contradict such knowledge. So I took a few hours to play with the shadows in the common area for a few hours, much to Zakira's amusement.

I learned that while I couldn’t pull darkness from my body in this environment, I could grab hold of the shadows around me and do with them as I pleased. In a way, it was like elemental manipulation or my ability to cast with mana without using my own; which I could also do with ease in this environment. Thus in a sense, my sorcery was closer to a physical ability when compared to my other magics. All of my spells were unaffected by this anti-magic, though they required much more focus to mold the shadows into the desired shape. An interesting trade-off. But not enough to roam through the Hells as I pleased.

With around two and a half hours left until the start of class, Zakira and I got a quick bite to eat before taking part in some amiable exploration. It was the only bad part of the academy. I learned that during orientation. Getting used to the schedule was one thing. But I quickly realized I’d need to find a productive means to spend my spare time. Of which I had an abundance. I could’ve spent it in the library, I assumed. But I wanted an entire day for that endeavor and I’ve spent too much time away from my regular training, so I elected to spend the time in the gym instead. Without enough time left before class though, I decided to give the place a quick look-see and come back after class.

The first thing I noticed after stepping through the entrance was the wall that acted as a sort of barrier to the gym. It was in an ice-like density, like the mana outside. But the contrast between the Maru-like mana inside the halls compared to what was in there was surprising. Even for me. Though I shouldn’t have been surprised, I supposed. With it being a gym and all. And what a gym it was.

Like many parts of the labyrinth of roots, the gym was much larger than would seem possible when viewed from the outside. Sure, the surrounding structure penetrated deep beneath the ground and extended far beyond the clouds. But the spaces inside were absurdly large all the same. The layout itself, however, was… strange. Like any gym, rows, and rows of seats surrounded a rectangular court in the center that’d been walled off from the stands by enchanted glass panels. And while almost no one was on the floor, the desked seats were nearly full of students.

I found a quiet place to sit and had my attention stolen by a frame of stems rising from the surface of my desk like a hidden screen. Which was exactly what it was, I soon learned. An enchanted monitor that allowed us to spectate the students training in the gym. For a price, of course. While we could see through the numerous points of view placed throughout the complex for free, we could also spend twenty-five points to spectate anyone not on our team but in our party. And fifty points to spectate anyone in another party. Things I had no particular interest in at the moment, though it did give me reservations. But those too were put aside in favor of studying the magnificent display of architecture before me.

While the central floor was a barren but large glassed court, it served as the base of an inverted pyramid that rose and widened to encompass the entirety of the ceiling above us. From what I could see through the glass and my screen, each floor of the pyramid contained a different biome, each bigger than the one before it. At its base was your ordinary gym floor. But a hole in the ceiling would give the occupants access to the mock city above. The town resembled something you could see anywhere. Forests and farmlands surrounded the perimeter, giving way to huts and houses and estates and manors until one arrived at the castle at the center. While vast, it was nothing compared to the expansive jungle placed above it. It had almost twice the surface area and seemed to be designed with vertical combat in mind. The same principle applied to the fourth floor. There, the only piece of land was a central platform that gave access to the area. The rest was a vast, deep pool of temperate water. The fifth floor was a vast, mountainous desert that gave me the impulse to go inside and fly around for hours. And the sixth and most spacious floor was a seemingly endless tundra that reminded me of home.

With only a little time remaining before class, I decided to think about the approach I should take in my upcoming duel against Winston. I wasn’t dumb enough to underestimate anyone. As such, I planned to deal with this problem as quickly and efficiently as possible.

And therein left only a few tactics to use.