The Sixth School.

Chapter Fifty Eight: A New Theory…

A single drop of the weeping flower tincture had been enough to take Greg from almost losing consciousness from fatigue to bursting with energy in the span of a few seconds. All his aches, pains, and injuries had also been made short work of by that single drop. He, however, was only a half-step first-tier mage whereas his teacher was currently at the power level of a third-tier mage. Given this, Greg wasn’t expecting as dramatic a result with her as there had been with him. Still, he knew that it would help her and that is all that mattered.

The healer gave up her objection with a sigh as she took the vial from him. Pulling off the stopper, Greg had to fight the urge to object when she emptied the whole thing into her mouth. He could still remember how potent it had been and feared that the healer would suffer some adverse reaction from it. But other than the sickly pallor on her face being replaced by a rosy hue, all the fatigue that seemed to weigh her down vanishing, and her breath seeming to come easier, there wasn’t any other effect from the potion. A smile crossed the healer’s lips as she let out a relieved sigh. “That feels much better,” She confessed. “Thank you,” She added, opening her eyes to regard him. “While I’ll still need to be careful with my mana usage, my recovery time has gone down from a week to two, perhaps, three days,” She reported.

“I’m glad to hear,” Greg replied. “But before we move on to the beast core, there is something that I wanted to ask you about but haven’t gotten the chance to because of everything that happened,” he went on to say, garnering a look of interest from the healer. Greg went on to explain to the healer about the plan that Olivia had come up with to beat the obsidian earthmover. He also explained how it all went wrong when the Earth-lock formation was activated.

When the healer heard about his ‘earth connection', as Greg had dubbed it, her brows rose high on her face. In her hand appeared a small box that Greg quickly recognized. When the healer pulled the box open, he wasn’t surprised to see the little glass bead inside. It was the Azra’s bead that the healer had used to test his affinity for magic a few months back. “Take it,” She instructed. Without hesitation, Greg complied, reaching forward and picking the bead from the box. Greg wasn’t surprised, when, after about ten seconds, the bead gave off a weak, earthy-brown light. This was the same result that it had given a few months back, the first Tim he’d used it. It marked his low affinity for magic, the earth element being the one he had the most affinity with.

But while Greg wasn’t confused, the look of confusion on the healer’s face only seemed to deepen at this result. “If I’m not wrong, what you are experiencing is what’s known as elemental awareness. It’s almost like a sixth sense that is developed by elemental mages for their particular element. It, however, only shows up in either the fifth tier for average mages or the fourth for truly gifted mages. You have to understand that by this time those mages have been using that element for probably a hundred-plus cycles. Enough time that they develop an almost instinctual connection to the element. It is almost unheard of in first-tier mages and the few times that it was recorded, it was in mages that had an almost perfect affinity with the given element. You aren’t even a first-tier mage. You haven’t even cast a single spell yet, let alone one of the earth element. Your affinity for the earth element also hasn’t changed at all,” She explained her confusion, her eyes still on the Azra’s bead weakly glowing in Greg’s hand.

Greg looked down at the bead once again, not sure what to make of the situation. “What does this elemental awareness do?” He asked after a while.

“From what I’ve read and the few elemental mages that I’ve asked about it, the simplest way to put it is that their particular element comes alive to them. In a way, it’s the difference between swimming against the current and flowing along with it. Before elemental awareness, the mage is just using spells and force of will to get the element to do what the mage wants. After they gain elemental awareness, however, they aren’t just forcing the element to do their bidding. For lack of a better word, the element itself guides them on how to cast the same spells they’ve been casting their whole life in a better way.”

“Take a mage of the earth element for example. Before they would have cast any spell they could regardless of where they were. With elemental awareness, the array of spells they use will change based on the kind of ground under them. Following this instinct, not only will they employ the best spell based on the composition of the earth under them, but even the spells themselves will be shaped in such a way that they are far more effective than they otherwise would be.”

“Elemental awareness doesn’t just end at spell casting, I once knew an air mage with elemental awareness that could get the wind to replay in his ear sounds from far away. They could be across the city from where you are but so long as air could get in and out, then they could listen in on a conversation you are having in your most secret chamber. I once came across a fire mage who could immediately tell how many living beings were in a certain place based on body heat alone. I even once heard of a blood mage who could tell what was wrong with a person from a single drop of their blood. According to her, the drop of blood would just tell her what’s wrong with it,” The healer laid out.

“As you can see, elemental awareness expresses itself in a myriad ways. So much so that it’s almost impossible to pin it down with an exact definition. You say that your ‘earth connection’ just gives you an awareness of the ground below you. However, I suspect that it does a lot more than that, you just haven’t had any chance to cast any earth element spells yet. The only mystery that remains is how you managed to awaken it both without a high affinity for the element, or a long period of usage of that element,” she said.

Greg turned her words over in his mind for a few seconds before offering a tentative answer. “Could it be my awakening method?” he asked.

One of the aspects of his teacher that Greg loved was that, despite being hundreds of years old and far more knowledgeable in magic than he was, she never disregarded his thoughts or suggestions without first hearing him out. If he was wrong, she would explain to him why that was and if he was on the right track, she would help him develop his thinking by guiding him in the right direction. In the rare instances where both of them were in the dark, she was always open to hearing out whatever thoughts or theories Greg came up with.

This isn’t to say that she would just accept anything Greg said. The healer was worse than a bloodhound at tearing apart theories and ideas she thought wrong. She would ask questions and raise challenges that would very quickly take apart your idea if it wasn’t well thought out. It was only after an idea had gone through rigorous scrutiny that she would take it to the next step of testing it out. As such, when the healer nodded to him to go on, he knew that it wasn’t that his idea had been accepted. She was just giving him a chance to voice it before they went to town trying to tear it apart.

“It’s simple elimination, is it not,” Greg continued. “You said it yourself, there are only two known ways that elemental awareness comes about in mages. The first is from several years of using the said element, which is clearly not the case with me. The second and even rarer way it comes about is through having an almost perfect affinity with said element. That, however, can’t possibly be the reason in my case,” Greg said holding the weakly glowing bead up. “That leaves only one plausible explanation for why I may have it, and that is this new process of awakening,” Greg laid out his reasoning.

“The process of elimination does narrow down the possible causes for this outcome, but still, it doesn’t answer the most important question,” The healer countered. “Why? Why would your awakening method cause you to develop Elemental awareness?” she posed. Greg was silent for a while, turning the question over in his mind. On her part, the healer didn’t rush him or try to move on when Greg didn’t give an immediate answer. Instead, she calmly waited to see if Greg would come up with any ideas.

Greg, whose eyes had been on the bead in his hand for about a minute, finally spoke. “What is affinity?” he asked.

A brow rose on the healer’s face not having expected the question. Still, she did her best to answer him. “Affinity for a given school of magic determines how quickly one can learn and advance through that school of magic,” she replied.

“Yes, that’s what it does but what is affinity exactly? Why does one person have this affinity and a different person have a different one? Why do some have a high affinity for magic in general and others a low one?” He questioned.

“You are asking questions that mages all around the world have been wondering at for thousands of cycles,” The healer replied with an amused smile. “I can’t say what an affinity in and of itself is without referring to what it does, I also can’t tell you why different people have different affinities. However, I suspect that you’ve just come up with some idea,” she stated, looking at him curiously.

Greg found himself daunted by the idea that these were questions that mages had been trying to answer for thousands of years. Chances that he, a half-step first-tier mage had the correct answer were negligible, if not nonexistent. Still, he knew that the healer had mentioned it as a point of information and not an attempt to discourage him, so he forged ahead. “Before you came up with this sigil, I don’t think anyone would have been able to answer the question,” He said. Noting that he was being completely serious and not just trying to flatter her, the healer quietly allowed him to continue. “There are three things you’ve said before that come together to explain what an affinity is and also to answer why this awakening process may have granted me elemental awareness,” Greg went on.

“The first of the three is what you explained to me when you revealed this sigil to me. You said that when passing mana through objects, over time, they developed certain pathways along which it was easier for the mana to travel. It’s on this principle that you came up with the sigil. In essence, rather than coming up with artificial mana pathways, as everyone else does, this sigil traces and finds the easiest paths for mana to flow through in one’s body and makes those into one's mana pathways.”

“The second thing to consider is the fact that you were born with the highest affinity for the rare element of light. However, if you were to touch this bead right now, it would shine with the bright white light of one belonging to the school of life. When I asked you about it, you said that affinities aren’t a static thing. After hundreds of cycles using healing magic, your affinities slowly shifted away from the element of light towards the school of life.”

“The final piece of the puzzle is what you told me yesterday. Magic isn’t just bone-deep. It affects every single layer of the entity it interacts with, from the physical to the spirit body to the very soul. In other words, a mage doesn’t just exert influence on the mana around him, that mana also exerts some level of influence back on them,” he asserted. “Bring these three pieces together and a picture starts to form,” he said looking expectantly at the healer.

A frown formed on his teacher’s brow as she turned over the three clues that Greg had just offered. In the end, she just shook her head. “I don’t think I see what you are getting at. Why don’t you lay it all out for me,” She requested.

“The first clue from your discovery of the sigil means that everyone capable of using magic has certain channels in their body that if left alone, the mana would find easiest to flow through. I suspect, however, that these patterns don’t allow all types of mana to flow through them at the same rate. With one individual, say me, for example, the layout of my mana pathways might make it so that mana of the earth element flows through my channels better than all other types of mana. With someone else, like you, life mana flows easier through their channels than all other mana types based on their layout. That’s where affinity with a certain school emerges from.”

“However, it would be a mistake to think that a certain layout of mana pathways can only be good at conducting one specific type of mana. The fact that you were able to shift from being a light mage to a healer proves that this isn’t the case. Some layouts, I would propose, can conduct several different types of mana easily. They are more, universal, in a sense. Of course, they’ll conduct some mana types better than others but in general, most mana types would easily flow through them. This is how general affinity with magic comes along. The first time you tested me with the Azra’s bead, you told me that the higher one’s affinity with magic in general, the easier it is for them to shift from one school of magic to another. With my theory, it’s easy to understand why. The channels of those with a high affinity for magic in general, can already conduct most types of mana easily, so they won’t struggle with shifting to a different school of magic,” He argued.

By this point, Greg was growing much more confident in his theory. Part of the reason for this was the fact that the theory seemed to be coherent and was coming together perfectly. The other part, however, was because, partway through his explanation the healer’s eyes had gone wide. Knowing her, she only needed to hear a little bit of his theory before her mind made all the necessary connections, probably racing to the finish before he verbally got there. But rather than start to counter what he was saying and poke holes in his theory, she had taken out one of her large books and her black quill. This was the same quill that she used during her research to take down notes without her having to write them by hand. She was having the quill write down every word he uttered.

Using her mana to move the quill to a new paragraph, the healer cut in with a query. “The ease of flow of different mana types makes sense. But affinity isn’t just about mana channels. Those with a higher affinity for a certain school of magic progress much faster than those with a lesser affinity. Be it learning the various spells of a particular school, or even rising from one tier to the next. How would your theory of affinity account for that?” she challenged him.

Greg smiled even as the quill moved to a new paragraph. “That’s where the third piece of the puzzle comes in. Mages don’t just exert influence on mana, unilaterally. The mana also exerts some influence back on the mage. Take you for example, I doubt that your affinity immediately shifted from the light element to the school of life the moment you decided you want to be a healer,” he more stated than asked.

The healer shook her head. “No, it didn’t. It took almost two hundred cycles before the shift happened,” She informed him.

“Based on my theory, I’d say that over the course of that two hundred years, your use of life mana slowly worked on your pathways until it overtook light mana as the most easily conducted mana type in your pathways. As for insight into spell or progress through tiers in a certain school, I only have one question. Do people with higher affinities tend to have larger mana cores?” he asked 

The healer nodded. “As a general rule, yes,” She said. Though the nod would have been enough Greg knew that she was speaking verbally so that the black quill would record everything.

“Then the principle remains the same,” Greg responded. “The higher your affinity for a certain school of magic, the more of that school’s mana flows through you. The more of that school’s mana that flows through you, the more influence it exerts upon you. Finally, the greater the influence it has on you, the greater the insight you gain into it in turn,” He said. “To bring it all back to the question of my elemental awareness, the answer is already in the theory. Unlike most mages out there who consciously exert influence on how their mana core and pathways are formed, my mana pathways were formed purely by allowing mana to find the easiest track to flow through. And while this sigil filters the influence of any particular school of magic, allowing only pure mana to reach me, it doesn’t change my affinities. Meaning that the pathways that were mapped out in the end were still closely aligned with the earth element.”

“And given that they are naturally formed, I don’t have to wait almost a hundred cycles or more for earth element mana to work on my channels before I gain elemental awareness,” He offered. The black quill which had been racing across the page of the large tome before the healer, finally came to a stop as the two of them stared at each other in silence.

“Barely tier one and you might have just cracked one of the longest-standing questions in magic,” His teacher finally found her voice. Greg wasn’t one to blush easily, but in this moment, he could feel his cheeks burn a little. It wasn’t her words of praise that evoked the reaction but rather, the genuine respect that Greg could hear in her voice. “When the day comes that I can freely walk once more in the magical world, then I’ll spread this discovery of yours far and wide,” She promised.

“Wouldn’t that require you to share your discovery of the sigil? You’d be putting a target on your back by announcing to everyone that you’ve discovered a way to create high-level mages,” He declared, a clear note of concern in his voice. Greg knew that the largest of those targets would be from Olivia’s true self as the healer had already promised never to divulge the sigil to anyone else as part of her agreement with the Primordial. Betraying that agreement seemed to Greg like nothing short of a death wish.

His teacher, however, didn’t seem too bothered by this. “I’ve been a researcher for most of my long life Roka. Trust me, coming up with an alternate explanation for how you arrived at this discovery will be child’s play for me,” She reassured him. With one last look of appreciation at the page on which Greg’s theory was written, the healer reached forward and closed the tome before sending both the tome and the quill into her storage space. Her hands were only empty for a second as a small metal disk with several runic inscriptions on it that Greg recognized as a formation plate took the place of the tome. Putting the plate on the floor between them, the healer turned to him. “When I activate the formation, your soul and mine will be linked. This will allow my soul to help your soul to bear any burden it might be subjected to,” She explained the sigil.

“As a seventh-tier mage, however, my soul is far more powerful than yours, so try not to panic when you feel the connection. Also, if it’s too much, then let me know,” She cautioned. Greg wasn’t sure what to make of her words. The healer, however, didn’t give him long to wonder about it. The formation plate glowed an ethereal blue for a second as she activated it. In the next moment, Greg froze like a mouse that had just become aware of a coiled viper ready to strike behind it. Greg had already been exposed to the soul of a deity-like being. As such, he’d been sure that he would be able to handle exposure to his teacher’s soul with ease. But while the healer’s soul was nowhere near as vast as that of the being that had reincarnated him into this world, Greg was still just a fledgling, half-step, first-tier mage being exposed to the soul of a seventh-tier mage.

Like a small drop in the ocean or a single flame in the middle of an inferno, Greg couldn’t shake the feeling that if he wasn’t careful, he would lose himself in the far larger soul that he was now exposed to. “Ta… Take it down a few notches,” He struggled to keep his voice steady as he asked. With a nod of acknowledgment from the healer, the feeling faded gradually and Greg went from feeling like he was a hair’s breadth away from being subsumed by something much bigger than himself to feeling like he was standing on the firmest possible ground. It felt as if no matter what came at him Greg would never be moved. With increasing confidence, Greg nodded to the healer to let her know that he was ready.

Extending her hand towards him, the earth-brown beast core from the obsidian earthmover appeared on the healer’s open palm. Greg didn’t know if it was the healer’s soul boosting his willpower or something else, but despite the deep longing he still felt for the core, he didn’t swipe it out of her hand the moment it appeared. Perhaps it was the fact that he knew she was freely giving it to him that helped. Who knows? Still, with a slightly shaking hand, Greg reached forward and took it from her. The beast core felt like a cool pebble to his hand and in a way that wasn’t entirely physical, Greg felt like he was holding a small trove of secrets, secrets that would help him gain power if he could just reach them.

Greg was already conscious of the fact that he didn’t know what he planned to do with the core. He was just as much in the dark about it as the healer who was watching him like a hawk was. As such, rather than try to overthink it, he just closed his eyes and let instinct take over. Greg was familiar with the feeling of mana flowing through his body. He had, after all, spent the last several months being pumped full of it by the healer. In that period, however, he had also been strictly forbidden from consciously manipulating his mana lest he affect the development of his mana pathways. As such, this was the first time Greg felt his mana moved through his channels out in the real world.

Before, the ‘earth connection' was an ephemeral feeling that he could only detect when he focused on it. As soon as his mana started moving through his channels, however, the sensation ceased to linger in the background and leaped onto center stage. While before he and the earth below him were two separate entities, it suddenly felt like he was a pillar stretching up from it. The separation between himself and the ground below him suddenly felt like it had been an illusion all along. What had only a second before been little more than inert rock, suddenly felt very different.

Vast, stoic, immovable, unchanging… it took a few seconds for Greg to wrap his mind around the fact that he was ‘feeling' the mountain which he was suddenly connected to in a way that he’d never been before. It wasn’t that the mountain had suddenly come alive and communicated the feelings to him. Rather it was the reverse. He, a pillar with a mind had been connected to the mountain allowing him for a few fleeting moments to understand what it was like to be a mountain! Before Greg could lose himself in the sensation, however, he felt himself sink into oblivion.

When he came back to consciousness still inside a cave, Greg thought that he must have passed out. It took a few seconds for it to register in Greg’s mind that this wasn’t his teacher’s cave. It might have been slightly larger than the healer’s abode but this one was a lot less furnished. By which he meant that it was just an empty, dingy cave. Greg wanted to get up and look around in the hopes of figuring out what had happened and where he was. After a few seconds of wanting to move and not doing so, however, Greg started to panic as he realized that he wasn’t in control of his own body. His first instinct was to call out to the healer. Even this, however, proved to be beyond his ability to do as he continued to quietly look around the large cave.

Greg’s attention turned towards the mouth of the cave when he noticed the inside of the cave darken significantly. Things just seemed to be going from bad to worse as he found the reason. Darkening most of the mouth of the cave Greg was now trapped in, was the fearsome figure of the obsidian earthmover. Didn’t the healer say that only a fragment of the creature’s soul would be left behind? The beast he was looking at could be described by any number of terms, but a fragment was most certainly not one of them! It seemed that the fear of seeing the beast shocked his body out of its paralysis as he found himself rising to his feet.

Greg wasn’t certain what he would do. Large as the cave was, the beast before him wasn’t that small either. It wouldn’t take a lot of maneuvering on the part of the obsidian earthmover before he was cornered like a mouse. Greg would have to employ every bit of cunning that he could to get out of this situation. First, he would have to draw the beast inside the cave. Sure, the closer it was, the more danger he would be in. Still, it was unavoidable. With the beast occupying almost ninety percent of the cave’s entrance, there was no way he would be able to escape this cave with it there. And escape was exactly what Greg was thinking of doing right now. Not even for a second did he delude himself that he could take on the behemoth before him. The only way he made it out of this alive was by running as fast and as far as he could.

But while his mind was trying to come up with a viable plan of action, his body moved on its own… and it was charging directly towards the creature. 

Greg couldn’t help but feel like he was the subject of a cruel joke. Somebody somewhere had taken control of his body and was doing all they could to kill him. There wasn’t even a plan behind his charge. He wasn’t aiming for the small gap to the right of the creature in the hopes of getting out. He was running straight at the thing! The closer he got to the beast, the larger it loomed over him. Whether he was the one getting smaller or the beast getting bigger, Greg didn’t know. However, by the time he was just five feet away from the creature, he noticed that he barely even came up to its knees.

This was the end.

Greg was sure that in the next moment, he would either be gored or stomped to death! Which was why it came as such a shock to him when the colossal beast did nothing and just allowed him to run into its leg. Covered in sharp obsidian armor, even just running into the thing’s leg should have badly injured him. He, however, was perfectly fine with barely a scratch. It was the shock of this turn of events that finally broke Greg out of his panicked state of mind and allowed him to notice all the details that he’d so far failed to pick up on. The first was the small tusk sprouting from a snout a few inches away from his face. The second was the sound of stone grinding against stone every time he rubbed against the bigger beast’s leg. The third, if the sensations coming from his body were to be trusted, was the fact that he was moving on all fours as opposed to the two legs he was used to. The most jarring of his discoveries, however, was the fact that, rather than panicking, he was actually happy to see the massive beast!

It didn’t take a lot of thinking for Greg to work out what was going on. His initial guess that this cave was the arena for his fight with the fragment of the obsidian earthmover’s soul had been off by a mile. Instead of fighting whatever was left of the obsidian earthmover, Greg had somehow been granted a window into the memories of the now-dead beast from a first-person point of view. No, whatever this was, it went even further than pure memories. He wasn’t remembering how the floor of the cave felt under his feet, he was actually feeling it. He wasn’t just remembering how his mother’s leg felt as he rubbed against it. He wasn’t just remembering how much he loved the huge beast looming above him. He actually loved it…

***

Alena remained alert even as she watched the calmly breathing boy. She’d noted the slight movement of his mana when she gave him the beast core, it, however, had settled down shortly after. Although a part of her was happy that it hadn’t been significant enough to affect the development of his mana pathways, another part was frustrated that the flicker was too fast for her to track. One of the issues that she still had yet to make heads or tails of was the complete lack of a mana core in the boy. Roka had tried to reassure her by telling her not to worry. Given that this was a new method of awakening that they were employing, it was bound to differ from the closed-loop system in some ways. And while the words had reassured her somewhat, she still found it niggling at the back of her mind. She’d wanted to track the flow of mana inside him back to its source to try and figure out what replaced the mana core in her new system.

Once again, Alena found herself cursing her pride. If not for overexerting herself the day before, even that brief flicker would have been enough to give her a general idea of where to look. As things stood, however, she needed to take it easy lest she make her situation even worse. The potion from the boy had helped her deal with a lot of the physical symptoms. Her mana pathways, however, were still in a bad shape… or at least in a worse shape than they usually were. As such, despite her frustration, she didn’t dig any deeper into where his mana flow originated from. Instead, she watched the boy like a hawk, ready to intervene at the first sign of trouble.

Her caution, however, proved unnecessary as a long while later, nothing had changed. The boy was just calmly seated in the same position, taking long breaths in and out, the core still held in his hands. Even through the formation that connected their souls, Alena couldn’t pick up on any disturbance from his end. Everything seemed to be going perfectly fine just as the boy’s instincts had predicted. This was why Alena was caught off-guard when a mote of light appeared from between the boy’s brows and materialized into the form of a frowning Olivia.

“This is the wrong formation! You need to create a soul tether formation, right now!” the familiar spoke, the urgency in her voice clear to be heard.

Having been a healer for most of her life, Alena was familiar with emergencies. Her body was already on the move even before the words reached her mouth. “What’s going on?” she asked.

“He’s not fighting the soul fragment in the beast-core, he’s reliving its life!” Olivia replied causing the color to drain from Alena’s face.

Alena wasn’t usually one to curse but a whole string of curses escaped her mouth even as she redoubled her speed of carving new runes into the floor around the boy. Of all the known types of soul injuries, soul corruption was without question the worst of them. Treating any kind of soul injury was no easy task. Soul corruption, however, was a beast all its own. Where one soul began and the corrupting influence ended, was almost impossible to tell. If the fragment within the beast-core was potent enough and Greg lost himself completely to the memories he was being made to live through, chances are his sense of self may be completely corrupted. In the worst case, he might even emerge from the ordeal fully believing that he was an obsidian earthmover…

***