The Sixth School Ch. 035

Author's note.

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All Characters in the story are 18 years of age and above...

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Chapter Thirty Five: Groundbreaking...

Greg was surprised to see the state of his teacher when he walked into the infirmary. He could understand why he looked a bit frazzled. It had been a torturous hour before the harsh effects of the dungeon dive had ebbed enough for him to sleep. But while they had ebbed, they hadn't gone away entirely. Despite sleeping for most of the night, Greg felt a deep fatigue that permeated his whole body. It was as if he hadn't slept a wink. According to Olivia, this was also because of the toll on his soul that the dungeon dive took. His body was perfectly rested and sleeping a little longer wouldn't do anything for him. As such, Greg forced himself out of bed despite his body feeling like it was tied down with lead weights. Not that Greg would have missed today's lesson even if actual lead weights had been tied to him.

What Greg hadn't expected was to find his teacher in an even worse state than he was in. The healer's raven black hair which usually flowed in a straight line down her back was now disheveled with stray strands falling over her face. She had slight bags under her eyes as if she hadn't slept for a night or two. The distracted look in her eyes even as she looked in his direction told Greg that she was probably looking right through him. She kept wordlessly moving her lips as if her mind was somewhere else completely.

Greg was forced to ignore his soul fatigue, as he'd come to dub the state he found himself in, and bow a second time in greeting to his teacher just to get her attention. "I hope the day finds you well, teacher," He greeted louder than he did the first time.

This seemed to do the trick as for the first time the healer's eyes focused on him. A slight frown crossed her face as she spoke. "What happened to you?" She asked a question that revealed just how unaware of her current state she was.

Greg was tempted to point at her and ask the same question. He, however, didn't. Instead, he gave the closest answer to the truth that he could. "I'm having my familiar help me grow my willpower," He revealed. "It's not a pleasant experience, to say the least!" Greg spoke the truth.

The healer's eyebrows rose at his answer, clearly not having expected it. Eventually, she nodded in approval. "Keep at it, you will need it," She advised cryptically. Before Greg could ask her to elucidate what she meant by this, the healer continued. "Come closer," She instructed. Meanwhile, she reached into one of the drawers of her desk and pulled out a small box. Greg who had been standing at his station, approached the healer's workstation just as she pulled the box open. Inside the box was a small, clear, glass bead. "Pick it up," she prompted.

"What is it?" Greg asked out of curiosity even as he reached forward for the bead.

"Something I should have done before I made any promises to you," The woman spoke in a cryptic tone of voice.

With a slight frown at the enigmatic answer, Greg picked up the bead and brought it to eye level to inspect it. For a long ten seconds, Greg couldn't see anything unique or useful about the bead. It was just a clear glass bead. Ten seconds after he picked it up, however, the bead began to glow softly with an earthy brown light. The light coming from the bead wasn't that bright. Inside a dark room, one would easily notice it. In a well-lit room like the one they were in, if one wasn't directly looking at the bead, they wouldn't notice it.

A sigh left the healer. There was part relief, part disappointment on her features even as she did so.

"What does this mean? Greg couldn't help but ask.

"Place it back in the box," The healer stated nudging at the box. Once Greg had done so, the healer brought the box with the bead close to inspect it more closely. Meanwhile, she answered him. "This is an Azra bead, named after the mage that first made it. The bead serves only two functions. The first is to measure one's affinity for magic, or as people tend to refer to it, one's talent for magic," She said. Greg couldn't help but look differently at the bead that was already slowly losing the soft glow it had previously had. A sliver of worry began to grow within him, part of him already worrying about what the weak glow of the bead said about him.

"Once in contact with anyone, how quickly and how brightly the bead glows tells you how much affinity for magic they have," She explained. By now, the bead had already lost all the earthy brown light it previously had. Greg watched as the healer reached forward and placed just a single finger on the bead. Immediately, it was as if someone had flipped a switch. A bright white light filled the room from the bead before him. Greg had to turn his head to the side to spare his eyes from the bright light. The light, however, didn't last long as she flipped the box's lid back over it to close it once more.

"I won't lie to you Greg, as you have seen, you don't have that much affinity for magic to begin with," She spoke the words Greg had been both expecting and dreading. "The path of magic for you will be like climbing up a steep cliff. For people with high magical affinity, progress along the path of magic is far easier as they have a far more instinctive understanding of the arcane. They have an easier time rising through the tiers as they can more easily manipulate the mana within them," She informed him. Her expression then became stern. "The same, however, is not true of you. For you, the path of magic will almost entirely depend on how hard you are willing to work and how many resources you can gather. The moment you stop putting every bit of effort that you can and more into your magic is the exact moment that your magic stops growing! Do you understand?" She asked. From the serious look on her face, Greg could tell that the woman wasn't trying to scare him. She was simply telling him the barebones truth.

Greg couldn't help but grit his teeth, his resolve firming. With a serious look on his face, he nodded. It didn't feel good to be told that he didn't have any talent in magic. This, however, wouldn't stop him from pursuing his goal of becoming the strongest mage there ever was. If anything, it put a fire under him that made him want to defy this assessment of him and prove the stupid bead wrong. The only silver lining as far as Greg was concerned was the second thing that the healer had said he would need. With a system shop full of all kinds of items and materials, the one thing Greg would never lack is magical resources. So long as he could gather the magic points he needed he could get anything he needed.

"A poor affinity, however, is worlds apart from no affinity at all, so don't look so down. As you presently are, it will take a lot of help from me, but I can get you on the path of magic. If that bead hadn't glowed then it would have been beyond my abilities to help you," She said.

"Does the color mean anything?" Greg asked as he remembered that his had been an earthy brown whereas hers had been purely white.

"That's the second function of the bead. It indicates the school of magic that one has the closest affinity to," She said then paused. "You do know about the different schools of magic, don't you?" She queried.

"Olivia only gave me a brief introduction of each," he answered with a nod

"That's enough for now," Came the reply. "The bead will turn a different color depending on one's affinity. White for a healer like myself and brown for Earth mage like you for example!" She explained. "There are several other colors it can show depending on one's affinities, but that is not very important right now. What you do need to know and always keep in mind is that the orb only shows your affinity, it doesn't in any way limit what you can do or become. In other words, the orb only indicates that you will have the easiest time pursuing earth magic and can probably walk the furthest on that path. You, however, can choose to disregard that and walk the path of a healer, a summoner, or even a sorcerer if you wish to. The path, however, will be much harder for you should you choose to ignore your affinity and pursue other schools of magic," She informed him.

"Now, all that being said, my advice for you would be to stick with earth magic. The greater the talent one has with magic in general, the greater the freedom one has to ignore their primary affinity and pursue other schools of magic. You, on the other hand, already have a weak affinity with magic to begin with. To pursue your primary magical affinity will already be hard enough for you. Should you choose to go after other schools of magic that you don't have as much of an affinity for, you may be making it so that your progress through the tiers will be a slog," She advised.

Greg remained silent as he considered the healer's words. It only now occurred to Greg that, while he had been excited about becoming a mage, he hadn't really put much thought into what school of magic he wished to pursue. Faith magic had been out right from the start because Greg didn't want his power to be reliant on some outside entity. This was also the reason why the beast-taming and summoner school of magic also didn't speak to him all that much. But then, that left three other schools of magic on the table, The school of the elements, the school of body and mind, and the school of life and death. Greg didn't feel any innate desire to be an earth mage, at the same time, he didn't have any particular aversion to it. At present, it was just his best choice among many. The same was true for most of the other options that he had available to him.

"Do I have to decide right now?" Greg asked when a few minutes had gone by and he still couldn't decide.

The healer, who had gone quiet to allow him to think, smiled and shook his head. "You have a few years to consider the issue. I don't know how much the familiar told you but one of the most important stages for a mage is setting up their foundation," She informed him.

Greg nodded. "Olivia did tell me about the importance of a good foundation," He answered.

The healer nodded in acknowledgment. "A weak foundation has been the stumbling block for most mages out there. The shallower and weaker your foundation is, the less that you can build upon it. As such, for the next few years, you don't have to think about what school of magic you wish to be part of. Your sole concern should be giving yourself the most firm foundation that you can," She advised.

Getting up from her seat, the healer started to move towards the door to the room. "Follow me," came the brief instruction.

Greg walked behind the healer as they moved through the hallway. As tired as she seemed, there was no denying the sexual appeal that seemed to drip off the woman. Try as he would, Greg couldn't keep his gaze from dropping down to the perfect ass that was swaying before him. There was nothing exaggerated about her motions and Greg knew that the woman wasn't in any way trying to be sexually appealing to him. She seemed to be too distracted by whatever was on her mind. This, however, only made her allure even harder to resist. The fact was that, without trying, each of her motions had a subtle lascivious pull to them that set his blood aflame and drew him in whether he wanted it to or not.

Luckily for Greg, before he could get swept up in the lust that was bubbling up within him, the healer disappeared through a wall. Greg's mind came to a screeching halt when, without pausing, the healer walked right through the wall at the end of the hallway. Tentatively reaching forward to see if he wasn't hallucinating, Greg wanted to test if the wall was actually there or just an illusion. Before he could touch it, however, the healer's hand appeared through the wall and grabbed hold of his before pulling him through the wall. To Greg, it felt like he'd been pulled through a thick, gelatinous substance. The experience was disconcerting and a bit uncomfortable, but fortunately, brief. On the other side, Greg found himself in a small room, no bigger than a closet that was illuminated by small round balls that were somehow attached to the walls.

"Hold your breath," The healer gave another short instruction.

Greg wanted to ask why that would be necessary. The words, however, quickly died on his lips when he noticed a light coming from below his feet. Turning to look down, Greg noticed that carved into the floor was a complicated circular sigil filled with runes of various kinds that Greg couldn't even begin to parse out. The two of them were currently standing within the circle even as the runes were slowly filling up with light. Without wasting a second, Greg took in a deep breath and held it, not willing to find out what the consequences of not following the healer's instructions would be.

As it turns out, Greg had acted just in the nick of time. Barely a second after holding his breath, Greg noted the fact that the colors around him seemed to increase in saturation, so much so that they eventually started to bleed into one another. The healer standing before him started to lose her outline. Her shape was distorted to the point that it was almost impossible to tell where she started and where the wall behind her ended. It took a second for Greg to notice that this effect of things blending into each other wasn't just a visual thing, even his own body started to feel as if it was losing its substantial form and like a drop of ink dropped in water, he was being diffused into the environment around him. He didn't suffer any harm or feel pain as a result of the dissolution process. To say that Greg wasn't on edge throughout the whole process, however, wouldn't be accurate.

Before he could begin to panic, Greg felt a strange force close in around the two of them. What it felt like to be a liquid being pulled through a straw, was a sensation that Greg never thought he would ever get to experience. That, however, is the next feeling that engulfed him, except that, unlike the liquid through the straw, he was moving at a supersonic speed. The feeling only lasted for about five seconds or so. Greg, however, knew that they were now tens if not hundreds of miles away from where they'd been just five seconds prior. When they took form once more, they were still in a small, closet-sized room identical to the one they'd been in back inside the infirmary. The only clue that this was a different place from the one that they'd left was the fact that the air was noticeably cooler than it had been before.

Reaching forward, the healer placed a hand on the wall before them. Greg watched as another sigil full of various runes lit up on the wall. Before Greg could study it, however, the healer took hold of his hand and once again pulled Greg right through the wall. Seems I'm not the only one to think of a secret cave hideout. This was the thought that went through Greg's mind as he looked around at the large cavern that he found himself standing in. Unsurprisingly, the healer's cave was much more elegantly furnished and equipped compared to the cave Greg considered to be his hideout. Just in terms of size, this cave was about five times the size of the lair Greg had taken from his uncle. The roof of the cave was at about the same height as a high ceiling would be. Greg, however, could tell that the place had been excavated to give much more lateral room to its occupant than would have otherwise been available naturally.

There was a dualistic nature to the way the place had been set up. Half of the place seemed to have been designed for leisure and relaxation, the other side for serious study and research. To one side of the cave, there was a large bed that even at a glance seemed like one could sink into and forget all the troubles of the world. There was a thick, snow-white, fur carpet covering the floor on the leisure side of the cave. A rocking seat next to a fireplace carved into the wall that even now was burning. There were no logs in the pit instead, a runic sigil that produced bright orange flames was inscribed into the bottom of the hollow. The most eye-catching feature of the leisure side of the cave was a small pool full of clear water that was currently giving off a layer of steam. Greg didn't know whether this was a natural hot spring or something that the healer had designed herself. Still, he'd be lying if he said that he wasn't tempted to just sink into it and allow the soul fatigue to slowly fade out of him.

The other side of the cave was almost the exact opposite of the first in terms of how austere and bereft of creature comforts it was. All that could be found on this side of the cave were various workstations, some with strange liquids bubbling on them, others with the skulls and other body parts of various creatures on them, several had various plants on them. Others, had several open tomes on it as if the healer had been trying to zero in on an idea through the different texts. On one section of the wall there was a large shelf full of several rows of thick books. There were also large open spaces on this side of the room. This isn't to say that they weren't used for anything. The large sigils carved into the floor in these open spaces were clearly meant to serve some function that Greg wasn't as yet privy to.

"You can breathe now."

It wasn't until the healer mentioned this that Greg became aware of the fact that he'd still been holding his breath. Letting the breath go, Greg followed the healer to one of the larger sigils on the cave floor.

"Bring her out," The healer spoke even as they paused at the edge of the circular sigil. The inscription was about three meters in diameter. The size of the thing, however, was the least significant thing about it. The circle was filled with such intricate runes that not even an inch of space was left unoccupied. Even more amazing was how each of the runes had been placed in such a way that they perfectly fit into each other like a jigsaw puzzle. Greg couldn't even tell from where he'd need to start if he wished to analyze the sigil. There had to have been close to if not over, five thousand different symbols inside the sigil. If this was what the healer had been working on in the past two days since they last spoke, then Greg could understand why she looked to be in the state that she was in.

"Olivia," Greg called out. He didn't need to ask the healer who she was talking about. There was only one "her" that Greg could bring out.

"Yes, master," came Olivia's answer even as a mote of light escaped from Greg's glabella and took her shape. When the familiar's gaze landed on the healer a mischievous light gleamed in her eyes. "Master, you shouldn't be too rough on your partners," She said in a suggestive tone with the air of one who was coming to the defense of the weak. Greg knew that the familiar could see all that Greg did and so she knew perfectly well that nothing had happened between the two of them.

The healer, who wasn't slow on the uptake, quickly moved her hands through the air in an intricate pattern causing the air before her to start shimmering. Before long, the shimmering air coalesced into a reflective surface that showed the healer her present state. A sigh left the woman even as she brought her right hand to pinch the bridge of her nose. It was almost as if she was just now coming to terms with just how tired she was. The healer turned to Greg. "Why didn't you say any..." The healer paused in the middle of her question as her gaze was drawn by something below. Greg wasn't sure if he just imagined it or not, but there was a slight increase in the color on the healer's face as she turned to look back at herself in the mirror.