Embedded Files
Lucas descended the staircase to the stone-walled corridors and did not take long to find Professor Morrix’s office. He knocked on the door.
“Come in,” the voice from within said in reply. Lucas pushed open the door to find a large barrel standing, one of its faces removed to reveal its vast, empty volume. “Well? Go ahead. Did you just come from Bodily Enhancement?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know why they chose such an impressive-sounding name. It’s just working out, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, it is. It’s fun, though. Especially since I do a lot better than the people from noble families,” Lucas replied conversationally, conjuring the black sludge into the barrel. After a few minutes straight of depositing the slimy, viscous substance, Lucas felt his whole body begin to ache. He began to feel like his body was emptying, as a bottle might feel as the water or juice inside it was drunk.
“That would make sense. After all, as you have probably noticed, the nobles don’t really prioritize physical work.” He looked into the barrel. “That’s definitely enough. Take a short break. I wasn’t expecting you to be able to make this much darkness in one go. We’ll probably move on to conjuring vapor soon. That’s good. A faster pace means that we can move on to exploring the possibilities of your special circumstances sooner.”
Lucas looked at the barrel and saw that the black sludge was already past two-eighths full. He sat down and caught his breath. After taking his break, Lucas got up again and began conjuring his twenty crystals. When these were finished, the professor went on.
“Today, I’ll teach you how to conjure basic objects. For example, a cube,” Professor Morrix said as he held his palm face-up and a small, slightly shiny black box built itself upon it. “It’s similar to how you made that crystal—”
“Like this?” Lucas asked, holding a similar, but seemingly much less reflective cube out.
“Yes, like that. I thought that it would have taken you many more tries, but I was mistaken. How tiring is creating such a cube?”
“I think I could do this the whole day. It’s not too hard for me.”
“That’s perfect. Imagine what you could do when you’ve unlocked the ability to draw sigils. Well, why don’t you try your hand at conjuring a chair?”
Lucas closed his eyes and pictured a chair, but the moment he cast it, he knew something was wrong. He opened his eyes and beheld a very miniature version of a high-backed chair sitting atop his palm. The professor laughed.
“It appears that you still don’t know how to create things that can’t fit on your palm. Well, allow me to demonstrate.” Professor Morrix pointed his palm at the ground. From his hand spouted black mist that formed into the vague shape of a chair. The chair began solidifying from the top, even before the black mist had fully adopted the shape of a seat. The backrest became a glossy, solid black tone, followed by the rest of the chair, down to its legs. “This is a process known as vapor casting. I said previously that we would begin vapor conjuration, but evidently you already have a grasp over conjuring the solid and liquid forms of darkness.”
“Do the other elements have solid and liquid forms?”
“Not all of them. Some do, such as water and light. But some require other elements to change its state of matter and some cannot change at all. For example, earth and wind respectively. And vapor forms are limited to wind, water, and darkness, although light does have a form somewhat similar to vapor.
“However, vapor casting is useful in a variety of ways, especially since it is the only method for practitioners of darkness to form large, solid objects. Surely you understand the idea that objects become solid when they are cold, liquid when they are warm, and vapor when they are hot? Darkness does not obey these laws, especially since the one way that it takes form is under the influence of Azla, which, in itself, does not often obey physical laws.
“So, the magic within you feels like liquid, right?”
“Yes.”
“That complicates things. For certain people, it feels exactly like gas, which would make it harder to conjure either of the other two states of matter, if they could in the first place. For people like you, the majority of those who are able to use magic, Azla feels like a liquid, which would simplify the overall casting of different states. And in a very, very rare case, Azla feels solid, which means that they cannot circulate it and therefore cannot cast it. This is different from being discouraged from using one’s innate element, as it fully disables your ability to use magic.
“So, I would like you to try to get a feeling of it: try draining your arm of Azla — this should be slightly easier now that you have exhausted quite a bit of it doing your exercises — and physically expanding the remaining Azla. Then let it out of your hand.”
Lucas did as the professor outlined, closing his eyes once again to concentrate. After a short bit of expanding Azla within his arm, it felt as if it did not need his effort to keep it inflated; the Azla was pressing against his arm by itself. Lucas let the new sensation out of his hand. He opened his eyes and beheld a cloud of darkness, so dark that it obscured Professor Morrix’s face. As soon as his eyes were open, he heard a loud smack come from behind the haze. Worried, he waved the darkness away and saw that the professor had facepalmed himself.
“Ah, I forgot. To be able to use vapor casting, you need to be an external mage. You’re quite proficient at creating the vapor, but as you will well notice, you are not capable of manipulating it in any way now that it has exited your body.”
Lucas tried, and, indeed, try as he might, the fog would not change.
“Well, this presents a challenge. You need to break through.” Spotting the confused look on Lucas's face, the professor elaborated, “Breaking through means to surpass one’s current stage and move on to the next. This usually occurs under moments of high stress or incredible opportunity. For example, if you receive the Elven King’s Blessing, you would be able to break through from any stage below sigil to your next stage. There is normally no way to intentionally stimulate a breakthrough. Every time one breaks through, their mental structure slightly alters. It allows them to access a higher level of magic abilities — after you become an external mage, you will automatically be able to manipulate any form of darkness outside of your body as if you had known how to your whole life.
“But first we must focus on how to get you to breakthrough. Normally, I would wait until the annual tournament. After all, it doesn’t take much stimulation to break through to the mere second stage. But, I think any time lost is time wasted with you. I will request the headmaster for permission to bring you on a guild-assigned mission. If that does not work out, I will request an S-grade magic crystal. Taking in the essence of one of those can also allow you to break through a level.”
“How would taking in the essence of a magic crystal change my mental structure? What is the essence of a magic crystal, while we’re at that?”
“It’s not that the essence of the magic crystal itself causes your brain to change. It triggers a phenomenon called breaking through that, in turn, modifies your brain. You won’t understand until you feel the breakthrough for yourself. And even then, you won’t be able to put it into words. The essence of a magic crystal, on the other hand, is exactly what it sounds like. It is what differentiates a normal jewel from a crystal that can supply magic power.”
“So, if I absorb the essence of a magic crystal, it’ll turn into a normal piece of —”
“Jade, most likely. Jade has the highest possibility among any naturally found non-magic crystal to assume the essence of darkness.”
“So there are elemental affinities even among rocks? Does that mean that earth magic users can just extract magic crystals from the ground?”
“I would say that materials like jade, diamond, et cetera do not fall into the category of rocks. Unless you’re a very special wielder of earth magic, it should not be possible to manipulate these minerals, whether or not they have been charged with an essence. Magic crystals are also mostly only found in the creatures you find in the wild — and only the creatures who are capable of wielding magic. They happen when a crystal, one way or another, appears within the body of a creature. They are exceedingly rare in any beast other than a stone golem, which you can find when you go hiking, or certain bird-related magic beasts, since some of them eat stones to grind up the food inside their stomachs.”
“What does S-grade mean, then?”
“It just means that there is a lot of elemental essence. There is a ton of magic energy within S-grade essence-bearing minerals. When a crystal appears within a beast, it absorbs the energy of the beast and converts it into essence. If the elements are incompatible between the beast and the crystal, it takes a much longer time for the crystal to accumulate essence. An S-grade crystal is defined as a crystal with so much magic essence that it takes a minimum of five centuries to cultivate, even with full elemental compatibility. Now, we could dive a lot deeper, even taking the surface area of the crystal into account. But that is neither here nor there.”
“So if it takes five hundred years to make an S-grade crystal in the best of conditions, wouldn’t it be a big waste for me to just use it?”
“Well, we all have high hopes for you. Just remember that using magic crystals isn’t the best idea to break through. The amount of crystals you need increases exponentially. In case you are curious, the amount that it costs to upgrade from Nascent Grand Mage to Grand Mage is one thousand and twenty-four S-grade crystals. The current amount of recorded S-grade crystals on this continent, between the two human kingdoms, adds up to less than a hundred. However, more than that, you need the experience that you can get from the moments of high stress.”
Lucas could only nod. He didn’t know what shocked him more — that there was a numerable value to becoming a god or that the difference between the sixth and the seventh stage would be so great.
“Well, it does appear that our session has come to an end today. We’ve accomplished our daily goal and you’ve learned a little about progression. You may return to your dormitory now. Don’t forget to shower. I can smell your sweat from here.”
“Yes, sir,” Lucas said.
Lucas was met with the sound of sprinkling water as he opened the door to his dormitory. Shutting the door behind him, he yelled, “I’m back!”
“Welcome back,” Eren returned over the sound of the shower.
Lucas entered the bathroom and began undressing. “Don’t come out until I say so,” he said. He slipped into the shower, completely forgetting to remind Eren that he could come out.
After the shower, the duo, joined by Vaelith, Cairen, and Iriyen, went downstairs for dinner. The theme of the food this time was seafood, though unlike anything Lucas could have imagined came from the sea. There were a few glowing dishes that Eren said were radiant because of their bioluminescence, which Lucas took to mean that the food was not dead yet.
No otherworldly occurrences manifested for the night and the following day. Professor Ward gave a brief introduction of the course, including an overview of the basic customs of the six intelligent races, especially harping on the dragons’ and dwarves’ lack of tolerance for outsiders. Besides Magical Ethics, no class differed much from the previous day, although Professor Hawke did assign a short worksheet on certain historical events and asked the students to weigh the likelihood of the provided factors that might have caused such events to arise. The subsequent weeks went on without much event.
In late September, Lucas rapped his knuckles on Professor Morrix’s office door. It creaked open, revealing the rather cramped room that Lucas had gotten used to. The professor was pacing behind his desk, his normally tired eyes now wide awake and darting about the room. Seeing Lucas enter the room, the professor retrieved a rather well-adorned black box from within his drawers. It was the size of his hand, decorated on all faces with haphazardly placed golden squares. Professor Morrix handed the seemingly needlessly expensive box to Lucas.
“Take this. It’s the S-grade magic crystal I said that I would get. We couldn’t secure a guild mission this time, but it doesn’t matter now. Don’t open the box,” the professor warned, seeing Lucas about to lift the rather tight lid. Lucas nodded and ceased his attempt. “Follow me. If you try to break through in here, you’ll knock my stuff over.”
Professor Morrix walked past Lucas and out of the door. Lucas hurried to catch up. They walked along the stone corridor in silence, their footsteps echoing off of the smooth walls. Finally, after five minutes, they arrived at a door that resembled that of a vault. It was dun gray with innumerable, incomprehensible contraptions on its surface, all of which converged at the center, where there was a small, round wheel.
The professor grabbed onto the wheel with one hand. With a great downward swing on the professor’s part, the wheel began spinning. The contraptions whirred, at times releasing puffs of steam. A few pistons extended upward, seemingly pushing at thin air. Then, with a clacking sound, the door slowly swung inward, revealing a very large space lit by numerous, square ceiling lights. The wheel slowed to a stop with a click, seemingly beckoning the two into the room.
Professor Morrix walked in, gesturing for Lucas to continue following. After ensuring that the door had been closed properly, he said, “You can open the box now.”
Lucas lifted the lid of the box. It opened on a horizontal hinge, revealing a red, cushioned interior with a thin crystal the length of a long finger diagonally pressed into the velvet material. It was translucent green, with what looked like black mist swirling and moving about within it. When Lucas opened the box, the crystal felt as if it were lifted of its restraints.
Lucas instantly felt the oppressive nature of the piece of infused jade before him. Without even making contact with the long shard, he felt a force pressing down on his heart. It also felt as if infinite people were pressing down upon his shoulders, forcing him into the ground. His knees buckled and he nearly fell to the ground. Lucas maintained his stance, his forehead sweating from the sheer power that the crystal was exuding.
“Quick! Grab onto the crystal and let the box drop to the ground! You’re leaking its essence right now,” he heard Professor Morrix say. The professor’s voice sounded faint and miniscule, as if he were yelling at him from two hundred meters away. Lucas’s vision became blurry. The crystal became two, then three. Its image faded in and out.
Then, by some miracle, Lucas got a grip of himself. He plunged his hand into the box and grabbed onto the crystal. It was extraordinarily cold, and the surprising sensation caused Lucas to nearly drop it. He let the box fall to the ground, barely hearing the clatter over the loud buzzing in his ears.
Suddenly, a chilly feeling exploded within Lucas’s palm. It expanded outwards, into his forearm and up to his shoulder. It continued proliferating throughout his body, taking round trips through all four of his limbs and his head, finally congregating at his kidneys. Lucas could not help but shiver, but it did not help. The extreme frost came from deep within his body and seemed to take root in everything — his blood vessels, his bone marrow, his nerves, his numerous organs.
After it finally assimilated Lucas’s kidneys, the coldness faded away. When the abnormal temperature dissipated, Lucas realized that it was in fact a sort of numbness. His body felt as if infinite, tiny knives were shoved into every last corner of it, spreading fire through every bone that existed.
The pain lasted for who knows how long, finally ending with Lucas curled up in a fetal position on the ground. His shirt was sticking to his chest and he could vaguely smell a rather sharp odor. His hands were clammy. Lucas pushed himself upright and quickly stood up. The professor was watching him from the side and was showing obvious signs of relief.
“Looks like you survived.”
“Was I supposed to die?” Lucas asked.
“No, but I forgot to tell you that it would be a little excruciating.”
“Only a little.” He was still perspiring.
Professor Morrix pushed unlocked a few latches on the door and pulled it open. A gust of warm air rushed in, causing the torches in the corridor to flicker. The professor handed Lucas a short towel, allowing him to dry off before exiting what looked like a rather extravagant training room.
As they walked along in the empty corridor, the professor said, “Examine your magic. Do you feel any differences?”
Lucas did as he was told and realized that he could indeed begin to move the shadows cast by the flickering lights, causing them to tangle and intertwine with themselves, creating unnatural shapes. “What happens if we manipulate the same shadow?”
Professor Morrix looked at Lucas and said, “We’d enter a clash over control over the shadow. I’d probably win because I’m more proficient at using magic, but you’d win against most darkness mages who're around the same level as you — remember, you awakened your magic just two months ago.”
After professor and student arrived at the office, the bell tolled and cast Lucas to his dormitory. He learned vapor casting within two weeks and began learning how to flexibly use his magic in unpredictable circumstances. Lucas's grades soared in his other classes with his critical thinking and memorization ability.
However, nearing the end of November, Rebrixi approached him.
“I don’t think we should be affiliated anymore.”
That was it. All she said. She turned around and walked back the way she came. It was right after dinner. Eren was in detention for using his magic on a student who had tried to insult Lucas. Vaelith had gone up earlier. Cairen and Iriyen did not come down for dinner.
“Wait! Why all of a sudden?”
A coolness began to fill Lucas. He couldn’t feel anything. When the coolness reached his head, he began to feel dizzy. Multiple images of Rebrixi wavered in and out of view. Her blond hair looked green.
“Was your head so high in the clouds with your new friends that you didn’t notice that you were ignoring me?”
“What? But— Wait! I won’t ignore you! I’m sorry!”
“It’s too late. The prince already set his eyes on me.”
Lucas couldn’t speak. Rebrixi walked away, her form swallowed by the shadows atop the staircase.
And then he felt it. The coolness disappeared. A gaping void swallowed up his heart, prompting his eyes to leak unwilling tears. His knees gave way, but he didn’t notice. The void grew, stopping in the bounds of his pectorals. It stayed there, pinching at every bit of flesh that grew there. His eyes burned. He’d cried too much.
“Lucas?” a voice came. “Oi! Lucas!”
Lucas felt someone shake him through his stupor. His eyes were blurry. He didn’t want to clear them. His arms were heavy. He could vaguely tell that whoever was shaking him was wearing green. He was sleepy. What had he been crying about?
Lucas woke up. Everything was dark. He quickly sat up. A knot inside of him exploded, forcing him to gasp for air. He looked around him. There was a large window behind his bed. It was half-covered by drapes. Lucas could barely make out the stars from his angle. There was another bed across the room. A lump upon it was slowly inflating and deflating. On the same side of that bed was a shut door.
A sudden snore shook Lucas. His brain snapped into place. This was his dormitory and Eren was sleeping, which meant that it was nighttime. Did he pass out? There wasn’t anything he could do at the moment, so he just laid himself down and slept. The night passed quickly and before Lucas knew it, the bell was shaking him awake.
Lucas looked around the room that was just dimly lit by the newly rising sun outside. His face felt needly. He took off his blanket and looked at himself in the mirror and saw that there were red patches underneath his eyes. Hearing Eren yawn, Lucas walked back and grabbed the clothes that he had retrieved from the laundry room two days prior.
As he was changing, Eren said, “I won’t ask you why you were crying like that yesterday, but if you ever feel like anything’s too big to bear for you, I’m here. Just tell me about it and I’ll try to help you get over it.”
Lucas nodded his head in appreciation. The day commenced as usual. All of the other students went on, chatting and laughing with their friends, seemingly without a care in the world. It seemed unthinkable that no one around him was affected by his immense misery. It felt as if it was impossible that his unhappiness was not seeping out of his body and that since his body was exuding the misery, the negativity was shying away from contact with another living being.
To Eren’s credit, however, he had at some point pulled Vaelith aside and informed her of Lucas’s abnormality. They had been quietly observing him since Magical Ethics.
However, during lunch, Lucas was shocked out of his anguish. Cairen approached him after they had finished, saying, “Hey, Lucas. Would you like to join me in the intraschool tournament at the end of this year?”
“Isn’t the tournament meant for students of year two and up? I’m just a first-year. There’s no way they’re going to let me join.” Lucas’s first reaction was doubt. He felt as if Eren and Vaelith had told Cairen to cheer him up.
“Don’t worry. I’ve already got it covered for you. Just say the word and you’re in. If your friends want to join, they can, too.”
“Are you sure? But won’t I just weigh you down?”
“I have a good feeling that you won’t.” Cairen waved and walked away. This vague answer only served to make Lucas more suspicious.
Eren and Vaelith, who had just finished, caught up with Lucas. As they walked together, Eren asked, “What did Cairen ask you?”
“He wanted to see if I wanted to go participate in the intraschool tournament with him. He invited you guys, too.”
“Really? How can he be so sure that we’ll be allowed to join?” Vaelith inquired, causing Lucas to suspect if she was putting on an act. He didn’t say anything, though. It wasn’t a big deal.
“I dunno. He didn’t explain it to me. But do you guys want to join?”
“I don’t see why not. Give it a try and get some experience, you know?” Eren said.
Vaelith nodded. “I think what Eren said is reasonable. We don’t have anything to lose from this.”
“Alright. I’ll also go tell Professor Morrix about this. He might have some ideas on how we should prepare.” The other two accepted this suggestion. They had both long given up on coercing Lucas to reveal why he was taking private lessons with a practitioner of dark magic as a human.
The moment Bodily Enhancement ended Lucas ran through the hall and dashed down the stairs, arriving at Professor Morrix’s office. He knocked on the door and was allowed in.
“You’re earlier than usual,” the professor said.
“Yes. I had something I wanted to talk to you about.”
“Proceed.”
“My friend Cairen said that he could let me join the intraschool tournament this year, even though I’m a first year. Do you have any ideas about how I should prepare?”
“I was planning on addressing this matter today anyways. The headmaster has already informed me of this matter.” He conjured the barrel from the shadows again, placing it before Lucas. The professor’s words had confirmed that Cairen had informed Lucas of this not purely to cheer him up but because it really was happening. “Here. We’ll talk while you do your exercises.”
Lucas's daily requirements had risen to a fourth of the barrel. Instead of making shards, Lucas was charged with creating ten small, intricate objects that had at least four distinguishable layers and ten large objects with vapor casting.
“First of all,” the professor began as Lucas started on filling the barrel, “we will probably focus much more on developing your Will. After all, you can’t use your magic during the tournament itself. You might have started already in Bodily Enhancement, but I will at the very least be introducing more applications for it and more abilities that it has. How far along are you in using the Will?”
“Apparently it’s similar to what I learned in my village to make my labor-wise tasks easier, so I’m currently not having much trouble with it.”
“That’s good, but the progression of what you can do with the Will becomes very hard very quickly, much more so than magic. Just as a heads-up.”
Lucas finished his exercises in twenty minutes, which had become the norm for him. His body was not extremely physically tired, although of course he had had Bodily Enhancement prior to this period; he could now feel the difference between Azla exhaustion and corporeal fatigue. After making sure that Lucas had mostly recovered from having exerted his magic, Professor Morrix handed a book to him over the table.
“This is a codex of all applications of the Will. Most of it doesn’t affect you at the moment and there’s no need to memorize any of this like you’re going to be tested on any of it. It’s just for you to understand the whole concept behind this.”
Lucas caught the book. It was around a hundred to two hundred pages from the looks of it. It had a dark blue leather cover, bordered by dark yellow patterns. He flipped to a random page. There were seven words that specifically jumped out to him: awakened, channeler, resonant, warden, ascendant, paragon, and sovereign. They were ordered in a list at the end of a long paragraph. The previous page was titled “Stages of Will Development”. The titled page displayed two very long paragraphs, both of which were detailing what seemed like the history of the classification of Will mastery.
Lucas examined the second page more carefully. In it was inscribed a table, listing each of the stages of development of the Will and their characteristics. He flipped back to the first page and began reading:
In this book, you will receive Virexian teachings upon the mystical force known as the Will, or, rarely and more historically, the Dominion. This is by no means a comprehensive list of all of the Will’s capabilities, for it is as boundless as the sky and stars themselves. Even I, Virex, the then-modern discoverer of the Will, cannot completely grasp on its limits.
Lucas did not know that the Will would be complimented so by the legendary hero from a thousand years ago.
“Isn’t this book really old, then?” he asked.
“It was revised over the last nine hundred and ninety-four years since its publication. This is just a copy of the latest edition.”
“This was written six years after the War of Two Doctrines?”
“No. It was written one year before the war. To be very accurate, it’s been nine hundred and ninety-three — nearly nine hundred and ninety-four — years since the end of the war, but it’s just faster and easier to say that it’s been a thousand. The Two Doctrines’ one thousandth anniversary will be in just over six years. The book is only revised by the best of the best, though. The widely-accepted official version has only been revised by paragons and sovereigns. Or should I say sovereign, since there has only been one since Virex’s time.”
“Is it that hard to become a sovereign?”
“Let me put it this way. A sovereign is an order of magnitude above a Grand Mage. Whatever you believe a Grand Mage to be capable of doing, sovereigns can do, times ten. But becoming a sovereign requires not only hard work but also luck. If you were born with a naturally weak mind, no matter how much you strengthen it, you will not become a sovereign before you die, no matter what you attempt.”
Lucas was rather shocked. At the moment, practicing his Will seemed easier than practicing his magic.
Reading his mind again, the professor said, “Of course it feels like practicing Will is easier than practicing magic. Your magic is already on the second stage. Your Will is almost certainly still on the first stage. Even then, first stage Will is easier than first stage magic. It’s just that Will development becomes harder much faster than magic development does; its difficulty outpaces that of magic. So, if we take advantage of your absurd learning speed, you should be capable of holding your ground in the tournament. Well, at least against third years and below.”
The bell sent its deep vibrations through the walls again and Lucas knew once again that it was his time to depart. He told the professor his goodbyes and hurried back to his room to read the book bestowed upon him. Eren arrived a moment after he did. After a quick exchange between the two of them, Eren began practicing his healing magic on Lucas. From a conversation that they had had a few days previously, Lucas found out that Eren was already an external mage before arriving at this school, which explained why he was capable of maintaining a healing cage.
Lucas opened the book and began reading from the first page. The book, titled First Manuscript of the Will, contained many diagrams of the human body and mind. The opening chapter explained that external magic was, at its core, the extension of one’s own Azla, reaching outward to merge with and command a larger mass of the element. Normally, this process was subconscious. Only under extremely rare circumstances does the caster require physical control to transfer Azla into the target.
The Will, it argued, followed a similar principle. Its first stage refined the self, but its second allowed a practitioner to move beyond mere self‑enhancement and into the reinforcement of external objects—a much more deliberate, conscious projection of intent. It explained that the use of the Will to enhance the features of an object would result in a glowing aura enveloping it. Its aura’s color would depend on the user’s innate mental strength — normally it would be a light cyan, but those who had the potential to become sovereigns had reported colors of dark purple and black. Or, in some very rare and extreme cases, red.
Theoretically, it was possible for a further color, orange or yellow, to manifest in a very mentally stable, or, as Lucas correctly comprehended it, stubborn, person. But this, the book elucidated, would result in a rather unintelligent mind and would also be nearly impossible to appear in the first place, due to sheer rarity.
The following chapter began with the introduction of the Will and its deeper connection with one’s magic. It was affected by the user’s element; if one used the Will against magic of one’s non-innate element, it would support and reinforce the magic. With any other element, it would counteract — and sometimes swallow up entirely — the magic. This was the Will-magic compatibility. It could be bypassed with enough willpower and skill from the third stage onwards. If one had no element besides their innate, his or her Will would display no compatibility with any sort of magic.
The chapter continued to explain that certain magic techniques would allow one’s Will to support all magic. Others would enable one’s Will to counteract all magic. This, the First Manuscript stated, split techniques into two groups: positive and negative, respectively.
It further explained that stagnant techniques often turned out to be negative while progressive techniques were usually positive. What exactly qualified as stagnant or progressive, Lucas had no idea. He made a mental note to consult Professor Morrix.
And through the following days, Lucas began to center his focus on the development of his Will. Lucas focused on training his Will through the numerous pointers that the book gave him. Outside of Spellcasing with Professor Morrix and Bodily Enhancement with Coach Flint, Lucas also began practicing his mental strength. The book had mentioned that in order to go up a stage in mastery of the Will, one needed, without exception, to batter one’s own consciousness with all kinds of negative thoughts and emotions — self-deprecating ones, grief, and especially anger — and to expel these feelings once they reached a certain threshold.
This, unlike magic, was a gradual process. Lucas needed to repeat these batterings every day in order to push past his limits. The only indicator of a breakthrough would be waking up the next day with the basic knowledge of how to use this stage’s abilities appearing in one’s mind. Normally, this kind of training would require one to spend much time finding sources of these negative emotions, but Lucas had the perfect one, for better or for worse.
For the duration of the remaining bits of light frost of November and the soft snow of December, Lucas relived Rebrixi’s words. For the first few weeks, it took all Lucas had to resist the urge of letting tears leak out of his eyes. However, as time progressed, Lucas became colder to his heartbreak. By the end of December, it no longer held the power that it used to. Lucas frantically searched for sources of torment, but Professor Morrix put a stop to it. A rampage for self-agony was not a good path for someone with such a promising future.
Professor Morrix said that it was better to allow these things to occur naturally. Although it was indeed training to strengthen the mind, he especially emphasized that it often turned people heartless and apathetic. No matter how kind and sympathetic one was, at some point, it just became a choice of feeling or not feeling.
“Sovereignty is not something to strive for, Lucas. A heart is meaningless if it can’t thaw another.”
But then again, the book said that it was just a risk that one would lose their empathy to the path of the Will. Those who stayed on its correct path —
“The only correct path is the one where you stop yourself at the point where you can maintain calmness in a stressful situation. You’re being too power-hungry, Lucas. You’re interpreting this book too selectively. Have you read its endnote?”
I heavily advise you, dear reader, against pursuing the Will past the stage of ascendancy. I have braved all the world’s fears in the seemingly small skirmishes between Hycadia and Genesca. There is a war coming — I know it —, and I cannot say that I am in any way meaningfully afraid. But among everything else, what has truly scared me was my lack of tears at Quenlin’s funeral.
“You see now? Virex himself regretted pushing himself past the bounds of normal human emotion.”
Lucas had no choice but to accept the professor’s words as true. Not only because Virex had the same opinion, but mostly because — and he knew that this should have been obvious — the professor had undeniably proven that he had read the First Manuscript front to back. Lucas was also now aware of the fact that he, at some point, had already reached the stage of resonance.
“Yes. But don’t be afraid to stagnate your growth. You don’t need to put yourself through daily torment. Unless something manages to traumatize you, your mental strength will not wane.”
Lucas realized that his mental stability had already reached as far as it needed to be for the tournament. He began focusing on the practical applications of the Will as they were inscribed in the book. Instead of beating up his brain every afternoon, Lucas started practicing projecting his Will onto his arms and punching the air. After this became natural for him by the middle of January, Lucas switched to applying the Will onto any random object he laid his hands on.
His Will color was light cyan. Although it was slightly disappointing, he didn’t seriously expect anything better. Lucas quickly got hold of the ability to levitate objects, but he was limited — try as he might, he could not lift anything greater than his notebooks and higher than himself. However, one thing made up for this. Now, when he applied the Will onto his eyes, he could see the vague figures of people, surrounded by the colors of their Will. This was not obstructed by physical objects, either. For now, he could only see seven meters in his line of sight. This was about enough for him to view Eren’s bed from his.
When he told this observation to Professor Morrix, the professor said, “Normally, you would be able to see through the walls, too. But the school uses formless Azla of all elements to obscure your vision past them. But on another note, how easy is it to recognize Eren when you’re only using the Enhanced Eye?”
“What do you mean?” Lucas asked.
“Well, once one reaches a certain stage of mastery, they will be capable of recognizing people from their Will alone. It’s somewhat similar to how you can differentiate people with their faces, except, of course, it wouldn’t be visible. As for why you can’t lift anything past your height, you just need more practice. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Will is challenging for you to learn. It’s a known fact that ones who excel at magic can sometimes not be as proficient in their Will. Anyways, can you recognize me from the Enhanced Eye alone?”
Lucas infused his eyes with his Will again. A slightly purplish aura formed and pulsed around the professor, but if there was any ability of Lucas's to otherwise differentiate the professor with anyone else, it was too subtle. Lucas shook his head.
“I see. That might be a little problem, then. Let’s work on your ability to project Will onto someone else. The tournament will mostly be combat-oriented, so being able to support your teammates should be your main focus at the moment. We’ll be able to go into more detail with developing your Will later on. Try transferring your Will to me.”
Lucas did as he was told, first imagining his willpower being pulled out of his brain and onto his hand. Then he pushed it to the professor. Instantly, the light purplish aura around the professor disappeared and Lucas's cyan burst into flame around him.
“Not bad,” Professor Morrix said, pressing a small pocketknife to his skin. As he applied more pressure, Lucas felt very slight increases in the effort he required to maintain the reinforcement. However, Lucas's Will seemed to hold on very well. The professor did not bleed even when he was applying his full force on the blade.
Then came one, final test. Professor Morrix drew his right fist back and extended his left arm forward. He manifested darkness around his right fist and sent it down faster than Lucas could react — his only indicator was the loud thunderclap that sounded throughout the room and his sense of losing grip over the professor.
With his ears ringing, Lucas saw that the professor’s arm was untouched by the magic. The sleeve of his cloak, however, was in tatters, swaying in the slight breeze of the aftermath of the spell. The professor nodded his head, “Your Will’s effectiveness is beyond my expectations, but clearly your stamina needs work. This is doable with time, though. We have about four months give or take until the tournament begins and we have to report what your role will be. The spell I just used should be stronger than, let us say, ninety percent of what any student should be capable of producing.
“This means that your Will is currently capable of protecting a person against anything weaker than an ultimate. As long as you can keep this protection up for four other people and ensure that you don’t lose your grip, you have a very good shot at winning the tournament, even though your team is made up of first and second years.”
“Am I not allowed to use my magic, then?”
“It would be preferred if you could keep it under wraps, yes. It’s also probably a good idea to have a supporter on your team. From what I know, Cairen usually gets up close and personal with his attacks, even though his magic seems to suggest otherwise. Iriyen is a control mage. Eren is recovery and Vaelith is ranged attack, correct? Your support makes up for defense but it also seems to grant a metaphysical morale and physical stamina boost. Both of these will be very important in the events taking place in the tournament, although that is the extent to which I can tell you before the headmaster gets angry at me for being a bad sport.”
“Wait, wouldn’t my Will reinforce your magic? This won’t be a problem, since most of the students at this school are humans, which means that I can block most of the attacks that come at my friends, but I was wondering.”
“Not entirely. Your Will, in this case, is taking the form of an existence that reinforces the body of the receiving person. This is different from the normal Will-magic compatibility. That occurs when the Will itself supports the magic of a spell. This cannot occur when darkness encounters your reinforcement, since your Will is purely acting on my skin. It cannot seep into the magic itself.”
“So that means when I’m reinforcing my friends, there’s nothing the opponents can do about it?”
“Certainly, but there is a certain, high-level concept that I might as well introduce to you now, called the Reinforcement to Will Ratio. This compares the amount of your Will that actually goes into strengthening an ally to the amount of your Will that you supplied to them.
“What I observed before attacking myself was that your Reinforcement to Will Ratio is somehow the highest I’ve seen for someone your age. Well, that’s not saying a lot since usually I don’t receive reinforcement from people your age. In any case, that means that even if there is Will seeping out of your recipients, it will be in such small quantities that it’ll barely make a difference. But this is true normally, too. The ratio is never less than 9:10, unless something’s really wrong with your Will.”
Lucas had decided not to hide his element from Eren, Vaelith, Cairen, and Iriyen anymore. Although it took some time for him to clarify every detail and answer every last one of their questions about his veins and how they really don’t exist, he decided that he was much happier letting them know rather than keeping them in the dark.
When he returned to his dormitory, he began practicing his darkness. He had become capable of manipulating the already existing shadows cast by the setting sun. It was midwinter, the sky allowing lesser and lesser sun every day. Shadow manipulation wasn’t fun at night, although the meager light from the lamps gave a bit of room to work with.
Eren returned to the dormitory as Lucas was creating squiggly lines on the ground. Eren yelped and shot his vines at Lucas's shadows.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“I was playing around with the shadows.”
“Don’t do that in those patterns next time. It looked like there were snakes on the floor.”
“My bad. I was just fooling around. Hey, now that you’re here, can I try something?” Lucas giddily asked.
“As long as it doesn’t involve me, you can do anything, I suppose.”
“Great!” Lucas said, beginning to drag the shadows on the ground onto his body. He wasn’t entirely sure how well this tactic would work. After the shadows had entirely covered his figure, he inquired, “How do I look?”
“You look black.”
“So I’m not invisible?” Lucas asked, disappointed.
Eren chuckled. Lucas saw his form bend over slightly, as the shadows did not obscure his vision whatsoever. “No, you’re not. You would blend in in a dark alley or something, though.”
“Ah, well, that’s—”
Lucas let go of his shadow manipulation, which would normally have let the shadows return to their original positions. Instead, Lucas found the dormitory disappear, immediately replaced by an endless field of very dark purple. The ground was smooth. The sky was similarly dark purple, though it differentiated itself from the ground as it became slightly lighter at the horizon. Lucas was struck with awe. He instantly felt that everything around him was shadow — this was his world and nothing was beyond his control here.
However, Lucas's newfound sense of awe melted away as quickly as it came, replaced by a suffocating sense of panic. He couldn’t think straight. How was he going to exit this place? He began sweating profusely. The atmosphere, which was cool at first, quickly shifted to being too hot. Lucas adjusted his shirt and attempted to cool himself down. He drew himself into this place, so he could definitely bring himself back out. This cause and effect relationship was a feature of magic, after all. Once he had this thought rooted in his mind, Lucas's heart stopped pounding in his chest. His breath stilled as he played around with what he could do.
Lucas molded the darkness and tried to convert it to light, hoping that coating himself in light would counteract the result of coating himself in darkness and shadows. However, try as he might, the darkness would not become light. This wouldn’t fundamentally make sense, anyway, Lucas thought dejectedly. Instead of trying the impossible, Lucas remembered that this world belonged to him. If he could assign a concept to something — if he could — he would just be able to create a door that led out of this realm.
So, Lucas put this theory to work. First, he tested it out on a box, created when he pulled it out of the ground. He attempted to input the idea of automation into the cube, which then began to slide along the ground. This motivated Lucas. He then conjured a door, testing out its hinges. Then he gave it the concept of leading out of the realm. Just in case, he also made sure to specify that it should lead into his dormitory.
Lucas took a deep breath and pushed the door open. It revealed a dimly lit room, set with a black window that allowed only the light of the numerous stars to shine through. He could dimly see the outline of the curtains, though they and the stars were occasionally blocked by a moving shadow. It paced back and forth, almost like a human in deep thought. Then, upon closer inspection, Lucas realized that it was Eren, seemingly worried.
“Eren!” he yelled, causing him to jump.
“Lucas?” the black figure said, stopping and looking around. It didn’t take the shadow long to see Lucas.
Lucas walked through the door, shutting it behind him. It had taken the position of the main door of the dormitory.
“Where did you go? How are you over there?” Eren asked.
“I dunno. I think when I cover myself in shadows I just go to another dimension or something.”
Eren didn’t say anything for a little while, though from the glint in his eyes, Lucas could tell that he was staring at him. “Damn, that’s cool,” he said finally. “I want that ability.”
The two spent the rest of the night until curfew discussing possible uses of this ability. Lucas unwisely tested the ability on Eren, attempting to bring him into dimension with him. Thankfully, the process went without repercussions, although Eren suggested testing it on one of his plants next time.
They learned that anything Lucas made within the domain could not exit it, although it could minorly affect the outer world as long as it was through a shadow — which was what Lucas did when he created a door leading out of the realm — and Lucas could not open a door from the outside. On the other hand, he came up with the idea of creating a portal that could transfer him to wherever there was a shadow — instead of a door that was hopelessly linked to physical doors, numerically limited to those that Lucas had encountered before.
However, as much as Lucas wished to play god within his world, he could not create life. He could imitate life, though, which had him extremely excited over an extremely rough replica of Eren, until said replica demonstrated its inability to act on its own without Lucas's intervention.
But Lucas could do anything within reasonable bounds in his realm. He playfighted with Eren, conjuring one sword for Eren and two for himself at first. When Eren still defeated him, he fell onto his back and laughed.
Yet even in the midst of all of this bliss, a small dot in Lucas's heart twinged, reminding him that this ability would be useless in the tournament.
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