Chapter 44
“The manners in which magic can be applied to improve yourself is endless. There are spells to improve every metric by which a person might be judged, and if applied correctly and consistently, growth in almost every area is a possibility. But with too much focus placed on advancement to higher circles by the education system, we end up with stunted mages who miss out on these opportunities until they are too old to take full advantage of them.”
—The Trouble With Mages: Why Rushing Advancement Ruins Your Future, Melia Fairbloom
“You aren’t gonna get stronger doing just that.” Kaya told him the next morning as he went through his calisthenics in their chambers, the sound of him exercising forcing her to stir from her own room. “Maybe if you want to just tread air, fine. But if you want to actually improve, you need to do more.”
“Oh? And what do you propose?” He replied, bracing himself for another one of her jokes.
But this time, it didn’t prove to be a joke.
“You’re a mage, aren’t you? Start empowerin yourself. Using magic.”
Unfortunately that didn’t help Sylvas in the slightest in figuring out exactly what Kaya meant, his blank stare prompting her to retreat to her room, grab her slate, and all but toss it towards him from the bathroom door. Catching it, or rather letting it slam into his chest and closing his arms around it, he look at what was on the page, his eye skimming over the words at the top.
- Empowerments: Body Enhancement
He felt like an idiot as he discovered yet another blind spot to his education as he began to read, noticing that it was one of the many new avenues of progression that opened up after receiving an affinity. Not that he’d had any time to delve into it given his immediate change in workload.
Apparently there were countless physical empowerment spells to improve his strength, resilience and reaction times, each of which were paired to the attributes and scores that his scries consolidated in their reports. By layering the proper enhancements upon himself, and pushing himself as far as he could go, they would soak into him as his body healed, granting gradual improvements depending on his efforts. Apparently, it wasn’t too dissimilar to the construction of a magic item, where each day another layer of a spell was applied until finally it came to fruition, save that instead of it being a staff or wand enchanted, it was his muscles, nerves, skin, and bones.
Or at least it was for that half of the equation.
There were empowerments paths to the wielding of magic as well, even if they were immensely more complex to understand as attributes. Potency was basically defined by the ability to produce mana in bursts, and Focus was some sort of mental calculation on how well and quickly a mage could assemble spells. Both of which could only be improved through practice and repetition rather than through the direct aid of magic, often while under exceptionally trying conditions. The only true magical empowerment that he could come across for the other half was for Regeneration, and even then that wasn’t like the empowerments designed to reinforce a physical body. Rather they were a variety of techniques to draw mana in faster, which of course varied depending on affinity.
Though I imagine that having what is quite literally a gravity well inside me puts me in a vastly different situation than others, Sylvas thought as he scried himself, having noticed that his mana regeneration had grown exponentially since his last scry the day he’d arrived on Strife without any assistance from him, the same if to a lesser extent as his other more magically inclined attributes.
- Name: Sylvas Vail
- Species: Human
- Health: 100%
- Mana: 201%
- First Circle Embodiment: Arterium Arcanum
- First Circle Paradigm: Clearmind
- Second Circle Embodiment: Arcane Bulwark
- Second Circle Paradigm: Lockmind
- Affinity: Gravity
- Strength: F1
- Resilience: F2
- Speed: F1
- Potency: E7
- Focus: E11
- Regeneration: E13
That part was good news at least in the sense that he was already accustomed to holding in more mana than his circles should technically have allowed, because some mornings he woke up feeling full to bursting. At the same time however, it meant that he had to start making meaningful progress towards his third circle, lest he find himself truly overdoing it.
In any case, with Kaya’s aid, Sylvas quickly learned and then started casting a series of physical enhancement spells one after the other on himself, giving his body the potential to regrow all the strong once he strained it. Unfortunately it was at the cost of burning a decent amount of his reserve away. If he had pure gravity affinity mana to work with it he wouldn’t have needed to do so, but for now, the mixed blend within his core meant he had to spend a lot more mana than he would have in the past.
But it was a problem that Sylvas would just need to learn to deal with, the same with his own delayed progression in empowering himself, if for the simple fact that the cull was coming far sooner than he had time to deal with.
The only silver lining, if it could be even considered such, was that combat exercises were effectively over for the lead up to the event. On the one hand it gave Sylvas and the other recruits more time to study and prepare, but on the other, it prevented Sylvas from truly pushing himself physically to make the most of his physical empowerments. Granted, someday he knew that the knowledge of how to slingshot a ship around a gravity well would come in handy, but with the more physical threat of the cull looming over him, focusing on academic things felt like wasted time.
Or so he felt when it came to the bigger picture of things, for there were a few positive highlights to the classes he attended. Originally when he’d been tempted him into the Ardent, Sylvas had been promised an unrivalled magical education, and only now did he finally he felt like he was starting to get it.
And it all started with a single word from Instructor Vilmander, who taught Sylvas’ very first Empowerment and Enhancement class.
“Pathetic.”
“Um, I beg your pardon, sir?” Sylvas had almost been shocked into silence as the man stopped before him, immediately realizing that he had to talk fast before Kaya could jump to his defense and landed them both in the brig.
“Second Circle. Gravity affinity, working towards Waveform Paradigm and… some sort of internal weight shifting?”
It was an assessment that Sylvas didn’t exactly want to have broadcast to the entire class he was currently in. These were the only surprises he was liable to have at his disposal during the cull, as such he had to fall into Clearmind to help him bite back his temper. “As you say, sir.”
“Yet not a single empowerment worth a glance set upon you? By the time I hit third circle I could manipulate my embodiment to perform minor miracles without ever having to exert a drop of mana, and what do I see in you? Flesh riddled with holes, layered on protections, a hollowed out skull, yet sealed shut from intrusion, and then stopped dead as if you didn’t realize that laying the foundations of a house and building a house are two separate activities. I have come upon many a slacker in my unfortunate days as an instructor at Blackhall but none so willfully ignorant to their own capabilities.”
Sylvas might have had learned patience at the feet of an apocalyptic cult that had spent generations waiting for him to arrive and condemn Croesia to destruction, but even he had his limits. “You are my instructor in this subject, sir?”
Vilmander nodded plainly. “I am indeed.”
“Then perhaps you might like to instruct me, sir.”
Kaya made a little choking noise and promptly leaned away from Sylvas so that she wouldn’t be in the direct line of fire when the Instructor went nuclear at Sylvas.
However instead of exploding, Vilmander’s eyes simply narrowed upon Sylvas. They were odd for a human, golden, and shining, but malice didn’t seem to be in them. “You’ve already got intentions for the gravity shifting—”
Sylvas cut him off before he could spoil any further surprises. “I do.”
“You recognize how it can be used to enhance—”
Sylvas had chosen it based on the potential it had to supplant the need for improving his physical scores. “I do.”
“So that leaves us the other circles to work with, and the Waveform. That could be expanded out into something useful and sensory.”
“It is already something useful and sensory.”
“We can enhance it. Broaden the spectrum, widen the range.”
Sylvas froze at the thought, eventually nodding once. “So long as we don’t—”
The man finished Sylvas’ thought, his tone having changed drastically since his original introduction. “—lose the granularity, of course. Wouldn’t do to blind ourselves to what is in front of us so that we can see the horizon more clearly.”
It was enough for Sylvas to concede that the man knew his business, enough so that he made another concession, something he hadn’t admitted to anyone. Even Fahred. “The first two paradigms are interlocked.”
“That makes expanding them difficult but not impossible.” Vilmander tapped at his slate as they spoke, adjusting calculations. “You use the first to manage second sight?”
“I do.”
A brief glimmer of gold appeared from beneath furrowed brows. “And you’ll use it for the third also?”
“If it becomes necessary.”
“It might, once we expand out the third.” Vilmander went on without missing a beat. “Then we should shift our focus to the embodiments. Not often you see them designed specifically for casting enhancements.”
“And resilience.” Sylvas added.
Vilmander paused in his scratching at the slate, then nodded. “Limited resilience applications, but expandable.”
“I believe that we may have come to an understanding, Instructor.”
“Now kiss!” Kaya suddenly called out from her seat, making all the other intently listening students laugh despite themselves.
But while Sylvas flushed with embarrassment, the Instructor didn’t even glance up from his slate. “Miss Runemaul, I am afraid that this is not that kind of educational institution.”
As the man said that, Sylvas own slate then lit up with newly received information. Complex and interlocking spells, not only for temporary enhancements and empowerments drawing on his embodiments. But an ongoing plan for growth and expanding out their functionality exactly as the Instructor and he had just discussed in rapid-fire. The man must have had all of this ready in advance, already knowing how their meeting was going to play out. But even if he did, Sylvas couldn’t find it in himself to be annoyed at being so easily played.
For if everything on his slate did a fraction of what they promised to, he might very well have been tempted to follow Kaya’s advice and kiss the man.