Mia glanced up at him, and her smile faltered. “I used to frequent them quite often with my mother, but I haven’t been to one in several years.”
Judging by her reaction, it was a touchy subject, and he regretted bringing it up and ruining her mood. “Does anything on the menu sound good to you?”
“Right now I’m between the potato soup, the garden minestrone, and pork cutlets with carrots. What about you?” As Mia listed off the several menu items that caught her interest, her smile slowly returned, and he had to stop himself from sighing in relief.
“I’m considering the vermilion scaled lizard.”
Mia maintained her smile, but it seemed slightly more forced. “That may not be the best decision.”
He looked at her curiously. “Why?”
“Vermillion scaled lizard is a creature that is served in high-end restaurants. If they are serving it here for only 50 copper coins, the meat will likely have been cut from the leftover carcasses thrown out by those establishments.”
He frowned, that didn’t sound very appetizing. At that moment the waiter came back in the room to take their order. “What would you like to eat my lord?”
Dante glanced up to the waiter, according to the adequate Mia taught him, she should have been the first to order. “You can take her order first.”
“Of course my lord, I’m terribly sorry.” The waiter seemed to become even more flustered. If their status were the same, Mia would have ordered first. The waiter clearly believed that he had misread the situation and offended him. “What would you like my lady?” There was almost no hesitation when he said ‘my lady’ this time.
The treatment, or just his manners, seemed to make Mia even happier. “I’ll take the garden minestrone.” She handed the waiter her menu.
“Excellent choice my lady.” The waiter turned toward him. “And you, my lord?”
The vermillion scaled lizard definitely didn’t seem like a great option anymore, so he decided to follow Mia’s expertise. “I’ll do the same.”
“Another excellent choice, I’ll have it brought right out.” The waiter quickly collected the menu’s and rushed out of the room.
“Dante.”
He looked up to Mia. “Yes?”
Mia averted her gaze slightly. “Thank you.”
The words took him off-guard, they seemed to come from nowhere. “For what?”
A slight tinge of crimson appeared on Mia’s face. “You’re the first friend I’ve had in years.”
For a moment the two of them just stared at each other. He didn’t know what to say, he didn’t even know how to feel.
He finally had a real friend.
Chapter 33
Dante’s Immortality – Chapter 33
Layla Calman
Layla’s nails clicked against the desk as drummed her fingers. The report in front of her was troubling, Kayla’s actions made no sense, unless she knew something…
Layla looked at the spymaster her father had assigned to them. “How did she even find out about him?”
“I believe Sir Andres used her to lead Greggory Tibbott to the arena.”
Layla rubbed the bridge of her nose. She couldn’t fathom how Sir Andres could have been so useless as to use Kayla from House Stavins. “Tell me, that at the very least, Dante didn’t see her in the arena.”
The spymaster in front of her finally showed some form of emotion, and seeing his hesitation, she decided she could have done without it. “It is a possibility… She sat in the Housing District 1 section during the fight.”
“Idiots!” Layla balled up the report in front of her and threw it at the spymaster, bouncing it off of his bald head. “Why would he not use someone more disposable?”
The spymaster’s calm expression didn’t change at all. “She could be disposable.”
Layla jabbed her finger toward the report she just threw. “She is in all four of his classes, in what way do you think that she is disposable now?” She took a moment to calm herself. She hadn’t met Kayla personally, but judging by some of the things in her report, Kayla should have been killed long ago. “Why wasn’t she disposed of already?”
“From what I have read, our agents have found her unique skill set to be useful for jobs that need a… subtle touch.” He motioned to the report. “Not only has she been successful in all of her missions, but she hasn’t left a trace in any of them.”
Layla snorted. “You call this not leaving a trace?”
The spymaster had the decency to at least look embarrassed. “This wasn’t the sort of job that she specializes in.”
“What of Mia’s recent reports, does he suspect Kayla of anything?”
The spymaster stepped forward, handing Layla the papers in question.
Layla read them over carefully, and the more she read, the closer her eyebrows were drawn together. “He’s taking advanced mana manipulation? How was this not in Kayla’s file.” She had a hard time processing the information through her anger. It stated that he was only taking the class because he wanted to learn more about mana manipulation, but if he had a magic Classification… Even though it was close to impossible for someone to inherit both a magic and non-magic Classification, it was still worth looking into it.
Layla raked her hand through her hair. She didn’t have time for this, she needed to continue to focus on the campaign preparations. “Where in the hell is Alexander? I don’t have time to do all of this myself, and that damn headmaster keeps getting in my way.”
The spymaster looked away. “I’m not sure.”
Layla was breathing heavily, she attempting to reign in her anger, but it was a losing battle. “Where is he?” It was hard to get the words out through her gritted teeth.
The spymaster cleared his throat, clearly uncomfortable. “There was a new shipment of… servants, and he went to, uh… inspect them.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” He should have been dealing with headmaster so she could actually get something done. “Tell Alexander that if I even see the old bastard today, I’ll have him castrated.” She was so mad that she couldn’t even think straight.
She motioned for him to leave. “As you command, my lady.” The spymaster turned to leave.
Layla rubbed her forehead. “Wait.”
“Yes, my lady?”
“Put someone you trust in his mana manipulation Class, I want a detailed report of his progress.”
* * *
“Wake up.”
“No.”
He felt a jab to his side and released a groan. “Give me a few more minutes.”
Mia was standing over him, looking quite haggard. “I already did, get up, or you’ll be late for your advanced mana manipulation class.”
Her words drew out another groan. He couldn’t be late for his mana manipulation class, the old bastard of an instructor already hated him enough.
Dante utilized all of his willpower and threw himself off of his soft and warm bed. He laid sprawled out on the wood floor, getting a few extra moments of rest before sitting up. Three hours of sleep just wasn’t enough.
Mia looked inside his room, and seeing him awake, she smiled kindly… She looked like she was moments away from passing out.
Seeing her, Dante couldn’t help but grimace. Mia had seen better days, the bags under her eyes were well defined, making her look rather ghastly. “I think I can find my way to class today, maybe you should take the day off.”
“If you really think that’s a good idea…” Mia was unable to even finish her sentence, she just slumped to the floor and passed out.
Dante got up and stifled his yawn. The new schedule was brutal, he was averaging around three hours of sleep a night, and had only been doing it for about a week. He was beginning to regret taking four classes.
He didn’t regret it because he lacked sleep though, the new knowledge he was learning was invaluable. No, the reason he regretted it was because of what it was doing to Mia.
She had been doing her
best to support him, not only following him around to his classes and making sure he kept to his schedule, but by also using the small amount of time they had during the night to prepare food for him to eat between classes the following day.
He was averaging around three hours of sleep a night, but Mia couldn’t be getting more than one.
Walking over to Mia’s unconscious body, Dante picked her up and carried her to her bed. After tucking her in, and then stifling yet another yawn, he walked back toward his room and began to get ready for the day.
* * *
Only thirty minutes later, Dante found himself inside of the mana manipulation training room.
‘Room’ wasn’t really a good description of it, it was almost exactly like one of the arenas, but lacked the stands for spectators. Everything else was the same, down to the enchantment protection bubble surrounding the area they trained in.
“I told you we should have skipped that boring artifact class, you would have had plenty of sleep.” Kayla was standing over him. One of the neat tricks he had learned was that if he arrived before a class started, he could take a nap and Kayla would wake him up.
She smirked. “If only you could see yourself right now.”
Is she even human?
He couldn’t fathom where Kayla got so much energy. She was always with him in every single class, yet she wasn’t tired. At all. He had never even seen her yawn.
Dante shot up, Kayla only arrived just before instructor Arin each morning.
He almost made it up, when he heard the nasally voice behind him.
“Ah, I see it’s too much to ask for a student that doesn’t slack off before class each morning. Despite my constant reminders.”
Shit.
Dante spun and stood attentively towards instructor Arin. He had already sat out during a class as punishment for sleeping in the mana manipulation room. He almost preferred Archie’s form of discipline… almost.
Instructor Arin saw his expression and smiled. “I don’t have time for you today, we need to update everyone else’s Status for manipulation.”
“Pardon?”
Instructor Arin just snorted through his hooked nose, then began to speak slowly, as if to an imbecile. “When you were swinging your sword around like a savage and began to learn how to pump world essence into it, it’s the thing that your savage of an instructor forced into you.”
Dante’s expression didn’t change, he was used to the instructor’s prejudice against non-magic Classifications. “My instructor didn’t force anything into me.”
Instructor Arin smirked and reached up confidently to slick back what was possibly a full head of hair at one time. He couldn’t tell what the instructor was trying to accomplish by doing it, but it resulted in greasy strands of hair sticking the man’s shiny dome, which was sickening to say the least. “Why does that not surprise me?”
Dante tried not to react to the horrific sight in front of him, but Kayla didn’t hesitate. Her face was scrunched up in revulsion. “You’re absolutely disgusting.”
Instructor Arin’s face flushed red. “I’m terribly sorry miss Stavins.”
Despite the instructor’s many terrible qualities, the man wasn’t a hypocrite. He valued one’s ability above all else, as long as they had a magic Classification. So, even though he despised Dante, who was a ‘Warrior,’ he also saw himself to be completely bellow Kayla, who he praised as a protegee in mana manipulation.
Instructor Arin cleared his throat. “As I was saying. Your instructor was most likely smashed once too many times in the head and completely forgot about updating your Status.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small bag.
That was unlikely, Archie had left out more than one thing he thought was useless to their training, this was likely just one of those things. Archie may have been a demon incarnate as an instructor, but his methods were far more effective than any of the other instructors in yard one.
Instructor Arin began to dig around in his sack. “Alright everyone, fall in.”
He wasn’t sure who ‘everyone’ was, but he and Shan walked forward.
Kayla just stood back, inspecting her nails. “I’ve already eaten a manipulation crystal.”
The three of them were instructor Arin’s only students. Unlike the world essence manipulation, mana manipulation classes weren’t divided by nobility. There were too few commoners with a magic Classification to warrant a separate class, which is how they had someone like Shan in their class.
Shan was strange. The first day that he met Shan, he tried to be friendly, thinking it would be nice to talk to someone who wasn’t a noble. But the boy just completely ignored him. Every class, he would just stand and watch everyone else expressionlessly. He wasn’t sure if Shan had a poor experience with nobles in the past, making him reluctant to talk to him or Kayla, but something about Shan made him keep his guard up.
Instructor Arin held out two tiny crystals in his hand, they were the size of small seeds and looked similar to the manipulation orb that Archie had given him. “Alright, infuse these so we can get on with our lesson.”
Shan immediately took his and swallowed it, and Dante watched closely. He had severe trust issues after having Archie as an instructor. After a few minutes, there were no adverse reactions.
All the evidence in the situation led him to believe that the manipulation crystal wouldn’t harm him, so he took it and swallowed it.
“Alright, fill it with your Mana.”
He began to fill the essence crystal up with his Mana, it was tiny, only a fraction the size of his manipulation orb, so it filled rather quickly. As soon as it reached capacity, the crystal shattered and there was a burning sensation in his wrist. Dante stared down at his combatant’s glove, interested in the new development. He was itching to open his Status, but he wasn’t going to do it in front of Kayla, much less instructor Arin or Shan.
Instructor Arin saw him looking at his glove. “You can waste time on your own time.” He snorted as if it was some clever joke. “Let’s get started with the lesson. Create your mana shield.”
They all began to form their basic mana shields. Kayla was finished first, hers was by far the densest. Shan created his after, it was what Dante assumed would be average for a new student in advanced mana manipulation. Or at least, it’s what he based his on. He formed his own mana shield, it was around half Shan’s in density and took him twice as long to make.
He was pretty sure he was underperforming, even for the average Warrior Classification, but he reasoned that underperforming was far better than overperforming in his situation.
“Excellent as always miss Stavins.” Arin gave Kayla a look full of admiration. “Alright, I have already bestowed you all with the knowledge of creating a mana shield. Today we will learn to strengthen it. Begin by creating a second Mana shield.”
Arin had barely finished talking when Kayla effortlessly created her second shield.
Showoff.
Dante began to create his second shield also.
“When your second Mana shield is created, connect them with strands of Mana then pull them toward each other.”
It took him a few more minutes than Shan or Kayla, but eventually, he was able to create and maintain his second shield.
Maintaining the second shield was the hard part, it was like holding two different thoughts at the same time; he could only focus on one, but he needed to focus on both. As soon as his second shield was formed, he shot thin mana threads between the two shields and began to pull them together.
It was difficult. Mana, as a rule, was a somewhat elastic substance when formed. Meaning that it had some give, but if you yanked on it too hard, it would just use the force to rebound after the thread snapped.
“Now that the shields are close together, interweave the mana threads inside of the shield with each other.”
The entirety of the shield was actually several different threads of mana, which is why it seemed so soft and elastic. It
was theoretically possible to control mana that wasn’t in thread form, but the control that it would take was ridiculous.
Mia’s technique for spreading awareness was a good example. Not only could he only get the mana about an inch away from his body before it dispersed on its own, but the mana was too loosely packed to actually help in any form of defense.
Mana strands were helpful to use because the Mana inside of the threads wouldn’t disperse unless they were severed, and they were easy to use because they would automatically stick to each other. The only thing that took focus was maintaining shape, like maintaining his current shield wall.
“Force them into the same space, interlocking the threads, and fusing them to shrink the shield.”
Dante frowned. His headache was already quite substantial, and he wasn’t sure if he would be able to make it through today’s lesson. As his two shields touched, he began to weave the threads together. Then, as the threads began to weave, he started to fuse them.
His skull felt like it had been split by an axe, but the result was a single shield that had about twice the Mana density of the original. He couldn’t help but have a newfound respect for the noble who had beaten him in the arena. The noble made it seem so smooth and effortless, combining several shields together in the span of only a few seconds.
“Well done miss Stavins.” Kayla was fusing shields one after the other, instantly fusing each one as soon as it touched. “I suppose that the two of yours are passable.” He indicated towards Dante’s and Shan’s shield. “Focus on this until the end of class, I’ll see you all tomorrow.”
He had never thought that he would miss Archie so much. Arin only spent a few minutes with them each day, then left them to practice on their own.
Letting out a sigh, he pushed through the pain of his headache and began to practice.
Dante's Immortality: Beginnings Page 29