“LET ME IN, DON’T HOARD IT TO YOURSELVES!”
“Fuck off, Bord! I am finally truly rich!”
“Rich? It’s not food?”
“No, it’s money! And gold! AND JEWELS WOOO I’M RICH!”
“Can’t eat gold, and jewels taste bad. I’m going to raid another kitchen!”
“No, you won’t. Stupid humans, we should leave before they realise what is going on. The chaos is starting to lessen.”
Five minutes later, a beastwoman is seen dragging two humans through the streets. The human boy is dragging a trail of sausages behind him while the girl leaves a trail of valuables in her wake. The few other figures out and about all stop and stare at the trio, their lack of green robes immediately painting them as outsiders and intruders.
“Y-you three! Stop right this ins-”
The beastkin’s glare is filled with enough fury to shut the mage up immediately. The small, thorny plants sprouting up from between the cobblestones around the beastwoman’s feet only add to the intimidating aura of anger. “Human, just don’t.”
Each word coming out of her mouth seems to cut the air. The aura of dread is gone the moment one of the figures she is dragging behind her disappears in a black cloud. The still-frozen nature mage can only gape as his purse gets nicked by nimble fingers.
Tess freezes now that she can look around the corner of the building this entire scene played out in front of. “Shit, Angy, there’s a lot of people coming this way.”
“Bord, start running on your own. They will not feed your fat ass when they catch you.” Angeta leaves the busily chewing boy behind as she darts after the black streak that just ran past her. Bord dusts off his pants while putting another sausage into his mouth. “What are they…”
He stops as a rumbling sound reaches his ears. His head slowly turns towards the corner as the sound of many footsteps becomes ever more apparent.
Not half a minute later, Bord catches up to his two fellow disciples, an ever-growing horde of plant animals with green-clad riders chasing them. The trio rushes back towards the centre of the town, their rings stuffed with gold, food and rare plants.
⁂
“But his name is ‘Drew’, right? Why does he want to be called ‘Teach’ then?” Selis is sitting on a chair while forcefully patting a grumpy rabbit. She is sunbathing as the ship slowly rolls in the wind, chatting to the other sunbathers.
“The word ‘teach’ means to share knowledge. Don’t you noble folks have those types of people?” Ket slowly reels in the fishing line he is trailing behind the boat while glancing at the redheaded siblings.
“Ah, we had tutors. They taught us in exchange for a lot of money. Knowledge is only powerful if it is kept to a select few, you know.”
“Yeah sis, before I went on that… vacation, I remember dad and mom talking about the cost of hiring mister Blanche.”
“They gave that creep money?”
Brother and sister start reminiscing about a past not too long ago. The rest of the people ignore the duo as they keep talking about Teach. Ket turns to Re-Haan while keeping an eye on his fishing line. “Do you know why he insists on being called Teach? It’s a pretty old word that has fallen into disuse.”
“Why would I care what he chooses to call himself? It’s not an earned name, so it does not matter.”
Ket opens his mouth to reply but no words come out. After a while, he speaks: “I have no reply to that.”
“Lola is a pretty weird name too. It doesn’t have any whistling or tone change in it.” Selis holds the rabbit in question up high into the air while swaying her back and forth.
“And Drew is weird too. It sounds really foreign. Does he have more names?” Ket is staring at Re-Haan again, craning his neck to look at the woman standing behind the wheel.
“None of them are ea-”
“Earned, yes. That must be a dragon thing, I am guessing?” Ket cuts her off the moment he realises she isn’t answering his question.
“Only great deeds warrant the giving of a name, giving one frivolously is a sign of an underdeveloped culture.” Re-Haan sneers at the stupid human boy with his stupid and inefficient way of catching fish.
“How advanced could the culture of sleeping lizards be? Have you guys discovered the base principles governing electricity or physics?”
“Did you?”
“No, but Teach did. Or his people, at the very least. And he taught them to us. That earns him the name of ‘Teach’ in my book.”
The sound of waves breaking against the hull of the Ascent is very loud in the following minutes.
“I’m bored! Come fishy, let’s check out the other experiments!” Selis jumps up, summoning streams of water around her. A transparent fish flits through the suspended liquid, twirling around the girl as she bounces belowdecks.
Vox and Ares also make their way down the stairs, leaving Ket and Re-Haan alone on deck.
“So, human. A distance between you and your potential mate makes you irritable.”
“So, dragon. A distance between you and your mate makes you-”
“You guys are repeating each other now? I’m gone for a little bit and instead of the nurtured intellectual powerhouses brain cores should be, I see childishness.”
They both freeze, looking at the bearded man that just landed on the deck. “Where is eve… they are below decks. Ah, the mana experiments! Nearly forgot.”
With that, the boy and dragon are alone on the deck again. Ket breaks the silence after a long while. “So, what manner of weather prediction simplification have you found?”
The dragoness arches a single eyebrow. “Dynamic resolution.”
Ket looks at her with an obviously faked dumbfounded expression on his face. “Of course, I scale my resolution down when there is little activity.”
“Did you try a system not based on grids?”
“Uuhm…”
“You still go through the entire grid in a single pass?”
“Well…”
“Okay human. Admit that dragons are superior, and I might just teach you something about object-oriented nodes.”
Ket looks down, mumbling to himself. He then looks up with a wide grin on his face. “No need, thanks for the tip.” He gives the fishing line a large pull and drops the coiled wire on the deck. He jumps overboard, takes a deep breath and sticks his head underwater while clinging to the side of the boat. Sizzling noises can be heard as the excess heat gets dumped in the salty brine.
“So, emitting intent works like that too, hmm. Concepts along with words, interesting. I am a huge stinky poop face.” Re-Haan smiles to herself as she steers the boat.
An entire minute later she realises what she just said. She spends the next hour frantically searching through her own brain space without finding anything at all.
⁂
“Hey Teach!” Selis waves at me, a big smile on her face. I nod back and look at what she is doing.
“What are you doing to my experiment. Why are you contaminating it?” I keep my temper in check as the girl keeps poking a teeth-covered fish. “Don’t touch that one Vox.”
Vox retracts his hands from the burning fish. “What is the meaning behind those lines, Teach?”
“They concentrate dark and light mana. The mages here call it dim and bright. I figured out that mana mutations are caused by a mana imbalance.”
“The beast hordes! They will be starting to roam soon, and each one has a few mutants.” Vox stares at the bowls with big eyes.
“So, Teach, why does bright mana enhance while dim mana seems to… twist?” Selis is now poking her finger through the floating cloud of organs that is one of my experiments. I slap her hand away and sort through the information I gathered so far.
“Qi brings out potential and enhances functions. I think mana is a lesser form of energy, a smaller set of universal principles condensed into a metaphysical form. Qi enhances what is already there. Mana doesn’t seem to be… complete enough to do so.”
�
��I don’t get it.” Vox looks down while rubbing his brows.
“That’s insufficient data to extrapolate off of, Teach.” Ket looks at me accusatorily. He just walked downstairs, water dripping from his wet hair.
“Yeah, qi feels bigger than mana.” Ares is looking down while thinking.
“But fishy now uses qi, not mana?” Selis is still staring me directly in the eyes.
I grin at the thoughtful expressions of my students. “Here is your first task as my students: find out the secrets and science behind mana mutants.”
I see none of the enthusiasm I was hoping for. They all stare at the weird-looking fish pensively. I sigh and give in. “The best theories will receive food privileges. I will cook whatever you want. Cooperation is allowed and encouraged; you all know the basics of science. Use those principles and keep track of who does what.”
I internally lament about the fact that my students get a ferocious and zealous gleam in their eyes when I mention the words ‘food privileges.’ I walk back up the stairs to the deck while thinking about how to lead horses to water.
I also bring the process I implanted in a certain dragon out of stealth mode and greatly enjoy the obvious aura of anxiousness around the ship’s current captain.
Chapter forty-three
Progress
T here is this concept called the pole of inaccessibility. That imaginary pole is the hardest to reach place in a landmass, the piece of land most distant from any coastline. You can invert the concept and figure out the spot in an ocean that is the furthest away from land.
This is relevant because we have reached this place.
Rhea gave me a lot of information when she blasted my mind into the next dimension, including a rough world map. The ocean, on which a large part of my adventures so far have played out, sits in between two continents and is a roughly square shape. I filled in some blanks using my upgraded scouting drone and figured out the spot that is the furthest away from any intelligent life.
There is no point on this half of the planet that is further away from land, unless you go into space. This trip took a bit over two weeks. A lot happened. I could summarize it all, but that would be pretty boring.
I scoot over to Rhea, give her a squeeze and jam a fake microphone in her face.
“Hello, miss, could you give me and the viewers at home an update on what happened on this little journey of ours?”
I manage to keep a straight and semi-professional journalist face as the ticked off dragoness starts fighting back. I can see a flame starting to smoulder inside her pupils as I feel her up while keeping her in a reporter’s hug. Ha! That’s what you get for rejecting half my qi, woman!
“What is it now, you insufferable a-”
“Recap of what happened the last few weeks. I’m keeping a logbook.”
“You know very well what happened, you Dick. Leave me alone.”
I feel my temper flare at her abuse of my name, I heard the capital D in the way she pronounced it. Rhea looks away from me, ignores me totally and acts like the steering wheel needs all her attention. Alright then, let’s start plan number two.
“Pleeeeeaaaaaaase?” I look at her with begging, innocent eyes. I draw a slow-moving band of qi through my eyes and make them water a bit. ‘I’M FUCKING CUTE, CAN’T IGNORE ME, PUPPY EYES’
She stares at me. She blinks a bit. She ignores me again, the ocean taking up her full attention.
“I reformed my cultivation-base, my previous double core base’s qi intent was largely sexual. Great for having fun, useless for fighting. I reformed a braincore with a pure air focus. I tried a heartcore and a gut core. I will reform the double core setup when I reach past the foundation realm.”
I was about to leave and pester the others, but she gives me a recap anyway. I’ve still got it, aw yeah! I smile and kiss her on the cheek.
“Thanks, hun, you sure you don’t want to join me up there later?”
She nods, a smile creeping up her face despite the fierce glare she is still sending my way. “Yes. We’ve got all the time in the world, right? I also am a massive cunt-face.”
I grin back at her and walk downstairs, a jump in my step. I dodge the burst of hyper-condensed air while remotely sending the implanted process into hiding again.
⁂
Selis and Tess are sitting on a bench in a dark space. Ominous shapes surround the duo as they peer into a large cauldron, eldritch lights playing across their fascinated faces. Selis grins an evil smile while rubbing her hands, Tess peers into the murky mixture while rubbing her fingers, letting a fine powder fall from between her digits.
“A pinch more!”
“I’ll add a dash of this too!”
“Don’t mess with the balance too much!”
“Oooh, this one is turning out great!”
They both look at each other and start cackling like mad witches. The mysterious liquid they are bent over flickers with an eerie light as something builds up.
“Tess, here it comes!”
“Control it! I will catch it!”
A thump sounds and the large cauldron shakes a bit. A thin strand of smoke starts rising from the surface, menacing shadows flickering through the wafting fog.
Then the entire thing explodes. The rapidly forming water geyser seems hesitant to form as Selis spreads her arms wide. The fluid explosion freezes as the blue-haired girl’s eyes glow for a brief second. A shadow flashes through the frozen water and Tess appears in the dark cabin, holding an odd shape with two pinched fingers.
“Let’s see. Ow, note this one down Sel. Water and darkness make it ghostly looking. And it seems to glow? Why is it glowing when we added dark darkness mana and light water mana?”
Selis hops over and studies the wiggling thing squeezed between Tess’s slender fingers. “This looks like something deep sea! There is no light there, so some fish do this… uhm… bio… numyremins? Biorumi… nence… thing to create light. Yeah, bio-ruminence. The light attracts prey or is a warning signal.”
“Hmm, can we learn something from this one?”
“Nope, it doesn’t really confirm any of our theories either. Toss it.”
“Yessir!” The fish and her hand turn to black fog as she sticks both through the nearest ship wall. Seconds later a splash is heard as the freshly mutated fish suddenly finds itself outside the ship and falling into the ocean. “What combination do we do now?”
Selis’ eyes sparkle as she rummages through a box, shoving tinkling crystals out of the way. “I wanna try a triple combo again.”
“But Seeeeliiiiis, the last twenty exploded! I’m fine with it, but let’s do a fish again. Exploding squirrels are horrible to clean.”
“I’m sure that the combo of bright nature mana along with dim earth and metal mana will create something viable!” Selis holds a trio of crystals clutched in her fist as she kicks the cauldron over, causing the mana-rich water to flow through a clearly improvised drainage hole.
I stare in horrified fascination as the two girls continue experimenting. Wait, I am peeping on two girls through a crack in a wall. Am I a creep? But this scene is just so… fascinating. My students took to the mission I gave them with gusto. These two have been messing with mana and small animals pretty much nonstop. Angeta has been doing the same with plants, but we’ll get to that later.
For now, I kick open the door to the room in the ship’s bow. The two girls freeze, huddled over the large bowl of freshly poured seawater as they crumble mana crystals on top of their newest experimental subject, a small grey fish.
“TEACH!” they both scream. Tess drops her half-shattered crystal. The water starts to boil furiously for a split-second and explodes at once.
“Ah, ignore me, girls. I just want to hear a status update from you two.” I stare at the two sorry figures expectantly. I ignore the dripping water, along with the small bits of fish guts that just now plopped to the ground from Tess’ shoulder and repeat my question. “Status update from when we left
the mage isles please.” I smile at them broadly. “You have an… eye on your forehead, Sel.” I point at the glistening piece of fish, slowly sliding from a wet hair covered forehead.
She wipes it away while looking at me with eyes just as dead as the fishes. “Reached condensation stage. Am filling core with liquid water-intent qi with a focus on the many forms of water. All three normal phases and variable liquid properties, except for plasma and crystalline structures. Tess, just give him an abbreviated version. He won’t go away until we tell him.”
Tess is trembling, obviously keeping her face blank with effort as she looks at Selis with the corner of her eyes. “Angry Selis is cute too, hmm.”
I’m pretty sure I wasn’t supposed to hear her mumble that to herself. I see Tess take a deep breath to get herself under control.
“I’ve filled up half of my core with sublimation shadow-intent qi. I’ve got nothing new to report besides a lot of experiments on the properties of mana.”
I give the duo a thumbs up and walk towards the edge of the dark room. I knock a finger on the small green dome, and it opens up a crack, thick wafts of mana seeping through the opening. I look inside the dark little room and smile at the angry, furry face peering at me from the dark. “Hey, Angeta. How’s it going?”
“I’m working on plants again. Stupid fucking pieces of goatshit.”
“How many did you manage to mana mutate?” I ask the irate woman.
“Two… I managed to make two fucking plants mutate in three fucking weeks. And there goes this one.” She covers her face in both hands as the plant she was staring at withers and crumbles in seconds. “A single blade of grass needs incredible dense amounts of mana for at least a day to mutate.”
I look at the mix of fury, resignation and excitement flickering across her face with interest. I am recording this, of course, I’m not doing all this for nothing after all.
“I’d stop, but this is helping my cultivation base immensely. Making qi from loose mana this dense is faster than turning wild qi into my own. I’m past the halfway point of filling my core with liquid qi, so that’s pretty neat I guess…”
The Dao of Magic: Book II Page 35