Mother of Learning 2 - Outside World

by nobody103

  As far as Taiven was concerned, this was exactly what she had been waiting for. Already frustrated with the lack of chances to prove her worth, she was eager to take advantage of this new development to make a name for herself by aggressively pursuing bounties and putting down as many dungeon denizens as she could find.

  The problem was that her group was too small for her ambitions. Three people do not make a proper hunting party.

  "I'm surprised you came to me with this," said Zorian. "This sounds like it requires decent combat skills, and I am only a third year. Surely some of your peers would have been better for this?"

  "Well, the thing is, I'm not the only one recruiting… and many of the other recruiters are a lot more prestigious and well-known than little old me. It should get easier once I start getting results, but that could be too late and I can't afford to be too picky right now."

  "Can't afford to be picky, huh?" said Zorian flatly. Before the time loop, that phrase right there would have caused him to refuse her offer out of spite. He hated being thought of as second best, nevermind a last resort. But years in the time loop had tempered his ego, and he could admit to himself that Taiven's judgement was spot on – considering the information she had on him.

  "Okay, bad choice of words," admitted Taiven. "But as you said yourself, you're only a third year. How good are you at combat magic? Do you think you could pull your own weight in a team as you are now?"

  Hmm, how much should he reveal here? Taiven could be shockingly oblivious about some things, but she would definitely not ignore him being way stronger than he had any right being. And she was one of the few people who knew his pre-time loop self well enough to make such a judgement call with a fair amount of certainty.

  And for that matter, did he even want to join Taiven's group? It sounded like a huge time sink, and he had so many other things vying for his attention… maybe it would be better if he were to pretend he was too weak and inexperienced to help her?

  Oh to hell with it – he'd give it a chance this time. If nothing else, it would give him a ready-made excuse for a lot of things he intended to do in this restart.

  "Absolutely. I have been in the Dungeon before," he admitted. "I have a decent repertoire of combat spells and I'm confident that I won't freeze on the first sign of danger. The biggest problem is my mana reserves – at maximum, I can only cast about 20 magic missiles in a row. And that's after I increased my reserves through constant use – I'm pretty average in terms of mana reserves magnitude."

  Taiven stared at him for a few seconds, incredulous. "You've been in the Dungeon before?" she finally asked. "I'm surprised you got permission for that. The Academy sure didn't want to give me one before I was well into my fourth year."

  "I didn't say anything about asking permission," said Zorian.

  "Zorian…"

  "What, like you've never done anything like that?" challenged Zorian.

  "Well, maybe once or twice," Taiven admitted. "But it doesn't sound like this was an occasional occurrence for you. Getting your mana reserves that high must have involved some pretty intense practice, considering where you started from. That sounds pretty dangerous."

  "Sometimes a man has to take chances," Zorian quoted in Taiven's voice. "I do believe you're the one who told me that, Taiven."

  "I was talking about romance and you know it," she protested. "Why couldn't you take my advice about that instead?"

  'I did take your advice,' thought Zorian sourly to himself. 'I got laughed in my face for my trouble.'

  "Why are you lecturing me about this? You should be overjoyed your desperate play had worked," he said instead. "Do you want me in your damn team or not?"

  "I do, I do!" Taiven quickly assured him. She pulled out a sheet of paper from her bag and set it down on the table in front of him. "I guess you're right, this isn't really important right now. Why don't you just fill out this membership form and I'll give you a rundown of what I had planned for tomorrow…"

  ✦ ✧ ✦

  Over the next couple of days Zorian went on regular forays into Cyoria's underworld with Taiven, Urik and Oran. He quickly realized that his combat skills weren't really the most valuable thing he brought to the whole operation – the combined might of Taiven and her two old teammates was usually enough to destroy any threat they encountered, with Zorian only called to fight when one of those three ended up low on mana and needed to rest for a while. No, the biggest benefits he brought to the table was a detailed map of a huge chunk of Cyoria's underworld (courtesy of the matriarch's last message) and a decent proficiency in divination that allowed him to scout the areas in front of them and track down any specific target they were pursuing. Without him there to direct the rest of the group, they would have probably spent most of their time wandering aimlessly in search of something to fight. Those three were dangerously overspecialized for direct combat in Zorian's opinion.

  While down in the Dungeon, he took the opportunity to scout the invader's underground bases that he was aware of, trying to see how they were dealing with this kind of increased activity and scrutiny of Cyoria's underworld. Taiven's group was far from only one that had tried to cash in on the bounties the city was offering, and more groups were expected to get involved soon. What he found was that the invaders had retreated somewhat, abandoning several of their more exposed bases completely and leaving only token forces in many others. That was bound to have a very negative impact on the execution of the invasion…

  When he wasn't hunting down dungeon denizens with Taiven, he was tending to the multitude of his other plans and obligations. He finished harvesting crystalized mana under Knyazov Dveri and had started to slowly sell his huge stockpile off to various stores, both in Cyoria and outside. He took Kirielle to see Nochka and stayed around to watch out for any cranium rats in the area (but thankfully didn't detect any). He ended up meeting Nochka's father this time – a tall, jovial, bearded, muscular fellow named Sauh who loved to laugh and talk and was completely unlike his wife, yet still terrifying in his own way. Zorian was half-convinced that the workshop Sauh insisted on showing him, the one full of hammers and other heavy, dangerous-looking tools, was the man's way of threatening him bodily harm should he hurt his daughter in any way. He also visited the library to see what Ibery wanted from him. To his surprise, he found out that Ibery was interested in getting magical instruction from him. She had been looking to hire someone for additional tutoring outside of the academy, but found most tutors out of her price range, and was hoping a third year like him might be amenable to a spell exchange or something else of that nature. Though the offer was kind of interesting, he had too many things on his plate as it was – so he told her he'd get back to her after the summer festival, if she was still interested. Perhaps in some future restart where he refused Taiven's recruitment pitch.

  And, of course, he still had to attend classes. That was a chore, though not quite as big of one as he had been expecting. His long absence from Cyoria had made him forget many of the details of how classes were supposed to go, and caused him to view others in a completely new perspective. The constant monster incursions into the city had also had an effect on the academy. Jade was gone from the class, pulled out of the academy by her family for safety concerns. Zach was gone too, of course, and since nobody (except Zorian) knew the real reason for his absence, most people assumed he had been similarly pulled out for safety reasons and sent out of Cyoria. Kyron announced during their first lessons that he was running additional combat practice lessons during evenings and Ilsa openly encouraged anyone with significant combat ability to join one of the groups culling the monsters, offering special benefits and exceptions to anyone who did so and achieved results. She pointed out Zorian, Briam, Tinami, Naim and Estin as examples of people in the class who had already done that, thoroughly surprising Zorian – he never would have guessed so many people in his class had decided they're good enough to get themselves involved in that. Two days later, Kopriva would join that
list, while Maya and Iroro were ordered home by their parents until the situation calmed down.

  With such large changes in class composition and teacher behavior, Zorian's school experience was relatively novel compared to what he remembered of his pre-exile Cyoria days. He was sure it would all get boring and repetitive again after another restart or two, but for now it was bearable.

  ✦ ✧ ✦

  A few more days passed. The number and severity of monster excursions gradually dropped off, and the city stopped behaving like a kicked over anthill and settled into some semblance of normality. There was still a lot of tension in the air, forays into the Dungeon went on still, but things were finally calming down. As such, Zorian started investigating various invaders, cultists and other people related to the invasion that he still remembered from his time with the Cyorian aranea, tracking their movements and activities but launching no attacks for the moment. The furor over the dead mercenaries and monster incursions caused so many changes to the preparations of the invasion that his memories were of limited use, and he didn't want to move until he was reasonably sure he knew when and where to strike.

  It was peculiar, though… even accounting for massive divergences due to Red Robe's removal of aranea, the invaders were still strangely ineffective. Less informed. Before, they seemed to know how to bypass certain wards or evade notice of Cyoria's law enforcement – knowledge that they largely lacked in the current restart. He was starting to suspect that Red Robe had a habit of handing over a lot of crucial information to the invaders in previous restarts, even ones where he didn't appear to pay much attention to them afterwards… but that in this one restart he'd chosen not to bother with that at all.

  Strange.

  The arrival of Kael at Imaya's place reminded Zorian of their deal to help Kael develop his alchemy in exchange for help with soul magic and other stuff. Unfortunately, there was a problem: Zorian had largely forgotten what the contents of Kael's notebook were over the many, many restarts he had been absent from Cyoria. Somehow Kael managed to figure out a few things from the disjointed parts of his notes that Zorian still remembered, which helped convince him that Zorian was telling the truth, but he was essentially starting from scratch.

  Zorian knew he had to find a solution to the forgetting problem if that deal was ever going to work. Without constant reinforcement in every restart, he would forget again, and the amount of information he had to memorize was only going to increase with each restart, making the task harder. And that wasn't just the issue with Kael's potion recipes, either – he had been having trouble remembering the layout of Knyazov Dveri resource deposits, some of the minor details of previous restarts (such as his meeting with Nochka) had completely slipped from his memory, and he had a feeling that remembering the vast amount of information about invaders in Cyoria he was currently gathering was going to be a major issue in the future.

  He needed a better way to remember things, and he needed it soon. He would have to set aside the upcoming weekend to see if he could figure something out.

  He knocked on Xvim's door and dutifully waited for the man to invite him in.

  "Come in," Xvim called out from inside, and Zorian quickly entered the man's office and sat down when instructed to do so.

  "Show me your basic three," Xvim ordered.

  Zorian did so – silently, efficiently and without complaint. He had decided before coming here that he would try and see how long it would take for Xvim to get unnerved by him meeting all of his demands without any issue or complaint. It was a long term project, of course – he didn't really think he could baffle the infuriating man in this particular restart – but he was determined to see it through. He would practice whatever stupid exercise Xvim threw at him every single day, restart after restart, until he got them right. Until he got them all right, if he was forced to. The man had to run out of shaping exercises at some point, right?

  Xvim threw a marble at him. Zorian moved his head lightly to the left, moving out of the marble's flight path without ever meeting the man's eyes. Another two marbles flew at him, but the result was exactly the same.

  "Close your eyes," Xvim ordered.

  Zorian did. He still dodged every marble Xvim threw at him, a cloud of diffuse mana scattered around him as a detection field. Xvim did not react, unfazed by his improbable skill, but neither did Zorian.

  "You can open your eyes again. Here's a box of marbles," said Xvim, reaching beneath his desk to pick up a large bowl full of hated spheres of glass. They came in a wide variety of sizes, and Zorian was silently thankful that Xvim only ever threw the small ones at him – some of the big ones looked like they could knock a man unconscious if they connected. "Levitate as many as you can. Hurry up, we haven't got all day!"

  Zorian levitated every single marble in the bowl, but alas – he was too slow. Or at least Xvim thought so, anyway. He made Zorian lift and lower the entire mass of marbles over and over again, wasting an entire hour. Zorian said nothing though, doing his best to meet Xvim's unreasonable demands.

  "Levitating them like that in a giant disorganized lump is unsightly. Make it a proper sphere. A ring now. A pyramid. That doesn't look like a pyramid to me – do you need to have your glasses checked, mister Kazinski? Yes, better. But slow – you must be faster. Much faster. Start over from the sphere again. Again. Again."

  Zorian made the mass of marbles flow from one shape to another as fast as he could, but eventually a disaster struck – he lost control of the exercise and the entire mass went crashing down onto the table. Zorian winced as the marbles bounced off the table, making a huge racket and scattering all over Xvim's office, his mask of cool detachment breaking for a moment.

  Damn it.

  Several seconds passed in the aftermath as Zorian and Xvim stared at each other impassively.

  "Well?" asked Xvim curiously. "What are you waiting for, mister Kazinski? Hurry up and gather the marbles into the bowl so we can continue where we left off."

  "Yes, sir," said Zorian, unable to keep a note of sourness out of his voice. "I'll be right on it."

  It was official: he really hated marbles.

  Chapter 39

  Suspicious Coincidences

  Zorian stared at his tormentor in silence, as relaxed and impassive as one could be when faced with such a pitiless, unreasonable man. Xvim stared back at him, his face a picture of unshakable, effortless composure that made Zorian's best efforts at stoicism appear laughable in comparison. Still, he wouldn't break. He didn't break. He had (eventually) met every ridiculous demand Xvim had given him and had never blown up at the man even once. Of course, that hadn't impressed the man any, even when he'd demonstrated insanely good shaping skills for a third year student, but he'd expected as much.

  They continued staring at each other in silence for several seconds.

  "That," Xvim finally decided, "was terrible. You are inflexible, slow, yet paradoxically impatient. I see in you a tendency to overreach, mister Kazinski, moving on to advanced fields of study without a healthy foundation to back it up. A common problem with many of your fellow mages, true, but 'everyone else is doing it' was never a valid excuse for anything. We will have to work on that before we tackle anything more substantial."

  "Of course, sir," Zorian said calmly. "I'll be sure to practice everything you've shown me back at home."

  "Good. I expect a better performance on our second session," said Xvim, leaning back in his chair before making a shooing motion with his hand. "You are dismissed."

  Zorian made a solemn nod, slowly rose from his chair and then fled the office as fast as he could without making it obvious he was in a hurry to leave. Only when he shut the door and put some distance from the room did he let himself relax.

  That could have ended up badly. Very, very badly. He knew he'd be taking a risk when he tried to read Xvim's mind, but the man had aggravated him so much that he couldn't help himself. Besides, what were the chances of Xvim deciding to shield his mind for a meeting wi
th one of his students? Pretty good, apparently, because Zorian encountered a powerful mental shield when he tried to read his thoughts. He withdrew immediately, terrified that his telepathic probe had been noticed by the man, but whatever defenses Xvim had apparently gave the man too little feedback to notice Zorian's relatively delicate attack. Well, that or he did notice but decided not to say anything, but that seemed very unlikely – if that were the case, he would have at least made a snide comment or two about how sloppy Zorian's attempt was, even if he wasn't at all bothered by the attempt itself.

  It was very interesting that Xvim had bothered shielding his mind for their meeting, though. Was Xvim one of those mages who kept their mind shielded at all times, or did he somehow know about Zorian's talents? There were a lot of possibilities. Zorian made a mental note to barge into the man's office unannounced at some point in the next week, just to see if Xvim had his mind shielded even when not expecting Zorian to arrive…

  His thoughts were still preoccupied with Xvim when he arrived back home, at which point the realization that he could sense the minds of Nochka and her mother in the house pushed the topic of his so-called mentor out of his mind. That was unexpected – there had been no plans for them to visit, as far as he knew. He entered the house and made a beeline towards the kitchen, where he could sense Imaya and Rea were currently situated, and found them seated around the kitchen table, gossiping over some cookies and… plum brandy?