Aethernea

by Cloe D Frost

  Zerel clutched his heart in mock pain. “That can’t be…! I thought we were close friends?”

  Deora barred his teeth at Zerel. “Friend?! With you?! With a friend like you who needs enemies?!”

  Zerel’s face contorted into a pitiful expression. “You are so cruel little Dei. Stomping on my honest feelings like this. Didn’t I always look after you like you were my own little brother?”

  “You call that looking after?! No wonder all your brothers and cousins turn tail and run as soon as they see you coming their way! Deciding not to make you their family head was the best decision your family head ever made!”

  Zerel waved his hand dismissively. “That’s where you are wrong. It was me that didn’t want that position. It is too boring. They can have it. I don’t want it.”

  Deora smirked and challenged. “Is that so? Didn’t look that way to me.”

  Zerel shook his head sadly. “See, that’s why you need me to look after you. You are so clueless and naive. If I let you go alone into this cruel, cruel world, you’d be taken advantage of.”

  “Ah, so you decided to take advantage of me instead? Wait! Don’t change the subject!”

  Zerel suddenly smiled, a smile that caused Deora’s skin to crawl. “Little Dei, if I really wanted the family head position, do you really think anyone would dare to say no?”

  Deora gaped. He opened and closed his mouth like a fish but couldn’t find an adequate response. He’s totally right. Considering how his siblings and cousins run away at the sight of him, none of them would dare tell him no! Heck, even the family head himself didn’t dare force him into an arranged marriage!

  Their exchange was suddenly interrupted by an awkward cough. “May I?”

  The two suddenly remembered the reason why they were here in the first place, and their eyes landed on the red head in front of them.

  Deora’s ears turned pink. He squeezed out an awkward smile and nodded. “Yea…go ahead…”

  Seeing Deora finally agree, Elaru smiled at him radiantly, so brightly that Deora actually involuntarily shielded his eyes, before he realized what a strange action it was. He then looked away, a tinge of pink spreading from his neck and ears towards his cheeks.

  After dealing with the troublesome firecracker, Elaru finally started the actual test. Her smile faded away replaced with deep concentration. She weaved the trigger spell upon the glowing glass figurine and started the test.

  One after the other, figurines constantly lit up and dimmed. Even Deora had to admit it was an impressive sight. No wonder that the noble family behind this girl placed enough importance on her to give her something as precious as a mana purifying artifact. Or at least, that’s what Deora thought. Gravity was an augmentation spell, so the girl was either an Arite or had a mana purifying artifact. The likelihood of the latter being much higher.

  Multicasting was known to be among the most difficult tests on the exam. A test very rarely aced. And yet, they were witnessing someone do it so casually, seemingly without even breaking a sweat.

  Even Deora had to admit that he couldn’t have done a better job at it. This girl was an absolute genius mage, no matter how one looked at it.

  When the final figurine dimmed, both Deora and Zerel forgot to note down the score and just watched the apparatus in shock. Well, the shocked one was mostly Deora, with his mouth so wide he could catch a tiwi bird in it. Rather than shock, Zerel displayed surprise and interest. His eyes glittered so brightly one would think he was a child who just found a new fascinating toy to play with.

  After finishing the test, Elaru accelerated her floating body away from the glass figurines and then dispelled her Gravity spell that made her weightless. She landed on her feet gracefully, and without further ado made her way towards the second apparatus.

  When she arrived in front of the pink jelly, Elaru let out several deep breaths to calm her state of mind. She then stared at the pink abomination with what seemed to be… displeasure?

  Her eyes darted around the cactus, and even her feet started to circle around it, as if she was searching for the optimal place where to stand.

  The more she moved about, the darker her face became. Her eyebrows furrowed slightly, and she involuntarily bit her lips a few times, making her naturally red lips even redder.

  After a few circles, she started casting Light on the black cubes littered over the floor. Each time she placed a cube under her control, the cube would follow her around as she walked in a circle.

  When she reached her original, starting position, all 50 cubes were flying around her in tow.

  Zerel’s eyes squinted into an undisguised glee. “Do we even need to continue with this test? The test didn’t even start yet, and she is already controlling all of the cubes. Why not just save the time and just send her off?”

  Deora’s head snapped back to glare at Zerel. “We aren’t allowed to do that!” He hissed. “It’s against the rules!”

  Zerel shrugged but didn’t say anything more.

  Elaru threw a few annoyed glances at the pink cactus in front of her, mumbling something along the lines of: “I hate this shade of pink the most…” and then, instead of starting the exam, she pulled her goggles out from under her scarf and placed them over her eyes. The goggles were tinted, and no matter how much Deora tried to see the expression hidden under them, it was to no avail.

  Something is off about this girl. Deora’s frown deepened. Why is she constantly doing strange things that make no sense?

  Unlike Deora who had a bad feeling about all of this, Zerel’s grin only grew wider and wider. His expression practically screamed “Fascinating!”

  After her goggles were securely set, Elaru finally made her move. A single cube flew towards the pink bubble in front of her.

  As soon as the bubble popped, two other bubbles appeared.

  Both of the bubbles were to the right of the cactus. As soon as they appeared, Elaru moved like a shadow and appeared right in front of the bubbles. What followed were two popping sounds as the cubes touched the bubbles.

  And then 4 new bubbles appeared, one on each side of the cactus.

  Elaru hesitated for a single moment, before gritting her teeth and suddenly stepped towards the cactus. Her body swayed left and right gracefully, like a branch on the wind, flipping and dodging. Completely avoiding all the tentacles as she approached the cactus. The cubes followed her into the fray, all 50 of them, and they too carefully avoided the tentacles.

  Deora’s pupils shrunk. “What the…?!” What is she doing?!

  * * *

  Author Note

  I am on a roll, this makes three cliffhangers in a row! Don’t worry, things are heating up. The next episode will have what all of you are looking forward to. ;)

  Coming up in the next episode:

  Could it have backfired? Was it really impossible for mortals to change fate?

  “Where is everyone?? What did you do?!”

  “Of course you are fine. I am worried about the other guy.” She scratched her head and grinned sheepishly. “The other guy has a giant hole in the middle.”

  Episode 63 – Out of Control

  Episode 63 – Out of Control

  Previously:

  Elaru had aced the first part of her Multicasting exam and is now taking the second part. She places all 50 cubes under her control and charges straight towards the pink cactus. Instead of staying out of the range of its tentacles, she keeps avoiding the tentacles while popping bubbles.

  * * *

  Both of the men stared at the girl in front of them that popped bubbles one after the other while seemingly dancing inside the danger zone.

  “Is this even allowed??” Deora let out a raspy breath, his eyes glued to the slim figure in front of him. Zerel’s eyes also never left her figure as he shrugged. “Why not?”

  “But she’s…she’s…” Deora stumbled for words. “What is she doing?”

  Zerel smirked and whispered. “I think she finds the cubes
easier control the closer they are to her. Therefore, she decided to approach the bubbles instead of staying out of the range of the apparatus.”

  Deora frowned. “But that makes no sense!” He had never heard of such a thing. Controlling a spell was exactly the same no matter the distance. The only thing the distance impacted was the travel of mana. If the distance was larger, then the mana needed to travel for a longer time. But a few meters of distance made absolutely no difference.

  No matter how he looked at it, the redhead was only making it harder for herself.

  This way, she didn’t even have a clear view of the bubbles, and she also needed to constantly avoid touching the tentacles.

  Elaru flipped and twirled very expertly as if she wasn’t doing anything difficult at all. There wasn’t a single drop of sweat on her, yet she continuously kept popping bubbles, very rarely leaving the proximity of the cactus.

  20. 22.

  Zerel’s eyes darted left and right with profound interest, trying to capture every detail, studying the movements of the girl as if she was a most fascinating creature.

  Deora’s face became redder and redder. The girl’s clothes weren’t revealing or tight fitting at all. But somehow, when she moved and danced about gracefully, it had an inexplicable beauty and charm to it.

  26. 28.

  By the time the 30th bubble popped, Deora’s face was completely red, and his hands were covering his eyes. However, they weren’t doing a good job at it, revealing many holes for his eyes to see through. It wasn’t that he wanted to see this spectacular show, it was rather that he, as the examiner, had to see it. Whether he liked it or not.

  He kept grumbling “Indecent.”, “Scandalous!” and “Improper.” the entire time. His face was so hot that he could have fried an egg on it.

  Zerel, on the other hand, was having a blast watching the show. The only reason why he refrained from cheering and clapping was because the examiners weren’t allowed to do anything that might distract the examinees from doing their best in the exams.

  While Deora looked as if he was watching a stripper dance, Zerel looked as if he was watching a fascinating arena match, his face not showing any reddish or pinkish tint.

  34. 36.

  Deora caught the expression on Elaru’s face which was perfectly calm and focused. The cubes around her moved in perfect harmony, not hesitating a single moment to pierce the bubbles. It seemed as if Elaru wasn’t using her eyes to see at all. It was as if everything happening around her was perfectly captured by her mana sense. Therefore, she needed not see it.

  40. 42.

  Deora’s breath caught in his throat. Even Elaru’s face wasn’t as calm as collected as before. Her eyebrows furrowed into a frown. Crystalline beads of sweat glistened on her forehead.

  44.

  Elaru gritted her teeth, her eyes involuntarily turning fierce, as if she hated these pink bubbles the most in the entire wide world. Come on. Come on! Come on!! Elaru chanted inside her head. Just a bit more. Just a bit more!

  When the 47th bubble popped, the entire fleet of 50 bubbles appeared almost instantaneously.

  Their position made Elaru’s pupils involuntarily shrink. Some of them were close to the cactus, some of them were at the absolute edges of the tentacles.

  Finally, what she dreaded the most happened.

  Several tentacles stretched to their utmost limit, creating bubbles which were on the absolute outer edge of the field of tentacles. Since the bubbles appeared on the diametrically opposite edges of the cactus, even if she hugged the cactus, they would still be…

  No! Elaru’s eyes flashed dangerously. I won’t give up now! I need just an instant! If I can do it for just an instant that would be enough!

  Her eyes turned bloodshot, and a vein could be seen pulsating on her neck, but the cubes around her all honed in on the bubbles. With utmost accuracy, they collided, not wavering for even a second.

  The popping sound of 50 bubbles reverberated inside her head like a gong beat.

  In that split second of elation, her tightly stretched control relaxed. It relaxed for only an instant. But in that instant, the rapidly moving cubes slipped past the edge.

  Exactly 6 cubes surpassed the 1-meter radius from her own body.

  It was only an instant; it was only a single centimeter. Yet, at that moment, the Light spell cast on the cube seemed to come alive.

  The glittering symbol seemed to grow frantic. It started wriggling and twisting as if in agony, struggling left and right.

  It lashed out like a whip in all directions, deforming completely out of shape.

  The reality-altering phenomena around the cube didn’t even have the chance to dissipate when the deformed Light spell slashed through the center of the cube – around which, the enchantment powering the cube was still revolving peacefully.

  It would have been fine, it wouldn’t have mattered, if only Elaru had not opted to weave her Light spells denser than normal. If her Light spell were less dense than the enchantment, it would have been her Light spell to suffer the consequences. Yet she knew from the start that the task in front of her wouldn’t be simple, therefore, for the sake of increasing her own control over the Light spells, she weaved them especially dense.

  And those dense Light spells, like hot knives through butter passed right through the enchantments, splitting them in half.

  Luckily, active spells were resilient entities with a high degree of self-recovery. Breaking spells wasn’t an easy task at all. One had to know exactly where to aim, for only if the weak points of the spell were hit would the spell be damaged beyond repair.

  The first cube, which got its enchantment split into two, dropped almost to the floor before its enchantment recovered and it stabilized, several centimeters above the ground.

  Even the second cube and the third suffered the same fate, staggering for a moment before recovering and slowly drifting to the ground.

  The fourth and the fifth cube were even luckier – they weren’t affected at all; the wriggling Light spell fell apart before it managed to come into contact with the enchantments.

  This unfortunate incident would have been resolved without any damage. Everything would have been perfectly fine, and Elaru would have gotten full points of the exam. If only there were 5 cubes.

  But there were 6.

  Perhaps it was just bad luck, or perhaps it was fate, but when that 6th Light spell wriggled and twirled, it sliced through a very peculiar point on the enchantment spell.

  It sliced through the bridge between the main enchantment and the limiter fragment whose purpose was to limit the maximum movement speed of the cube.

  The wriggling Light spell was already falling apart, its reality-altering effect was chaotically pulsating between releasing no light and releasing an extremely intense light. However, the cutoff limiter evaporated into smoke much faster.

  It took only a single moment, before any of the present people could react, the already fast moving cube turned into a blur. It shot out of control like an arrow and collided with the floor with a loud resounding crash.

  In only a blink of an eye, with speed hardly discernible by the eye, the cube rebounded off the floor, and like a bouncing rubber ball alternated between hitting the ceiling and the ground. Leaving craters in its wake.

  By the time a 4th crater was smashed into the floor, the hard corner of the cube had broken off, altering the movement path of the cube. Instead of hitting the ceiling once again, it lodged itself straight into the large glass tank filled with the red liquid standing in the corner of the room.

  The sharp sound of breaking glass didn’t even register in everyone’s ears when the cube once again rebounded and crashed through the window above Deora’s head.

  Deora’s mouth wasn’t even done dropping to the floor when a sound of a soft yelp and a thump reached their ears. The cube hit something large in the courtyard and caused it to unceremoniously fall over.

  Deora’s jaw almost dislocated, his blo
odshot eyes looked through the cracks of his fingers, that were protectively shielding his face, at the floor, where several conspicuous craters had formed. His eyebrows started twitching violently, especially when he noticed that a bright red liquid started pooling inside those craters.

  His eyes followed the rivers of red until they landed on the big hole in the glass tank, from where a bright red healing potion was spilling in large quantities.

  Since the hole in the tank was actually in the lower regions of the tank, the pressure of the liquid above the hole caused the healing potion to spray out of the hole in jets as if it was a fountain.

  Elaru stood rooted to the spot with her mouth pressed tightly into a line. Her few crystalline sweat drops suddenly turned into a river. Her mind was already coming up with many disaster recovery plans.

  This situation had surprised even Zerel, and his usually nonchalant and relaxed expression was nowhere to be seen. His eyes were wide with surprise but unlike the horror that was slowly showing in Deora’s expression, Zerel’s mouth twitched into a smirk. He found the entire situation incredibly funny, or perhaps, satisfying in some strange way?

  He looked at Deora’s comical expression and snickered slightly. He then proceeded to scribble down a score next to Elaru’s examinee number.

  That’s when a miserable scream finally broke out of Deora’s throat.

  That wail was so soul crushing that anyone would feel deep sympathy for the poor lad.

  Well, anyone but Zerel. His smirk only widened into a grin.

  Deora’s eyes darted between Elaru and the glass tank, between murderous intention and panic. After a few short moments of indecisiveness he finally made his choice and like a mad person dashed towards the ruptured glass tank.

  He slid to the floor and tried to patch the hole with his fingers, like a desperate man in the middle of an ocean with a leaking ship.

  However, his efforts only managed to change the trajectory of the spraying liquid. It splattered over his shirt and pants making him a miserable sight to behold.