by Ian Rodgers
“Does that mean I’m disposable, then?” I asked worriedly.
“No, not at all!” Arnolt assured me. “That you were picked means you’re a better person than literally all but two other people in the world. If you die, Nia would have to choose someone who’s second-best to replace you. Remember that! You were selected first! So, don’t die!”
“Your motivational speeches need work,” I chuckled. Headmaster Arnolt looked put off by my claim.
“Hmph! Come up with your own inspiring words next time!” he declared. He couldn’t keep a straight face, though, and eventually cracked, chuckles of his own spilling out.
“Yeah, you’re right, trying to make people cheer up through words alone is not one of my many talents,” the retired adventurer agreed. “But my point still stands! Never consider yourself to be worth less than anyone else. Nia decided you were to be one of her champions. So, suck it up, and act like the hero you’re supposed to be!”
Gruff though they were, Arnolt’s words were grandfatherly and caring in their own right, and I bobbed up and down in understanding.
“Anything more you care to tell me about this cultist or the magic he uses?” I queried.
“Arboralnecromancy has many spells and uses similar to what Druids can do, such as using trees as a medium for a form of teleportation, known as Green Walking, in which they walk into a tree, and emerge from another tree many miles away. They can also send their senses through them, observing things in a manner not unlike scrying,” Arnolt revealed.
“They do have weaknesses, though. Fire and Light Element magic are extremely effective at curtailing this tainted form of Druidic magic.”
“Alright, I’ll be sure to practice my fireballs when I can,” I said. “Good thing I’m surrounded by ocean on all sides. I can shoot off flames and they’ll do little damage. So long as I aim away from the ship, of course.”
“Excellent idea! Very proactive of you,” the headmaster praised, his mentoring instincts approving of my plan for self-study. “And perhaps work on your Hydromancy as well. You prefer using Acid as your main Element for offensive purposes, and Acid is merely a derivative fusion of the Elements of Dark and Water, so you should be able to exert a decent bit of control over the ocean around you if you put in the effort.”
“Got it,” I replied, creating a hand on the end of a pseudopod for the sole purpose of giving him a thumbs up. He snickered at that.
“I see you’ve mastered at least one form of human interaction,” Arnolt said after he composed himself.
“Yeah, thumbs are pretty awesome,” I agreed. “Easily the best feature of you bipeds, hands down.”
The headmaster frowned. “Was that a pun?”
I was about to reply in the negative, when I froze, uncertainty flooding my mind. “I don’t know,” I admitted. I shivered in disdain.
‘If I ever make one again, please give me a firm slap upside my inner thoughts,’ I begged Tara, and she sent me a firm telepathic nod of assent.
~Of course. Puns are the lowest form of humor. Yet they are a slippery slope. Once you set foot on the steep incline of dreaded wordplay, return may be impossible.~
Glad that that matter was resolved for the moment, I returned my attention to Headmaster Arnolt.
“Is there anything else we need to discuss?” I inquired, and the wizened sorcerer shook his head.
“Not at the moment. I shall continue to endeavor to find out more about this particular branch of magic so you can have some manner of awareness of its capabilities.”
“That’s good, then,” I said, before letting out a sigh. Arnolt raised a bushy eyebrow at that.
“Is everything alright on your end, Jellik?”
“I’m nervous,” I admitted.
He said nothing, simply motioned for me to continue and I did, spilling my metaphorical guts to my mentor.
“In less than a month I’ll be in Drakon, and it shouldn’t take too long to find the Soul Ooze colony. But will I be accepted by them? I’ve been searching for people like me, but while they’re similar, they weren’t made the same way.”
“I’ve always found that trying to fit in is a futile effort for some individuals,” Arnolt said after a thoughtful pause. “There will always be those who are stronger, smarter, and plain old more talented than the majority of other people. Take me, for example. I’m an elderly human, but I could never fit in among other pensioners and retirees.”
He leaned over and patted me fondly once more. “Power makes people like me and my fellow X-ranks outcasts. Even S-rankers have trouble fitting in with the weaker and more fragile common people. We may look like other adventurers, but in the end we are separated by a vast gulf in strength. We make the most of it, though, enjoying lots of freedom, prestige, and finer things in life thanks to our contributions to society. Besides, you should have known you’d never really fit in anywhere. An Ooze that can talk like yourself is not going to have many safe havens.”
I stared at him in disbelief. “Wow. I know I said it earlier, but I feel the point needs reiteration: you are terrible at trying to make people feel better.”
Tara snorted in agreement. ~I could have given you a better motivational speech than that! And all of my experiences and knowledge comes from books! How can someone with some many ‘life lessons’ be so bad at this?~
The headmaster just rolled his eyes, but they contained a hint of annoyance at having his skills called into question.
“Fine, next time I’ll leave all the ‘motivation’ to Princess Liliana and her friends. Happy?”
“Very,” I said, bobbing up and down to simulate a nod. He grumbled about disrespectful brats for a few minutes before picking me up and dropping me into my glass tank.
“Don’t forget, you have tests in Summoning and Magical Creatures soon. I’ll make sure your owner has the test sheets ready for you by next week. Also, your Alchemy exam is in two weeks on a Selday, so be sure to make time for that in the afternoon. Your examiner is a stickler for punctuality.”
“And he won’t find it weird an Ooze will be taking it?” I queried.
“I honestly have no idea if he’ll even notice,” Arnolt claimed. “He’s so focused on Alchemy, I doubt he’ll see anything other than the potions you’ll make for the examination.”
“Sounds like a dedicated man,” I said.
“That’s one word for it,” the headmaster griped under his breath. He spotted me watching him rant and he flushed a tad.
“Anyways! See you on Selday.”
“Got it,” I promised with a bob up and down. I then shut off my senses and fell into darkness, before drifting back to my true body.
I appeared in my mindscape, which was modeled after a fusion of Liliana’s room back at Palestone Castle, and Headmaster Arnolt’s study. Over by the bookcase that contained my memories – represented by a number of books and scrolls – a librarian-esque woman stood, sorting through them. Her hair looked to be made of parchment, and she wore a pair of black rimmed spectacles.
“I’m back, Tara,” I announced, giving the Spirit of Knowledge a smile. One of the many things I loved about my Astral Form was I appeared as a humanoid. Made of purple slime, of course, but at least I had a mouth with which to make facial gestures.
“Hello, Jelly,” she replied, shooting me a smile as well. “Now that you’re back, do you want to work on something with me?”
“Sure,” I said with a shrug. With a wave of her hand, a jumbled green knot appeared in front of her. It was the mysterious spell Gaea herself had gifted me after visiting one of her major shrines last year.
“This again?” I uttered, and my shoulders slumped as I beheld the pain in my brain.
“We’ll never figure out what this spell is unless we study it as often as we can,” Tara chided me. “Unless you want to cast it? Then we’d certainly know what it is.”
“No, no, it’s fine,” I denied, shaking my head. I couldn’t explain it, but I had a gut feeling that I would kn
ow when it was time to use it. And seeing as I was almost 90% stomach, I trusted my gut feelings. They hadn’t let me down yet!
“It’s your spell,” she said with a sigh, before reaching out and plucking at the ‘string,’ trying to understand what it was.
I joined it, probing the spell’s mental representation. I poked at it, tried to map out the shapes the knot made, and even went so far as to try and unravel it as far as it would go, but it was no use. Whatever the spell was, it was annoyingly complex.
Most spells, be they Divine, Occult, Druidic, or other, were represented in my mind’s eye as a shape, or collection of them. This knot was composed of far too many to count. For comparison, a Level Four spell might be made of eight or so different symbols.
Gaea’s gifted spell had no less than twenty shapes and symbols wrapping around each other, and those were just the ones I could perceive.
“I give up!” I uttered, throwing my arms into the air after an hour of straining to examine the spell.
“I suppose you’ve helped enough for now. You can go to sleep, if you want,” Tara offered, still engrossed with the emerald knot.
“I’ll take you up on that,” I said, muffling a yawn. “Got a busy day of shooting fireballs at the ocean, tomorrow!”
“Have fun,” Tara said offhandedly, waving me off.
I couldn’t help but chuckle at her dedication to the pursuit of knowledge. I exited my mindscape, and let sleep overtake me.
.
Arnolt stared at the purple blob in front of him and sighed softly when it began to squelch about mindlessly, the controlling intellect that had previously dwelled within the tiny Ooze noticeably gone.
He watched the miniature Royal Ooze explore the inside of its glass home before rising out of his soft chair with a groan.
“I’m getting too old for this,” he grumbled, walking over to a wall in his office. It looked like all the others, except it had a portrait hanging on it, depicting a much younger him, standing next to a smiling woman with auburn hair who held a baby swaddled in pink, while a two-year-old boy held his right hand, and a four-year-old daughter the left.
He traced his finger over the picture, feeling a strong sense of his own age crashing onto his shoulders as he looked at the happy smiles in the family picture, and left behind a trail of mana that glistened for a moment before sinking into the paint and vanishing. After waiting three seconds a chime echoed through the room and he walked over to his office’s door.
When he opened it, the other side was not the waiting room it normally would have revealed, but instead was a room filled with over a dozen intricate magical arrays. He took his spot in one of them, and whispered a few words.
He waited silently for a response. And he soon had one. Three other magic arrays flickered to life, shining pale light everywhere. A trio of figures appeared before his eyes, pale and transparent as they stood in their spot.
“Hello again, my friends,” Arnolt said politely.
“Arnie, good to see you! What’s up?” a person with a laid-back drawl inquired.
“Is this everyone?” one of the other figures asked in a youthful tone, surprised at the low turnout.
“Tomas Nierz is busy taking care of some personal matters, and Silas Revel is busy with running the Guild,” Arnolt stated. “While it seems that Tein Huntersteel is under house arrest back in the Domain for some reason.”
“Idiot’s sense of justice got in the way of common sense again,” an elderly woman complained.
“As for the others, well, they either couldn’t be bothered, or were otherwise engaged,” the headmaster continued.
“Why did you contact us?” the third of the spectral figures demanded, his voice gravelly and stern. “I have several other matters to attend to.”
“The World Rebellion is starting to move,” Arnolt warned. “I have confirmation that none other than Root is testing the first of Nia’s Chosen.”
“Him? Are you sure?” the elderly woman demanded sharply.
“Yes. He wore a silver mask with the tree symbol, and used Arboralnecromancy. It’s him without a doubt,” the elderly sorcerer known as the Ritual Master said, inclining his head apologetically towards the only female member of the group.
“Curse that foul man to the depths of the Hells!” she swore. After spitting furious words for a full minute she ran out of steam and gave Arnolt a steady look.
“How is the Ooze doing? Is he safe?”
“Well enough. He’s a quick study when it comes to magic, at least, which will increase his odds of survival. And he has an astonishing amount of mana at his disposal. Soon enough he’ll surpass all of us in raw power, if not technique,” Arnolt claimed, a hint of pride in his voice.
“Does no one else find it weird that a slime is one of Nia’s Chosen?” the youngest sounding member inquired, sounding put off by the idea of one of the weakest creatures in the world being the deciding factor in its salvation.
“It is unusual, but it was our fault for assuming that Nia’s Chosen would all be human,” the stern and gravelly voice stated. “It was understandable, of course, she is mainly a human goddess. But now we have to widen our search parameters.”
“But since the Royal Ooze in question was given a soul by his owner, who was a human girl, I think this makes Jelly more of an exception to the rule than anything else,” Arnolt interjected. “Though I agree, we should check more than just pure-blooded humans. Increase the search to include half-humans as well.”
“Understood,” the gruff male said, giving a stiff nod in acknowledgement.
“What is the plan for the rest of us?” the woman asked.
“For now, we continue to do as we have done. Find the remaining two Chosen Ones, and guide the one we do have. I believe we should also get into contact with the rest of our group. We need to establish better lines of communication now that the World Rebellion had decided to interfere.”
“Some of our august gathering will be hard to find,” the youngest of the quartet mused. “The Deep Pearl Priestess has her hands full running her kingdom, and the merfolk are always aloof when it comes to ‘land dweller matters.’ Same problem with the Infinite Spear. His vows to the Qwanese throne make it hard for him to leave his post. And who knows where the Wide-Open Emperor is?! He travels a lot, and is rarely in the same place for long. The Crushing Fist is just a hermit, though, so finding him isn’t hard, but convincing him to do anything is a touch trickier.”
“All of them will come if it means saving Erafore from the Void,” the stern voiced member declared. “We might all have our own agendas but they mean nothing if the world is destroyed and we all die along with it. They’ll come, even if they grumble about it.”
“Very true,” the woman agreed. “I shall try to get Tein to join the next meeting, and through him get the Infinite Spear and Crushing Fist to attend.”
“I know where the Wide-Open Emperor currently is,” Arnolt announced. “It won’t take long to find him and convince him to visit. And the World Paladin should be finished with his own mission soon enough. He’s also good with people, so I’ll have Tomas seek out the Crushing Fist if Tein cannot get into contact with him. And Silas would be more than happy to take a break from running the Guild to meet with us.”
“I guess that leaves me to fetch her watery holiness,” the youthful one sighed. “At least she’s a nice host. Even if everything is underwater.”
“And what should I do?” the gruff voiced member of the group inquired.
“Contact your friends in the bank, and any smiths whom owe you favors. I have a feeling we’ll be in need of powerful artifacts before too long.”
Everyone nodded, their assignments received. They all placed their right hand over their heart, then crossed it with their left, making an X over their chest.
“We are the ones who guard the bridge of the future, so we all may cross over in time. To protect. To serve. Let the world endure!”
Their oath complete, the th
ree Astral Projections flickered and faded from their magical arrays, leaving Arnolt alone in the dark. He sighed, exiting the room.
Being an X-ranked adventurer was hard. But he knew, no, they all knew they had the duty of keeping the world safe. They couldn’t afford to let the World Rebellion to succeed. The Order of the Cross would not let them.
Arnolt slumped back down behind his desk, contemplating the future and the best way to get a message to the people he needed to contact. He reached for quill and paper, but paused as he couldn’t find them amidst the mess. He glared at the paperwork that seemed to reproduce on its own and left his desk cluttered. Yes, his work was never done.
Chapter 3: Turning of the tides
“How’s the fireballing going?” Katherine asked sometime in the afternoon.
“Not bad,” I replied indistinctly, trying to shape my flames the way I wanted them. An orangish-red orb appeared on the end of my staff, and it crackled and fluxed, the flames trying to spread out and stop being contained in a spherical shape.
I had been up at the crack of dawn and spent my time awake shooting blasts of fire into the Bluestar Ocean. Fire was an easy Element to cast. It was just heat and energy, and I had plenty of the latter. Controlling it was another matter entirely, though.
“You don’t seem to be doing much,” the dwarf thief said, watching me practice my spells. Rosa nodded in agreement.
“The Element of Fire is wild. It consumes everything as it moves, and unlike Wind, which is also a free-willed Element, it needs to be corralled, lest it spin out of control. Sure, Wind might be hard to contain, but at least it doesn’t do as much damage if left unattended. A breeze is less harmful than a spark,” I explained to my newfound audience. “What I am currently doing is measuring how much mana I need to conjure a flame, and how much concentration it takes to shape a Fire-based spell.”
“And that involves shooting fireball after fireball into the ocean?” Katherine inquired, amused but also a little bit curious as to how magic worked.
“It’s not like it’s safe to practice on the ship itself,” I retorted. “So, instead of accidentally setting the Striding Fish on fire, I’m checking out the size and spread of the steam my spells cause when they hit the water to determine their power.”