章 18: Preparations
Lady Silvia had been 'satisfied' with my results, though she was more 'shocked' than anything else.
A king of all magi...
But even a king must take one step at a time in his journey towards the throne, especially more so if he starts off as a peasant.
She had given me 3 tasks to do for the next few weeks.
1. Gain proficiency in the Destruction aspect of Aether, this was especially more important now due to the possible dangers I faced.
2. Master a physical element. Out of the four base elements fire, water, earth and wind, only the water and earth elements were of physical matter. She told me she would personally teach him which one he wanted to learn first.
3. Learn, or create, an offensive spell.
I decided to omit the third task since once I masted destruction, I could utilize it temporarily as my offensive source. Though it would have a hard time causing actual damage to living creatures, such as my enemies who I assume, or hope, were human, it would easily nullify their attacks.
As for the mastering the physical element, I was to report to Lady Silvia at 10 O'clock in the morning every 2 days until I masted the element.
I decided to learn the water element first as I believed it had more flexibility. Plus I had a special ring that could produce water, skipping the procedure of turning my aether mana into physical water element.
But this was all after I mastered Destruction, it was of my top priority and I was granted private access to one of the advanced labs until the day I mastered it. It would be reserved under my name and my name only for secrecy, though I wonder if all this was necessary since the majority of the tower knows about my 'situation' already.
Better safe than sorry I guess.
-----
"The boy has mastered creation, it is safe to say he will soon master destruction as well" A shadow with glowing yellow feline eyes, Leo, read out a letter.
"We must hurry, the boy must not be allowed to grow..." A small but dreamy voice could be heard from the side.
"I know, do you want to go for it Aquarius?" Leo looked to his left at a silhouette of a curvaceous female and her blue eyes.
"Scorpio is already in motion. Reports say he has been inside the tower for the past 2 months and none of our 'spies' had seen him in almost a month." Aquarius responded.
"Scorpio... He's a good choice. Maybe we need a higher position within the tower to gain more intel..." Leo pondered.
"But that would require us cultivating a magi, we must not create more of such vile creatures." Aquarius, whose eyes had started to glow in a slight manner, responded with a hint of anger.
"Calm down, it would be a disposable 'investment' for our progres..." Leo, who had seemed to be the leader of these shadows, seemed to be having a difficult time against this female known as Aquarius.
"If I ever hear of such vile acts, I will come find you. Personally." The silhouette Aquarius disappeared with a warning.
"Sigh..." Leo slumped down onto the chair in a depressed manner. "Hopefully Scorpio can succeed..."
-----
Five intensely vibrating grey orbs rotated against me as Lady Silvia stood before me.
"Ignis" As Lady Silvia spoke a word.
Whooosh!
Five orbs of fire appeared before her as they quickly shot towards me.
"Haa!"
With a shout I shot the orbs one by one at the approaching balls of fire.
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!
Sszzzzz....
The orbs collided with the balls of fire and quickly 'destroyed' the majority of the fire elements as a small amount of leftover flames could not maintain themselves and dispersed onto the thin air.
"Good. You have mastered how to judge exactly, well close to exact, how much mana the incoming attacks have and learned to efficiently nullified them." Lady Silvia spoke with a nod.
"Ugh... Rattling the Aether mana actually uses the mana within them a little..." I gasped for breath as I replied.
"Of course, you are adding 'energy' into the mana, this would naturally use up mana." Lady Silvia responded to me as if it was obvious. "Alright, now show me water."
"C-Can I take a break for a bit?" I asked, still breathing heavily from the expenditure from before.
"No, use the ring you have. Your enemies won't give you time to take these 'breaks' during a fight. They would do everything they can in order to win." Lady Silvia denied my request.
"Ugh..."
I lifted up my left hand and poured a bit of the leftover mana within my into the ring. Soon, a steady stream of water flowed into the space above my right hand, creating a liquid ball of water.
"Good, now show me all three states of matter." Lady Silvia demanded.
"Understood". With a reply, I poured in another bit of mana in a highly energized form by agitating it.
Ssssss...
The ball of water started to bubble and soon evaporated into steam, thankfully I had willed the mana to stay within a specific area and created a weird form of dense, but gaseous, water. Almost like a denser form of a cloud.
"Next, solid." Lady Silvia, seemingly unsatisfied with something, asked once again.
Thankfully, this was the easy part. At least for me.
I utilized the method of reversing the converted mana back to Aether form except I had isolated the energized mana within the gaseous ball of steam and sucked it back out.
Shhwooop!
The large steam ball had condensed into a tiny orb of ice, one could see tiny hair-like icicles forming on the surface of the ice which soon broke apart as the external force, me in this case, continued to compress the ice.
Crkkrkrkk!
I had condensed the ice as much as possible which had visibly lowered the temperature of the lab they had been in as they could see their own breaths.
"Good. You are ready. Though it would be good to learn more before you go, you have the basics of self-defense and offensive capabilities with this at least." Lady Silvia nodded in satisfaction.
"A greenhouse is not fit for someone of your caliber, you need experience. And a lot of it." Lady Silvia added.
"Am-Am I getting kicked out of the tower?" I asked in worry.
I agreed with her side of the argument. I did need to learn more about the world but I still didn't feel ready.
"Let's just say it's a... Forced assignment? Yes. That." Lady Silvia smiled. "If you were to die during these travels, you can only blame yourself. You have the tools to protect yourself already and possibly even attack. Don't worry, here take this."
She handed me a pendant with a small crystal loosely hung in the center.
"It's a form of a communications device, there's a hint of my mana inside it. Break it when you truly feel like you are about to die. There is a distress call spellbound with it which will cast once it is broken, it will summon either me, or the closest Dragonkin in the vicinity to your aid." Lady Silvia explained. "And yes, it can only be used once. Treasure it as it will likely be your second life."
"Th-Thank you..." I looked at the pendant, trying to analyze the contents of the crystal.
'She doesn't know that I am immortal... Well, nobody does. It's best if I keep it a secret right? Who knows what kind of horrible experiments I will have to endure through if I was found out...'
I shuddered at the thought as I quickly erased it from my head, changing into a different topic.
"Where am I supposed to go? I know nothing except this tower and the village where I had came from." I asked.
"A lot of new apprentices have appeared recently, calling themselves 'players' and us 'npcs'. I do not know what they mean by this but I assume it is a form of code between themselves. They seem to congregate around the capital, head over there. There's also a letter I need you to deliver to the Emperor." Lady Silvia pulled out a letter from her bosoms which caused me to blush.
I was clearly inexperienced with romance, being all cooped up in my labs with experiments and studying and it was showing now.
"Show the imperial guards the badge we contracted upon, they will recognize my mana and let you in. Make sure to hand this over to the Emperor personally, let nobody touch it. Also, do not lose it. Your life may become much more dangerous if you do so." Lady Silvia solemnly warned me.
"U-Understood..." I gulped in fear as I replied.
"Request the rest of the supplies you need through Dorothy and don't forget asking for a few maps as well in case one gets damaged or lost, she will gather the things you need within a day." Lady Silvia added as she walked out from the lab. "Scamander had already returned to Cinders a month ago, Mertho is still within the tower."
"T-Thank you..." I responded with a bow.
How did she know I had gotten close to the two senior magi?
Well, it was more like they had gotten more close to me I guess...
Sigh...
I really didn't have a good feeling about this...
The majority of the tower knew of my situation, it has been almost 2 months since they found out and such big news was bound to leak out.
Lady Silvia didn't show it but she seemed to know that such news had spread already thus giving me this amulet...
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