After a few days, Tista entered Lith's room while he was using Accumulation to further refine his mana core.
"Say what you want, lil brother, but after seeing what you did for mom and Brina, I don't think that being a healer is just a job. It's something that brings hope and joy to other people. That's why I want your help. I'd really like enrolling in the academy."
Lith was sitting on the floor cross legged, her words merely caused him to raise an eyebrow.
"Once again, that's incredibly na?ve of you. I can't wait for you to meet Professor Manohar. If he can't change your mind, then no one can." He sighed.Find authorized novels in Webnovel£¬faster updates, better experience£¬Please click www.webnovel.com for visiting.
"Let me be honest, right now you have no chance of getting admitted. You are old for the fourth year, your mastery of the elements is sloppy, and you have no sponsor." At those words, Tista's smile disappeared.
"Use next year to practice magic until it becomes second nature to you. Then, if I manage to graduate, I can pull some strings and make everything easier for you."
Tista rushed to hug him when Lith stopped her by raising his hand. She suddenly had no control over her body anymore. Tista was pinned against the wall with her feet dangling a few centimeters from the floor.
"Tista, you are a pretty girl and the world is a harsh place. This could happen every time you walk alone in a corridor. Show me that you can take care of yourself."
At first, she thought it was just a bad joke, but when Lith refused to let her go, she discovered she couldn't even call for help. Whenever she opened her mouth, no voice came out of it.
"It's just chore magic. You can do it." Lith's words helped her to regain her cool, yet it took her a while to break the spell.
"Why did you do that?"
Lith replied by telling her about all that had happened to him from his first day at the academy. About the hazing attempts, the mean words from the students and professors and even how Phloria had almost got r*ped.
Chapter 259 Learning Part 2
"Despite Linjos's best intentions, the academy is still a 'survival of the fittest' environment. If you go in there with a weak mentality, you will not last even a month. Chore magic is your sword and shield against humans, since it's quick and effective. Practice it until you get as good as I am."
Lith had expected for Tista to be shocked and to need some time before making her decision. He was only half right. She immediately asked Lith's guidance, to the point of requesting homework to improve her control over the elements.
After a month passed, her magic foundations had improved by leaps and bounds. Because of the harsh weather, she could spend most of time indoor practicing. Lith's training course focused more on finesse and surgical precision rather than use magic for bashing stuff.
It allowed them to safely perform sparring sessions inside the house by fighting for the control of the color of candles, changing the temperature of a glass of water, or use earth magic to juggle with an increasing number of pebbles.
When the weather was good, Lith's family would use Warp Steps to visit their neighbors or the village. Elina was the only one with a communicator amulet, so she could always call Lith to have them Warped back home anytime they wanted.
Lith used those days to go back in the forest and conduct experiments with Forgemastering. It had taken a while, but the package from Linjos had finally arrived. After learning of his ranking, Lith had spent almost all his points immediately.
He had purchased a Skinwalker armor and several magic crystals of different purity. The Skinwalker armor was similar to his uniform, but better in every way. The elemental and physical protections were stronger. Also, by injecting mana into it, Lith could boost its self-repair speed.
The armor's best trait was its adaptability. It could shapeshift into different forms, the only requirement was for Lith to provide the enchantment a sample of the clothing he wanted it to reproduce.
Thanks to the Skinwalker armor, Lith now had a whole wardrobe of enchanted clothes. They would all offer him a great degree of protection and he wouldn't remain naked for a second like it happened when he switched between clothes via the dimensional pocket.
Lith stored inside the gemstone his farmer clothes, the hunting suit, the academy's uniform and the expensive noble clothes that Lark had bought him.
"Now this is the only suit I'll ever need!"
Lith had chosen the Skinwalker armor not only because it greatly improved his defensive abilities, but also because it made possible to easily blend in with any crowd and provided him a sample of magic crystal imbued clothes.
He had now an enchanted item he could study with Invigoration, which properties he could attempt to replicate and improve by using true magic.
Lith had spent the rest of his points to buy mana crystals. There were too many unanswered questions about them. He was eager to perform experiments with the mana blade away from prying eyes.
Realizing a mana blade like the one he used during the Magic Crystal class had been an easy feat. It was just a handle made of solid silver enchanted to have mana pathways but no pseudo core.
The only issue was the price. Lith had to pay for both the material and the craftsmanship since he was no blacksmith. Lith managed to cut his losses by exchanging his forgemastering works with Zekell's.
The blacksmith was eager to acquire dimensional rings to safely store his possession and enchanted tools to make his life easier, just like Lith was eager to get his hands on free materials.
Thanks to his experiments, Lith discovered that if instead of cutting along a magic crystal's lines he used the mana blade on the cracks that Invigoration revealed, he could recharge the low quality ones or increase their purity by one tier by providing them enough mana.
The crystals' cracks were capable of absorbing and store his mana, but only up to a degree. As soon as the crystal couldn't contain more energy, the cracks disappeared. All the attempts of further refining the gemstones ended up in failure.
'It seems that the cracks are the spots from which the crystal was still absorbing the surrounding world energy when it was mined. It means that it had yet room to develop further and that's exactly what happens when I inject mana into it.Find authorized novels in Webnovel£¬faster updates, better experience£¬Please click www.webnovel.com for visiting.
'I wonder if the so called crystal scraps are actually what I need to refine better quality gemstones. If they work like my mana core, the mana crystals need to grow up to a certain size before shrinking to compress and boost their energy and then they need to grow again, repeating the process.
'If I'm right, it means that high quality crystals require not only an abundant mana source, but also a lot of time to properly develop. Since my core took years to turn from red to cyan and its max size is that of marble, I can't imagine how many decades it takes for a mana crystal as big as those I saw down in the mine to form.
'Unless I find a way to artificially grow them at a faster rate, buying and charging low quality crystals is the best I can do. Refining them would take too much time, my mana core takes precedence since I can't buy a better one with money.'
Soon only one month of winter was left and Lith's birthday was closing in. The prolonged rest made Lith recover most of his strength, while teaching Tista turned out to be a great way for him to further improve his foundations about magic.
Everything he taught her about chore magic also applied to true magic. Tista asked him a lot of questions about silent magic and multicasting, some so peculiar that he had never thought about such niche cases.
Unlike him that was used to think big since he was little, trying to improve the effects or the range of his spells, Tista thought small by following his teachings, focusing more on micromanaging the mana.
To answer her, Lith had to revise and deepen his understanding of the flow of mana. After many trials, experimenting together with her, Lith was able to improve the way he waved spe
lls and to further simplify multicasting.
The only times Tista had the opportunity to put into practice her new skills was when Nana had to leave the village either for personal reasons or because of house calls. Lith would spend those days locked up in the tower, trying to incorporate magic crystals into his creations.
Lith's aim was to reproduce an Earth's house facilities, providing his family with running water, lighting, and most importantly, a real bathroom.
After getting used to the academy's lifestyle, not having a bathtub and being forced to use a chamber pot again was quite traumatic for him. His elemental stones could provide the first two, but to make them last until his return, he had to mass produce them.
Elemental stones were just a poor imitation of magic crystals that he had invented before even knowing the crystals existed. They could store a single spell, needing to be recharged after every use.
Even the weakest red magic crystal held much more mana than dozens of elemental stones. Also, it could be turned on and off like a switch, making it last much longer. For any other young mage, using red mana crystals would be too expensive.
Low quality crystals didn't recharge by themselves, and once they ran out of power they had to be changed. Lith could simply pretend to replace them with new ones, since he was able to power them up at will.
Even with the experience gained developing the elemental stones on his own and having studied the academy's tools for a whole year, the task turned out to be harder than he expected.
At first, he used only the lowest quality stones. Lith expected them to be lost or even worse, to explode. Lith had no idea how to link a pseudo core to a crystal since it was a subject of the fifth year, which he had yet to begin.
He used the Skinwalker armor as a template, searching for a way to reproduce its schematics using true magic only. After over two months Lith had yet to find a way to make the process safe.
There were only two weeks left before his birthday when he received a call from Marchioness Distar.
Chapter 260 Crossroads Part 1
"Your Ladyship, to what do I owe the pleasure of this call?" Lith gave her a bow. Not only Mirim Distar was his sponsor at the White Griffon academy, but she was also his most powerful backer.
"First of all, congratulations are in order. The ranking you achieved brings great prestige to both our households and puts a muzzle on all those who wanted to prosecute me for strong arming Linjos into accepting your application."
"I'm sorry to have caused you so many troubles." Lith bowed again, aware of the meaning of her words. The Marchioness was a busy woman, she would never call him to exchange niceties.
Hers was a business call and she was reminding Lith about how much he owed her before asking him for a favor.
"Don't be." She dismissed his apologies with a wave of her hand, surprising Lith quite a bit.
"Politics work like that. If you cannot attack someone's actions, then you attack their reputation. Remember this well, once you have made some powerful enemies, they will criticize you no matter what you do.
It's something you must get used to, if you ever decide to join the political arena."
"Thanks for your concern, but it's not my intention. I plan to devote my life to magic and magical research. Wealth and status are just a mean to an end to me. I think the Marquisate is in good, capable hands already."
Lith chose his words carefully. The Marchioness' game was still unclear to him, so he decided to make it clear that he had no desire to become one of her competitors. Once he became a mage, Lith would receive a last name and a noble title.
Yet unless he also accepted the role and responsibilities that ruling his lands implied, he wouldn't become a true noble. His title would simply be nominal, giving him status and authority over the lesser nobles, but no wealth or annuities.
Many Professors of the academy had chosen that kind of life, serving their country with their magic rather than as feudal lords.
"Thanks for your kind words." The Marchioness nodded her head in approval.
"Now let's get down to business. The reason I called you is to inform you about the progress we made with the sealed box and the coded message you delivered to me. Sadly, despite countless hours of studies, my Forgemasters were unable to open it. It detonated leaving behind little clues. If only we had more than one, things could have been different." She sighed.
"The contents we managed to salvage matched your hypothesis. It contained a lot of alchemical tools that could have been used to synthesize and transport the toxin. It also carried enchanted items, but the explosion destroyed them leaving nothing we could identify."
'Damn! I know that already.' Lith thought. 'If only I had a decent excuse to provide her some of those useless trinkets I found, I could understand the bigger picture. Too bad there was no way to explain my stockpile of boxes.'
"On the bright side, we have finally managed to decipher the message." The Marchioness continued.
"It contained a series of instructions and names. The instructions explain the timing and dosage of the toxin, so at this point is irrelevant information. The names are quite interesting, though. They belong both to members of the academy staff and the students.
"We know from the royal constables' investigation that only a part of the academy staff listed was involved in the poisoning scheme. The others were simply approached and found ill-suited for recruiting because of their loyalty to the Kingdom or simply due to their cowardly nature.
"The problem is that we cannot interrogate students as we did for the staff. Accusing young heirs of noble households of treason would mean to implicate the whole bloodline. Those are more intricated than a spiderweb.
"One wrong move without hard evidence could escalate things, especially if the kids are actually innocent. Just being publicly suspected of high treason would mean for the households to lose their reputation, upsetting the balance of power in the Court.
"As I told you earlier, in the political arena it's not enough to be guiltless, you must also appear guiltless. The slightest suspicion can make you persona non grata in the right circles, not to mention your business relationship with the other nobles or the Crown.
"It can turn a family on the rise into one in decline. The Crown can't allow itself to lose even a single ally, that's why I have thought of an unorthodox method to continue the investigation¡"
***
Deirus Household. After the closing of the academy.Find authorized novels in Webnovel£¬faster updates, better experience£¬Please click www.webnovel.com for visiting.
Yurial Deirus was having the hardest time of his life, to the point that he often remembered Balkor's attack with nostalgia. At least back then he had friends and enemies. A safe zone and a danger zone. Everything was perfectly black and white.
Now his whole world was in shades of grey so similar between them that the only way to distinguish sh*t from chocolate was by the smell. His parents and his future in-laws paraded him almost daily during social events and parties, forcing Yurial to always keep his uniform and the golden pin on.
The situation caused him a huge amount of stress, since he was forced to spend a lot of time with Libea, his future wife, while pretending he enjoyed her company. The more Yurial knew her, the more he found himself contemplating Lith's suggestion about how easy it would be to arrange for her to an 'accidental fall' from a window.
Also, every time someone complimented him for his achievement, Yurial prayed to the gods to make him disappear or put him out of his misery, whatever they found more convenient.
Linjos's trickery with the rankings was like a poisoned knife in his heart. With each present and congratulation he received for his undeserved position, his condition got worse.
In two months, he had barely the time to touch a single spellbook. Yurial felt like an exotic beast, no one was interested in what he thought or had to say, only in the griffon shaped golden pin.
To avoid another relapse in his addict
ion to tranquilizers, Archmage Deirus, his father, had assigned him a personal assistant whose only task was to make sure Yurial would remain clean.
Yurial's father had chosen for him a stunning young woman, so to not ever leave him alone, even at night. Yet her well paid care and attention only contributed to making Yurial feel like a puppet.
'Neither my father nor Libea's family trust me. If this is how I'm going to live my life after I graduate, then I'd rather fail. I have no say in what I do, where I go, not even about who I spend my nights with. What good is to be a powerful mage if I'm only a spectator in my own life?'
The only silver lining in his current predicament was that the Ernas family attended to most of the events he was forced to took part in, allowing him to spend some time with his friends.
He and Lith called each other from time to time with the communication amulet. Every time Lith told him about his slow life in the countryside, Yurial couldn't help but wish their roles were reversed.
In his eyes, Lith's life was perfect, with a loving family, no responsibilities and a bright future ahead, while his own resembled more an elaborate form of torture with each passing day.
Chapter 261 Crossroads Part 2
Ernas Household. After the closing of the academy.
Phloria Ernas was having the time of her life. Her ranking was high enough to earn her father's admiration and to prevent her mother from nagging at her. She could spend her days as she pleased, riding, hunting, practicing her sword or magic.
The only sour note was that she wasn't allowed to leave the estate. Winter was the time of the year when the Ernas, her father's household, and the Myrok, her mother's, would meet to spend some quality time and reinforce their bond.
Since she attended the academy, it was her only opportunity to see her cousins and grandparents. There was no bad blood between the families and although Phloria found her mother's bloodline to be quite creepy, she loved them nonetheless.Find authorized novels in Webnovel£¬faster updates, better experience£¬Please click www.webnovel.com for visiting.
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