Day 70, 8:30 PM

  Since I don’t plan on fighting Edna, I pick Initial Overpower Resistance and check my new level up condition.

  “Cast at least one spell of each mana affinity.” I look at Edna to confirm she heard me, but she just keeps eating her dinner.

  So, consider what I’ve experienced with the marble-finder. It’s no wonder Edna seems surprisingly unintelligent for her stats. If she’s constantly scanning everything within a hundred yards of her, processing and sorting that information must be taking most of her conscious mind.

  “How much time do you think it will take?” I address her directly, since she’s still pretending to be focused on her stew.

  “Not much, it doesn’t say you have to do it perfectly.” She takes another mouthful. “Probably a handful of hours. In the meantime, teach Gila how to cast Firestarter. That’s red mana. Gatherer is black, Scanner is indigo.”

  She goes on to list the different color spells she taught me, even though I cast them all using my green mana. I will need to learn brown, white, violet, orange, yellow, and blue spells, and she muses about which would be the best choices as she finishes her dinner.

  “There’s a problem.” She sets aside her empty bowl, probably happy she has Gila to carry the small pot, bowls, and cutlery. “We know the names or concepts we have for those colors are wrong. They might even be the wrong colors, as you previously said, but I can tell you journeyman mages have advanced beyond fifth level. Both sixth and seventh level skill choices were recorded, even if people reached them very rarely. I personally have reached level six before becoming a full fledged mage.”

  She looks me in the eye. “That means we can see whether we have the colors right. And if we don’t, I’ll have to teach you some more esoteric spells, which are a blur between two colors. That might help us answer the question of ten mana affinities.”

  There’s an uncharacteristic eagerness in Edna’s voice. I think she’s resolved herself to redo her class, or at least the lower tier ones, if there are any tiers to classes.

  It’s bedtime, so Edna and Lucy sleep while Gila and I take the first watch. I demonstrate firestarter with what’s left of kindling, then let her practice while I keep watch. Two hours pass before she starts throwing sparks, igniting the kindling.

  “I got it,” she says excitedly. “I got the class!”

  So you don’t need your master to acknowledge you? I should’ve checked that before, but Edna straight up gave me a congratulatory speech of approval, so there was no time. The information seems useless, but I file it for later consideration, and proceed to teach Gila the gatherer and the clearer.

  Both extremely simple spells, and by the time our watch ends, she’s already mastered the former well enough to cast it. I’m guessing she’ll reach level one before breakfast, and level two shortly after that. Learning three spells and then using them to your benefit are easy enough conditions to meet.

  Reaching the third level, not so much. But I guess that’s tomorrow’s worry.

  “You go to sleep, Gila, I’ll wake up Edna and Lucy.”

  She nods, huddles her sack on the ground and she’s out. Instantly. And she snores like a dragoness. I allow myself a faint smile of amusement, then look at Lucy, she’s taller, older, and looks at least five years more mature than Gila, yet she’s sleeping like a little girl, while Gila sleeps like a pirate, snoring and hugging her shinies.

  Edna on the other hand.

  “You’re not asleep, are you?”

  “I’m not.”

  “You need to sleep more. It helps sort memories.”

  She growls at me, and I guess I deserve it, even though I mean well.

  “Shall we focus on magic for a couple of hours? Then I can awaken Lucy and grab some shuteye.”

  This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  Edna glares at me, but gets up and starts teaching me the magic I’m missing. Death magic is first, a spell called witherer. In accordance with the prevalent spell naming culture, the spell’s purpose is easy to deduce; it withers plants in a small area. They should’ve named it the weeder, since that’s its intended use.

  The wordless song makes me think of plague rampaging and snuffing out medieval towns and cities as well as a swarm of locusts devouring all greenery before them.

  I take ten minutes to master the witherer well enough to cast it. The pitch black dungeon even has ample test subjects available, since saplings and grasses are already carpeting the ground in the form of tiny green dots.

  Next up is a completely bonkers white mana spell, called finder. Finder doesn’t locate objects, instead when a mage casts it they are more likely to recognize people they have resonance with in a crowd.

  The chant gives me a ridiculous vision, and I break down into tears, barely holding back a sob, startling Edna.

  “What is it? I didn’t even cast anything, just sang the song.”

  “I’m all right.” I clench my teeth and drive the tears away. “My mind was open, exploring the images of your song, and I saw a familiar place and a familiar face when I wasn’t ready. That is all.”

  What I saw was a brothel across time and space, a beautiful, injured face, and all the joy and pain that meeting brought. So young, so desperate, so vulnerable. I would go through all of it again, just to protect a phantom.

  I shudder. “Can we do another white magic? Please?”

  Confusion dances about Edna’s face, but she nods. “Not a problem. There’s one that helps you find minor items you have fate with, it’s called Locator.”

  Locator versus finder, such original names. I have a feeling thesaurus was a spell inventor’s best friend, and I understand why Honorable Alchbert’s Wave of Fire received such a mouthful of a name.

  Edna sings again, this time her voice conjuring a much safer imagery of me asking my aide where I had placed my seal to sign a royal decree. It overlaps with a dog fetching a stick, and I finally wonder why every song seems to come with two images. Always exactly two wildly different scenes.

  I file the thought away for later, and focus on leveling. Locator and definitely not a finder or a tracer takes a quarter of an hour to learn. The test casting reveals I have no fate with a random stone I picked up, and then we move onto violet.

  “This one will be useful to you, it’s not an easy spell, but I believe you will be using it often in combat, once you master it.”

  Edna proceeds to explain hyper-stimulator, a spell whose song invokes the image of that exact moment when you get used to a ludicrous speed at which you are moving. It overlaps with a pebble falling through the air and hitting water, sinking down with half the speed.

  The spell itself alters the perception of time, increasing the mage’s reaction speed. A neat trick, and a huge advantage in combat. It’s questionable how much I need it with my processing power, but on the other hand compounding strong points can result in absurd abilities.

  “How much effort does it take you now?”

  “Hyper-stimulator is not a minor magic, it takes a hum and minor gesturing.” Edna demonstrates. It takes about two seconds to set up the spell. “You can control how much faster your mind works by the amount of mana you spend. It’s negligible if you keep it low, but if you burn it with all you’ve got it can slow down the world three times or more. It’s best to use violet mana for maximum effect.”

  Edna is being nice to me all of a sudden. Is it because I cracked and showed weakness, or does she want something from me?

  Regardless, I take what help and good will she’s offering, and take half an hour to master hyper-stimulator.

  By the time the girls get up, I have mastered scarer, a yellow spell which makes an object creepy for a short while, followed by teacher, a blue spell, which increases your ability to focus while learning, and revealer, an orange spell which highlights weaker magics and makes it easier to detect.

  BSD rewards my efforts with a level, and I improve my mana control skill to an advanced tier before checking my next level up condition.

  “This one’s easy,” I tell Edna. “Cast a spell targeting a living creature.”

  I cast hyper-stimulator and wait. An agonizingly slow minute passes with nothing happening.

  “There’s no level up notice. What kind of crazy logic is this? Am I not a living creature?”

  “I don’t think you are the problem.” Edna says, her finger to her chin, her brows furrowed. “Hyper-stimulator might affect an intangible part of you, or your perception of time, or time in a small area around our brain. We know the spells’ effects, not how they achieve it.”

  Another worrisome thought. Magic is magical, mages don’t understand it, they just use it.

  “We can use our future students as test subjects to gain deeper understanding into how magic works.”

  Edna nods. Her lip twitches in hesitation, but she speaks her mind, “Other than Lucy and Gila, our students shouldn’t know how to level up. The process is too ridiculous. I know you said you could advance fast when we discussed it, but this is too fast. You have years upon years of missing experiences and of opportunities you have lost that you can never recover. To you, learning magic is just a chore to gain a level, there’s no excitement, no exploration.”

  “Edna.” I smile and look her in the eye. “I’m too old to care about enjoying myself.”

  What I care about is tearing the border between life and death, about finding those I love and achieving immortality for them.

  Naturally, I don’t say that. There’s no reason to scare the old witch.