The Undying Magician - Book 1 - Chapter 40 - Critique (Patreon)

                                                                                      Nathan

                                                 Year 2849 | Month 5 | Day 24 | Monday

I hold in my tears before a grunt escapes my lips as my arm stops falling mid-air and flies straight back to my body to reattach itself.

“If that’s too much for you right now, then let’s see how you fare losing your-” Anabel begins to say, only to pause midsentence as I vaguely hear the door to the classroom opening up.

I push the last remnants of my pain away to roll to my feet about a meter away from her with my sword in my right hand before looking at the entrance, only to sigh in relief as I find Leo walking in with one brow raised.

“I guess she’s doing a good job guiding you if that’s your response to my entering the room,” the man says with barely hidden amusement in his tone. He then turns to look at Anabel and says, “Unfortunately, however, I’m gonna have to call a short pause on this training session.”

The woman – who I’m now placing directly behind the doctor on the list of psychopaths I know and never want to see again – simply raises her sword and waves it in his direction with a cold glare on her face.

Leo – apparently also not immune to her threats – raises his hands in a placating manner and says, “Don’t worry, you can continue with whatever you were doing after I tell him something.”

My eyes widen slightly in fear at his words before I quietly shake my head back and forth in the hopes that he will see me. Unfortunately, Anabel happens to jerk her head directly towards me soon after I start, catching me in the act and narrowing her eyes in the process.

Shit.

Leo seems to notice this as well and just averts his gaze from us both as he says, “Well, to keep this brief-”

Please don’t keep it brief!

“-I’m going to be taking you along with me for the first ‘field trip’ to a Warzone that we’re going to be having.” He says, piquing both my interest and Anabel’s interest by the looks of her raised eyebrows. “The first trip will be on the day after your duel with that first year student, and it will be to one of the easier Warzones.”

Wait, if it’s the day after the duel, then won’t the trip be on a-

“And yes, you will be excused from all of your classes on the day of the trip,” he continues, answering my unasked question, “but you will still be responsible for turning in any assignments you might have on time.”

I nod my head in understanding before hearing Anabel ask, “Which Warzone are you taking him to?”

Him?

I turn to look at Anabel with my brows furrowed slightly in confusion.

Why do I get the feeling that she’s completely ignoring the rest of the students going along on the little trip and focusing only on me?

Leo – completely ignoring the confusion on my face – answers her question with a smile, “The Desolate Warzone.”

My eyes widen slightly at his answer before I simply nod my head.

“So we’ll be fighting against the warriors of Natra then?” I ask out of curiosity.

The man nods his head before glancing at Anabel and asking, “Would you mind if I had him show me how far he’s gotten on his spell for Magic Circuitry right now?”

Anabel nods before sheathing her sword and saying, “Sure, but I’ll be adding more time on to the end of the training session to make up for it.”

My eyebrow twitches slightly at that statement before Instructor Leo walks up to me and says, “Go grab your device and show me what you’ve got for your spell so far.”

I wince slightly at that statement before pulling out my device and walking up to my bag to grab my latest printed page of code for the barrier spell.

Just like when in my room, I take my top off – ignoring the other people in the room – before starting to form my magic circle and entering the script into it.

Over the past couple of days, I managed to do a lot of debugging for the spell – which mostly involved me blowing up, crushing, and severing my arm over and over again – but even with that, I still haven’t managed to perfect it.

I did do a few more changes to it since I last tested it, so here goes nothing.

After several minutes of entering and checking the script – which has been shortened a lot from the first time I did it due to how many times I’ve done it at this point – I press the button on the device, causing the spell to begin activating with the two instructors watching from the side with obvious interest in their eyes.

Just like always, the spell begins with no issues, with the barrier forming outwards from the back of my wrist to spread out over my arm up till my forearm.

However, right as it reaches my elbow, where I programmed the barrier to end for this test, it suddenly begins to curve inwards, digging into my elbow.

I grunt in pain whilst cutting off the flow of mana, but not before the barrier manages to cut almost all the way through my elbow, leaving my forearm hanging on by a literal thread of flesh.

At this point, this amount of pain – which used to be enough to make me fall unconscious from the shock – is now ignorable if I am focused enough. Except for a short expression of pain that is, like that grunt.

Which is really making me wonder if I came to this academy to learn magic, or if I came to train my pain tolerance.

Because I seem to be spending quite a few hours each day in extreme amounts of pain. Not to mention how Anabel seems to be obsessed with the idea of making me pain tolerant enough to not so much as give a reaction when a limb is severed.

“Hmm, it’s not bad,” Leo says, to which Anabel nods her head in agreement, “but you seem to be having some errors in the part of the script that identifies the end of the spell and what to do once it reaches it.”

He then leans down next to Anabel before they both begin to point out errors in the printed page of code I have with me. Errors of which I quickly mark down with my pen.

This lasts for several minutes before Anabel finishes her and Leo’s critique and help by saying, “-you also should change how your using this function, because, while this way is technically correct, it isn’t the way you should be using it.”

She then proceeds to point out the way it should be used.

I quickly nod my head before writing it all down and sitting back again to look over all of the changes I wrote down on the page.

Okay, guess the no pain no gain saying does have some merit to it.

“Now that your done with that, I’ll be adding ten minutes to your sword training today,” Anabel suddenly says as she and Leo both stand up straight again.

I jerk my head over to look at her, only to see a cold smile on her face as Leo casually begins to leave the room.

Well, shit. This won’t be fun.

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