53. Midnight Gazing (Patreon)

“… isn’t an ellari.” Alatea’s words resonated on my mind days after our miniature tea party.

There weren’t any non-ellari at Ferilyn, currently because of the dome, but even prior to that the presence of foreign commerce was dictated by traveler ellari returning to the country not the other way around. The city was isolationist, and it did show. The only alien species I had seen were either the dragonborn at the Wyrm’s Landing, or the plentiful exotic pets being sold at the bazaar back in Thal’mer.

For a non-ellari to have left a book as big as the anthology undetected at the heart of the most important academy of the country, which was overwatched by the Arcane Sanctum, the ever-looming tower of the High Arcanist, it was unbelievable.

Sure, magic lets you do a lot of things, but the fluctuation of mana was traceable. The librarians here were trained to detect the minimal output of magic as to prevent the ancient books from being damaged. Even then, the author must be a mage solely concentrated on soul magic, if they left the book here, it was through spiritual means.

But by judging the spells written on the book, they were at least an eleven-star mage. Why did a foreigner risk so much to leave the book here, albeit of their massive power?

The High Arcanist was the only current twelve-star ellari mage, and one of the few in the whole world. That didn’t mean that eleven-stars are common, though. As with common people, or ellari to be exact, were stuck at the six-star thanks to the seven-star barrier, most mages don’t break through the tenth-tier mark.

Most mages stayed in the nine-star, unable to climb the wall that’s orders of magnitude higher than all previous ones. And the few that manage to do so end up finding a wall as rough as before for the eleven-star.

A distinction has to be made: the seven-star and ten-star and upwards barrier were not the same. The seventh tier incorporate advanced spell composition to even work, making it difficult to those without tuition to get further on. The tenth tier, on the other hand, was just straight-up more difficult. It was just that way. Or so I had been told.

Hypothetically speaking, if there were a hundred-thousand nine-star mages (which in reality was much, much lower), then there were a thousand for the tenth-tier, ten for the eleventh, and a lone one at the twelfth, who would be the patron of Ferilyn.

I’m not so much scarred of having trouble with such wall thanks to my absurd elemental affinity, but more so about the madman that infiltrated the capital of magic, went to the High Arcanist’s neighborhood, stayed at the academy and copied all books (because remember, all the soul spellbooks at the library were contained in the anthology), and then wrote some original spells to finally leave it laying at plain sight.

I just can’t process the logistics behind such gymnastics and ploys to pull out everything without being detected.

“A non-ellari mage, huh?” I finally sighed in defeat, trying to forget about the matter and concentrate in my meditation.

It was currently midnight, I was uneased since the revelation, and I had a lot of problems to sleep. It decreased by half my sleeping time, but hey, at least my meditation time more than duplicated. And today I was specially exhausted after a training session with Adrian. My roommate showed its exhaustion by sleeping at my side like a dragon in its hoard.

“Is such analogy racist? I mean, dragons do exist in this world, and they are a fruitful and intelligent species.” I sighed, my eyes weighing me, yet I was unable to fall sleep. “Meh, who cares.”

I would be worried if I still was under academical schedule, but that was the thing about holidays, there wasn’t a sleeping pattern I followed to begin with.

The cold breeze of a particularly frigid Scorch night rocked my tunic, giving me a pleasurable chill. I had gone outside at a random spot of the campus park to not bother Adrian with my ramblings; no people were able to be seen or heard. Thankfully, the night curfew prevalent on the first years after the attack was removed as nightlife became the norm, especially on Scorch.

Yet it was too late currently for such nightlife to matter.

I know I just became twenty-three a few weeks ago, but I felt like I was progressing slowly. Too many powerful people, to many unknown variables. Whether they be the High Arcanist, the Imperium, or the alien author. It was paranoia talking, but I felt like I was on the eye of the storm, and the moment the hurricane mode elsewhere, I would be on its striking point.

It started as a reflex, a second thought after my duel, but I began focusing on soul magic rather than arcane. Mana-weaving wasn’t relying on my arcane knowledge, but magic as a whole. Arcane affinity just helped with it.

While the chaotic and ordered energies of the arcane interested me greatly, soul magic was an invisible gun in a world where everyone used bows. Where did that knowledge about advanced weaponry came from? I couldn’t know. But the analogy felt fitting.

Virtually no one, especially the ellari people, had their souls defended. Maybe their minds, mages are a paranoic bunch, me included. But souls were a totally different matter. Having said that, I should find a way to protect my mind, just in case.

This provoked a situation where I could instantly down any mage with a touch of my soul. Not only because the average ellari mage soul were pathetic as a whole, but because mine was downright insane.

Entering on my soulspace showed that my soul was bigger than myself, that if I walked close to someone, I would invade their own soulspace just because of the girth of my spirit. I continued to cut my soul daily, I had yet to find a way to stop this growth. Maybe Alatea would know a solution.

I heard blades of grass being stepped on and my eyes shot wide towards the sound’s origin. There two girls wearing freshmen tunics stood by.

“It’s him.” One whispered to the other.

“Oh, no. He saw us. Run!” The other girl ignored all pretense and started running away. Her friend soon followed. I heard a laugh and a too girlish scream, so I told myself they were just joking.

A sigh escaped my mouth after such display. “How’s it that I’m still this infame after a whole season?” I scratched my long right ear as I talked to myself. I could comfort myself knowing that I didn’t have a weird title given to me. That was for the best.

It was kind of my fault to meditate in the middle of the park, but I did like the chilling wind that swayed my hair. Better than boiling myself at the bedroom.

My mind drifted towards the end of my conversation with Alatea, nothing more had happened after she dropped the bomb, but I feel that was an occasion where the lack of words was the same as talking. At least she didn’t discourage me from reading the book, not even implicitly.

“So, what are my objectives then.” I asked myself to reassure my path. Both figuratively and literally, as I began walking to calm my mind and body.

I was normally walking blindfolded with secondary objectives at the background like finishing school or the academy. But now, I had two clear objectives.

Firstly, find the non-ellari author. I had the impression that I would have to master the book to make it. Mystic’s Dominion was my first clue as it was the more complex spell in the anthology besides that eleven-star one. It included soul-reading and soul-detection spells inside its complex framework, so it would be pretty useful.

Secondly, achieving the eighth tier with any of my affinities. I would like to be an eight-star mage by the end of the year, but it was too close of a deadline even for myself. Though that didn’t mean I wouldn’t try.

One goal was amassing power itself. The other required power to do so.

In my pondering, I hadn’t paid attention where I was walking to, and when I noticed, I was outside the academy. Whilst the academy grounds were big and the institution itself was strict with its rules, there weren’t any limitations on going outside the campus.

So, taking advantage of my insomnia, I walked across the Sin’fal district, also known as the administrative district. Even though I had already been studying on the academy for two whole seasons, I hadn’t gone outside to the district it was located in.

As the nickname of Sin’fal implied, the district was quite boring and mostly empty. Truth be told, the district was basically composed of the academy and the Arcane Sanctum, so there wasn’t much room left for anything else.

That’s why I made my way towards the Arcane Sanctum. The towering spire was the heart of the city, its town hall, the governmental house, and the biggest center of study and congregation for mages.

And yet I had never visited it in my two decades of life.

Well, that’s not true. If I had waited, I remember reading that the freshmen of the academy would do an outing to the Sanctum. And judging by the fact that only a trimester of the year was left for such occasion.

I planted my feet before the colossal building, enormous floating Mage Lights surrounded the structure and illuminated the whole plaza. There were only three people present, and neither of them looked lifeful nor amicable.

A man who seemed a researcher laid on a bench, his hand on his face as he was sobbing. The man gave me a dead look, heavy bags under his eyes. Someone didn’t have a good day, or week, by the looks of the color of those bags.

I put an oomph on my step and quickly got away from his side.

The other two people didn’t fare much better, but for completely different reasons. Two guards stood before the gates of the Arcane Sanctum wearing full armor. It was silvery and fully enchanted with runes I couldn’t distinguish. Though I couldn’t distinguish a lot from the broad and big armors they wore, one looked like a man and the other a woman.

The armor themselves were lavish and looked light. More a uniform than an actual protection, as the armor had a lot of opening which full plate armor shouldn’t have. And even then, ellari didn’t have the need for armor to begin with, a seven-star defensive spell was far resilient than any metal protection could provide.

The figure on the left was incredibly tall, while the one on the right was far shorter, and had longer hair and ears. To be honest, I wasn’t the correct man to identify a woman by those characteristics as my ears were as long as my mother, and my hair was longer than Marissa and Monica’s.

The door leading inside the Sanctum was colossal, a few tens of meters high. Somehow that didn’t impress me, as it would be pretty easy to open it with magic. It also had a small, more ellari-sized door on the middle. That one was open.

Either way, I had no business inside the tower. I doubted they would have allowed me in in the first place.

As I stood on the plaza, with my eyes closed I inspected the place. I had yet to mention it, but the mana concentration on the air at the academy was far superior than Thal’mer. And here at the Arcane Sanctum, those quantities were higher.

For an arcanist, the air became more of a liquid than a gas, as overloaded air enveloped the place. Even if it wasn’t tangible, I could feel it on my skin. A viscous substance permeating the surroundings. Such density of mana shouldn’t be healthy.

“Hmm? What’s that?” I pondered to myself as I observed the Arcane Sanctum with my Soul Sight.

It was pretty difficult to see anything, as mana interfered with all three planes: the physical, the mental, and the spiritual. And the Arcane Sanctum was but a singularity of mana, were all the magical energies of the city gathered. And still, I could perceive something on that tower.

I was severely limited, it was like looking through dense mist, but a lot of souls moved around the towering needle. As one of the major edifications of the city, it was obvious it would be filled to the brim with people, but what grabbed my attention weren’t the quantities of souls themselves, but their state.

A lone and shining soul stood at the top of the needle, a bright beacon, a miniature sun. Any amateur mystic could instantly tell that was the High Arcanist of Ferilyn. But what stroke me was the coloration, a soul made of glowing deep purple with dots of dull grey.

Common souls didn’t shine, they didn’t possess any luster. But the High Arcanist’s soul did. But even then, what worried me most were the other souls.

They contained smalls specs of shining purple.

Unnoticeable for the untrained soul-eye, those sparkling dots were the same as the soul at the top of the tower. I didn’t like what I had seen.

I wouldn’t like to stay on the surroundings of the tower more than necessary.

What I did was track along a golden path which led me to a lookout, not bothering to ponder on what I had seen. Not yet. The Sin’fal district was not only found on the middle of Ferilyn but was also place on top of a considerable hill. So, I could enjoy a good look of the western side of the city even if I was on a better sighting place like the Arcane Sanctum itself.

There I saw the Thal’mer, Lan’el, and Shal’mar districts. The Lan’el and Shal’mar districts were hard to see as there weren’t many lights. The former district had become a military base after the Wyrm’s Landing, and the latter wasn’t known for his nightlife to begin with. The only feature recognizable on Shal’mar was the Open Library of Ferilyn, which skylight acted at a limelight pointing at the sky.

Why did they made a skylight emit light? That was beyond me.

On the other hand, Thal’mer was easily visible. The forestall district was mostly covered by the Thal’mer park, and those magical trees of colorful canopies emitted a low light from their leaves as they expulsed mana. This was something I was told in Herbalism class, but the common tree in Ferilyn also followed a magical version of photosynthesis. At day they absorbed mana through their roots, and at night they emitted said mana through their leaves in the form of light to perpetuate their photosynthesis and helping their neighboring trees.

“Ah…” I sighed, resting my arms on vine-laden wooden railing, as I watched the district where I grew in. Stargazing would have made this moment far more mystical, but the damned violet sky forbid me from doing so.

“This has made me a bit nostalgic. I have been away from home for more than half a year. Maybe I could do it with Marissa, she surely would like to visit back their parents now that we have holidays.”

As I was getting sleepy looking the myriad of colors illuminating the city, I made my way back to the academy. It took me a whole hour. The sun had come out when I arrived.

Damn.