Chapter 37 - Extra Study (Patreon)

Between one moment and the next, Corrine changed. She went from swearing in an apparent incoherent rage to a massive grin.

“That was fun.” She laughed and patted both of them on the shoulder. “It was fucking fun, letting loose, and, to be honest, if you weren’t aiming to do the impossible, I would have been disappointed.”

Tom stared at her in disbelief.

“Are you serious? Was that put on?”

“It was a bit of fun. As I said, it felt fucking awesome to let loose. Definitely recommend it for stress relief.”

Kang next to him doubled over laughing:

“What? You thought she was serious? That’s so funny”

“Her words were pretty pointed.” Tom actually wasn’t sure what precisely they had been, as he had retreated into his system room in a futile attempt to avoid being spat on. Well, it was at least only a partially successful retreat, as he had been spat on, but had not felt the specks land on his exposed face. Based on her facial expression, he figured it had been a safe assumption.  “No reasonable person would say all that…” He trailed off as he realised how ridiculous he sounded.

Corrine put her hands on her hips, tilted her head higher than usual to create an impression that was like a cross between a haughty lady looking down on people and a street bully:

“I’m not fucking reasonable.”

Kang just laughed harder, then Corrine cracked her stern visage with another smile.

“Rage boy, did you honestly think I’ll be upset at someone striving to be their best?”

Tom opened his mouth to respond.

“I haven’t been exposed to him for long, but I don’t think Tom’s necessarily the best at social stuff.” Kang interrupted quietly.

“How can you say that? My acting has been great.”

“You outed yourself as a reincarnator on the first day.”

Corrine guffawed:

“He did what?”

“I…” Tom went to argue and then stopped himself. “It was just a long sentence. I was in shock and it slipped out. Plus, we were in a safe spot at the time.”

“The hide fort’s not secure.”

“You and Bir were the only ones to overhear.”

“Yeah, and I picked you and I’ve been trying to figure out since whether it was worthwhile to make contact. You failing in the first interaction did not inspire confidence.”

Corrine tapped her empty wrist to indicate the time. It was a gesture that would only work with someone who had grown up on earth.

“First day, that’s so funny. I would love to hear more, but we’ve got two minutes. Is there anything else you want to know?”

Kang appeared thoughtful for a moment, and then shook his head:

“Nothing pressing.”

“How often are we going to meet?” Tom asked.

“Not often. It’s too dangerous otherwise. I’ll keep doing these meetings.”

“Quarterly, then,” he summarised.

She shook her head:

“Every third or fourth. I’m not about to create fucking patterns someone might recognise. Dimitri, however, sits down with all students privately once every six months. He’ll be your main point of contact.”

“What she’s saying is that, despite the GODs guaranteeing your behaviour, she’s unwilling to take that risk.”

“She’s not saying that at all.”

“Not with your spectacular ability to out yourself. She feels unsafe having too much to do with you.”

“Children, focus.” She ordered, laughing. “I’m not saying Kang’s right, but can you see his point?”

“Fine, be like that.” they both laughed harder. “Moving on, what happens if I get general two combat?”

“Then, Tom, you engineer private time with Dim. He is the person you have to talk to. Going direct to him is not recommended. If any one of us is watched constantly, it’s him. It’s better to wait until your sit-down session.” She checked her watch again. “Sorry about this. It’s a matter of operational security.”

She attacked him.

He attempted to block, but his hand-to-hand fighting ability was terrible. She went through his defences effortlessly. He felt his collarbone break, and then a snap kick dislocated his hip. The force she struck with was ridiculous for someone he knew was restricted to the strength of a preteen girl. Skills, potentially even passive ones, turned blows, which should have been restricted to damaging soft tissue, into ones capable of shattering bones. He crashed into the ground, then twisted in an attempt to get his functioning leg between him and the danger.

Corrine nodded approvingly and stepped back. “You’re tough: kept fighting, not a single whimper. Great job.” She glanced at Kang. “You’re going to have to get those ribs checked out. So, I don’t need to hurt you further. Formally, you’ve both failed and I’m not recording any abilities against. You can work out how to treat future assessments, whether to produce an ability every time or slide under the radar. It’s not something I can help with.”

The door dinged open. “A healer will be here in a minute.” She said in a curt, disinterested tone as her mask went back on. She left, unconcerned.

Tom tried to fix his hip, smacking it with an elbow to try and drive it into place. If he had his magic, it would have been different. Even with his eight mana he could have fixed this himself with his old Touch Heal spell. Use it to loosen his tendons, relax and tense the right muscles, and, with a bit of outside pressure, it would click back into the socket. Without that level of control, he needed to rely on brute force, and his strength wasn’t going to be enough.

Kang grabbed him. “Stop,” the other boy hissed and threw a furious glance at the open door, and then Kang deliberately dug his fingers into the tender joint. “Healer soon.”

The unexpected pain caused an involuntary whimper even as his brain caught up with what was happening. With a mental sigh, Tom retreated into the system room and his avatar immediately started screaming in pain. He acknowledged that reaction was probably what he should have done the moment Corrine turned to leave to leave, and his failure to pretend was why Kang had gotten so pissed at him.

Less than a minute later, a young man entered. The pain immediately vanished, and then, with true brute strength, the healer carefully popped the hip in place.

Tom had discovered the ability to play sound and to slow down sections while doing so to make them perceptible. The healer cursed at how brutal the trainers were, but not, Tom noted, at Corrine specifically.

They had lunch and then were placed in their isolation rooms. Tom injected himself to continue his magic, and practiced it whenever his mana fully recharged. During the rest of the time, went through his spear forms.

Straight afterwards, the trio met together.

Kang stood at the entrance to his room:

 “I built fort.” The boy held his spot, apparently proud of his achievement. He gestured for them to come in.

“Me don’t want,” Bir instantly objected. “No isolation room.”

Kang caught Tom’s eyes and made a smallest head gesture.

“Together. It’s fun,”

“Me want to see,” Tom declared and hurriedly entered the room. Bir pouted. She was used to being the leader amongst the three of them, and didn’t like the two conspiring to deny that. Unhappily, she followed them in and Kang let the door ding shut.

“Why play here? Boring. We here every day.”

“Because this morning,” Kang reminded her.

Bir shuddered.

“She mean. Super mean.”

“We need trick. Look.” Kang pulled her over to a familiar-looking folder filled with paper. It was open and Tom could see the wire frames of a spell form, but it was not one he could recognise. The lines were all wavy, and seemed to go from thin to thick in ways he wasn’t used to. Kang tapped the paper. “Magic.”

He raised his hand and the same wire frame as on the page formed upon his palm. It was fuzzier than the clean, crisp drawn lines - a very poor imitation that was not even close to being accurate enough to create the spell. But something was wrong. Tom studied it closer, and then realised: the image was an illusion. It was constructed of light, not magic like he had assumed.

“You can cast illusions,” he blurted out in surprise.

Kang shook his head minutely once more:

“Yes. A trick.” At the same time, he tilted his other hand. It held a palm-sized coin that had been turned into a necklace by the addition of a thin, fine-linked silver chain.

Tom recognised that he was looking at an artefact, and one he recognised from the hidden cupboards above them. He had dismissed it as currently useless. A cute trinket, capable of sustaining a tier four illusion, but at a mana cost that was way too high for his current regeneration to sustain. If he had three times his current mana pool, it could be used to permanently hide something small, like a spatial ring, so he could see a genuine use for it later on. However, for most kids, its purpose would be pranks. Such an activity wouldn’t be the worst use of someone’s skills and time, so he approved of its presence.

The illusion puffed out of existence.

“That’s cool. Do it again,” Bir demanded.

“Seven minutes.” Kang answered. “No mana. But trick,” he poked the page. “To show at assessment. Master and no hurt.”

She turned away. “Don’t want.”

It was a first try. She had, as expected resisted their push. Tom wasn’t worried. He had seen Kang work before, and he was confident that before long it would be Bir pushing them to train magic harder.

Tom moved closer to see what wire forms the other boy was working on. Kang saw him and shuffled the paper. His finger ran down the list of names and paused significantly on three.

·        Shadow Concealment.

·        Deceptive Movement.

·        Conceal Weapon.

Bir did not notice the exchange, as she was poking her head into the fort Kang had built. It had been constructed out of the three toy boxes. It was an impressive construction for someone as young as Pa was supposed to be, but not the type of effort that would draw suspicious eyes. 

“Warrior or mage?” he whispered after another glance at Bir.

“Warrior,” Kang answered, and his finger tapped the deceptive movement line.

“Rogue?”

A quick shake of the head.

That was enough for Tom to understand the build that Kang was going for. He was a front-line fighter, one who intended to use shadows to mask his movements. He would confuse his opponents and make them strike where he wasn’t, or, alternatively, allow his own axe to score strikes without being blocked, parried, or dodged. It wouldn’t be like a proper illusion, which could create perfect mirror images to distract the opponent. Rather, it was a more subtle approach, a battle style that would have magic cause the enemy attacks to miss by centimetres, which in a desperate fight could rapidly escalate into a significant advantage. 

Tom approved of the choice. He had fought monsters that used shadows to distort and those that created perfect illusions. The shadow ones he had always found to be the harder fight.

Bir was busy.

However, having seen the artefact, he couldn’t pass up the opportunity to communicate. He pointed at the coin necklace, and it was passed across. As he expected, it took mana and his imagination to create illusions. Tom’s years of controlling lightning made the process simple. Light was far easier to manipulate than electricity, and, to be honest, the artefact did most of the heavy lifting.

Kang was looking at him. Bir was still in the fort, hidden. Tom focused and created words in the air.

Teleporting, Lightning Spearman.

The other boy nodded as he read it.

Deceptive Shadow Axeman?

Kang gave him a quick thumbs up.

Bir?

Like he was expecting, the other man picked up one of the other folders that he had out and pointed at the heading.

Water Domain.

Tom remembered what Corrine had said earlier, that there was a girl who had gained such a domain by age ten. There was one problem with that. Magic aptitude wasn’t necessarily governed with hard work.

But affinities?

The words puffed out of existence almost immediately as his mana bottomed, but Kang had been looking straight at it, so would have read it.

He winked at Tom:

“Bir? Did Trial test affinities?”

She poked her head out of the fort and nodded her head vigorously:

“You know. Me talented. Water, Ice, Storm, Life, Arcane.”

“Was that the order you were given?”

Kang glared at him and, as he was outside Bir’s eyeline, he pointed aggressively at his own throat. Tom winced slightly. That was his way of saying shut up and watch your damn words. His excitement at being able to communicate normally was causing him to make mistakes.

She hesitated and pulled herself fully out of the fort. “Storm and ice worst…. For other Not sure. Hard choice”

“Water coolest.” Tom told her.

Despite their encouragement, she refused to look at the wire forms. Tom accepted the setback passively - if a bigger push was needed, he could use his own fate to influence the decision. He didn’t think it would be necessary, though.

Three days later, Kang got her to start practicing.

It was tempting to push her to use fate to speed up her learning, but it wasn’t necessary. Given that they had years of training ahead of them, a week or a month would make little difference.  He hoped she would think to do it herself, because he didn’t want to risk triggering the geas that stopped him from communicating too much about the unique uses of fate.

If he had to, he would consider it, but, hopefully, it would never be required.

Three weeks passed with only a single noticeable shift to their routine. The morning combat sessions had been fun.  Tom was given a chance to experiment with a variety of weapons, and then, to his annoyance, everything changed to focus on crafting.

It irritated him no end.

The three of them were back in the isolation room. It was something they did every second or third day, despite Bir’s reluctance. Having watched Kang in action, he suspected the other reincarnator to be primarily responsible for the success of these sessions. He was very good at prompting an idea and then waiting until Bir seized it. He wasn’t sure if it was originally Bir or Kang’s idea, but the pre-isolation room raid for cookies kept her spirits up.

The girl in question was currently focused on a cup of water. Every now and again, the surface would ripple, as though an insect had taken off from the top.

She was smiling at her progress.

“I hate crafting,” Tom complained.

Kang glanced sharply at him with a disapproving frown on his face:

“I like magic part.” Those words of rebuke, no matter how minor, and the look of disappointment were equivalent to most people yelling.

He was more than a little surprised at the show of emotion - if the other boy cared that much, then there was probably something he was missing.

He forced himself to reassess the sessions with a more flexible perspective. The crafting activity was a slow-moving shift between disciplines. The first week had been basket-weaving, which he guessed prompted dexterity and nimbleness of the fingers. It was not an explicit waste of time. However, pottery did not give that benefit. You just got your hands muddy, and the spinning wheel did all the heavy lifting. That was time that could be better spent doing almost anything else.

Kang subtly angled a folder towards him, and the yellow paper was suddenly filled with text.

I think it’s fascinating how they’ve incorporated magic to help with the mundane. So creative.

The words vanished as Kang ran out of mana and he offered the large coin to Tom.

As was his policy, he shook his head. His mana was for the spell form practice, and, while it was nice to communicate directly, it wasn’t worth the lost training time. Kang shrugged. He was used to Tom’s quirks by now.

However, Tom did not reject his fellow reincarnator’s words. All the activities were magic-assisted. There were tools that had made the basket weaving easier, and they had all required the students to use their own magic to start the process, even if mana crystals or the trainer’s own powers took over immediately after. 

It was possible that the whole thing was a training aid, a way to subtly teach the young kids how to access their mana. They had already done physical sessions, and those interested had the opportunity to continue in their own time. Switching now to give everyone a feeling for magic was useful. Tom was sure, for example, that Bir had got more out of the crafting session than out of the more traditional mana sensing and usage lecturers might have provided. At her current age, she learned far more from hands-on experience than from being talked to.

“Magic good,” he agreed grudgingly, but not for the reason the other boy thought. To Tom, it was intriguing to think that someone had thought to introduce such a non-combat-focused stream of learning to promote the development of better fighters. It could be a coincidence, but everything else he saw in this place had been carefully planned, and he suspected that went down to this level.

Quietly, he brought his hand over to one of the latest injection sites. This one was a faster-moving poison, at least relative to the ones that took a day to expand to coin size. He had mere hours, probably as little as an hour, to contain it before it spread so far his limited magic would have no chance of stopping it. At that point, he would either get help from the healing crystal or suffer intense itching for days. Tom ignored the skin spell which, having been formalised, could quickly trap the foreign substance. Instead, he concentrated on the muscle. Slowly, bits of it began to change to create a wall.

It was hard going. The manually-constructed spell forms barely worked, but he persisted until his mana vanished.

Bir abruptly squealed in delight as the water in her cup briefly jiggled.

“Did you get ding?” Kang called out.

“Me got ding, me got ding.”

Tom’s head snapped up. That was suspiciously fast.