In my place, someone else might have spent several days interrogating Janelor carefully, creating a very comprehensive plan before finally challenging the angel with two Divine Sparks and one of the strongest factions in the Empire under her control.
Yet, I stood at the entrance of the headmistress’ tower, knocking recklessly without her summons, and it wasn’t just the — justified — confidence of my abilities to create a strategy quickly.
No, I was pushed by past knowledge.
I didn’t know if it was paranoia, or it was some kind of sixth sense I developed after handling several disasters in quick succession, but I could feel another disaster in the distance.
Maybe it would be the Eternals, discovering Janelor’s hideout, maybe it would be the Princess and her secrets proving more dangerous than the headmistress and the school could handle, maybe it would be Helga and Cornelia managing to put themselves in danger, forcing me to save them.
I had no idea which one of them would actually result in a crisis, but I didn’t trust my luck enough to avoid all of those triggers. So, the sooner I started working on the headmistress, the sooner I could fix her misunderstanding about my employment status…
After knocking on the door several times, I had received a message from the headmistress, and I responded by saying it was very urgent.
I still waited five minutes before the door opened. “Come to my room,” her voice echoed, and I started climbing the spiral stairs.
Her room contained the full range of decorations it had when I had visited to receive the blessing of light, interesting considering they were not out when I had sneaked into her room and watched her purification ritual. She must have put them on hurriedly to maintain the same impression.
The slight dampness of her hair, no doubt lay forgotten as she hurriedly put on her armor, confirmed that I had stumbled on her in the middle of her cleansing ritual.
Pity, she didn’t invite me in immediately. I would have loved to watch her.
“What’s the emergency?” she asked, her expression as stiff as her voice, no doubt ready to bring out her fury if my interruption was unmerited.
“I have managed to get the dragon drunk,” I said.
“That’s it,” she said, her frown tightening as she looked at me. “That’s what you interrupted me for,” she added, her wings glowing as I felt her light magic flare, her aura of power blanketing the room, reminding me that she was not someone to be dismissed.
Luckily, she was quick to clamp on it. She didn’t have the luxury of using her powers casually, not if she didn’t want her Divine Spark to go out of control — an even bigger problem than I had initially estimated if her deal with Janelor was any indicator.
“She has loose lips when drunk, especially when speaking to a servant, and she had mentioned a couple of ways of suppressing the effects of Divine Sparks,” I said, then took a step back, like I was about to leave. “But if you don’t treat this as an emergency, we can talk about it during our next meeting.”
“Stop!” she gasped, her magic flaring once again, but this time with a chaotic feeling. “How do you know I need that urgently.”
“The dragon mentioned it, of course, while gloating about an unfortunate fate,” I answered. She looked at me suspiciously. “I told you, she has loose lips.”
“That …” she started, only for her to swallow what was without a doubt an insult, her anger clear in her tone. Her anger was understandable, considering she had accepted every single request of Janelor, yet she still blabbed about her secrets.
Secrets that revealed her deadly vulnerabilities.
She was not unjustified in her anger. Janelor spilled those secrets when she was drunk, though she was drunk of pleasure rather than alcohol. I didn’t even know whether alcohol had that effect on the dragons, though luckily, the headmistress didn’t question me about that part, busy thinking more important aspects.
Like whether this mysterious technique slipped from a dragon’s drunk lips could actually help her control the Divine Spark.
A nonexistent one, of course, as I needed an excuse to poke and prod around the headmistress’ own reservoir, in the hopes of stealing substantially more than I could during her transfers, hoping to discover something in the process.
“What’s the technique?” she asked after a long pause, which didn’t surprise me, not with the risks she was facing.
“She had mentioned several containment strategies, and one of those containment strategies was good enough to store the divine spark in your body, isolated from everything else,” I said as raised my hand, and a complicated, three-dimensional structure appeared in front of her, a variant of the little internal trap I used to store some of the Divine Spark after I had stolen from her.
In some aspects, it was better than that design, as working on the spear for a full day with no interruption helped me to understand its design principles more, making several improvements to my own structure.
“It doesn’t look very reliable,” she examined the structure carefully.
She was correct, it didn’t, because while I had made several improvements, I wasn’t showing her the full structure. “She showed it to me only for a moment, and considering she was very drunk at this point…” I said, not bothering to finish the explanation as I blamed it on the intoxication.
“Better than nothing,” she commented after she examined the structure for almost ten minutes. “Do your best to make her talk,” she ordered. “Getting the complete schematics is the priority.”
“As you wish, mistress,” I said. “Do you want to conduct a test right now, to see if it works?”
“Maybe,” she said as she raised her hand, and a similar structure appeared on the air, barely bigger than a fist. The difference, the oppressing amount of light mana radiating from it, her mana type determined by her angelic nature.
A glance was enough to show she had made several changes to the structure I had displayed earlier, a couple worthy of being copied into my own design to make some significant improvements, showing that she wasn’t exactly a slouch when it came to magic research and analysis — though it might be also about no doubt the extreme research she had sunk into the subject.
I felt her pushing some of her mana, barely worth a couple of points, along with some Divine Spark.
And the structure exploded immediately.
“It doesn’t work,” she said with a frown.
A genuine frown appeared on my face as well. “It should have lasted more than just exploding immediately,” I said. “Could it be about the nature of your mana too similar to the spark, making it create some sort of resonance?”
“Maybe,” she said, thoughtful.
“Let me try,” I said as I raised my hand, creating a copy of her storage spell, though a few small mistakes to undersell my magical ability.
[-130 Mana]
“There’s a mistake here,” she said, pointing the most glaring error I had included, and I changed. Then, she put her hand, injecting the same amount of mana. Once she stopped maintaining control, the Divine Spark went wild, smashing against the limits of the container, but it easily contained the spark.
She watched my success carefully for a while before she flared her mana once again. But this time, rather than using her mana directly, she created a ward, pulling power from outside reserves, making the construction a longer affair, though the ultimate result looked well.
Yet, when she put some of her mana, it exploded once again. She turned to look at me suspiciously before her gaze dipping down to my structure, which was still stable. She examined it carefully for a while before replicating the same thing, only for it to shatter again.
Her frown tightened as she gazed at me, unable to hide her distaste before she replicated the same feat again. This time, when she injected the mana, the structure stayed stable. “Good work. Your discovery solves most of my problems,” she said, though I didn’t miss the tenseness of her tone.
Nor did I miss the sudden calmness of the mana in her latest container. I would have exploded in laughter if it wasn’t for my Subterfuge skill, helping me control outward signs of my amusement, and even with that, it was a close call.
I was amused, because I was familiar with the behavior of the Divine Spark after my own attempts to contain it, and it was certainly not as calm as that when mixed with ordinary mana.
The most reasonable explanation, my dear boss didn’t put any Divine Spark into her structure, trying to trick me that she was able to copy my structure.
I wondered why she was lying? Was she trying to look more competent than she actually was? Or was she trying to tell me that the vulnerability revealed by Janelor was not as bad as her words indicated?
Pity that her attempts were destined the failure the moment I noticed the changes in her mana.
“I’m happy to hear that,” I said. “Is there anything else I can help you with?”
“Not for now,” she said. “But you earned a reward. I’ll have to think something for you when you visit me again tomorrow for the empowerment.”
“As you wish,” I said as I nodded respectfully before leaving, hoping that the nuggets of information I had revealed to her would be enough to lit a fire under her…
[Level: 32 Experience: 499110 / 528000
Strength: 46 Charisma: 63
Precision: 40 Perception: 42
Agility: 40 Manipulation: 45
Speed: 39 Intelligence: 49
Endurance: 39 Wisdom: 51
HP: 6528 / 6528 Mana: 7960 / 8000 ]
SKILLS
Master Melee [100/100]
Master Tantric [100/100]
Master Biomancy [100/100]
Master Elemental [100/100]
Master Arcana [100/100]
Master Subterfuge [100/100]
Master Craft [77/100]
Expert Speech [75/75]
PERKS
Mana Regeneration
Skill Share
Empowerment (1/1)
Teleportation
COMPANIONS
[Cornelia - Level 22/26]
[Helga - Level 22/26]
