When I arrived at the headmistress’ room, I found it decorated with crystal pillars once again, glowing softly as they charged with her unique-natured mana, pushing the oppressive darkness of the wards she used to block the System.
She was once again dressed in her gold-embroiled armor, carrying a sword, her beautiful wings carrying an impressive sight with their soft glow. Unfortunately for her, I had already seen her dressed like that before, so I noticed other details. Like the subtle hint of blackness under her eyes, indicating a sleepless evening. One that also implied exhaustion as well considering just how strong her supernatural body must have been.
And, it wasn’t the only extraordinary detail I had noticed. I could also feel the remains of a repeated spell, most likely wards, lingering in the air. A momentary focus had even revealed the type of wards she had been casting.
The storage ward.
Even with my exceptional Perception, I had barely been able to notice the lingering remains, but that didn’t mean she had cast it only a couple of times.
After all, pure mana wards, unlike the ones that had been created with the assistance of physical objects, left next to no residual once destroyed. For me to be able to pick them casually meant that she must have created hundreds of them during the night.
And, if her frustration — which, unlike her exhaustion, was much easier to notice on her beautiful face — was any indicator, her repeated attempts to create alternative storage for the Divine Spark had failed spectacularly.
How fascinating.
“Good morning boss. What a great morning, right?” I said cheerfully, amused that I wasn’t the only one that had gone through an extremely exhausting evening, though unlike her, I was able to hide it better.
Her twitching eyelid was enough to show just how much she appreciated my greeting. “Come on boss,” I said, pushing even more. “You’re an angel, shouldn’t you be more cheerful in the morning.” This time, it earned a growl, warning me to keep my mouth shut.
It was enough teasing, I decided as I took my position while she climbed on the platform wordlessly, not even warning me as her mana flooded me, much stronger than the previous time, enough to be classified as ill-advised.
A cry of pain escaped my mouth before I could suppress it, surprised by her move. A punishment, I noted, unable to hide my grin as I once again created a magical funnel leading to my fake soul-space, stealing as much as Divine Spark as I could manage.
Despite the pain her sudden flood had created, it was hard to say there were no benefits. A stronger flood meant more fragments, and more importantly, it meant she could pay less attention to the sudden disappearance of some of them, allowing me to steal more without making her suspicious.
When it came to an end, I had almost stolen five times the previous amount despite a similar duration, most of it safely locked in my body — a perk of the improved storage I had managed to develop — isolated from the hungry fingers of the System, a sliver of it went to the fake soul space, improving the Light Node, showing the headmistress that her great effort hadn’t gone to waste.
However, she seemed to miscalculate the drawbacks of her not-so-subtle punishment, because the moment she cut her mana flow, she trembled, leaning forward as she was going to fall.
Luckily for her, she was in the room with a perfect gentleman! I didn’t waste any time before standing up and wrapping my arms around her. “Don’t worry boss, I got you,” I said cheekily.
“Stop hugging me,” she gasped as she pushed me back, her face blushing much harder than I expected. “And stop calling me boss!”
“As you wish, boss,” I said, smiling cheekily, enjoying her frustration as I acted significantly laxer. A cheekiness she could not push against too hard, not when I was her only way of keeping her important dragon guest happy, unaware that her guest was much more helpful to me than her, and I would have paid a great price for the privilege of accompanying her if she had presented the deal differently.
Especially since I had resolved the misunderstanding about the exact job description of a servant.
Still, watching the headmistress as she tried to swallow her anger at my playful jabs was beautiful, especially since she was even more uncomfortable compared to the subservience she had shown to Janelor.
Her thoughts were visible on her beautiful face as she weighed the importance of her problem versus admonishing me. However, ultimately, her needs won over her desire to reinforce her authority over my harmless rebellion. “Show me that storage ward again,” she ordered.
“As you wish, boss,” I said cheerfully as I created the storage, this time even simpler to make it easy for her to copy it flawlessly, watching as she forced another piece of Divine Spark. The storage held the Divine Spark in without any issue.
I expected her to repeat the spell after examining it a few seconds later, solving whatever that was preventing her from completing it, but she surprised me by injecting more Divine Spark into the storage, as if she was trying to break it.
Much to her surprise, it held on, even after she repeated the trick two more times. “How?” she gasped.
It was lucky that she was focused on the structure, because even I had a frown on my face. The capabilities of my storage had exceeded even my expectations. I was tempted to delve deeper into that, but I had more important questions for the headmistress.
Aviada’s disappearance was more urgent.
“So, boss,” I said while she started poking at my wards carefully with her mana. “Can you tell me more about the world beyond the System?”
“Why?” she asked, turning her gaze toward me suspiciously. “
“I think I can lead the dragon into spilling more important secrets during our discussion if I have more information to direct her, but if you think it’s not important…”
“No, it’s important,” she said, her suspicion replaced by panic, enough to make me guilty about tricking her. At this moment, it was hard to imagine her as a mythical being hundreds of years old, astute enough to manage a complex entity like Silver Spires without revealing her true nature. “Ask me your questions.” Though, as she said so, she pushed another sliver of Divine Spark into the storage, continuing to test its ability to hold Divine Spark.
“Let’s start with something simple. How exactly is the nature of the lands outside the system.”
Her expression showed that it wasn’t exactly a simple question, but she still started to explain. “Before the System was established, the worlds were much more ordered. There was the central material plane, a complete world, and the domains of Major Gods surrounded the material plane.”
“And where were those planes?” I asked.
“Floating in the aether, of course, but that’s not relevant for you. Aether is not something that mortals could step in. Even for the Demigods, it’s almost certain death. Only gods could easily travel in aether Dimension with the help of their avatars.”
I nodded in understanding, assuming aether was what I had been calling Arcana dimension. My attempts at teleportation had taught me just how hard was to successfully utilize it. I had only survived due to sheer luck.
“Can’t people just use teleportation formations,” I asked? After all, teleportation was not exactly a unique skill for me. It could be also done by ordinary mages, if one was willing to create two huge wards and spend an extraordinary amount of mana in the process.
Hardly something that could be used outside the direst circumstances, like reinforcing the capital during a disaster. And only then, it only made sense for some peak existences — at least, in terms of what the public defined as peak, like Titania — to use it.
“That’s only possible if both the target and destination are in the same plane,” the headmistress answered dismissively, not appreciating my interruption. “Without the shadow of the plane blocking the primordial aether flow, an errant wind would burn the wards easily,” she explained impatiently.
Interesting, I thought as I took note of it. I had no idea what primordial aether was, yet her tone implied it was something that was common knowledge, it was her distraction as she fed more and more divine spark to the storage yet it managed to stand, that was making her spill more secrets than she might otherwise explain.
Sometimes, even a word was more precious than gold.
Of course, it raised the question of how Aviada actually managed to survive such a deadly environment. I doubted my Empower Perk was enough to ensure her survival, especially with her absolute lack of magical ability. Yet, I had distinctly felt Aviada’s survival until the breach had closed.
The mystery behind her sword got even deeper.
“So, with the material plane blocked, does it mean the only other place is the domains of the gods?” I asked.
“More or less,” she answered. “There are some plane fragments big enough for people to live, but their shadows are hardly strong enough to establish a successful civilization. They might not exist—“ she continued, only to be interrupted by an explosion.
My storage ward finally reached its limit, but the explanation was strong enough to force me to create a shield to protect us from the after-effects. While we were talking, she must have put much more Divine Spark than I expected.
“How can your storage hold that much Divine Spark?” she turned to me suspiciously.
I frowned. It was a question that I wanted the answer to as well. The performance of the storage surpassed my expectations as well.
[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: 8000 / 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 (0/1)
Teleportation
COMPANIONS
[Cornelia - Level 22/26]
[Helga - Level 22/26]
