I sat on her desk while waiting for her to leave the bathroom, and started examining the books open on her desk. The books and her notes were about repairing spell structures and wards, validating my assumption about the reason for her exhaustion.
She didn’t neglect to send me a frustrated look as she opened the bathroom door and stepped into her bathroom, dressed in nothing but a towel, giving me a glimpse of her glistening skin before she cast a spell to slam the door close.
[+100 Experience]
I chuckled at her impotent anger, showing that the time she spent alone did little to regain her emotionless status. It was good news, allowing me to benchmark both the power and the recovery state of her light magic’s anti-emotion feature. And what I learned encouraged me further.
Pity I couldn’t miss her on the way to the meeting. I had no intention of revealing such an important freebie to the vaunted headmistress. Our playing field was sufficiently unequal before I started providing her with free cards. It was the same reason I didn’t bother Titania as she dressed, giving her some time to recover.
However, as I waited, I couldn’t help but feel panicked. The headmistress was a legendary figure, and the students barely encountered her, each encounter turning into an urban legend. Based on what I had searched, the last known student meeting occurred two decades ago, and left the student with constant nightmares for the rest of his life.
It was an interesting tale, though it was hard to guess whether it was correct or it was just another result of the mystery that surrounded her.
The gossip and tales about her were not a surprise. She was holding one of the most important posts known to mankind for significantly more than a century, but still managing to keep anything related to herself a mystery.
Including her political stance, powers, and even her appearance —not that I expected much from a crone that measured her life in centuries.
Even the thought of it was ridiculous.
Titania left her room almost half an hour later, and when she did so, her expression once again stiff as an iron plate. “Let’s go,” she said coldly, and I followed her, suppressing my desire to mess with her.
“Anything I should know about, before finally meeting the legendary headmistress?” I said.
“Just answer her questions truthfully, and don’t waste time,” Titania said. “And don’t think you can lie to her, you can’t,” she underlined.
“Really?” I said, feeling intrigued at her certainty. “Then, how comes there are traitors in the school without her noticing.”
“Politics,” Titania answered with absolute certainty, unaware that she had revealed important information to me. They knew the identity of the traitor.
How interesting.
Still, rather than pushing her on the subject, I decided to focus on her certainty about my eventual inability to lie. She might be talking about the insights generated by living long, but I had a feeling that it wasn’t something that simple. Maybe it was a skill like my Subterfuge, only about revealing the truth rather than hiding it, or maybe it was some kind of spell. Regardless, it was not something to be underestimated.
Honestly, I would have never taken the risk if I hadn’t already nominally allied with her accidentally when I saved Titania from the necromancers, and while I had secrets, they were not the kind that would come up easily.
Regardless, I could feel my heartbeat climbing up as we climbed the stairs of the central tower, which was the dedicated residence of the ruler of the school.
Then, Titania knocked on the door, a door that was glowing with magical wards. I wouldn’t like to try breaking it while the wards were active. “Come in,” called a voice from inside, rusty and cracking. Titania did so, giving me the first glimpse of the office of the headmistress.
And the first thing I noticed was darkness. The room was entirely too dark, from furniture to the walls, everything was in tones of black and dark brown, including the thick curtains, blocking the sunlight to leave a few flickering lights as the only source of light.
The sensation of darkness didn’t abate when we stepped in. Instead, it increased further. Without being blocked by the wards, her aura slammed against my magical senses immediately, which was just as dark as the decorations of her office.
Then I saw her.
She was sitting behind a huge desk, and the only reason I could tell she was a woman was her title. She was dressed in a black hooded cloak wrapped tight around her, revealing nothing but a lock of white hair peeking through. So mysterious, I thought even as I walked toward her in reluctant steps, even if something was tickling on the back of my head. To complete her looks, she had a huge hunch on her back, disfiguring her looks even further.
The dark accents of her room and her aura gave me a reason to second-think my visit. The only reason I didn’t beat a hasty retreat was the fact that she controlled Silver Spires, therefore had no reason to ally with the necromancers.
“Speak,” the headmistress ordered, her voice still croaky.
The situation was far too complicated for me to delve deep into the implications of her voice and her darkness, before I could get a better handle of the situation, at least. “I heard from a confidential source that the princess will be visiting the school…” I started and gave her a short yet effective explanation of the status.
As I explained, however, I was doing my best to analyze the aura that filled the room, to understand the accuracy of Titania’s warning about not giving her a signal.
It proved to be an excellent tactic, because, without my full focus, I could have never identified the subtle tendril of mana that doing its best to worm itself into my body, directly toward my soul space.
I had to hide my frown of disappointment, as her action clearly signaled that I wasn’t the only one aware of the secrets of the soul space. Me being the only one that discovered that secret would be a stretch, but still, I felt a bit disappointed at the loss of my advantage.
The disappointment was barely a momentarily flicker in my focus, however, as my attention was on running my own mana, stretching my Tantric and Subterfuge skills to the limit, and started designing a fake layer of soul space.
I was lucky that I was very familiar with the other people’s soul space appearance, allowing me to customize it based on the impressions I had gained from the girls.
The first thing I had done was to adjust my stats lower, not wanting to alarm her. I doubted she would be as calm if she noticed only two of my stats were below thirty —and barely— while my highest stat was almost fifty. Instead, I created a much more modest stat spread, showing my physical stats were even higher than the mental ones. I kept the likes of Perception and Manipulation extra-low, just to reduce her alertness further.
Of course, I couldn’t just downgrade everything and still maintain my credibility as a fighter. I faked my level higher to mid-thirties, but very limited space for further growth, and carrying the skills dedicated for combat. Tantric and Subterfuge were gone, replaced by Legendary Biomancy and Grandmaster Melee and Elemental, everything that Titania had observed me create.
Miraculously, I managed to finish it in seconds and cast it without alerting them —helped by the fact that I was targeting my own body.
[-146 Mana]
Then, the headmistress’s mana tendril invaded my fake soul space, exploring carefully. Weirdly, there was no subterfuge bonus.
Maybe I was caught already, I thought, doing my best not to reflect anything outward as I carefully examined her mana tendril exploring my soul space. It was certainly a possibility, but I had already committed to faking, and changing the tactics would only make things worse.
Instead, I decided to counter-attack —in a very limited sense— and started examining her mana, while I continued to explain the Princess’s visit. I wouldn’t have dared to copy her assault when I could see her magical flexibility was above mine, but her probe gave me a chance to do so.
The exploration gave me another shock. Everything in her room was dark, including her own aura, but in contrast, her mana was purer than anything else I had felt, which included Titania’s light magic. The headmistress’s magic was as bright as Titania, but it lacked the sensation of a crusader that was tempted to burn everything, instead of signaling a soft acceptance.
Such an interesting paradox, I noted. Especially since I didn’t know whether her aura, or her mana was her true self. Maybe neither was, and her mana was another layer of fake she developed to acquire Titania’s alliance.
Pity that I was not in a position to enjoy delving deeper into this particular mystery, still unable to decide whether she had discovered my own little ploy. She gave no indication of it, but I was not over the fact that my Subterfuge had not increased. Though curiously, my Arcana didn’t as well, which was supposed to be more about the successful construction of the spell rather than the effectiveness of the trick aspect.
Maybe it was just about the interference of the fake soul space… I certainly hoped so…
However, I wasn’t free to waste my time on alternative scenarios. “… and that’s it,” I said, completing my explanation as I looked at her face, hidden under her hood so that even my enhanced senses unable to see anything other than her white hair.
I expected the headmistress to speak, but Titania acted quicker. “What should we do?” Titania asked.
Rather than answering, the Headmistress looked at me. “What do you think?” she asked in the same raspy voice that reminded me of an old oak covered with mushrooms.
“I think we should attack their central base and damage them as much as possible,” I answered, despite having better ideas. Attacking was not the worst idea, as it would at least reduce their cards, but it would also reveal our hands unnecessarily, and wouldn’t give the initiative back. However, I suggested it for two reasons. First, I didn’t even know their resources to create a more complicated plan that could steal the initiative.
Second, and more importantly, I didn’t want to reveal my strategic abilities to the headmistress, certainly not before I could have a better understanding of her.
“What do you think, Titania?” the headmistress asked.
“We should have done it earlier,” she sharply answered, showing her hatred toward dark magic, which only made her obvious sympathy toward the headmistress even more curious. “What about the team?” she asked.
“You two will be enough. Their forces have already started dispersing around, and we need to keep some of our forces in reserve in case they target the towns with their monsters,” the headmistress said, speaking the longest sentence since I entered.
Titania didn’t look satisfied with the suggestion —which was telling considering her emotion-blocker was running at full power— but she still nodded. “Is there anything else?” she asked, and the headmistress shook her head.
She stood up and I immediately followed her, curious about the lack of interrogation, but feeling even more scared of the headmistress as a result. I had expected her to ask about my origins, leveraging her power position, but she hadn’t done so. So, she was either confident enough that she had got a handle of my abilities, therefore didn’t feel alert, or she already discovered more than I was aware, therefore staying calm about the subject.
Regardless of the reason, when I left the room, I was even more alert about the mystery of the headmistress…
[Level: 28 Experience: 386600 / 406000
Strength: 33 Charisma: 48
Precision: 30 Perception: 32
Agility: 30 Manipulation: 35
Speed: 29 Intelligence: 39
Endurance: 27 Wisdom: 38
HP: 4172 / 4172 Mana: 5297 / 5326 ]
SKILLS
Master Melee [100/100]
Master Tantric [100/100]
Master Biomancy [100/100]
Master Elemental [100/100]
Master Subterfuge [95/100]
Master Arcana [86/100]
Expert Speech [57/75]
PERKS
Mana Regeneration
Skill Share
Empowerment (1/1)
Teleportation
COMPANIONS
[Cornelia - Level 17/25]
[Helga - Level 13/17]
