Chapter 110: Chapter 110

Ascelkos didn’t need long to figure out what I was talking about. He didn’t answer me at first, though. I had a feeling I knew why.

“Did you rule out Ring Four completely because of its current condition?” I asked.

He looked minorly embarrassed, his blue-tinted skin gaining a soft, rosy hue. Now that we were closer, I got a sense he was younger than I had originally assumed. It was his… stateliness, for lack of a better word, that made him appear older than he was.

Ascelkos had probably researched me up after the meeting on Ring One and found out I was from Ring Four.

“Well, we scouted out Zairgon before our negotiations, you understand,” he said. “And Ring Four unfortunately didn’t appear very suitable.”

I nodded. “I mean, I don’t blame you for coming to that conclusion. You want what’s best for your people and Ring Two is objectively better in a lot of ways. But the reality is that Ring Four is the place with the most free-space. We’d just need to rebuild some of it first.”

Obviously, that was a terrible sales pitch. But then, the Anymphea’s need was great. They might not have high opinions of Ring Four, but also, would they let that hold them back from availing themselves of Zairgon’s direct protection when the Blight Swarm arrived?

“I’ll obviously help things go smoothly if you decide to have some of your tribes settle there,” I said. “And I won’t lie, if you’ve had altercations and experiences with the Blight Swarm already, we could use that to help set up the defences we’re planning.”

That caught Ascelkos’s interest a lot for some reason.

“You are preparing to actively fight back?” he asked.

“Of course. We’re not just going to keel over and die.”

“Even against the might of the Blight Swarm?”

“Even against Ascendants themselves, if they decided to appear.” I looked him squarely in the eyes. “We’ve been through some real shit, so this isn’t anything particularly grim or new, regardless of the difference in threat level. We’ve fought for our survival. Literally. It would be deplorable not to keep fighting.”

Ascelkos’s eyes widened marginally. “That’s… very good to hear. I will consider your offer very carefully, I promise.”

That was probably as good as I was going to get just then. Plus, we had reached the classroom, where other people were slowly arriving. For the time being, before classes actually started, we talked a bit about related but less pressing matters.

For instance, Ascelkos confirmed that the woman who had tried to cause a stir at the meeting, Helike, was being kept under close guard at the tribe’s camp. It was reassuring she wasn’t free to sow more chaos, although both I and Ascelkos were more interested in why she had done what she had done. Unfortunately, Helike was mum about it.

“If you bring something of hers,” I said. “Then I could possibly find out just what in the world she was thinking.”

“Oh?” Ascelkos asked. “How so?”

“Let’s just say I’ve got a unique way of looking into people’s pasts.” I told him a bit about my Sacrifice Aspect’s Affixes, which he nodded along to, though he had a weird look about him. “It just needs to be a physical part of her, not something that simply belongs to her like a possession.”

“Alright. I will see if I can procure an offering that works. Although, I can offer no guarantees. Others may be… culturally opposed to such a practice, and even I don’t fully approve of it, you understand.”

Ascelkos also mentioned that this wasn’t his first Mage Guild class. He had attended the other beginner ones as well and was considering whether he ought to join Xokrist academy too.

“The people working there seem to be good,” I said. “Although, you probably don’t want to get into Artificing or anything like that. Heard they’re having funding troubles for that field.”

I explained how I had come by that information, and Ascelkos gratefully nodded at me for sharing it.

“I just want to be strong in my new Path,” he said. “Strong enough for the Swarm.”

“Yes. I manifested a new Path recently, and as the guild confirmed, it’s one I can advance much better if I join the Mage Guild.”

I wondered if it was just that, or if the guild was facilitating it because he was an important Anymphea whom they wouldn’t want to piss off and would want to get their political claws on. “What’s the Path, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“It’s the Path of Nebulous Flows. It’s rare for Anymphea to manifest it, but not unheard of. We have a good deal of information about it among us Anymphea, but all that information is rather, how do I put it…” He considered for a moment, still not fully used to New Zair. “It’s very Path-specific.”

“Oh, I see. You want a lot more generalized information about the Weave.

“Yes, exactly. Thus my decisions regarding the Mage Guild and the academy.”

Huh. Interesting to know that we were kind of in the same boat. But new Path implied he had one or more Paths that weren’t new. Paths that were probably high-ranked but clearly not mage-like ones.

Our conversation stalled when the teacher arrived. I smiled back as she spotted me. It was the old Scalekin who had taken the first beginner class I had attended.

“Greetings, students,” she said, voice sweet and kindly as ever. “I am Professor Urhei. I’m glad you all could make it. Some of you I recognize from before. Now, let’s see what I can teach you, and—” She turned her slitted eyes to me “—what you have for me to see.”

Ascelkos gave me an impressed look at the professor clearly knowing me.

The class went pretty much like the last one I had attended. A lot of the information was basic enough that I was pretty knowledgeable about the basics now, having acquired Affixes for all my Attributes so far. Ascelkos was diligently noting it all down even though a decent chunk of the info wasn’t new to him either. What a model student.

I did learn some interesting titbits here and there though.

“Augmentations are an additional dimension of control granted by the Weave over the mana you claim,” Urhei said. “By acquiring and using Augmentations, you are no longer limited to the capabilities of your Affixes. As such, this expands your own abilities in many potential directions, depending on the Augmentations you acquire.”

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We got to the good parts later on in the class, however.

“The other method of acquiring Augmentations is by transferring any Affixes you already know into a free slot beneath an Attribute, provided the Affix would fit under it as an Augmentation.”

“Professor,” said a student I recognized from the last time I was here. A thin, older Plumefolk fellow. “Is there a way to transfer Affixes that aren’t seemingly compatible as a certain Attribute’s Augmentation?”

That was a good question. I thought about trying to push something like Infusion under an Attribute like Power. Would that even work? My mind thought of punching things while infusing heat into my fist.

But then, Professor Urhei answered the follow up question—along with the Plumefolk’s original one—that I’d have asked next.

“Admittedly,” she said. “The cases where a to-be-transferred Augmentation is incompatible with an Attribute is rare. That said, another issue you would need to look out for is the inverse capability of the Augmentation to complement the Aspect. Does anyone know what I mean by that?”

It was Ascelkos who raised his hand first. I looked around and found out that the smart academy student who had attended my last Mage Guild class wasn’t present.

“Is it because the interactions of Augmentations with Aspects differs depending on the Attribute they are under?” Ascelkos asked back.

She went on to explain how different Augmentations had different capabilities depending on the Attribute they were working under. For example, Infusion under Power would allow me to infuse my strikes with any of my elemental Aspects, but it wasn’t going to let me infuse my Aspects into things like I could if it was an Affix. That just wasn’t something Power was capable of.

Unlike a proper mage-like Attribute such as Spirit, or any of the number of Attributes Kostis had mentioned. Interesting revelation I’d have to keep in mind.

After the professor spent a little longer talking about different Attributes giving different styles of Augmentations, I was given a nice segue for my question.

“What happens to the Affix that you transferred into an Augmentation?” I asked. “Like, does it still stay an Affix under the original Aspect, or does it disappear when it becomes an Augmentation and you suddenly gain a slot for a new Affix?”

“Ah, no,” Urhei said. “You do not gain that slot back. I’m afraid Augmentation transfer will not remove any Affixes from under their original Aspect, only copy it under whichever Attribute is targeted.”

She seemed a little taken aback at my wide grin. I had to admit I was a little ecstatic that my assumption had been correct.

If I had taken Manifestation as an Affix, I would have been stuck with it. Well, maybe not permanently stuck. Professor Urhei’s words implied there was a process for removing unwanted Affixes. But the point was that transferring an Affix into an Augmentation didn’t remove the Affix from its Aspect.

In other words, I really would be better off getting Manifestation as an Augmentation directly under a Path-related Attribute.

Professor Urhei spoke about the actual process of getting an Affix transferred. I paid attention so I’d remember in case I needed to perform it down the line. Turned out I’d have to undergo a trial similar to getting a new Attribute, called an Augmentation Trial.

Essentially, it was just a matter of focus, will, and achieving a breakthrough by using the Affixes of the Attribute that the transferred Augmentation was supposed to go under.

A process I was already familiar with. They just had a more formal name for it, apparently.

Although, there was one important part of the process since this was supposed to be a transfer rather than trying to learn an Augmentation from scratch. Mana control was key. I could already understand why, and Urhei’s explanation just confirmed what I suspected.

“Your Affixes work with Aspected mana, something I explained in a prior class,” she said. I remembered Aspected mana was essentially the variant of magical energy mana converted to via the Weave when channelling Aspects. Like how using Gravity converted regular mana into Gravity mana. “However, if you want an Augmentation to work with all Aspects, you cannot use Aspected mana to learn it.”

Right. The Augmentation version of something like Manifestation would need to use regular mana that was then driven to a chosen Aspect to become Aspected mana. The process was similar to what already occurred, just with a small but fundamental difference to start.

There wasn’t a lot to the class after that. I did learn how different magical Attributes like Arcane and Thauma had different preferences for Augmentations. It seemed like common sense, since they were obviously different to some respect, but learning about example Augmentations I could gain for both—well, Thauma especially—was interesting.

Like, Arcane could manifest Augmentations that blocked harmful mana effects on the caster, while Thauma could create mana stores that could automatically re-cast the same “spell”, as Urhei called it, that the caster used a second ago.

Definitely things I needed to keep in mind. Maybe I should have started noting it all down the way Ascelkos was so diligently doing.

“Do you think I can copy your notes later?” I asked with a whisper as the class was nearing its end.

Ascelkos gave me a side eye. “Only if you agree to a duel.”

Professor Urhei cleared her throat, and I shut up for the time being. I’d figure out whatever craziness Ascelkos was referring to later, when my whispering wouldn’t be disrespectful to anyone.

The class ended with Urhei mentioning that Augmentations could also be driven into Icons. Now there was something I hadn’t heard in a while but would need to consider before long. Well, no. Mana core awakening first. I needed to not get constantly sidetracked.

Urhei mentioned that Augmentations could be used to shape the rules, capabilities, and associated limits of an Icon. Which she didn’t expound on because that was a separate class. Go figure.

“So,” Ascelkos was packing up notebook and quill. “What do you say?”

“One second,” I said as everyone else left. I quickly hurried over to Professor Urhei. “Hello professor, do you have a moment?”

“Certainly, Mage Moreland.” She gave a smile so grandma-sweet, I was sure I was contracting diabetes then and there. “I’ll always have time for bright buds like you.”

“Um, thank you. Anyway, remember I asked you about a recommendation after the last class I attended?”

I would have absolutely forgiven if she had forgotten because I didn’t even remember the date of the last class. But she answered with an affirmative. Read full story at novᴇlfire.net

“Certainly,” Urhei said. Her grey-white scales might have dulled with age, but that smile of hers made up for it. “I can give you one within a week. What would you need it for.”

“Just as a letter that grants me entry into Xokrist academy to use its facilities. Specifically, whatever you have up there that helps mages get new Attributes.”

“Ah.” Her eyes narrowed academically. “You intend to use the Attribute Chamber. Yes, that’s quite alright. I’ll draft up a letter and send it over to the academy. Do you have a date in mind?”

“No actually. I was hoping you could give me the letter that I could then use whenever I was free.”

“Ah, unfortunately I’m not quite comfortable with that. Tell you what. Let me draft up the letter minus the date, and then I’ll hold onto it. You can let me know what date you’d prefer and we can meet that day where you pick up the letter and go about your business. Does that sound alright?”

I considered that for a moment. It made sense she was unwilling to give me a blanket permission to go in whenever I wanted, though it was obviously more complicated than that.

Presumably, it wasn’t just the letter that she’d need to send. Urhei would likely need to personally request that I be allowed into this Attribute Chamber, and that sort of request needed stringent details to make sure everything worked out according to plan.

My PA days had taught me that much, at least.

I smiled at her. “Yes, that sounds alright, Professor Urhei.”

“So…” Ascelkos said as I returned to him. “People here seem to know you. The meeting on Ring One suggested you were a known quantity, but the amount of looks you’ve been receiving throughout the class almost makes you seem a celebrity of sorts.”

“Please, it’s not like that.” In all honesty, I hadn’t even noticed that many people looking at me. “I just had a nice showing in the last class I attended. Were you serious? About the duel?”

“Of course! A challenge for a duel is never done in jest among the Anymphea. It’s a time-honoured tradition, vital for our survival in the wastes of Ephemeroth, to make sure we’re never at the mercy of the tainted beasts that eat mana.”

He looked and sounded absolutely genuine.

“And I have to duel you…” I said. “Just to copy your notes…”

He grinned at me. “Laziness has a price, my friend.”

I snorted. I figured he had some other motive for going to such elaborate lengths, but Ascelkos seemed like a decent guy. Possibly friend material. “Fine then. We’ll duel.”