Chapter 18: Magical proficiency and the impending battle

Evin glanced at Liza and saw that she seemed to be confused as well.

"Sir, what do you mean by that? When did the rules change?" she asked.

Kens thought briefly and answered.

"It wasn't long ago, an incident of mage on the frontline dying and leaving his declared disciple with no one to take care of occurred recently, forcing us to implement this new policy," Kens said perfunctorily.

Evin felt like the man was making things up and simply didn't wish to help Evin. While Liza was shocked because of the mention of a mage dying in the frontline and she froze up slightly due to worry.

"But don't worry too much. Aran's should almost be finished with his task and returning in three weeks, you simply have to wait a bit more"

"What about the safety of my family?"

"That is a problem for you to solve, I don't have an obligation towards non-mages," Kens refused Evin's plea outright.

…

A few minutes later, Evin was asking Liza about what had just happened at the gates of the Mage Association.

"What was that?"

"I don't know. When a change to the rules happen, they inform all mages without exception. There's definitely something wrong with this situation," Liza answered.

'My bad feelings were correct, there was something wrong with that guy's attitude towards us. And while the reason doesn't seem to be me directly, he does seem familiar with me' Evin thought.

"What did Aran do to receive such hate?"

"I don't know, but it's always been like this after he came back from Arcvallen… Every mage would avoid him like the plague. I tried asking him about it and he said that it had to do with the obligation. I tried to assemble the pieces of the puzzle myself, but the only thing I could think of was that he did something to terrify the other mages greatly," Liza explained.

"I could tell that Kens looked at me with some wariness when I first entered the room, but his attitude completely changed when he learned that I was Aran's disciple. Perhaps he knows of a spell of some sorts that others don't know about? Do you know what magic he is most proficient at?"

"Maybe so… As for his magic, I think it's the one that has to do with illusions and thoughts," Liza replied after thinking a bit.

Evin also felt that Aran was talented at the World of Thoughts. The way he imparted knowledge upon him was quite impressive, especially after his talk of how rare mages from the Conceptual Worlds were in reality.

"Well, we can talk about this later, what should we do about the safety of your family?" Liza asked.

"I suppose all we could do is wait for Aran to come back and then decide what to do," Evin said, but had a bad feeling about all of this.

There was no need for Kens to delay Evin's citizenship. As the man said himself, it was only a matter of time before Aran came back and made Evin his disciple. Unless there was something else that was brewing in the background. 

Evin fell into thought and realized that this whole thing was a bit too skewered against Evin. It was completely unnatural for the entirety of the city's guards to turn the other way just because some innkeeper bribed them. Those kinds of things just didn't happen. It was also unsure if Norna even had enough money to bribe all those people. 

Evin shook his head, thinking that perhaps he was worrying about it too much, but he couldn't shake the feeling of worry in his heart, as he and Liza headed back to her home.

On the way back home, Evin felt like someone was observing him, further forcing the child to think of the worst. He was quite sensitive to these things, after his experience in the World of Time.

Although he couldn't really know who was looking at him, but he trusted his instincts to be right.

…

After coming home and talking things over with Lora, they felt that Theor was in a dangerous state and decided to bring him to Aran's house for the time being. Liza decided to fetch him herself, since it felt safer with her status as a 1st grade citizen.

After she left, Evin could notice one unassuming bystander start to follow her. And Evin was also sure that he was seeing some faces more than others.

'Why would Kens send people to follow us? What the hell did you do, Aran?' Evin's paranoia was flaring up.

Since that mage was decisive enough to start stalking him and his surrounding people, it could only mean that Aran's secret was much heavier than Evin could imagine.

Becoming someone's disciple meant that they would be learning about whatever the master was best at. If one became the disciple of a World of Thoughts master, then they would most likely learn about the World of Thoughts the most.

And since Evin was Aran's disciple on paper, people would assume that Evin would learn of Aran's secrets. It didn't matter that Evin became his disciple due to necessity. Evin would instantly become someone to look out for.

Soon after, Liza came back with the unwilling Theor. Evin could see the same person following after them like a shadow.

Looking at the whole situation, Evin started to truly hate one person.

'Fucking Norna'

Evin could confidently say that all of his problems stemmed from this guy. If the man could take a rejection like a normal person, Evin would still be babbling to his parents, pretending to be a normal child.

'And the worst part is that my only way of successfully resolving the situation was refused,' Evin thought with resignation. But he did have one thing that he could do, and that was to practice his magic.

He had so much free time since he was a toddler, he could spend it all training his magic from now on. For the following week, he spent most of his time training. He asked Liza if he could use the lodestones in the house, and Liza supplied him with Aran's stash. There were quite a lot of them, so Evin didn't think that he would run out of them any time soon. Liza also assured that these lodestones recharge themselves over time, so there was no need to feel bad about using them.

He practiced with them for a while and started to understand some of the rules. There was a cooldown period after every time Evin used his mana-core to his limits. If he ignored the cooldown period and had his mana-core absorb World energies anyway, he would basically be crippled for half an hour or so. He would have trouble breathing and he wouldn't be able to concentrate much.

He was also careful to never exceed his mana-core's limits.

For the Worlds' emotional effects, it was pretty much non-existent even with his mana-core filled to the brim, thanks to Two Tales' perk.

After a few tries, he could enter the Worlds simply by willing to do so. He didn't need to chant anything, so it was quite convenient.

As for his magic World choices, he did not bother with most of the Worlds, only focusing on the World of Storms, the World of Earth, The Dark World and the World of Thoughts. Evin had a surprising level of affinity with the World of Fire, sometimes even going inside it to just watch the World burn before his eyes. But he knew that it was a bit dangerous to practice with this World, so he left it alone for the time being.

Evin did not like the Worlds of Water and the World of Light, for obvious reasons and as for the World of Space, Time, Emotions and Life, he did not even know where to begin, so he could only give up on working with them.

He had some luck with the Heavy World, making objects heavier and lighter, as much as his mana-core allowed. He understood how mana demanding the task was when he tried to make things heavier. But he had better luck with trying to make an object lighter. He reckoned that he could make himself light as a feather and start floating as Aran described, but he lacked the capacity to do such a thing for now. But he did feel he was close.

Other than that, he tried to either pull and object to himself, or push and object away from himself... but it didn't quite work as he intended. He also tried making an object collapse into itself, but the task only proved to be a waste of mana. He was even wondering if the World was actually defective, but his meeting with Two Tales did not allow this stray thought to take hold. Two Tales was anything but weak.

But he did have some success in the field of magic. After training for a whole day and night, he could finally control the winds from the World of Storms enough to be able to cut a piece of cloth cleanly. Evin unceremoniously named the ability 'Air blade'. He tried his best to increase the speed at which the air traveled, while working on his ability to control them precisely. He also tried to do specific things with the air. Such as repeatedly throwing Air blades at high frequencies. His idea was to achieve a similar effect of a machine gun, but Evin's "machine gun" was like a senile old man, talking about his good old days, stuttering, and pausing during most of his talk.

Another idea was to create a layer of air around himself to function as kind of a foreign object detecting ward, but the concentration required to achieve that was simply beyond Evin's abilities.

He decided that this World would be his main way of attacking, so he practiced his aim to perfection. Well, to be honest, it wasn't that hard to aim with a magical attack. One simply had to will it to attack a certain part of someone's body and it would be like a homing missile following that part, if one was willful enough.

But Evin's proficiency with the World of Earth could only be described as sad. Even though the World did not have any negative effects on him, aside from a slight feeling of laziness, Evin could only feel what it is like to be completely talentless at something. His idea was that one should use the World of Earth as a defensive method, blocking enemies' attacks with a gigantic layer of earth. Then when enemies get close, he would be able to use various traps he laid down beforehand, to swiftly deal with the various enemies he faced.

He would also be doing all of this while he was running around the battlefield, utilizing his various other magics. He knew that standing still in the middle of a battle was akin to suicide, with all those powerful offensive spells the enemy mages would surely have.

But the saddest part was, that his air walls were stronger than his earth walls that were made of some rubble. While his air walls would not be harder than an earth wall, it still showed some enthusiasm to fight against the incoming projectiles. But the earth walls, on the other hand, would start falling apart the first instant something hit it. And after trying out the World of Earth for a bit, Evin decided to leave it be for a while and focus on other, more interesting Worlds.

Like the Dark World.

Fortunately for Evin, he did not lack talent in this World. But he could not find a proper way to utilize it. So far, his only ability was to hide in the dark. He could become nigh invisible at night, but he could only wave a white flag when it came to hiding during the day. He guessed that he needed to utilize the Luminous World with the Dark World to achieve some sort of a balance. And that would show him the proper way of mastering the art of stealth.

Regrettable, when Evin entered the Luminous World to see whether the effect of wanting to be acknowledged by others had reduced, he found that it had actually become more powerful. He did not understand why it happened, but he guessed that in his previous life, he gained an ability that helped him cope with the loneliness. As they said, when someone stays alone for a prolonged period of time, they would become so used to staying alone, and actually start loathing the idea of getting together with someone. Evin didn't know if he was correct, but that was the only explanation he had for the time being.

As for the World of Thoughts, Evin couldn't perform any sorts of mental attacks or memory transplants, but he was able to create an illusion of every other thing he could do with the other Worlds. But for the time being, he was only able to fool someone's eyes. He could not affect their other senses yet.

His illusions were like moving images. It was impressive to look at, but no one with a brain would fall for it for long. He tried to fix this flaw of his, but he had a nagging feeling that he just needed some guidance on it, so he decided to ask Aran when the man came back. His time was strained, so he didn't really wish to spend too much of his training time on this.

But thankfully, Evin progressed much faster than others, because he knew of the scientific reasons for most of the phenomena. Perhaps he was so terrible at the World of Earth, because that World simply required his willpower to be high enough. There was nothing scientific about floating rock walls, after all.

But even as he trained, Evin could see that more and more people started gathering around Liza's house. He could even spot Norna's giant figure in some nights, staring at Liza's house with a huge sneer on his face. Elina's trauma would flare up every time she saw that frightful figure.