Chapter 67, 1/2

Chapter 67, 1/2

Erick woke with the sun, though it was hard to tell since the sun rose on the other side of the forest at the back of the house. It was early; Erick had not yet adjusted to the time change, but he couldn’t sleep any longer. He got up, then did his morning routine while Ophiel scratched at the bathroom door. When he was done, he exited the bathroom and peered over the edge of the balcony, down into the center of the house. The smell of meat and bread wafted on the air while the faintest tint of gold stretched across the western sky. Ophiel tackled Erick’s leg, quickly climbing up to his perch on Erick’s shoulder. Erick patted the little guy and took the steps down into the main living area, beside the open kitchen and the massive picture windows. Teressa was cooking.

“Good morning, Teressa,” Erick said. “Peaceful night?”

Teressa flipped a pancake with a spatula, as she said, “Perfectly boring.” She checked if the sausage was burning; it wasn’t. “Boring nights are great. Just the way I like it.”

Erick smiled. He asked, “Is Rats around?”

Teressa looked to the windows that were the western wall of Windy Manor, saying, “He’s out there working on something.”

Erick briefly looked to the window, then turned to Teressa, asking, “I have to ask: What was the fight we had when I was under the influence of that Dream Worm? Did Rats not want to come to Oceanside for some reason? Maybe to do with his [Greater Treat Wounds] Quest?” Erick added, “It’s gonna be hard to finish that thing here.”

Teressa smiled faintly, her lower fangs barely visible. “You weren’t yourself and when Jane made a joke about learning necromancy here, you focused in on Rats and his past. If you must know, you basically called him a necromancer. That started a whole big fight that does not matter because it wasn’t you saying those words.”

Erick listened, and he frowned. He asked, “Should I apologize?”

“No, you should not.” Teressa lifted the golden pancake from the pan and set it with a dozen others in a [Heat Ward]. “Best not to dwell on actions that were not under your control.” She poured more butter and batter into the pan, adding, “A lot of weird shit happens in Ar’Kendrithyst and we’ve all seen a lot of it; we know not to take offense at people under the influence of magic.”

Erick wondered how he felt about that, but whatever feelings swirled around in his chest, they were too complicated to vocalize. So he just said, “Okay.” He changed the subject, “Do you have any magic you want to work on while we’re here?”

“Not really.” She said, “But I heard about some of that Mana Sense training. If you’re going to do more of that, I’d like to come to those classes.”

Erick brightened. He said, “Absolutely! We can certainly do that.” He commiserated, “I’ve never been good at clearing my mind, so you might get a lot better than me at Mana Sense.”

Teressa flipped her pancake, saying, “From what I heard from Poi about your exchange with Professor Rue, a good Mana Sense should combine well with [Hunter’s Instincts].”

Erick hummed in thought. There might be a truth there, between [Hunter’s Instincts], Mana Sense, and an ability that seemed to be shared by both. Erick said, “She did mention something about feeling the flow of battle.”

Teressa said, “Yup.” She flipped the browned sausage into a [Heat Ward] to keep it warm, then put more sausage into the grease, saying, “I’ve never been great at clearing my mind either but it’s a common practice in hunting to ‘become one with the forest’.” She mushed the sausage into the grease, speaking with a somber tone, “I might be able to get some of it back.” She forced cheer into her voice, saying, “If any of those skills are related there might be something to pursuing Mana Sense through multiple vectors.”

Erick smiled, saying, “Maybe they are.”

Teressa went silent.

Erick asked, “Can I help you with anything? Anything else, that is? I want everyone to be comfortable here, since we might be sticking around for a while.”

Teressa looked out of the picture windows, saying, “Rats is out there. I think he needs more help than me.” She spoke softly, “Thanks. I’ll let you know if my answer changes.”

“Very good then.” Erick nodded, then went off to find Rats.

- - - -

Outside, the sun rose on the other side of the house, casting pale yellow glows across the tree tops. The blue, early morning twilight still hung heavy in the air, while the sound of churning waves, a hundred meters down the far cliffside, carried up across the grass lawn that separated the house from the edge. The garden to the right of the front lawn did little to muffle the sounds of the crashing waves, but it did serve to hide a redscale man, sitting crosslegged under a lemon tree, writing on a pad of paper.

As soon as Erick opened the door to the outside, though, Rats stood up from his spot.

He dismissed the paper, and said, “Morning, Boss. What’s up?”

“Teressa said you were working on something.” Erick said, “I was just wondering what it was, and if I could help.”

Rats briefly frowned toward the house, then said, “Just putting together what I know about parasites, trying to come up with a way to better defend against them.”

“I’m planning on taking Defensive Theory and Practice. That should cover some parasite defensive measures.” Erick said, “You’re invited, to that class, or any others.”

Rats smiled softly. “If it’s alright with you, I would like to try this stuff out on my own, for now.”

Erick pushed no further. He said, “Of course. Let me know if anything changes. And if you need me to do anything to make your stay more comfortable. I’m not sure how long we’ll be here.”

“Sure thing, Boss.”

As Erick left Rats behind, Rats gazed out over the ocean, then went back to writing on his papers.

- - - -

Krigea showed up half an hour before morning classes. Erick invited her past the [Crystallize Air], into the house, and offered her coftea. Across from one another in the main living room, with steaming cups of cofftea on the short table beside the large windows, they began to hash out Erick’s schedule. Kiri and Poi were cleaning up breakfast, while Teressa finished eating hers at the kitchen table, further in the house.

Krigea said, “You’re welcome to stay and learn as long as you wish, but further bargains of trade might be prudent when it comes to some of the non-basic classes.” She added, “Though the library in the back of this house is stocked with all the books of this semester, so you won’t have to worry about purchasing those.”

“I noticed the books. Thank you, Krigea, and Headmaster. I’ve already looked over the books for the classes I want.” Erick said, “I can do more bargains, too. So that’s fine.”

“Has your list of classes adjusted since last we spoke?” she asked.

“Not really.” Erick listed, “Basic Spatial Magic, Basic Enchanting, Basic Defensive Theory, Basic Culture and Law, Basic World History, Warrior Training for Mages, Monster Ecology, and Esoteric Magic.” He added, “I’d also like to sit in on Ethics for the Warrior, and Dungeoneering, just to see what they’re all about.”

Krigea smiled. “Most of your chosen courses require more reading than attendance, though don’t tell the professors that. Therefore, there is no further need for you to pay to attend them.” She said, “But the Warrior classes, Esoteric Magic, and Dungeoneering, are hands-on courses, which might need further bargains or payment depending on the individual professors. Enchanting is also the most expensive course we offer; students are expected to provide their own materials.” She added, “Professor Rue Downs is one of the professors for Esoteric Magic. If you wish, I could make sure she is your professor. This would negate the need for another bargain of trade, as the Headmaster feels that you have already given Professor Rue more than enough.”

“That sounds fine.”

She asked, “Is this the full list of courses you wish to attend, then?”

“Oh. Uh.” Erick turned to Kiri, by the kitchen. “Which ones did you want?”

Kiri, her hands on a cleaning cloth, went from forlorn to overflowing excitement, to contained mirth, all in the span of half a second. She calmly said, “Destruction Magic for the Potential Archmage.”

Erick repeated to Krigea, “Destruction Magic for the Potential Archmage.”

Krigea asked, “The Headmaster will gladly teach you Archmagic, but this course when taught at Oceanside is much more than just the destructive magics taught at Tower Academy.” She added, “In particular, you would vastly benefit from Basic Defensive Theory, before you began Archmagic.”

Erick paused. “Really? He’s teaching it—” He said, “Oh. Right. Kiri said it was a non-standard course.”

Krigea looked off to the air, as a tendril of thought wiggled between her and elsewhere. She looked to Erick and said, “You’re only a week late for the new semester, and while that is easy enough to catch up on, the Headmaster would prefer to start Archmagic after midterms, in five weeks. If you are amenable to this idea, of course.”

“Two months? Okay.” Erick said, “That shouldn’t be a problem.” He said, “If financials become a problem I can just go hunt more wyrms.” He called over, “Right, Teressa?”

Teressa softly smiled, saying, “Aye, sir,” as she ate her pancake.

- - - -

Basic Spatial Magic had Erick sitting in a corner in the back of an auditorium of two hundred students. Kiri sat on one side, Krigea on the other, while Poi held near the back wall, standing with a few other bodyguards. Erick was obviously not the only big shot in the class room, but he was the only person over 40 in the audience; the other people with bodyguards must be young nobles, or something like that.

Of the class itself, Erick felt lost. Over the course of an hour, Erick discovered he had literally no idea what the fuck the professor up front was talking about. He also discovered that he needed to read at least three books before trying this class again. There was a lot of math involved; Erick was completely out of his comfort zone. So he just sat there, looking at the numbers the professor put on the board, vaguely knowing what they were, but not understanding how they all went together.

Kiri seemed to love the class, though. She zipped right along through the books, exactly in tune with the lesson plan going on up front.

Erick left that auditorium feeling drained, but there was no time to feel tired. The next class was already starting.

A single cloud loomed in the distance, but it was not like the silver, wind washed, barely-there clouds that sometimes naturally appeared over desert. It was dense and tall and red.

The Blood Cloud hovered hundreds of meters above the land, but dragged lines, like cables, across the sand. The cables touched upon Crystal Agave, and did nothing. The cables touched upon mimics, and wrapped tight around the suddenly struggling monster. The mimics flailed, but one after another, here and there across the land, the cables pulled the mimics upward, into the seething mass of red light and air, high, high above.

The Blood Cloud was hungry, and it had already taken Ophiel an hour to get into this position, and for Erick to regain enough mana for a fight. The monster was only four hours away from Spur, now.

Ophiel trilled out violins into the brilliant night sky, as chill air threaded over his many wings and hundred eyes. A blip of white flashed in the air beside Ophiel, revealing another Ophiel. They looked at each other, briefly, before focusing their many eyes toward the monster up ahead.

The second Ophiel flew forward, racing against the wind, directly at the indistinct, red cloud.

He slammed into raised tendrils that only appeared after they had been touched. As they wrapped around Ophiel, squeezing, they burst from the inside out with small spikes all along their lengths, trying to inject poison into Ophiel’s body.

A flicker of [Endless Plasma Wrap] trailed out from Ophiel’s tangled body, seconds before the tendrils dragged him into the red mist above.

A brilliant white flame spread among the clouds but it did not get far, for that illumination revealed the creature for what it truly was: a collection of gas bags that were invisible most of the time. One death spell sent one monster falling to the ground, trailing white flame as it crashed to the sand far below.

[Endless Plasma Wrap] was not the solution, here, but it needed to be tested, anyway.

Blood Clouds were horde monsters, like small blimps all crowded together, each with several tendrils each a kilometer long, and each naturally invisible and hidden in a red mist, until they latched onto something. They captured meat on the ground and incapacitated it with the help of their kin, only to drag them up, up into the sky, to a hundred eager maws. They captured meat in the air, too, with invisible tendrils floating out ahead of the horde. If something got within a kilometer of the horde, it was food.

So the solution was simple, really.

Ophiel hovered in the path of the horde. A white sphere of light surrounded him, as thick air spilled out into the night sky. The core of the [Domain of the Withering Slime] held in the air while most of the actual spell fell to the ground, but at an extra push, the ground-bound spell lifted up, into the Blood Cloud, over the gas bag monsters.

A dense, echoing keening filled the night. The red cloud transformed into a bumbling, shaking, floating landscape of red meaty spheres each four or five or seven meters across. Tendrils thrashed wildly, as monster after monster deflated. They were old birthday balloons left out in the living room for too long, and now they were coming down, one right after the other. They crashed to the sand, bodies piling up, tendrils going slack. Thick air swirled as [Cleanse] after [Cleanse] burst around the downed monsters.

Five minutes was all it took for Ophiel to deflate the Blood Cloud out of the sky. Soon, the sands of the Crystal Forest were layered with tendrils and dried out monster.

Ophiel flew around, looking for stragglers, layering the land and sky with his aura.

Here and there, more blood bags dropped from the air. They were at the edge of the effect and trying to escape under their natural invisibility. Or at least they were, until [Domain of the Withering Slime] caught them, and killed them.

Ophiel flew around for a little while longer, but could find no more monsters.

Not wanting to leave all this organic material around for the mimics to feast, Ophiel dropped down to the ground, and began layering [Cleansing Flame] among the piles of corpses.

Soon, a four kilometer bonfire of clean burning monster lit the northern skies of Spur with a bright white glow. In minutes, all the evidence that there was ever a Blood Cloud at all were the small rads scattered across the land like diamonds on a beach, glittering in the moonlight.

- - - -

Erick came back to himself.

Poi stood from his chair, silently nodded at Erick, and walked toward the door to Erick’s room.

Erick stopped Poi before he could leave, saying, “Those kids didn’t have to die. What stopped Mog from calling sooner?” Erick felt a hole in his chest, as he asked, “Should I have stayed in Spur and searched for each and every one of these monsters before I left?”

Rats frowned, saying, “It’s our job to provide a home, not solve every damn problem out there.”

Before Erick could object—

Poi said, “Blood Clouds don’t happen unless the entire cloud is at least level 50. If those kids had managed to kill several, then they would have gained enough levels to gain a Class. They would have instantly become true adventurers.” He said, “It is not okay that those kids died, but they chose to attack the Blood Cloud, ahead of all planning and coordination. As Rats said, sir: The function of Spur’s Army is not to defend people from themselves, but to defend the homeland. While it is sad, those kids’ deaths are on them.”

Erick said, “Very well. Can you tell Mog I’m glad I could help? In the future, we now know that it will take about an hour for any response to happen, so plans should be made accordingly. I can’t change that. Not yet, anyway.”

Poi nodded as he stepped out of Erick’s room, saying, “Of course, sir. I will let her know. Good night.”

Rats saluted at the doorway, and closed the door.

Erick stared at the closed door for a minute.

He dismissed all of the Ophiel except the one in his room. That last one remained on the extra pillow on Erick’s bed. Ophiel trilled in tiny violin sounds, his eyes blinking open as Erick continued to remain upright. But when Erick laid down, back to his sleeping position, most all of Ophiel’s eyes shut.

Erick stared at the ceiling for a while before he managed to fall back asleep.

- - - -

Morning came, and so did breakfast, and classes.

- - - -

Erick sat near the top of the small, amphitheater-style classroom, with about twenty students in attendance. He had not sat down for long, before Professor Apell Calloway, a green wrought with the shape of a human woman, seemed to waltz in through the door near the professor’s stage. There were small murmurs and conversations happening all around the room, but at her entrance, the talking ceased. Some of the students smiled to see the professor. Professor Calloway returned those smiles with one of her own as she took the stage and turned to her students.

“Good morning, everyone!” Professor Calloway said, “Welcome back to Dungeoneering! Today we have a guest auditor near the back of the room, but I’m sure you’ve already all noticed, Archmage Erick Flatt. Planar Particle Mage.”

Erick plastered on a smile as the curious faces of the students all turned to him. They had finally been given permission by a higher authority to look upon the famous person sitting in the back of the room, and they were going to milk it for all it was worth. For his own part, Erick played along. He even waved a little.

Professor Calloway directly asked Erick, “Since this is a hands-on sort of course, I would like to delay my bargain of trade for another week. It won’t be a big deal, but I would like to share the results of my bargain with the class, if that’s alright with you?”

Erick spoke up, “Uh! Probably okay? Sure.”

“Good enough for me.” Professor Calloway said, “Now that the obvious distraction has been addressed, back to the lesson plan, students! Eyes front, eyes front!”

Erick had no idea what he had just agreed to, but what was the worst that could happen?

... Okay. A lot of bad things could be possible, but come on! She’s a professor who seems to be loved by her students, and she even wants to share her bargain with the class. It’s probably nothing that bad.

... Erick would not let paranoia get the best of him.

The students, and Erick, watched as Calloway began [Stoneshape]ing a jumble of rocks at the back of the stage into a complicated pillar. At the top of the pillar was an entrance that led to a series of floors and staircases, all done in miniature, that finally bottomed out in a vast cavern populated by tiny balls of rock that Erick guessed were supposed to represent slimes.

Calloway spoke as she carved her pillar of stone, saying, “We’re going to take a slight detour back toward the last few classes, before catching up on the assignments I gave each of you.” She pointed to the top of her sculpture, where a vent seemed to lead from the top directly to the bottom, saying, “This here is the inlet for the advanced dungeon I have modeled for you. The inlet is important, as it will govern the entire growth of your dungeon. It needs to be open toward the prevailing direction of the oncoming mana, and be a one-way plummet from the surface, to the end of your entire growth zone.

She pointed to the cavern at the bottom of the sculpture, saying, “The growth zone is way down here, and is the starting point for where the mana will begin to condense into slimes based upon the nature of your growth field. Now the best way to get these little critters to grow is to have some sort of non-magical plants and such that can live down in these depths, or some other constant influx of biological material.” She smiled as she said, “For all you fleshy types, the sewers of your cities are perfect for this, and if you take the time to actually visit them, you can learn a lot about how to create a proper dungeon.”

Calloway spoke of twists in the tunnels meant to keep slimes in the dungeon until harvest time, and elaborated on the importance of proper staircase design. You want people to be able to walk in, but for the slimes to stay put. As Calloway called herself a Dungeon Keeper and spoke of valuable types of slime to harvest, from metal slimes to gem slimes, and of how to get them started, Erick smiled, and wondered why Al never called himself a Dungeon Keeper.

Soon, the remedial lesson must have been over, because Calloway called the first student up to the front of the classroom, where that student then [Stoneshape]ed the pillar Calloway had carved, into something else. Mostly, the dungeon the student carved was smaller; cruder.

After the student gave a verbal defense of their work, Calloway called on other students to critique the dungeon. Flaws in design were pointed out, from the architecture of the walls that one student thought would collapse as soon as slimes were introduced, to another saying that the mana intake was too small to support the underground structure.

The lesson went on like that, through every student, but after it was all done, the twenty students voted on the dungeons they liked the best, while Calloway held herself in reserve until after the tally. When the votes all came in, Calloway announced the winner, the runner up, and then she announced that third place went to a ‘textbook’ dungeon that wasn’t even in the running.

In the next class, they would meet at the dig site, and create the first of the three dungeons.

And then class was over.