By the time I had introduced each of my students to the Astral River, I was beyond exhausted. Not just from the repeated task of pulling them into that space and giving them a frame of reference but mainly from my attempts to gain the same runes they were trying to gain. But it wasn’t as if I had nothing to show for my efforts, in some ways, teaching for a day had been more successful than a night of grinding Shattered might have been.

Sadly, not all of them had been successful. Kenji was only a partial success. He didn’t have the Rune Magic affinity, but managed to gain his first Rune, the Rune of Wind, but failed to gain more. Afterwards, he put in some concentrated effort while I was working with the others and managed to unlock the Rune Mastery. Amusingly, I managed to understand the same Rune by watching him, though I didn’t have time to expand on it.

Similarly, Sandy failed to gain her Runes, but she achieved partial success, understanding the Rune of Nature but failing to gain more. With Kenji as an example, I encouraged her to work more, especially with Aiko, who had more luck.

Aiko was an interesting case. She managed to unlock the initial three Runes of both her affinities and observing her allowed me to gain a Rune myself, though not quite in the way I had thought I would. When I observed her learning the Rune of Nature, I failed to learn it, just like I had failed when observing Sandy and when she reached for the initial Runes of Flesh, I managed to understand the first rune, though it wasn’t part of a separate disciple of magic for me, it was added to the Runes of Blood Magic I knew. I would have to try and learn more if I wanted to understand the intersection between the two disciples and how her differently written Runes interacted with my own magic.

Either way, her success had been what pushed me over the edge and granted me another level, bringing me to twenty. The moment we returned from the Astral River, all of my students started to stare at me with that familiar mix of awe and disbelief, making me guess that they had felt something. When I didn’t explain or elaborate, they soon gave up and continued with their own projects, leaving me to marvel at my gains.

And what gains there were. Not only had I gained that level, and the Dragon-Touched Trait had reared its head again, giving me another point in each of my attributes. That, in turn, pushed my Courage to fifteen, granting me the Courageous Explorer trait. In some ways, it wasn’t anything special but it increased the effect of my Courage when dealing with the Unknown by thirty percent. Useful, but nothing earthshaking.

But it left me with a bit of a conundrum. I had three unspent attribute points remaining and knew that I would get a trait for pushing my attributes to fifteen, while at level twenty. Dexterity and Vitality were both at fourteen, while Endurance was at thirteen, putting me in range to get them to that threshold but spending more than one point would prevent me from reaching twenty-five intelligence at level twenty-five. If I only spent one, I could get there, but it would, in turn, prevent me from getting twenty-five Intuition at level thirty, assuming that Dragon-Touched granted me the plus one to every attribute every ten levels.

The traits would grant me some extra, immediate power but I thought that the traits or abilities I would hopefully gain by pushing my primary attributes to higher milestones would make up for it in the long run. Or at least I thought they would, I would have to see.

Either way, it was nothing I had to decide at that moment, so I focused on my students and continued my work with Leon.

His delve turned out to be successful, too. Sadly, his success had only given me a vague idea of what the basic Rune of Earth looked like and I hadn’t managed to understand it just yet. Maybe I would be able to, at some point, but for now, I could only try and experiment with it, or meditate on the concept of Earth. I wasn’t sure how to advance it, just like I was uncertain how to work with Nature Magic, but I had a starting point for either and planned to put in some time when things calmed down.

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Lastly, Ling’s delve was another complete failure. The only thing she managed to get was a headache, one that I shared thanks to my efforts to understand the basic Rune of Weather if there even was such a thing. It wasn’t as brutal as the headache I had given myself by trying to gain Mastery over the Runes of Death, but it was unpleasant nonetheless.

Finally, when all was said and done, I looked over the notifications and checked for skill upgrades. Three levels in Mind Magic, bringing it to seven and two levels in Astral Meditation, bringing it to fifteen, all in all, a nice reward for my efforts. Nothing in comparison to the level and the knowledge gained, but that was to be expected.

“Now, I believe all of you have something to work on. I’m afraid it will be hardest for you, Ling, simply because the Weather and Weather Magic is a far-reaching and complex field. That doesn’t mean its weaker or worse, just that you’ll have to put in more work at the beginning but I believe that your efforts will be rewarded,” I began to close down the lesson, planning to take a nap before heading back out and get some hunting done.

“From tomorrow on, I’ll hold lessons at another place. You might have noticed that I’m not the most sociable person,” at that, there were a few ill-concealed laughs and snickers, none of which I actually minded, “Due to that, I secured one of the nearby buildings, taking down the Shattered that once lived there and giving their victims a more dignified final rest. If you have questions or want to experiment and would prefer a second opinion and oversight, you can meet me there in the afternoon.”

From the looks of it, all of my students were quite exhausted from the lesson and none of them had additional questions, so I gave them the address of my new lair and dismissed the class. For a few moments, they milled about before starting to file out. As they were leaving, Aiko more or less grabbed Sandy, probably to discuss Nature Magic, while Kenji, Ling and Kevin had already put their heads together and were walking together, likely in an effort to understand how Weather Magic was supposed to work. With Water and Wind, they’d hopefully have a bit of success.

Leon simply walked away, apparently not interested in working with his fellows on the Arcane Path, which left me with Noriko. Light Magic User, Noriko.

For a moment, I was tempted to send her away, maybe claiming some sort of prior engagement but I stopped myself. Disliking somebody simply because of the magic they wielded was the sentiment that had pushed Blood Magic to the edges of society, or even out of society on Mundus. If I started that foolishness now, I would be no better than those who had done so there, a bigoted fool with too much power and not enough sense.

Taking a deep breath, I simply waited for her to speak, curious why she was lingering around.

“Mrs Samantha, could I ask a question?” the young woman looked at me, clearly apprehensive. I managed to keep myself from laughing at the address, though it was a near thing.

“I believe you just did,” I raised an eyebrow, before adding, “And cut that Mrs business. Just Samantha, Miss, if you have to. I’m not married and I don’t think I’d ever let some supposed higher authority try to dictate my relationship.”

“Right…” she paused, clearly confused.

“Ask away. Make it quick, I have something planned for later. What is it that bothers you?” I prodded, hoping to get this done quickly. For a few moments, she simply stared at me, before taking a deep breath and speaking.

“Not so much bothers me, but I would like to know if I have insulted you. You seem to dislike me, but I don’t know why,” she asked, looking rather uncomfortable at being this direct.

“Ah, that,” I scratched my head, not quite sure what to explain and how to explain, before deciding to give her a partial answer.

“See here,” I raised a hand, conjuring a cloud of Darkness around it, “I have an affinity for Darkness, which, in turn, means I have a certain innate dislike against Light and brightness. You might have noticed the same in yourself, that you dislike the Night or dark spaces. Have you?” I asked, getting a nod in return and even I could easily read the apprehension on her face.

“There is more to it, in my case, but I’ll endeavour to keep my prejudices from interfering with my teaching of you. But now, I believe you have some training to do and I would like to get some rest. Pulling people into the Astral River and guiding them is not as easy as it might look,” I added, gently shooing her away.

This time, she left without further complaints.