Chapter 159
The Cassie-Do List
“Blah, blah, blah.” The Lich continues to speak, but I don’t really have the patience to pay attention to him.
Since class is over, I had been hoping to try once again to visit Zero, though this meeting went just like the last. I did a Positional Switch, with my First Simulacrum, at which point Zero did manage to say his first words to me. Unfortunately, they were none too flattering and words that I very likely deserved.
“So you do know how to use that Trait.”
That was it, all he would say. Not that he needed to say more as those words spoke volumes and did make me feel like I was an absentee parent.
I would say something to the effect of my not really wanting Zero in the first place, or the fact that I had Zero too young, but those would just be excuses. Honestly, it was time for me to reevaluate the direction that my life was heading.
Right now, I had one son who was still making the same mistakes in this life as he had in the past life. The only problem was that these mistakes were likely a lot more lingering here than in the real world. At least in the real world he had the dreamt that he could just come here and escape reality.
I also have my daughter here, the one who I have entrusted with my class’s legacy. However, her story is not perfect either, as she is already pregnant trying to pay off, or maybe pay forward debts to her children, and my grandchildren in the real world.
My best friend and partner, is now fully committed here to building up this city in the middle of the desert. A spot that I chose, mind you. With everything going on here, it is clear that her days of climbing the Arcanarus Tower with me are all but gone. She is also sleeping with my daughter, which likely started as necessity for the baby she is carrying, as the baby is of mixed bloodlines. But I can’t help but feel that there was slightly more to their initial pairing.
Then of course there are Golum and Hector, both of whom apparently died while I was playing healer within Arcanarus University first, before it turned into Arcanarus Tower.
Jhonny Innerflame, what else can I say about him, other than he is the son or son-in-law I would want for any of my children. He is strong, reliable, and never gives up on himself or his goals. The only problem with Jhonny is that he is my bodyguard for while I am here, in Midnight Hunter territory. I wouldn’t dare presume that he would want to, or be allowed to follow me around a mystical tower of the dead that apparently sent chills down Mallory’s spine the further she climbed.
This leaves my last remaining friend as Zero, but he is angry and rightfully so that I all but abandoned him with one my Simulacrums while I went galivanting off. While I did have a good reason for leaving, he too was correct in that I could have at least popped over to say hello every once in a while.
I’m also realizing that being a college professor is not as glamorous of a profession as it might otherwise seem. The hours are long, you get attacked by your students and external students attending as guild delegates as well. Ultimately, I feel the deep burning nature within me to continue to climb.
Especially, with the last message that I got when I entered the tower to speak with Zero.
Hidden Quest Updated: First Acanarus Tower Climber (V): As the first Arcanarus Tower climber, it is your duty to determine a reward suitable for achieving the next goal of reaching the 250th floor.
Seeing the message, I couldn’t help but feel troubled by it, as before this time of my main consciousness re-entering the tower, I was told that I had to go out and leave the tower.
While I didn’t understand the reasoning at first, I believe I did now. During my last fifty floors on the tower, I found out what exactly Qi was and how to manifest it, even going so far as to get a class related to teaching this odd phenomenon to others. Which was why I originally stopped my original tower climb with Mallory.
Since that point I have gotten a lot stronger, and most importantly I have spread the knowledge of Qi to twenty-one new students, now thanks to Jhonny’s recent breakthrough. That apparently is enough for me to be able to be able to climb.
The only problem was, I didn’t quite know what I wanted to make as my goal for reaching floor 250. All the goals that I could ask for seemed rather selfish. Then again that was the purpose of such rewards from exploring Tower and Dungeons, each new set of floors would increase the difficulty, and would ultimately make it so you had a proverbial carrot waving before you.
Yet, before I could fully formulate my thoughts on the matter, a goal for continuing my climb was all but thrust upon me.
Hidden Quest Updated: First Acanarus Tower Climber (V): As the first Arcanarus Tower climber, a suitable reward has been chosen, for your achieving the next goal of reaching the 250th floor. Should you continue your climb and reach the vaunted 250th floor, you will receive a degree in Mixed Martial Mana. Rewards: Experience, Bachelor of Science degree from Arcanarus University: Mixed Martial Mana, Title: Arcanarus University Advanced Graduate (I), Increased Martial and Magical potency, Others. Floors completed (200 / 250).
At first, I felt sort of underwhelmed at the idea of effectively starting my graduate path over again with just another degree path. But then I realized that this would mean I could set and learn skills that would be improved not just once but thrice. Also, this was clearly a new career path that very few people could do. From the looks of it, only Gwen, Jhonny, and myself were capable of doing this path of dual energy usage.
Also, it wasn’t lost on me that even the titles had changed from Arcanarus University Graduate, to Arcanarus University Advanced Graduate.
Seeing that distinction, I realized how I could do this. This weekend was a perfect example of my ability to go off and do other things while still being a full-time teacher. In this particular case, I could train the students during the day, then tower climb at night and on weekends.
Thinking back this was exactly how I got my master’s degree, well the degree I earned while still in the realm of the living.
Yet, I was excited to see the possibility of a cross-over degree, one that used both Magic and Qi together. While I had both, I often tried to keep the two types of energy separated from each other, but perhaps I was wrong.
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At the very least, I was expecting some new skills to learn. Skills that would ultimately push me to new heights of understanding.
With that quest all but chosen for me, I mentally made up a list of things I would need to do first, before I could safely continue my travels up the tower.
Cass’s Pre-Tower Climbing to-do list: 1) Get the Lich to be an auxiliary teacher for the intro courses.
Yes, he was the lich, even though he had patterns and capabilities similar to a fictional character I’ve read and loved, I refuse to think that these two are the same, let alone even remotely related. As such, the Lich will now and forever be known as the Lich, and not as his name that he claims to be called.
2) Fix the two-sided win-win Marriage between Mallory and Myself.
This one will be a bit trickier than originally intended, particularly with the system coming up with ridiculous scenarios about testing the boundaries of friendship and decency between Mallory, my daughter, and myself. Honestly, I think the system is gross for this, but they did mess up in giving me over a month to prepare, meaning I might have a solution in place by the time the moment of truth comes.
3) Finish up any large remaining quests and upgrades.
I have several different quests that need to be completed, everything from the guild’s land reclamation act, to helping Ms. Kujo with her pregnancy, to just making sure that students get to a good point by the end of the first year. I also need to teach the art of spiritual Qi to ghosts, which I believe will go a long way in my understanding of how to mix mana and qi together, which seems to be the direction that my next degree path is taking me.
Most of these quests are nearly complete, with a lot being held back as we were waiting to find out what would happen with the native inhabitants if we claimed too much land too quickly. Fortunately, with us going the peaceful route, the cause for concern of war by taking too much land as invaders has been mostly negated, for now.
This of course leads me to my last and probably most important task.
4) Get Zero to be my traveling companion.
I know me, and I know I won’t push myself without a partner. Out of all of my family and friends Zero is the most likely candidate. I could possibly ask Jhonny, but I will ultimately need him to watch over my Simulacrum that I leave behind here, while my real consciousness goes exploring the Tower.
While I could travel alone, I feel that I will miss out on many experiences if I just force myself through the motions of getting there. With these Towers, or at least with this Tower, the journey helps you find out where and how you got to the final destination. I’ve found that experiences like that are far more enjoyable with others around you, than by yourself.
As with every list, the idea would likely be to start off with the first task, namely deal with the annoying Lich and get some much-needed assistance while teaching classes.
This logical need for a progressive way to go about completing tasks is likely why my mind went towards topic number three, where I finally decided to choose my final outstanding class advancement perk. Namely choosing my long-vaunted class evolution for my Akashic Qi Master class. The only problem was that for my primary classes I chose different schools of magic to open as affinities. While I could do something similar with my Akashic Qi Master, I felt learning a new school of magic and no longer having to fake it or use most of my concentration to alter the wavelengths of my energy. While new schools of magic would likely prove invaluable as time went on, I feel that a Qi class, and the first Qi class at that should not have a progression path that intersected with magic.
That said, I did have the ongoing quest to teach ghosts how to use and generate Spirit Qi, which gave me the idea that it might help me to teach these ghosts, if I myself knew what Spirit Qi was exactly.
With that, I focused my concentration on just learning the aspect of Spiritual Qi, and adding it to my own golden Qi aura.
As I sit there, I imagine a dense but oddly bluish-purple ball of energy forming next to my already condensed second tier Qi core. Then I imagine a chain of meridians attaching from my solid golden Qi core to the newly created ball of bluish-purple Qi. After the initial link, a return link is created from the bluish-purple sphere back to my main core.
After I imagine it, and am relatively happy with the results, or at least as happy as I can be given the current circumstances, I am met with a system message.
Akashic Qi Master Level 100 Class Evolution: (Qi Specialization): Spirit Qi: You have managed to unlock and begin to comprehend the first form of specialized Qi. This form of Qi will be forever synchronized with your primary core’s Tier Rating (Current Tier Rating: II).
Effect: All Spirit based Qi arts are 20% easier to learn and use.
With that done, I realize that I have accomplished a lot this morning. I know where I messed up, areas to improve upon, and most importantly ways to begin to understand what different aspects of Qi can be and feel like.
Now that I have Spirit Qi, or at least the beginning of it, I think I can begin to form ways that I can get the ghosts that are walking around as delegates to begin to create their own examples of Spirit Qi.
Honestly, I feel oddly proud of myself.
Or at least that is what I thought at first, but before I could get too far into my new train of thought, I was hit with a system message.
World Announcement: New types of Qi. Rejoice as someone has discovered the first of many types of Qi variants that are available to use and master.
Silence.
Pausing, I look around to see if anyone would be near me to think that that recent message was somehow related to me.
Fortunately, I am currently unsupervised. At least unsupervised from a guild perspective, Jhonny is here, but he doesn’t contribute much. The Lich is also unfortunately here as well, but he was a given.
“Are you even listening to me?” The Lich asked, sounding more exasperated than I felt was warranted. Well maybe it was warranted, as he had apparently been talking all that time and I had been getting my ducks in a row.
To my defense though, I did not acknowledge that I was even remotely paying attention to him, so he should have stopped if what he was saying was even remotely important.
“If she was making that face, then no, she definitely was not paying attention to you.” Mallory states, a faint tone of mirth to her voice.
Blink.
How did she get here so quickly? I look around with my sight, but there are just the faintest traces of magical energy at work. Yep, she full on sprinted to get here, then had the dramatic flare to stop and not even look winded from the action, well done. Honestly, I am more than a little impressed by the sudden display of athleticism.
“Hey, I could have been.” I shot back, though I feel her eyes peeling into the side of my face, right were a faint dab of moisture was present.
“Uh-huh, with your tongue out like that, you were in the deepest of thoughts, completely oblivious to your surroundings. Also a certain message tells me that you were clearly doing something complicated and likely dangerous to society as we know it,” Mallory stated.
“I was fully aware of my surroundings,” I begin, then continue, “Also, there was nothing remotely dangerous about what I was doing.”
“Uh-huh, so what did you do?” Mallory asked.
“I don’t know what you are talking about.” I replied.
“Hmm, and to think you were left here all alone with this Lich, and you never even once decided to try to protect yourself, I mean, you know who he is right.” Mallory noted, clearly loving the fact that the Lich was attracted to by my avatar and the real me, seeming to want participate in a love triangle that effectively involved two people. Really sickening if you think about it, but that is the Lich.
“I was perfectly safe the entire time, as I had Jhonny here looking out for my integrity, so I didn’t need you to save me.” I shot back.
“Save you?” The Lich asked indignantly.
“You know, your lisp seems to go away when you are flustered.” I quipped, turning my full attentions onto the now lisp less Lich.
“I, I would never fake my Imp, impede, impediment.” The Lich finally managed to make it out the third time.
“I think you are just trying to use words that you don’t fully understand, and thus have to pause to make sure you are using them correctly.” I replied.
“Why, why I never.” The Lich said, for a moment I could see him calling forth dark energy.
A quick zap of a polar opposite resonance to his Dark Magic, and his spell was not only Dispelled, but there was a faint burning after taste to it as well. Not enough to hurt or even cause damage, but enough to stun a magician who focused entirely on magic to solve all of their problems.
“Gah.” The Lich cried out, and then grabbed at his chest, right where his magical core was located.
“Don’t.” I said, then pointed at him, like he was a bad puppy who peed on the floor.
“Of all the,” the Lich said, before turning around in apparent defeat.
I almost wanted to go after him, especially as I wanted him to be an auxiliary teacher here at SVC with me, but I stopped myself. He was one of those weird masochists, where the more you dominated him the more he came around for thirds. Odd, to each their own and all, but seriously this guy just needed to let go a little. Not that he exactly could in his state, but still.
With the Lich and his incessant yammering gone, I turned to Mallory and mentally went through my mental checklist of things I had done, finding nothing that would be caught, I dropped that thought. From there I moved onto the next list, things that I didn’t account for going wrong, but I still apparently couldn’t account for them. Which led me to my next list, the pop-up to do lists, which everyone hates.
“Anything I can help you with?” I asked, hoping it was not one or three. Well two was probably the worst, but only because I don’t have contingency plans in place.
“Glad you asked that.” Mallory began, and like that I knew it was number three a pop-up, meaning any plans I had on completing my four main goals were pretty much shot down the drain.