Chapter 28

The Impossible Spell

  “I think we should talk about your future here at Arcanarus University and where you see yourself going.” Vice Principal Umbra states.

  After hearing that, I felt like a possible argument about avoiding a trapped trap that led to a little redecoration of the classroom might have been taken out of context.

  “Hmm?” I ask, making sure not to sound too committal, instead showing the right amount of intrigue.

  “I believe in being fully open and honest. That is why I will be straight forward with you and ask the one question that is on my mind. Why are you here?”

  “To learn.” I say, almost adding a bit more sarcasm to the statement making it close to a question, but I hold myself back.

  She stares at me, truly stares at me for a moment.

  “That’s it? To learn?” She asks, somewhat questioning the very nature.

  “Yeah.” I say, so glad I am blind and have my eyes covered otherwise I would be really tempted to roll my eyes. Gods, I don’t know if it is me being in a younger body, that is making me act this way or have these impulses, but they have to stop. Fortunately I avoid rolling my eyes, but I would be lying if I didn’t at least admit that I was tempted.

  Pausing Ms. Umbra just stares at me for a moment, before nodding her head and continuing.

  “Very well then. I shall ask, you have no want to establish political connections?”

  “No,” I almost want to add the fact that I don’t really like many people. I do realize that I am mostly a Regressor elitist, as those are the only people I have made any lasting friendships with, but I’m not an elitist, right? Well, I guess technically I am, which also plays into the fact that I don’t really care about politics. Also I have been a Second Class Citizen for so long that I don’t really care much for trying to associate with the locals. With ghosts it is different, as it seems that they are just happy to interact with people that they don’t care about racial divides.

  “I have to say, you truly are a puzzle. Out of every student here, you are the hardest to pin down on personal goals and machinations. Clearly you have fully embraced your gift for Spirit Magic as your antics earlier showed.” She pauses, “how did you get to the center of the cage?”

  “The cage?” I ask.

  “Yes, it was effectively a spirit version of a giant mouse trap, designed to lure in lesser spirit creatures.” Ms. Umbra states.

  Seeing that I just nod to myself, as that is seemingly what the trap was designed for.

  “Yeah, it would spring shut behind me, had I entered the main area?” I ask.

  “Indeed, it would. From there we would have used it to summon the spirit to class for a demonstration on the first few chapters of Introduction to Spirit Magic, of course I turned on the trap, never expecting one of our own enterprising students to not only enter the trap, but then consume the proverbial cheese at the end.” Ms. Umbra said.

  “What was that, I almost couldn’t help myself when it came to touching that.” I ask.

  Chuckle.

  “I dare say I hope you couldn’t resist. If you did, then I would demand the Apothecary Guild come up with a better bait. As it is, I’d think you find out what it is better by trial on your part. Later tonight begin to meditate on different spells that have given you a hard time. In fact, you will find that your absorption of that bait is likely what made your ability to learn Spirit Sight so easily.” She states.

  With that, I realize she is likely correct, that spell did seem to come easily to me. I had thought it was my own Intelligence, but hearing that it was at least a partial byproduct of some spiritual energy lure made me feel a bit deflated by the revelation. Here I was thinking I was a Prodigy, more so than just my base merits.

  “Do you have any complex spell forms I can try?” I ask.

  “I cannot in good consciousness allow a first year to learn combat spells. Particularly spirit-based combat spells.” She says.

  “What? No, gods no. None of those. See this is what I hate about my Magic Schools, they are almost all about breaking things. No, I’d rather be a healer, but of course that path in life was denied to me.” I say, lamenting the fact that I wasn’t born a second class light elf in the dark elven territory, forced to flee for my life.

  Ms. Umbra pauses as she looks at me with a scrutinizing gaze.

  I can tell that she is using some type of truth detection spell on me.

  “I have to say, you are an odd one. With your schools of magic and your heritage, I could have sworn you would have gone to the spirit realm to claim heaps of untold power. Yet, after spending hours there, you seem no more powerful than when I first met you.”

  I think about that, then realize that while I completed two quests since we last met, I only got experience for one of those. Then given the fact that I don’t want to kill things, my leveling is fairly stagnant.

  I shrug, not knowing what else to say.

  “Do you know what the average level for your classmates is?”

  “Not a clue.”

  “25.”

  She pauses, letting that number sink in.

  “That is the level where you have had enough time to learn what magic is, ways to do new things with magic, and hopefully still be able to be remolded. There are obviously exceptions at both end of the spectrum, you are a prime example of that, as you have shown that even a novice to their class can provide merit. Just know that you are well behind your peers. That level gap will only increase as times goes on. Right now, the average Intelligence of your peers is around 75, meaning you have a lot of catching up to do.”

  Hearing that, I almost laugh, but I decide to keep my emotions and thoughts on their underdeveloped Attributes to myself.

  “You don’t seem to be too worried.” She poses.

  “If I was worried about catching up to my fellow classmates I would not have applied.”

  “Perhaps you are made of sterner material than I first gave you credit for.” She states.

  I nod, not really knowing what else to say to that.

  Finally, after a moment, Professor Umbra seems to come to some sort of conclusion. “Fair enough. I have decided to grant you your request.”

  “My request?” I ask trying to figure out where I made a request.

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  “Yes, I will give you until two days from now at our next class time to learn a new spell. That should be nearly the entire time you have remaining with your mana bonus to learn this new spell.” Professor Umbra says, as she goes back to her desk and pulls out a particularly old tome from one of her shelves.

  Looking at the size of the time it is small, maybe the size of a thumb width, making it far smaller than our text book, and even smaller than a few of my notebooks I carry around in my back pack. Still, it is a book and a challenge.

  She holds out the book to me, and I reach out to take it, but she holds fast.

  “Do you swear to take full responsibility and ownership for this book and ensure that not just it, but its contents are safely secured?” Ms. Umbra asks.

  “I do?” I say, a note of confusion filling my voice. But before I can think too much about the possible implications a chime goes off in my mind.

  Bing.

Hidden Quest Found: The Lost Spell Form: You have been given an impossible task. Decipher the ancient language of the tome before you, and interpret the true nature and purpose of the spell. Reward: Experience, Hidden Skill (X2), new spell.

Requirements: Tome must not be lost, damaged, or stolen. Must complete conditions of this quest within 47 Hours, 54 minutes, 39 seconds…

  Seeing the quest prompt and the timer I realize I have likely been given an impossible quest. One that would require a lot of running around and trying to solve different components or aspects of, all of which would leave me with little to no time left to do the actual quest.

  I also realize from the quest description that chicanery will likely be afoot. Likely those rivals will show up, or something worse like princess kidnapping dark elves. To cut it all off at the root, I ask an important question.

  “Can I take this book with me?”

  “Well you can’t very well learn the spell while here. I have a class to teach next.”

  “Thank you.” I say, taking the offered book, and rather than putting it in my backpack I just hold it in my hand.

  “Oh, one more thing before you go.” The professor says.

  “Yes?”

  “Next time you steal the proverbial cheese from my minor spirit trap, I will make you make and produce the replacement salve.”

  “Is that a threat? I only hear upside to this.” I pose.

  “I will also make you fetch the materials.”

  I pause, “maybe I am missing something, but that just seems like more life skills that I either already have or new skills that I can learn.”

  “You already know Herbalism and Harvesting?” She asks.

  Hearing the idea of a new skill my ears perk up. Pesky dark elf ears. “Herbalism yes. Harvesting no, but I don’t mind learning new things.” I say.

  At that Ms. Umbra pauses and stares at me. “You really aren’t like our normal elitest students we have here. You know, be careful, I just might take you up on your offer.”

  I hold up my black gloves, proof that I am a member of the Apothecary Guild. “These aren’t just for show.”

  At that Ms. Umbra stares at the gloves for a quick second, long enough to Analyze them. “No, they definitely are not. All right, then it is settled. Solve that spell and I will put you to work as my harvesting assistant.”

  “Wait, now I must pass your quest to do this? What happened to stealing your spirit cheese and getting rewarded?”

  “Oh, I’ve decided that I will just have to put up more internal traps. Feel free to take the cheese again, just know that this time it will be far better protected.”

  Hearing that, I smile to myself. She was all but challenging me to steal her spirit bait, something that apparently makes learning spirit magic that much easier. Realizing this is likely not over I can’t help but smile. I am not certain about Ms. Umbra’s teaching style, honestly I am not even certain if this would be considered teaching to begin with. But I am ready for the challenges before me. Two new skills, a new spell, and Harvesting along with a recipe for how to make spirit snacks, I mean what isn’t to love.

  “Thank you.”

  “No, it is I who should be thanking you Cassiopeia.” She says, not using my surname, not that I have one, a purse sign that as usual I am a Second Class Citizen, but that should end within the year. In one more year that one and my Broke flaw will all be removed. I will still have a few, like Orphan which was forced upon me, though I wonder if that is a true flaw or something meant as a side quest for my new class.

  I apparently let the silence go on for too long as she continues. “You have let me see that there are still those who wish to learn for learning’s sake, for that I truly thank you.”

  At that I nod. “Of course, you mean it though. Harvesting, the crafting recipe for the spirit cheese stuff, and more guided lessons if I solve this book?”

  “Hahaha. Oh, the arrogance of youth.” Ms. Umbra says, a light smile cresting her lips. “Yes, should you succeed all those and more will be yours. At the very least I expect to see you in class in two days to return the book at the very least. I know I don’t need to tell you what happens if you do not return a book on time, do I?”

  I pause, as I think this is something important, but I don’t quite know why.

  Seeing the confused look on my face Ms. Umbra shakes her head the states. “Failure to return a book on time is grounds for immediate expulsion. Returning a damaged book is also grounds for immediate expulsion. Be careful, this is a place of learning and of respect to our equipment and our knowledge that we wish to pass onto the next generation of students.”

  “Right, no dog earing the pages, got it.”

  At that, Ms. Umbra draws in a dark spark of dense magic. “Do not even joke about such a serious offense.”

  “Right, got it.” I say, holding up my hands and holding the book out in front of me. Hopefully seeing the book will make her realize that any attacks on me would also damage the book.

  Seeing my gesture she takes in a deep calming breath, holds it for a moment, then finally visibly deflates. Seeing that she is now calm, I decide to cut my losses and leave.

  “Well thank you for this.” I say wiggling the book. Then with deft movements I cast my only active spell, and rip a hole in the veil between the spirit and mortal realms. Then I leave.

  Looking back, I can see that my Spirit Sight spell is still active, seeing as it is yet another channeled spell, I pause, only to see that it is a miniscule 2% of my remaining mana. Which puts me at just over 79% for my remaining mana pool. Seeing that the effect is nearly negligible for the spell, I decide to keep it active in addition to my other two spells. I figure at the very least being able to peer into the mortal realm will be worthwhile, which it is. Looking back I can see Ms. Umbra staring at the exact area that I teleported through.

  I wave to her.

  She pauses, then waves back. At this point I realize she has her Spirit Sight active as well.

  “What’s the book?” Zero asks, coming over to my side and read the odd script.

  Looking at the title I see that it is made up of letters that I instantly understand as old elvish, but they seem to be combined into a grouping of words that make absolutely no sense as they are.

  Seeing the book and given the task before me, I decide to dedicate the next 47 hours to solving this quest.

  Regardless of being able to read, I open the book to see if there are any pictures or diagrams, I can follow to make this text easier to understand.

  At near the halfway point is where my first image appears. The image is slightly off for some reason, but I can’t quite understand why. They are using the complete circuit of their body, but there is just something odd about the diagram.

  Looking at the text, I can see points where one hand first wrote the initial text and drew the drawing, then a second hand came along and seemed to press deeper into the page and complete different aspects of the diagram, completing circuits that didn’t seem to fit.

  Seeing the oddity, I begin flipping through page after page. While each word is seemingly written in the same odd form of elvish, quite a few letters have been changed by the same heavy hand.

  “What is it?” Zero asks, finally after seeing me stare at page after page of confusing texts.

  “Something is wrong with this page, it appears as though there are two authors.” I say.

  “Two?”

  “Yeah, there is one that wrote out most of the text and drawings, then a second firmer hand that came by afterwards and began marking through letters and characters.” I say, pointing to examples of each.

  “What do you think it means?”

  “I don’t know.” I say, as I try to puzzle out what is changing. I have a feeling that the book is likely a diary of some kind. Also my spy senses were telling me that if this was the diary of a master magician of some kind, then they likely used a cipher, or some other form of encryption to keep their data safe, if it fell into the wrong hands. Why a cipher? Why was this my first thought, well simple it is what I would do with my own thoughts. Especially if I couldn’t remember everything after a certain point. Fortunately I don’t have that problem yet, but I remember how I used to keep notes to myself on different tasks to perform each day. With magic use and experimentation it makes even more sense to continually write down changes, particularly if you are working on perfecting a spell form. Each day you would need to write down pertinent changes and jot down the way those changes to the spell form affected your overall progress.

  With that in mind, I decided to go back to the front and reread everything.

  Starting with the cover, I was able to translate the elven characters to this:

Tiov Taovq

  Seeing the letters, I began running through the different permutations for the types of cipher it could be. Instantly seeing the text a few forms of ciphers were originally out, like the scytale as that would require this to be a loose set of code that could be wrapped around a stick to line up to show a message. That of course left the possibility of a letter substitution, where one letter would be replaced by another with no rhyme or reason. There were also different variants of letter substitutions like Playfair squares, but most of those would require me to find out certain letters anyways. Meaning the only true way to solve a substitution puzzle would be to try to substitute certain letters for one another. Seeing the title of this book I was able to rule out a few combinations of possible words.

  Frustrated with my lack of progress, I knew I was onto something with it being a cipher of some kind, it just had that look. Also the fact that someone went through and wrote over one letter words to make them different letters, or appear to be different symbols of the Elven scripts only went to add more credence to this theory.

  In particular the letters for “a” and “o” were often changed quite often, or marked out entirely. Yet, I could see the forced changes as if they were clear as day thanks to the way I read. Thinking on it, the two most common one word letters are “a” and “I”. Now assuming that the writer of this diary changed out every letter for another I can assume that “a” would equal “I” and that “O” would therefore have to equal “a”.

  With that as a possible start I looked at the front cover and did the substitutions.

Tiov Taovq­­

_ _ a _ _ i a _ _

  Seeing that, and the combinations of similar letters I almost let out a smile as I was fairly certain I had not only guessed correctly about those two letters, but I now knew that this was in fact a diary, as proven by the near obvious translation of the title.

Tiov Taovq

Dear Diary

  With that, I began mentally going through each page of text and looking for the original works and began substituting all the known letters for altered forms. With three vowels, the “r” and “d” already known, I was well on my way to making this translation easy. Particularly since I knew where someone who came behind far later tried to hide the work.

  Focusing, I began copying the completed work page after translated page into my own notebook. Then focusing on the drawings and diagrams, I copied them, but made sure to leave out the false connection points that the second author had added in.

  Finally, once the last page was translated, I felt mentally exhausted, but I also felt more alive than ever. This was a puzzle, and not just any puzzle, but one that held the secrets of magic within its grasps. Still my mind was well beyond the point of exertion. Packing away both the book and my notes, I decided to take a quick nap, before I would begin my research into the spell again.

  As was quickly becoming a habit, I once again slept in the spirit realm. Just as I laid down, I was met by an all too familiar voice.

  “Oh there you are.”

  Hearing the voice of Tobias I groan. “Not now…”

  “Please, just one more chapter?”

  “Fine, but then off to bed.”

  “But I’m not tired.”

  “I am!”

  “Oh…”

  Shaking my head, I realize this is likely for the best as I do need to get through this quest as well and every chapter ahead helps, especially considering the fact that I still have six more books to go through.

  “Chapter 1…”